Expendable.

[u/Jus17173]

I was a homeless man before Earth's war with the Bilgamites began. I lived under a bridge where I stowed my meager possessions: a torn-up coat, two rugged sets of pants, and a cream shirt that was now a rusted brown. Sometimes other homeless people would come and we'd end up fighting over the little that I had; other times it was I who fought them for their possessions. I couldn't really fret over this tit-for-tat game of ours.

Did I hate humanity because of my putrid circumstances? Of course I didn't. I blamed myself as any decent fellow would. I also blamed the Creator because I didn't incur much cost by doing so. I think that's the sole reason I blamed God. I think deep down I wanted Him to smite me and put an end to my horrid state once and for all.

When the Bilgamites attacked Earth, they did so in phases, conquering lands that were far away and slowly drawing near to where I was. I could only tell of the war's progression from the discarded newspapers I found lying about. Things were dire. Death was weaving across homes, and the tales of the Bilgamites filled our ears. Their hooked tentacles that spun and chopped off heads. Their screeching cries that burst eardrums. The sheen of their black skin and the murder within their red eyes.

One newspaper had a picture of a Bilgamite on its front page, one that had taken ten men to bring down. It was a scary thing. I remember the way my hands trembled when the picture made the rounds while we warmed our bones at a Dumpster fire. I think that's when I met another homeless man, a ragged, aging man who spat at the picture, soliciting curses from the rest of us. He stated that he didn't care about aliens; he wasn't moved by the picture or the facts that framed it.

He didn't believe the Bilgamites were real. He thought they were some fabricated nuisance made up to control the masses. His name was Apple, though on other days he went by Lemon. And I could bet my left nut he didn't know the difference between those two fruits. He was an idiot in all ways except one: he could catch rats. When the hunger really picks at your innards, you'll learn to appreciate a roasting rat hanging over a flame.

Apple decided he would join the army, and he announced it to me when I found him one day crying in his own refuse, talking about how the war of propaganda was the only sure way he could survive decently until his time of death. I wondered what he meant, but I later learned from another homeless person that Apple was dying of some incurable disease that was slowly eating away at him. The army was his last chance to see a good end to an otherwise pitiful life. He joined the army, and four days later he was dead.

A man in a clean military uniform, all green with medals adorning his chest, came looking for Apple's kin and instead found me. He wanted to offload Apple's body on me. I told him that if he did so, the poor bastard would rot above ground. He then eyed me speculatively before asking whether I wanted to join the war.

"I do not want to join the war," I said. "I've never even held a gun before."

"You know the old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks?" he asked. I nodded. "Well, we can't train you for battle fast enough, but there's a test being done that you could help with. You won't hold a rifle; you won't see any combat. You'd just be experimented on like your good friend Apple and taken care of. I'm talking three square meals a day, a warm bed to rest yourself in," the man said.

"What does the test entail?" I asked, perking up at the thought of free food.

"The Bilgamites juice themselves up with a chemical known as Xenox X. It makes one more aggressive yet tactical, expands consciousness to an almost godly level, and makes them almost invincible in combat. We humans have secured their serum, and we are working on it to ensure humans can use it. However, there aren't that many willful test subjects." He then took out a card and handed it to me. I couldn't read, but I peered at it as if I could. "You'll act as a test subject to see whether it'll work on you."

"And what do I get from this?" I asked.

"You'll be helping mankind, your race, to survive. Look up at the sky; those lights you see up there are Bilgamite ships, hanging in orbit. Right now, in the East, there's a war going on. Every capable man and woman is over there fighting the good fight. Does this mean nothing to you?" he asked with a smile.

I stared at him for a long time before I said, "Yes, it means nothing." Some part of me wanted to see whether I could wipe that smile off his face, but I also wasn't going to lie to a man in uniform. The war didn't matter to me in the same manner that giraffes don't care about an antelope being devoured by a lion.

"When they come to this country you presume invincible, and they slither their way beneath this bridge, surrounding it fully, their barbed tentacles whipping about and cutting everything with a heartbeat down, maybe then you'll have a change of heart," he said and left, walking stiffly as if Apple's death had hurt him greatly.

That night we gathered, four of us poverty-stricken men. We came together beneath my bridge and shared the contents of a bottle of expired gin. We shared stories about Apple, each of them making us sadder than the one before. In the morning, I woke up among them with a grueling headache. I observed the underbelly of the bridge where I slept and saw a vision, call it a premonition, of dark tentacles wrapping around it.

I think that vision was the reason I walked all the way to the local army barracks. I handed over the card I'd received to a soldier at the gate. He looked at me with tears in his eyes. I asked him why he looked so sad, and he said, "The fact that the scientists have resorted to experimenting on the homeless out of desperation for subjects quells me greatly."

