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War on Campus

I fought them. I’ve been fighting the Muggies since the beginning. No, not since San Francisco or Austin, I wasn’t really into fighting the alien invaders until they hit Fort Hood, Tx. That one made me angry.

That is when I first donned the armored exo-suit and shouldered the dual-barrel plasma rifle for the first time. That is when I started shoving the thermal blast grenades into the side pouches it came with.

I was at Tampa when the bridge was taken out, I saw Disney World melt before my eyes, I saw Georgia Dome collapse and I stood idly by and watched when the aliens swarmed the Democrat National Convention and ate the delegates and spit out the alternates.

They kept coming, we were outnumbered at every turn, outgunned at every...er... turn too. Anyways, where was everyone? Most of the bystanders getting squashed couldn’t bother to get their eyes off their stupid “smartphones”. I have seen it so many times that the revulsion wore off.

Finally my unit was hit hard, the MCX-33 we were in was shot down somewhere in the far northeast. I didn’t want to die in Yankee land for crying out loud.

I was separated from my guys, communications were jammed, I was on my own. I found a building and got inside, I blockaded the door and set about fortifying the place. Before long the whole neighborhood was crawling with the Muggies, people were running in all directions screaming - most still holding those cellphones.

I could cover one or two sides of the building, but I needed someone to watch my back. I took stock, I was in some sort of day care facility. There was a big logo on the wall, dang it all, I was on a college campus. This was bad.

I heard faint sobs from the far corner and sure enough, there was a student there clutching his smart phone with tears running down his face. Some people his age were out in the world fighting and dying to save his hide and this guy was facebooking, then I saw he was holding a stuffed toy in the other hand.

“What in the world are you doing?” I asked

He seemed terrified of me. “Alien invaders are out there eating your classmates, why are you cowering from me?”

“You have a gun, that makes you bad”

I shook my head. “Wake up, we are at war for the survival of the human race here! Of course I have a gun”

He curled into a ball. “This is the safe room, this is where we come when we are assaulted by microaggressions and the white straight male hegemony”

I pulled the curtain off the nearest window and covered him up, the big baby. That was when a passing alien Mugg stopped chasing a girl to look directly at me.

Of course I blew a hole through him.

“You are a monster!” the boy in the corner said to me.

I ran across the room to see what was happening on the other side of the building. Oh no. An alien roller was headed right for the “safe room”.

“Want to throw playdoh at an alien tank?” I halfheartedly asked the kid, in jest of course.

“Such violence!” he answered.

I fired three grenades at the roller and it careened out of control and hit another building. Well, it was just the student union, no big loss there. Then it exploded, oh well.

“What is your name kid?” I demanded, I might have to go all R Lee Ermy on this one.

“Brady Losko” he said meekly.

“I’m going to need you to help me” I told him, he started shaking his head - which matched the shaking of his whole body. The wimp.

“I need you to watch that side of the building and tell me what the Muggies are doing” I said “I might be able to save our lives if you do this”

He was clearly too scared to say no and he sort of crawled to a window and pretended to look out. “Tell me if any of them start heading this way”

I turned over a table and a couch and moved them against the door. This left a nice open space in the middle for me to move around in, wearing my big armored battlesuit. It also littered the floor with crayons and coloring books.

“Are you kidding me?” I muttered before returning to my vigil “Thomas the tank engine and Bob the builder are a little out of your age range aren’t they?”

“They calm us down when we are triggered”

I didn’t understand that one at all. “Triggered?”

“Like when someone says something that is racist, sexist or xenohobic”

I tried not to laugh. “You mean like when I say the Muggies are coming to eat us all?”

He shrugged, I guess that xenophobia crap went out the window a few weeks back. “What, the poor Muggies aren’t on the protected group list any more? Don’t you think removing them from that list is racist or something?”

He didn’t answer.

More Muggies were making a running move at the building, these guys had their own armored suits. I fired my plasma cannon at them a few time, took a few of them out but the last couple literally rammed the side of the brick building.

They poked a hole in the wall big enough for two alien beasts, but the impact slowed them down enough for me to put holes in their heads. Green blood splattered the walls, ruining some prized finger painting taped there.

“Now that is art” I said.

“They’re coming!” the boy squeaked and hid behind a chair. He had pointed through the hole in the wall, and I looked. Sure enough more were coming.

I pulled out a grenade and tossed it their way, the explosion popped a couple of them like water balloons but the others kept coming.

“That was my last grenade!” I said, I moved back as I shouldered the plasma rifle, they were just about upon me. Us, actually.

“Here kid, the safety is off, just aim and pull the trigger” I said as I tossed him the pistol. It was just a sidearm but maybe the distraction would give me a little more time.

The aliens reached the hole in the wall at the same time, tried to push each other out of the way, there were too many of them. I started blasting them with the big gun, but this brought them to their senses and they fanned out.

They started coming in through different windows all around us. I turned and fired. Turned and fired. Turned, fired. There were just too many of them but their numbers were falling.

Then I felt two of them jump onto my back, they were ripping the armor off of my back and sides. I have seen it happen to too many good men. I was lying prone with the beasts on top of me, I couldn’t move.

“Brady, just kill me now!” I said.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, click, click, click....

I was still alive. The aliens were dead. The idiot had saved my life.

“Having more than 9 rounds in the magazine is illegal in this state, you know” he said.

We both laughed.

“You actually said magazine instead of clip, maybe you aren’t so bad after all”

That’s when I heard the beautiful sounds of MCX-33 engines, 50-caliber cannons and alien cries. The infantry had arrived.

“Ever thought about signing up for the war?” I asked him as I walked out to join my comrades in arms.