Phagocytosis

Assam, The Radiant Caliphate of the Emerald Crescent (formerly north eastern India), August 2037

Fifty to one hundred million dead had done nothing to slow the ongoing war in what was now India. As the UN helicopter I was in flew over the refugee camp just south of the oil fields where I was supposed to meet Takashi Saito, the Vietnamese machine gunner covering the right side of the helicopter glanced toward me. I had guessed correctly when I joked to myself that the refugee camp looked like it had been burned to a crisp two times over.

Assam was no longer the sleepy, rain-soaked hinterland it once was. It had become a flashpoint of chaos and greed, a shattered province sitting atop one of the largest oil discoveries in modern history ,a curse in liquid form. Once covered in tea gardens and thick monsoon jungles, the land now reeked of smoke, diesel, and burning ambition. As the helicopter descends, I remark that the landscaped looked more like the one I saw in Western Germany than anything else.

It's hard to believe that Takashi Saito and I share the same birthday. Not to embellish myself, but I have nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to military service — though Takashi's record is on a whole other tier. His face shows it, the way I have to shout in his ear shows it, even the way he bends his knees shows it.

He, along with thirty of his countrymen and two hundred mercenaries from around the world — mostly Poland and China — were tasked with maintaining and securing this vast perimeter of oil fields, refineries, and logistical depots stretching for miles. Gone were the days of "contractors" with PR teams, pools, and tailored suits. This was mercenary work more reminiscent of 1950s European mercenaries in the Congo than the 2010s US contractors in Iraq.

The way the UN helicopter crew looked at them as they hurried to unload medicine made that clear. The bodies crucified in the field between the mercenary compound and the refugee camp hammered the point home.

"That's the Polish restaurant. No idea where they get the meat, but it's alright," he told me in French.

"Where did you learn French?" I asked.

"Worked in the Sahel just before this. Learned Arabic and some Bambara too. It's probably better if some of my colleagues don't overhear what we're saying." He glanced toward the Cougar MRAP nearby, its sides adorned with skulls and rotted heads, then added, "Remember, no pictures."

===================================================================================

He bummed me a cigarette right after we finished our plate of pierogi. The Indian "waitress" took our plates after he paid her in euros and slipped her a tip in Chinese yuan.

"Why is it you stayed?" I asked, struggling to find the right words in my head.

He took a long drag from his cigarette, eyes distant for a moment.

"In a way, I loved the war," he said quietly. "Not the killing, not the chaos—well, some of that at least. But mostly the purpose it gave me and some of my colleagues. We're part of that lost generation, you know? The ones who grew up watching the world, our country, fall apart. No clear future, nothing to hold onto. Gone were the comfortable jobs our parents had. The jobs where you stayed in the office from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., where you were lucky to have one real day off. How many of my fellow recruits were former shut-ins—guys who only played video games and watched anime all day in their rooms, living off their parents' meager pensions and government handouts."

"Fuck me if we were going to slave our lives away," he continued.

"Sure, at first. When the draft started, when they had to fill the ranks, we all had ulcers in our stomachs. When they got all of us in shape. When we watched the footage from the front lines—Russian, Chinese, whoever—being slaughtered by the Crabs. Knowing we would be there in a few months just ate us from the inside. Other recruits had mental breakdowns, refusing to get out of bed, rather be sent to prison than Belarus. From the draft office, to basic training, to the plane to Irkutsk. And on that damned train ride west. Just that gnawing feeling inside of you—the same as when you were a kid walking home with a bad report card, or at work when you're behind on paperwork and your boss calls you to his office. That feeling, only ten times worse."

"Then we were in the thick of it. I remember it as vividly as the day I first held a woman in my arms. Some factory east of Minsk. The place was huge—entire factories lined up one after another, roads running between them. I remember how my legs felt as I jumped out of the back of the Bushmaster I was in. I even accidentally ejected a round when I pulled the bolt on my Type 89, forgetting I'd already chambered some minutes earlier.