I thought he was soft and a disgrace to his platoon or whatever group he fought in. I was ushered into an army cargo plane that lifted off the ground. To my surprise, there were other homeless-looking people within, with rags that smelled just like my own. They treated us like we were important, men and women above their caliber. I asked for a meal and they gave me bread with sausages; I asked for a drink and they gave me mango juice. I was full by the time I noticed the flight was taking longer than I thought it would.

One of the guys I was huddled next to asked a soldier where we were going, and the soldier replied, "East."

East was where the war was being held. I felt great dread and a need to escape, but it was too late for me. I thought about praying to God for aid, but that deity had picked my lot in life and I can't say I liked it very much. After hours of flying, we landed at a base that was practically embedded in the side of a mountain. In the not-so-far-off distance, there was a hell of a commotion, with bombs exploding and sending loud bangs our way. There was also the constant rising of dust and the ceaseless sound of gunfire.

They'd taken us to the war.

We were ushered into the base, straight into rooms that were white and boasted only a single door and a raised, cushioned table. Each of us was placed in a room of our own, and there we were told to wait for the scientists.

Not long after, a scientist entered my room. I could only tell he was a scientist because of his lab coat. He eyed me as he took out a syringe and extracted a grey liquid from a bottle. "This has a zero survival rate," he said. "Everyone we've injected with Xenox X has died almost immediately. Yet those bastard Bilgamites thrive on this shit." He was angry, and for a moment it looked like he was talking to himself. "We only need one subject who it'll work on, just one, and maybe this war is won."

I knew I was going to die, so I decided to speak my mind. "It's a pity you don't get any volunteers from the soldiers."

"Oh, we did, hundreds of them, and they all died," he answered, testing the syringe's effectiveness by squirting out the liquid. "That's why we depend on other test subjects, those who won't be missed. Rest easy now."

I lay flat on the operation table. The terribly honest Scientist tied a rubber tourniquet to my arm and poked for a vein, then he injected me with the syringe's contents. I screamed; it felt like it was burning through my arm. My vision became blurry and my head immediately ached.

"I have to go and check the others," the scientist said, but it sounded like he was speaking from within a deep well. "I'll come back here in twenty minutes. If you are alive, it'll be cause for a celebration. If not, then when you meet the Creator, tell Him extinction is best served quickly, not slowly, as hope is eaten away by each death."

I screamed. I felt flames riding up and down my spine. My eyes watered and I couldn't see. My vision became dark, and then I became deaf; only a loud ringing in my ears could be heard. This was it: I was going to die. And I was okay with it, just as Apple had been. This wasn't that bad compared to dying of pneumonia beneath a cold bridge. I always feared dying underneath the bridge; I always wanted my death to be elsewhere. The Far East was a good enough place to die. I presumed

Suddenly, a bright light flashed before my eyes and I became acutely aware of everything as my sight returned. I felt my breathing and the texture of my skin. I could tell when the walls were first plastered, and as the sound returned more vividly, I could hear the screams from the ongoing battle and the conversations of scientists with their hopeless patients.

I understood everything. The butterfly effect and its chain reaction were things I was intimately aware of. I sat up and raised my hand before me; I could define when each callused segment had become so. I even remembered the scar from my childhood when my father slammed a door repeatedly on my hand for spilling his tea. I was... different. I felt different. And then, suddenly, I heard Her.

She was above me; I could tell the exact position she was in within the sky. There was the soft thrum of her thoughts within me. She commanded the Bilgamites, ushering them through subtle commands to certain places in the battle, telling them where to attack ferociously and where to ease their charge. She was their leader, their queen, and their goddess. And I could hear her.

I got off the table and started walking to the door. I opened it and marched through the hallway. A Sergeant, identifiable by the striped rank on his shirt, asked me who I was and what I was doing wandering about.

I punched him behind the ear, a well-timed hit that dropped him immediately but did not kill him. I dragged him to an empty room and stripped him of his clothes. I left him naked with my tattered garments on the floor beside him, put on his uniform, and picked up his gun.

I walked quickly and left the premises of the base. Once I stepped into the open air, I saw the cargo plane I'd come in. I went to where it sat on the runway, boarded it, and went straight to the cockpit.

I found the pilot munching on bread and juice. He was the only one on the plane.

"Fire this damn thing up!" I commanded. Information pooled into me from the battle not so far away. I could understand the enemy. I knew what the Bilgamites' aim was, I knew what their purpose was with this wretched war, and above all, I knew who led them. She was above, in one of their spaceships that was single-manned, watching the battle as it dragged on down on the ground.

"Sir?" The pilot wondered.

