I, Immortal

The old G3 battle rifle was a leaden weight, straining against already weary muscles. A grim reminder that at four point seven kilograms, it was a lumbering dinosaur compared to the more modern—and lighter—assault rifles and carbines that had replaced it.

I dropped low, face-first onto the ground, moments before a hail of angry lead zipped through the air where I had been standing. I tasted bone-dry earth and parched heather. I spat to clear my mouth and blinked to get the dust out of my eyes. The kevlar was gone again—that damn chin strap was never in place when I needed it. But my trusted rifle was clear of the dirt. That was the only thing that really mattered.

Inaccurate AK fire—short for Avtomat Kalashnikova, the weapons of the invaders—was tearing into the bush around me. I wormed forward and into cover. It wasn't much. A pile of stony dirt crowned with a few long-dead shrubs. More 5.45-millimeter bullets passed overhead, but none came close to hitting.

The enemy had, for the time being, lost sight of me, earning me a short respite. I could not, however, afford to dally. There was only one of me and quite many of them. Soon they would pin me down, flank my position, and flush me out into the waiting sights of a sniper or two. I needed to keep moving, keep shooting, keep killing. Kill or be killed. It was always thus.

How had the world come to this?

When I was young, the world was at peace. Old enemies had become friends, the economy was booming, and it seemed that war—except for the odd local affair between third-world countries—was a thing of the past. There was inequality and there was injustice, true, but eventually, everyone would be lifted out of poverty and Earth would enter a golden age of reason and abundance for all.

But we were all mistaken. The darkness in the human heart would not so easily be vanquished. I don't know how the fall started, and the details of the process are no longer important, but I do remember how the old world ended.

It ended the night the stars fell from the sky and smashed into the Earth. It wasn't your regular shooting stars. They were huge, like the dinosaur-killing asteroids on National Geographic. I personally saw five, but I know there were many more based on other survivors' accounts. Before striking the falling stars broke into pieces. I think that's what saved us from utter annihilation and instead consigned us to a living hell.

Another barrage of gunfire brought me back to the present.

In this day and age, you can never have too many mags. I had started with ten. Two hundred bullets. Now I was down to two mags. Forty shots. I usually took around five rounds to kill a man, give or take. Eight more kills then. Probably not enough.

I slotted my second-to-last magazine with the practiced motions of a veteran fighter. Extract spent mag. Retrieve fresh mag. Insert mag. There was no need for me to work the action; I had left the last round in the chamber. It took me no time at all to get the weapon ready. I'd be a poor soldier if it did.

The Russki—I still thought of them as Russians, though technically there wasn't a Russia anymore—was still in cover behind the spruce I had seen him slip behind. I couldn't actually see him, but unless he had developed the power to turn invisible and fly away, he was still there.

I poked my G3 through the trampled low-growth blueberry bushes and sickly green moss—about the only things still living around these parts—and brought the stock to my shoulder. I took semi-careful aim at the foot of the spruce. I squeezed off a short burst, counting four hits in a flattened circle around the base of the tree.

I didn't bother firing any more. It would be wasteful. If the enemy soldier was still behind the tree—which he was—he was now dead or dying. There was no doubt in my mind. The G3 had one advantage over more modern weapons: penetrating power. Maybe if the enemy had been hiding behind a gigantic oak. Maybe. But a spruce trunk was nothing to the 7.62 x 51 mm NATO.