Our vehicle had gotten lost from the rest of the platoon, taken a wrong turn and came face to face with five or six crabs feasting between two warehouses. Those bastards were just a hundred meters away. The gunner sitting to my left had seen combat before, so it didn't surprise me when he pulled on his vape right before firing several volleys of .50 cal rounds at the crabs sitting in a circle. Guy was nervous, like the rest of us. But he didn't show it, more importantly didn't let it affect his work. On his remote screen, I saw one munch on a leg before it noticed us. I watched the .50 cal rounds blow its carapace open right before the rear door opened and we were yelled at to dismount.

Hamada, some guy who'd seen combat and a long prison sentence before the war, was damn near dragging a replacement by the collar. The new guy was an administrative clerk pulled in to fill the spot of a soldier who'd lost his right leg just before I arrived."

Takashi waved at a Polish and a Chinese mercenary as they exited the "restaurant" before continuing.

"Off we went, forming a line to the left and right of the vehicle. Using anything we could as cover, some forklifts, heaps of metal and trash that'd been in the sun and rain for too long, stacks of pallets. Mind you, the .50 cal was still firing, shaking the air to my left as I fired at the dead bodies. I was running on fear, adrenaline, and something that had been creeping up on me for days. Ever since I met the platoon, ever since me and the four other replacements were introduced, I'd seen it in the eyes of the guys who'd been there before we even learned to shoot a rifle—as if they were betting on which one of us four would die first.

That feeling pushed me, motivated me not to let them down, not to be the weakling, the FNG who'd get themselves and others killed. That's why I exposed myself and started shooting again once the .50 cal fell silent and needed to reload.

Even as the new grunt, Sora, that was his name, was being yelled at, called a coward for hiding behind rubble instead of taking over with his Minimi, I peaked out and fired round after round, left, right, bodies on the road, anywhere a crab might appear.

One crab peeked from a building to the right, about a hundred meters ahead, near the bodies. He fired his blasted weapon in our direction, nearly hitting our Bushmaster while the gunner reloaded from the hatch. I hit the bastard in the arm, he swerved as his blaster flew from his hand. He retreated back to cover before I could finish him off.

Hamata grabbed me by the collar just as he finished dragging Sora over to where I was. The moment Sora started firing uncontrolled bursts down the street, Hamata yanked me back to cover as the Bushmaster retreated—quite violently, if I may add.

But he was talking on the radio, his mind clearly elsewhere, trying to figure out where the rest of our platoon was instead of babysitting us. He pulled me down so I could cover the street from this position without exposing my whole body.

He squeezed my shoulder before returning to the radio operator, as if to say, "That'll do, kid."

I felt like I was jumping in place, my body on full override. I could have lost a leg and not even felt it because of the adrenaline. Crabs were just peeking from where we first spotted them, as if they wanted to scavenge the scraps of meat in the middle of the street.

We hadn't lost anyone yet, but the order was clear — stay put in that tetanus alley, surrounded by endless rusted debris, as if that factory district hadn't been touched since the Belarusians removed the hammer and sickle from their flag. We didn't like that order one bit, paranoid they'd hit us from behind, pick us off one by one, then literally draw and quarter our bodies to share the meat.

"Someone had ordered a 'Murder.' You ever seen the movie The Birds? A group of crows is called a 'murder' in English, did you know that?" he asked me, downing his beer and signalling for another round while motioning for me to finish mine.

"Yeah, I've heard of that, but I haven't seen a 'murder' in action," I answered.

"Don't know why the bastards ordered one in such an urban area. Those things on paper were only called if the crabs were caught in the open. Then I realized that black cloud a few kilometers away was the drone swarm—hundreds of cheap South Korean drones just circling the city. Saw a part detach and saw the look on Hamata's face as they came toward us. The crabs must have seen it too, because they started closing the distance. One long, narrow street between warehouses—us on one side with the suicide drones coming from there, and crabs on their side.

Those drones were dodgy in the best of conditions, but in those circumstances? Fuck, everyone started to panic.

Eight of us, some firing shots, others like Hamada flashing their IR lights at the drones closing in. I thought fast, was crazy enough to run across the street, braving lose blaster rounds, ran towards the front of the bushmaster. That .50cal was firing right on top of my head, bullets the size of my dick just flying a meter or two above me. The driver peaked just enough to try and see who was the madman playing with his truck. I ripped the Combat Identification Panel from the hood as something blew up to my left. Must have been a blaster. Heavy shells.

