Chapter 2 – Gods Never Die
After the initial attack, there were countless others. One by one, the so-called gods materialized and destroyed everything in their vicinity. They then waited, sometimes for hours, while people simply watched them float. It seemed as though gods have indeed descended down upon us. Yet instead of light in the form of glory and illumination from the stars, they brought light in the form of fire. Destructive fire. And after all this time, we finally saw and witnessed what we have wondered all along. Are gods real? Do they exists? They were indeed real, it seemed, and so was their raw hatred. It took us a few of their attacks to realize it would be a good idea to start fighting back. We employed our own energy weapons, our own soldiers and our own machines of war. All of the decades and all the years of strife had finally paid off, it seemed, and we managed to intercept one of them.
There was no joy in the faces of those who could finally get to test humanity’s most advanced weaponry. No enthusiasms, only a grim, stoic determination.
The being atomized in the middle of the square in central New York.
It left behind an area of charred concrete where it had manifested with a sound like thunder and air splitting and a rifle nearly bigger than it its body held in its hands. It looked at all of us at the same time and said something which their species had become all too fond of saying. “Die,” it demanded.
I watched the scene from afar as soldiers got into formation, drew their guns and fired as one.
Apparently, they have found an algorithm, a time and location sequence by which these “gods” were appearing, and have managed to predict where one will manifest next.
Like a series of countless wires short fusing and blasting, the rifles spat a barrage of horizontal lighting at the floating god. Tanks suspended on current of magnetic force strode from behind the artillery line. Elements from above swooped down and bombarded the area with precision strikes that cratered the soil. Dust veiled the being in a cloud of soot and grime and still, the soldiers kept their pressure. They stood positioned in a half-circle, their rifles a deafening roar striking into the smoke-barrier. They moved slowly closer in their wargear – their bulky feet stomping the ground, pluming dust, each exoskeletal suit reinforced with protective layers as thick as another man’s body. They did not stop. Didn’t stop even when their weapons began to overheat and blaze with radiation and light like miniature suns. There was a shout and they at last halted.
All civilian personal had retreated, cowered, watched the scene from afar if they could. I stood the closest of all the non-military personnel, observing from atop a tank the size of a small house.
Somehow, the men in charge got the idea that, because I had survived one attack, I could maybe contribute something valuable to the fight. I had agreed only reluctantly, however, since I could not convince them nothing I had to offer was of any value.
You may find that a man is at his most agreeable when he is being stared down by five generals and the president of the world government.
We waited for the dust to settle and when it did, our jaws dropped. Unmoving, unscathed, unperturbed, the being floated just as it had before we began our attempt to murder it. I could feel an almost palpable sense of fear clogging the air. Everyone froze and I heard the two military technicians below me talk amongst themselves.
“Impossible,” whispered the first, trepidation in his voice.
“How much energy did we release at the thing?” asked the second.
The first crunched the numbers using his mind-apps and came up with an absurd figure.
“That could level a god damn block!” the second gawked.
“A block? Are you serious?” the first asked him. “There’s a total of 234 soldiers there. Put them on a flyby mission and have them randomly fire at small town, and what you’ll end up with is very dead town. Leveled and reduced to piss and rubble.”
“It doesn’t even–“
There was a crack in the air and a luminous orb of white light rippled out from the being’s head. I would have missed if my eyes hadn’t been trained on the being. Looking away from a huge, staring and lidless eye isn’t something someone does easily. Soldiers were flung in the air and back, all 234 of them. The tanks that stood behind them were thrown and flipped, their heavy frames throwing up dust as they landed and cracking the tulles with dull clangs, their magnetic fields rendered inert. The shockwave hit even me. It robed me of breath and I fell to my knees, panting. I saw stars in my retinas, whooshing and dancing. My head began to pound as though I had been in the sun for too long as hot blood pulsed on my temples.
It was now the god’s turn to fire.
But it didn’t. It simply floated above the dazed soldiers. Then their bodies exploded in a black-purple mist. I could hear tiny bits of bone prickling against the tank. The larger tanks fired. Their advanced targeting meant nothing and some actually managed to miss, while sounds of the mass-reactive projectiles smashing into the entity were like a strike of an anvil. Heavy and deep. But the being didn’t move, didn’t stop. It kept coming and staring at us, floating over the remains of the dead soldiers.
The sky boomed as a multi-caliber shot was fired and hit the being in the torso. The whole tank trembled and shook underneath me and the explosion was immense. But it was then, when the being was so much closer, that I realized none of the projectiles actually hit it. They had all detonated before it, forming a circular nimbus about it as the energy was dissipated and released into the air.
I didn’t wait for another shot to be fired, I simply ran. I ran like hell and kept running until I could no longer hear the insanity. I ran until I could no longer hear men screaming and metal being torn apart. I ran until I could run no more.