Quite a few people who don’t believe in an afterlife aren’t
really afraid of dying.
I’m one of those people.
Not that I want to die, or anything, but death would mean a
cessation of all the problems associated with living. Namely, dealing with
other living things. Or dead things that don’t stay dead.
I’m with the emergency ZED squad. We are the ones who
protect your sleeping brains at night while choruses of rotting flesh shamble mindlessly
around, highly advanced individuals from other galaxies search for our natural
resources, and huge terrorist plots are destroyed. I don’t do it to protect you
or yours—I do it to protect me and mine.
A common thought is that America is most well-prepared for
these issues. This thinking couldn’t be more incorrect—the amount of money that
the United States submits to the ZED squad per quarter is pitiful. Strangely,
our greatest contributors are France… Go figure why. Maybe they have the most
to lose with a world gone berserk.
Regardless, almost every country in the world donates
something to the fight, be it monetary, necessary resources or technology, or
simply adding force to our growing army. The new fighters show up ignorant, and
in huge numbers only to be sent away again by the hundreds, maybe a couple-ten
left behind.
It’s always interesting to me to meet these newbies. They
either stand at attention, or sulk in a corner, scowl on their faces. Those are
the only ones I pay attention to, at least. The go-getters, the giddy puppies,
the nervous wrecks—those are a disgrace. I can’t mold them into what I need,
much less trust my back to their distraction and fear.
I seek cool.
Calm.
Collected.
Everyone is a mite timid when the job is explained. I can
see the second-guessing behind their gazes, and sometimes plain on their
expression. It’s the ones who settle again, accepting the information and ready
to take on a task that most are incapable of imagining. Those are the Stealths
and I am the commandant.
We don’t call our soldiers by a violent name—we feel it
offers the wrong idea to the latter threats of ZED. Extraterrestrials are
always a more highly evolved species and, as such, will respond when a threat
is realized. Delinquents (our name for human-apocalypse-starters) understand
our way of speaking as humans, and we can’t rest on the belief that they are
mentally stable enough not to simply break the world at the mention of “soldiers”.
So we’ve settled on the title of Stealths. After all, most of our jobs are
imperative to remain highly confidential.
We live our lives in stealth, so we might as well affix our
titles to it.
Most people wouldn’t believe how busy I am. Jet-setting
around the world in search of those with the endless appetite. In search of the
next threat to the planet Earth. I’ve gotten so efficient at taking out the
hordes that I sometimes feel as though I am single-handedly holding off the
apocalypse. Maybe it’s my dedication to the fight. Maybe it’s my lack of fear.
Maybe it’s that I have nothing to fear. Living trapped in horror has always
been scarier to me than dying free in battle. That’s why I fight.