"That's why that war was so deadly—imagine fighting an opponent whose three out of four soldiers are armed with high-explosive shells. Just some space brew that's more combustible than rocket fuel. That thing must hit the forklift some meters behind me to my left, the "cone of action" as we call it, the degrees where the shrapnel, liquid and debris hit. I was right in it. Some of the shrapnel hit the bushmaster as I felt something hard hit the back of my chest. Was I not wearing a plate carrier filled with a ceramic plate and a kevlar inserts I would have had my spine shattered, not including the internal damages. Part hit my left hand, right as I was finishing up removing the panel, only later did I realize that, my left glove was shredded at the little finger, so was my skin there, they had to tape the skin together later when we extracted.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Ran to the back of the vehicle, and started waving it like a madman—anything to tell those AI-powered bastards that yes, we came from the same planet, so please don't blow us up.

The roar of the drones grew louder just as some of my squad began shooting at them. That must have confused the drones enough for a moment, but confusing flying explosives didn't mean we were out of trouble yet. The first volley—two or three drones aimed directly at us—hit the hangars and the road just a few meters away.

I clutched my ears, but the shockwave still rocked me. It wasn't strong enough to kill, but it knocked me down hard—bits of metal stung like hell, pelting me as I collapsed to my knees. I covered my neck and prayed my body armor and helmet would do the rest.

A few seconds passed. I was still alive. That realization hit just as the second volley struck—right into the crabs charging our position. I got up as the dust began to settle and saw their bodies split clean in half, torn open where the drones had hit center mass.

Whoever wasn't shouting or crying was shooting at the crabs, crawling, torn in half but still not dead from the blasts. It was a miracle we didn't lose anyone.

I turned around, trying to figure out what the noise behind me was. Then I came face to face with a flying crow. Four rotors, a small camera in the center, and a shaped explosive payload strapped to its belly. It just hovered there, a few meters away. I froze like a deer staring down a grizzly. Its little black eye locked onto me.

I slowly pressed the headlight on my chest, red flashes, one every half second. The drone rotated slightly in its axis, as if adjusting its view. I nearly pissed myself before it rose in altitude and drifted down the street.

The fighting, for us, was over. The third wave of drones was taking over now. One, two, three, four, five, six flew overhead, straight toward the warehouse the crabs had retreated into.

The air stank, shit in Sora's pants, gunpowder, sweat. Hamada pulled off his helmet, wiping his forehead, the radio handle still glued to his ear. Trying his best to talk in English to whoever was on the other end.

Then came the explosions. Muffled at first, each one grew sharper, louder, closer. The warehouse shuddered with every blast, felt the rumble in the ground beneath my boots as my hands were shaking uncomfortably as I was laying down on a pile of rusted metal. Dust coughed from cracks in its metal frame, windows blew out in a sharp chain of pops. Don't know what was from the drones and what was from the blasters. But the sea food inside were having a bad day. More drones came in, this side from another direction, just slowed down, entered through a door and more explosions followed.

The whole structure convulsed as if something inside it was trying to claw its way out while being torn apart from within. We watched in silence, if by silence you mean the yelling on the radio, one of the vets trying to shake Sora back conscious, guys shouting how much ammunition they had left. The metal hangar just groaned and shook, until a final detonation sent a wave of smoke and flame belching from its roof.

I tried to get my hands under control, but the adrenaline just wouldn't let go. I set my rifle down and clenched my fists, trying to squeeze the tremble out of them.

"Saiko," I heard Hamada call out, his voice calm. Surprised he remembered my name—up until then I'd mostly just been "New guy." I turned my head.

"Here. It helps." He tossed me a bar of jelly fruit.

I thanked him, turned back to my sector, and tore the packaging open.

One bite, two bites. Then a door in the narrow alley between the hangars, the same one the drones had been tearing apart from the inside, flew open. I dropped the bar without thinking and grabbed my rifle. Looked down the sight, pressed the stock against my shoulder.

