All You Need Is Kill

In fact, Rita’s unit turned out to be a squad full of battle-hardened vets. If you melted down all the medals earned in that squad, you could have made one hell of an Olympic-class weightlifting barbell.

The squad was full of badasses who had been through Hell and back so many times they were on a first name basis with the Devil. When shit started flying, they started telling jokes. Not the kind of jokes you told your mother over dinner, either. Contrary to their reputation, however, there were some good guys in the bunch. Rita took to her new comrades immediately.

A first lieutenant by the name of Arthur Hendricks held the squad together. He had gleaming blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and a beautiful wife so delicate you had to be careful not to break her when giving her a hug. No matter how minor the operation, Hendricks would always give his wife a call beforehand, for which he was constantly derided by the rest of the squad.

In a squad where everyone, men and women both, used language that would have sent a nun into cardiac arrest, Hendricks was the only man who never uttered a single profanity. At first he treated Rita like a little sister, much to her consternation. She’d never admit it, but she grew to like it.

Rita had been in the squad for about half a year when she became trapped in the time loop that had dictated the rhythm of her life ever since. The battle that would turn Rita Vrataski into the Valkyrie was a special operation even by U.S. Special Forces standards. The president was up for reelection, and he wanted to deliver a military victory to secure his own.

Over the objections of his generals and the media, he poured it all into the operation, every tank with treads, every attack chopper that could stay airborne, and over ten thousand platoons of Jacketed soldiers. Their goal: to regain control of the Florida peninsula. It was the most dangerous, most reckless, and by far the hardest battle Rita had ever seen.

Special Forces had a lot of four-letter words in their vocabulary, but fear wasn’t one of them. Even so, it took more than one squad to turn around a hopeless war against a superior enemy. A Jacket granted superhuman strength, but that alone didn’t turn people into superheroes. During the Second World War, Erich Hartmann had shot down 352 planes on the Russian Front, but Germany still lost the war. If the brass drafted plans that called for the impossible, the mission would fail, simple as that.

After the battle, derelict Jackets littered the Florida peninsula, their shattered shells serving as coffins for the corpses inside.

Rita Vrataski had somehow managed to toe the piano-wire-thin line that snaked between life and death. She had bent her pile driver before losing it entirely. She was low on ammo. She clutched her 20mm rifle so tightly it might as well have been welded to her hand. Fighting back the urge to vomit, she stripped batteries from the bodies of her fallen friends. She cradled her rifle in her arms.

“You look like you’re having a bad day.”

It was Hendricks. He sat down next to Rita where she was squatting in a hollow on the ground and looked up at the sky as though he were trying to pick shapes out of the clouds. Right in front them, a javelin, screaming its high-pitched wail, shot into the ground. Thick black smoke billowed from the impact crater. Images of Pittsfield burning against a red sky filled Rita’s thoughts.

Hendricks knew he had to walk Rita back from wherever she was. “My mother once told me that in parts of China, they mix animal blood with their tea.”

Rita couldn’t speak. Her throat was sandpaper, and she doubted whether she could even manage to swallow.

Hendricks went on. “The nomads there can all ride horses. Men, women, even the children. In the Middle Ages, it was their mobility that enabled them to conquer the bulk of Eurasia. Not even Europe was spared. They came from the east, moving through one country after another-savage foreigners who sipped blood from teacups- drawing nearer and nearer. It’s enough to give you nightmares. Some people think it was actually those Chinese nomads who gave rise to the vampire legends of Eastern Europe.”

“… Lieutenant?”

“My little story boring you?”

“I’m all right now, Lieutenant. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Hey, we all need a break sometimes. Especially in a marathon like this. Just a little more, it’ll be time to hit the showers. I promise.” He finished speaking and moved on to the next soldier. Rita rejoined the fray.

And then she saw it. One Mimic that stood out from the rest. It didn’t look different from the others-another bloated dead frog in a sea of waterlogged amphibians. But there was something about this one that set it apart. Maybe spending so much time in such proximity to death had sharpened senses she didn’t know she had, revealing secrets that lay hidden from normal sight.

When she killed that Mimic, the time loop began.