The Price of Love

Hell

Writers Note: We are starting to get the action of the first game. I went back and replayed this mission on my Xbox, I forgot how dark Call of Duty games can really be, writing this chapter was hard. I'm still in a functional stall, but I'm feel some of my flow come back around, work is starting to slow with the weather cooling down and rain being so prevalent.

TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter describes the murder and death of a child with some description, PLEASE TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES. I have placed a stopper at the place in the story where this happens to protect those who wish not to read that part. Some emetophobia. Misogyny. Death. 

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Chaos was both a feeling as well as an action, and I lived in it. Gor Air Base was a warzone, and Gaz, Price, and I shot out of the back of the cargo plane without a word to one another. Instinct drove us to the closest Humvee that we could find.

I knew only from blacked out reports from Alex Keller's documentation that Gor Air Base was a forward operating base for Commander Karim, the leader of Urzikstani Liberation Forces here. From the way Price navigated the swerving trucks, the sprinting soldiers, and the lift off multiple helicopters coming from the tarmac, I knew this was not his first time here either.

"We need to get to that Embassy now," he said, opening the driver side door of the Humvee.

Gaz, already wearing the frustrated snarl of a man who was both prepared for battle and enraged at the sight all of us had seen, took his place in the back of the Humvee. Leaving me to pull myself into the passenger side.

"What in hell is going on?"

Mentally checking through my equipment; tactical vest, gun, mags, utility belt, pack, knife. It was all there, it didn't stop the rising anxiety that blended together in my brain, like a pinball dinging around. "The Wolf's followers."

Price, quiet as he ripped the coiled earbud from his backpack and stuffed it into his ear then turned the knob on the walkie directly in front of him. "Echo 3-1 this is Bravo 6, come in."

For all instances and purposes, the man was intensely focused. So much in fact that he didn't spare a single glance in either Kyle or I's direction, launching his arm over the head of the passenger seat, cranking the shifter into reverse and slamming the pedal down. How was managed to hit no one on our way to the gate was a miracle, but between the ferocious anger that radiated off Price like a heater and the precision of his movement, I doubted there was much he would have done if we did.

"Echo 3-1, this is Bravo six. How copy?"

Growling, he threw the walkie talkie over to me, "find their channel!"

I took the device, quietly scanning through the various channels on the receiver, finding nothing but static and Arabian music. Price drove with a viciousness, slamming around civilians on the road, trying to escape the onslaught of explosions that lit up the night sky. Even from four miles away, I could see the buildings up in flames and my gut twisted into a thousand little knots. "Sir, we won't be able to get through."

"We'll go in from the south," he answered, twisting the wheel hard and swerving around a bend in the highway, "Commander Karim alerted me to underground tunnels that we can use."

The closer we came to the city, the more my skin crawled. Carnage, absolute carnage. In the darkness of night, layered in the thick orange use of fire, the city is post-apocalyptic with business windows bashed in and completely looted, trash bins spilled over, blood and other bodily fluids covering the sidewalk. I turned my gaze away when I saw more than one stray animal running for it's life from a hoard of crazed teenagers, I could not bear to see the innocent slain.