They came running out. One, two, then a third, clutching his arm, same place I had shot him earlier. They sprinted down the alley, backs turned. My rifle kicked into my shoulder as I shifted to aim, lying down awkwardly on the gravel.

I fired. Short, controlled rounds. The third, he tried to keep going. I hit him high in the back, just below the neck. He spun, staggered, then collapsed against the side of the hangar. His body slid down the rusted wall, leaving a long smear where his wounded arm dragged behind. The second stumbled as my rounds punched through his back, then crumpled beside the first. The first one dropped instantly, legs folding under him like his bones had vanished.

Third crab didn't die right away. From my scope I could see him squirming, one leg twitching, his good arm pulling him a few inches forward like he still thought he could escape. Used his good arm to get on his knees, his awkward legs refusing to stand up. Just one round through the back of that shrimp head of his and he collapsed.

The biggest shit-eating grin spread across my face. I looked around, other squad members staring at me ,and smiled back, as if to say, "Hey, did you see that?"

That grin, that rush, didn't leave my face as we finished off the restt ,the ones in the street, the ones still hiding inside.

It stayed with me as we mounted up and drove toward the city center. The Russian and Mongolian battalions had taken a serious hit, but we were moving, alright. Minsk was ours. If you forget about the neighborhouds still out of limit due to the persistent nerve agents we used in there and the subway stations, tunnels still crawling with crabs

Later, as we ate near the central square, we were close enough to see tanks rolling in—a parade of T-72s and newer K2s rumbling past the cameras, circling the block once, twice, then driving up the square again, still stained with mud, grit and battle damaged. Hamada got me Sora's ration. Guy was rotated off the frontline and I got his food for the night and his machine gun for the rest of the war.

I hadn't noticed how much Hamada looked like Matsumoto Hitoshi. The name might not mean much to you, but I could never take him seriously when he was angry. All I could see was that comedian, and it killed any tension in the moment.

Still, the amount of respect I had for that man. One of the rare leaders you'd follow straight into hell without a second thought. Not because of rank or orders, but because his presence alone made things feel less insane. Just knowing he was there made you believe we had a chance, even when everything else was going sideways.

He wasn't loud. Didn't bark orders like some of the others. But when he spoke, people listened. Not out of fear, but something deeper. Even as a staff sergeant, he held more authority in our eyes than the emperor himself. If Hamada said jump, you jumped, not because you had to, but because you trusted he was jumping with you. He carried himself like he had seen every nightmare already and come back from it with a map.

So I can let you imagine when he gave me a bowl of chow and a pat on the back. Didn't even have to say anything.

As we walk outside, we see a line of men, rifles in hand, and a superior going past each of them to check if their weapons are indeed empty.

"I suppose we needed an Investigatory Committee. After everything we pulled in the last century—soldiers posing with severed crab heads, partying at mobile strip clubs near the front lines, showing up in news footage mid-firefight, all while wearing three Rolexes stacked on one arm—it didn't look good on paper. Parliamentarians weren't too pleased.

But what were they going to do? You send men headfirst into hell, and you can't be shocked when they stop playing by society's rules. Still, with Minsk liberated, Lviv thanks to the American paratroopers, and Narva back in friendly hands, there wasn't much appetite left for stirring up trouble." He says this as he walks right beside me. Then he stops, eyes fixed on one of the oil drills. A couple hundred meters away outside of the security cordon. A local maintenance crew is working overtime nearby, sweat and grime thick under the floodlights. Parked beside them, a jeep with four armed mercenaries—watching the surroundings, and the workers just as closely.

"Was all that shit true?" I ask.

"Man, if you knew half the shit we pulled..." He trails off, lighting a cigarette.

"The Buryats had a routine. First time I saw it, it blew my mind. Not just the violence—though that was something—but the way it was all organized." He pauses. "Jesus, never thought I'd see the day Daiki working overtime." He waves at one of the mercenaries near the well, then starts walking again.

"Must've been a few weeks after Minsk. We were still in the city. Got assigned rear-line security for a bit—couple weeks—then had a week off. Decided to celebrate by heading to one of the Russian camps near the old zoo. Took me about five minutes to figure out why they picked that spot.

