Brothers in Arms: Journey Through the Unknown [ONHOLD]

Prologue

*New York City, 1745 Hours EST*

Sometimes, fighting for your country has its limit. It was a statement that Evan could not help but constantly reflect on whenever he picked up his rifle or sat in the commander seat in his Abrams. What was the point of continuing, if one knew that Death was coming closer to taking one's life away?

The solution, he reasoned, was simple: one just had to cheat Death.

What he was about to do might be recorded as one of the dumbest acts performed by a soldier in the field. His head screamed at him, telling him that he would die. But his body kept on moving, shutting out the fear of losing his life regardless of whether it was to the enemy or friendly fire. Evan crawled like he was back in basic training; his head was down but still facing forward, and his knees spreaded forward one after another. The same could be said for his arms and legs, only instead of being static, they were in constant motion, pushing him forward with his rifle sitting comfortably in his arms. All he needed to do was rinse and repeat and it would all be over, just like in basic.

The gunshots continued in rapid succession and all he could do was pray that none of the stray bullets would hit him. Those jarheads were a bit happy on the trigger anyway, so there was a high chance some of them might accidentally fired toward the ground.

And there it was, the remote detonator that he had been looking for was in the hand of a dead fellow soldier. The small item shined brightly like a piece of treasure that could change his life forever. When Evan took a closer look, the man clearly had a very slow and painful death. In a world where bullets were pretty much the tools used to kill other men, seeing an arrow sticking prominently out from the corpse's neck might be shocking at first. Even though it was an outdated method, an arrow was still a deadly projectile when it can hit an unprotected spot like gaps between the body armor. Poor fellow didn't stand a chance.

Not thinking any further about his dead comrade, Evan grabbed the detonator out of the soldier's hand and pressed it.

A couple of explosions shook the entire block when hundreds of grams of C4 detonated at the same time. He hugged the ground, hoping that one small movement could stop him from sprawling all over the place from the shockwave.

After the blast subsided and the dust began to clear, Evan poked his head over the hood of a car and assessed the situation. To his relief, the end of the street was covered up with a wall of concrete debris, completely blocking any further push from the enemy. The explosions blew a big chunk out of the building corner without causing the entire thing collapsing on their own forces. Hats off to those combat engineers who set up those explosives earlier.

This should buy them some time and let their forces regroup and plan a new attack route.

Just when he thought the situation couldn't get any worse, the enemies gifted them with another surprise. Two large humanely figures, standing over two-stories high, suddenly burst through the makeshift barrier and growled at them, making a rather appealing and movie worthy entrance. Surprisingly enough, these things made their way through the concrete barrier without any problems! Then the pair wasted no time and began rampaging toward them, pushing away every single vehicle parked on the street with little to no effort.

The monsters were half-naked, only having a piece of leather loincloth wrapped around their waists. They had one large eye covering the entire upper portion of their face, bearing huge vampire-like teeth that managed to poke its way through their lips, and horns sticking on top of their hairy head like two pieces of cone-shaped drills. Don't get him started looking at the body of those damn things. It was one hell of a huge ugly cyclops.

As a matter of fact, he would rather fight a familiar and intimidating main battle tank rather than some giant mythical monster wielding a mace-like weapon.

Everyone should be running away at the sight of such a fearsome monster charging them at full speed. However, these mythical monsters did not know it was rushing straight into a platoon of some very angry Marines.

"ROCKET!"

Everyone's muscle memory kicked in and they immediately ducked as two HEDP rockets flew straight for the two cyclops. The munition normally used for bunker-busting was actually effective on a soft target when the monster exploded in such a majestic and bloody fashion. The shockwave was so strong, it tore the monster's arms and head right off. All that left of the cyclops were its intact lower half and a distasteful water fountain dripping with blood.

"Halle-fucking-lujah!"

"Woohoo! Now that's what I'm talking about!"

"Give me a high-five, dude! Ha, those fucking monsters got fucked up, boys!"

Among the celebration roaring across the firing line, Evan stood silently behind his cover and watched the Marines as they finished off the last remaining foot mobiles with skyrocketed enthusiasm. It was a turkey shoot.

Just by looking at the familiar scene in front of him, he put a faint smile on his face. He grasped the handguard and pistol grip of his M4A1, aimed down the sight of the gun, and pulled the trigger. The short burst from his carbine synced perfectly with many of the gunfire melodies pouring downrange, carrying the intention of pushing these monstrosities back to the world where these things belong.