War Fever

Chapter 1

The air was cool around me as I sat there, watching what looked like a crowd of people gathered around an area in a field next to some houses. There was a little white line, pulsating and floating in mid-air, thin, turquoise tentacles of electricity shooting off of it to dance along the grass below.

Some police officers kept the crowd back, obviously wary of this strange, new occurrence and what it could be. The little white line slowly began to grow, transforming into a massive, circular shape that was somewhat pulsating like it was partially made out of some sort of liquid. The centre was a solid white void that slowly transitioned into the turquoise colour that made up its edges. Some of the crowd backed up, some remained where they once stood as this strange sight grew.

Once fully grown, the shape began to bulge before the faint, blue silhouette of a figure appeared. After a certain breaking point, the bulging stopped increasing as a person walked out. He was wearing a dark pine green general uniform and service cap, medals decorating it. The most striking thing about his appearance, at least based on the crowd's reaction, was the animal-looking head and clawed hands of the general. His head was that of some kind of hyena, and the crowd, as well as the police, varied in reactions to his appearance. Some left, some stayed, and some officers drew their handguns at his sudden appearance.

More animal people of various species stepped out of what was now confirmed to be a portal, each wearing military-looking uniforms, albeit the formal ones used for celebrations rather than an actual military mission. They all were armed, although their guns were holstered and not drawn. A couple dozen soldiers stepped out of the portal, taking formation behind the general. After they all lined up, the general put a right hand over his heart before raising up his left hand and making a fist, the soldiers behind him doing much the same.

To the surprise of the crowd, the general spoke perfect English, saying the simple phrase, "Good day, we are here on peaceful terms to discuss land ownership. May you get a hold of some kind of government official?"

The crowd looked on with confusion, the police made calls on their radios, and Mr. Conners, our bunker leader, walked in front of the screen where this video was playing on the projector.

"As you all know, this was the first interaction with these people, dubbed, anthros." He spoke, going into a tangent that me and pretty much everyone my age did not pay attention to.

Once a year, our bunkers leader gets the residents together on the anniversary of the anthros' arrival to show some footage of them during the short peace humanity had with them and discuss the history of what happened.

"We must never forget the doom brought down on North America by their hand," is an all too common quote Conners tells the bunker during these anniversaries.

It's become kind of a meme here, where whenever someone fucks up people here say some variant of that quote in regards to the fuck up.

"We must never forget this fucking boredom brought down by this anniversary." My friend Calv joked when he realized today was the anniversary day.

After Conner's same old speech about the anthros being peaceful at first, he talked about some paranoid nutjob shooting into a crowd of passive anthros being led to a government office, then about some rising tensions afterwards before war broke out. Just stuff that I didn't care for, nor even try to remember the details of from all the times I've heard it. Around 8 years of hearing this same monologue had brewed disinterest among me and a decent portion of this bunker's younger population.

The minutes passed, pointless history to me was ignored, and the monologue came to a close with, "And so, this war still rages on outside these walls. Our continent is lost, there was no saving it when the first nuke went off, and there was certainly no possible salvation when the States panicked and launched more in retaliation. The anthros doomed our continent, raped our land, and now we are one of only a handful of civility remaining in not just our country, but our continent. We may never be saved by the UN in Europe or Asia or by anyone anywhere else, and we will never leave this bunker to retake our land. We are bunker folk, this is our home, our salvation. After the results of expeditions in the past, we've all come to learn that outside of here is no more than a lost cause, and as such, we will always stay here."