And by 'camp,' I mean the buildings around there had been gutted and repurposed for R&R. Black market stalls, vendors hawking knockoff Chinese airsoft gear to clueless conscripts, food stands where it was better not to ask what the meat was, brothels, liquor shops. No military police unit on earth could've handled that place. Whole thing was under the thumb of the Russian mob.

Anyway... I still remember the noise when me, Hamada, and another lad got to the zoo. We passed the cockfighting pits and the mutts tearing each other apart while men shouted bets. The old bear enclosure had been repurposed—guess the bears had starved or been put down back when the Belarusians first pulled out of the city.

That's where the biggest crowd was. And the crowd... it looked like something out of a nightmare. Like one of those old propaganda paintings from the Third Reich—the kind they showed to German troops and civilians. "Fight hard on the Eastern Front, or these hordes will be at your doorstep." That kind of crowd. Took us maybe two minutes to reach the spectator stands—hastily thrown together above and around the old pit. To sit there, you had to place a bet. So, like a dumbass, without even knowing what I was betting on, I slapped down some yuan on "Green." I didn't have a clue what Green even meant. Hamada knew. He just grinned and said he didn't want to "spoil the surprise.".

Sat there, doing my best not to fall down, my best to push the worry away that the whole wooden stand would collapse and I'd fall ten meters down on all the dumb fucks below me. Real tower of babel that place, men shouting in every language you'd find east of the Dnieper.

"Ānjìng! Tishiná! Joyonghi hae! Tynyshtyq! Jim!"
A guy started shouting through a loudspeaker—telling everyone to shut up in just about every language spoken within five borders. Strangely enough, it worked. The crowd went dead still. Guess no one wanted to spook the beasts.

Two gates creaked open at the bottom of the old bear pit.

Out came two crabs.

Sure enough, one was painted green, the other yellow. Those aliens don't look good on the best of days, but these two... they looked like they'd been dragged straight from a cell. Probably had been. I couldn't tell how the Buryats managed it—had to be torture involved, sure—but how the hell do you even convince crabs to fight each other?

Hamada told me later it was better not to ask. Whatever was happening in the underbelly of that zoo... it wasn't meant to be understood. Medieval stuff, he said. Things that burn their way into you if you picture them too clearly.

They were thrown two pitchforks. Pitch forks. At first, they were shy, like scared kids, even though they stood nearly six feet tall. They just jabbed at each other awkwardly. Then panic hit when the first few seconds of some old song blasted through the loudspeaker. It was like they'd been conditioned to snap into violence the moment that music played. Not in some Pavlov's dog, subconscious way. More like a clear message: Do it now or we'll fuck you up.

Their aggression built minute by minute. A few jabs here and there. One scratched the other with his claws. Even from up in the stands, under the spotlights, I could see the blood oozing from the wound.

All hell broke loose then. They fought like wild animals, leaping at each other, refusing to let go. Scratching, punching. The green one managed to dislocate the yellow one's arm. Half the people in the crowd went wild, like they knew the fight was already over.

He wrecked him. The one on the sand was too weak to keep going. Yellow just gave up. Sat on top of him once he realized what had happened. Watched him try to get up, then walked over to one of the pitchforks. Picked it up and finished green off with a single swing.

There was no silence from the crowd. No dramatic pause in the music. No stare from the so-called gladiator. The winners took everything. Hamada pulled me toward the betting stand where the crowd was already brawling over payouts. I got stuck covering the bill for the rest of the night.

"Did it disturb you? I mean, does it still haunt you?" I ask.

"We were back in the stands two hours later. I used what was left of my winnings for another ticket. Lost that bet, but I won half an hour later in a cockfight."

"How did they expect all of us to come back to society after that? It's hard to put things like that into books—at least where I'm from. I came back home, sat through three or four awkward dinners with my parents, got told by the guy at the veteran's employment office that I'd have to wait six months just to start a course to learn how to drive a municipal bus, and before I knew it, I'd answered a message Hamada sent me. Then, I was on a plane to Burkina Faso."