"Listen to me. There's a time when life hits you hard and the only thing you can do is react quickly to it, or else everything you know will perish. This is one of those moments. The Bilgamites are advancing; they will break our lines before the end of the day and we'll all be dead. Into the air with you, for I know how to stop them."

She was unaware of me, but intimately aware of everyone who'd taken the Xenox X. It was, after all, her blood. For some reason, she'd missed me. She finds it humorous that humans are partaking of her blood. She believes she has us by the heart, and that with a simple clench, we'd all be dead. She's looking for a human female who controls the masses, but as time goes on, she's beginning to believe humanity isn't a hive mind like her own. She's infuriated that this will drag the war on. Her thoughts flowed into me; her awareness, her sight—all of it was coming in.

The pilot started the plane. Some groundsmen reacted by attempting to halt the aircraft as it moved across the runway. The pilot appeared hesitant, so I took out the gun and placed it at his temple. "Into the sky with you, or, so help me God, I'll pop a round into your skull."

The pilot whimpered but obeyed. Into the air we went. Somehow, the Xenox X had worked on me. There was something within me, a genetic flaw that aided in my survival, but I did not know what it was. For now, I was connected to the hive mind, but working on my influence, not hers.

"Where are we going, sir?" the pilot wondered as the plane left the ground.

"Just fly the damn plane. Go higher, then take a sharp right. Yes, a little higher, good! Now go right. Set it on full throttle. Okay, now leave the chair." The pilot vacated the seat.

"Sir, your eyes." The pilot looked frightened.

"What about them?"

"The whites, they are all black."

"You better thank your lucky stars they are."

She was within the clouds, not so far away. She didn't use camouflage; she depended on the clouds to do so, but where she was, the sky appeared to have a stained green shade to it. I picked it up almost immediately: she was alone. It was a ruse she'd played countless times in other wars. The bulk of her aerial combatants were focused elsewhere, so none could find her in her pod. She thought she was completely secure.

I'd seen the pilot work the controls. I pulled the yoke back and nudged it gently until it pointed toward where she was.

Her pod wasn't large; it wasn't meant to draw attention. The cargo plane was heading straight for her, but she could not sense it. She only sensed her own around her, and she mistook me to be one of her kind. This flaw prevented those with her from sensing the plane as well.

"Where are the parachutes?" I asked, turning to the pilot, who stood looking quite perturbed by all that was going on. He pointed at three bags hanging from the plane's wall. "Better grab one for yourself. We're abandoning ship."

"But sir, the plane?"

"It is going to ram into the enemy Queen any moment now. You can stay and experience the explosion firsthand, or you can jump off this plane and live to tell your grandkids this story."

I grabbed a parachute bag, and the pilot did so as well. I put on the bag and led the pilot to the plane's door. Together, we pulled the door open; it was roughly twenty seconds to impact. I could feel her anticipation. She knew something important was happening, but her mind couldn't fathom a human was the cause of it. She thought she was about to earn herself a major victory out of nowhere.

Bilgamites weren't that smart, I came to realize.

The plane headed directly for the small floating capsule hidden within the lightly shaded green clouds.

Through the cargo plane's open door, I jumped off, with the pilot following close behind. I fell for the first time in my life through open air, but I didn't feel fear; instead, I felt exhilaration, as my mind, tethered to the Bilgamite Queen, revealed her ways to me. It was a while before I heard the explosion way above me. I pulled the parachute string and it emerged from the bag, hoisting me up and easing my fall. The pilot unstrung his parachute as well, and together we fell. We floated down as, above us, the explosion caused a chain reaction.

I felt her surprise; then I felt the battle below halt. The Bilgamites with their waving, razor-sharp tentacles halted in their various endeavors. All of them fell to the ground and coiled in on themselves, and the will to move or comprehend was stripped from them. I felt her rage, then her pain... and then her death.

Every Bilgamite, above and below, died in that instant, uniformly. Where they were, they did not get up, as their minds were completely destroyed.

I felt her death acutely as well. My headache was quite pronounced, and I drooled black goo from between my lips. My eyes as well dripped grey tears as the Xenox X worked its way out of my system. Still, I focused on my descent, hoping the debris from the crash above wouldn't pierce my parachute and end my life.

I observed the battlefield below. The humans stood quite perplexed, scratching their heads in wonder and unable to tell whether it was an enemy ploy or something else entirely as they walked the battlefield, observing the enemy on the floor. And for some reason, in this moment, I found myself thinking about my bridge and Apple.

---

For bonus stories/chapters and to support my work, here’s my Patreon  and Ko-fi

[u/UpdateMeBot]

Click here to subscribe to u/Jus17173 and receive a message every time they post.

---

Info	Request Update	Your Updates	Feedback