Casualties of War

We had arrived. Karl and I were dropped off in what looked like a make shift shelter for people that had been devastated from the attack. There were injured people as far as my eyes could see. So some people made it out alive? That was slightly reassuring but looking at the condition most of them were in, it wasn't by very much.

"How far do you think they've reached, the aliens I mean." Karl said.

"I don't know, but judging from how far away from us that tripod thing was, I'd say they've gone pretty far." I replied.

"Do you think this is the only place they've hit, I mean, are they any other cities they've attacked or did they strike just here." Karl asked.

"No need to think about that now." I replied.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Karl asked.

"I mean, there are a lot of injured here and we just have a few scratches. We should do what we can to help as much as we can." I replied.

"Yeah, you're right." Karl said.

I looked around at the shelter we were dropped in. It was a hospital that was way beyond it's capacity as there were still a lot of people injured and unattended to. There was no way the doctors were going to get to them in time. I decided to intervene and perform basic first aid with what was available.

As Karl and I attended to the wounded, we were met with multiple terrible injuries that left us in shock as to how some of these people were still alive. The answer was simple, the lasers they were being shot at with. The blistering heat from the lasers basically baked those parts of the body and was preventing them from losing blood. Which means they would also be in unimaginable pain.

A part of me wanted these people to be put out of their misery. None of them were left with just scratches. They were almost all in critical condition and this hospital didn't have the facilities to take care of half of them.

"This is really horrible." I said.

"Yeah…. It is." Karl responded.

"Hey! What are you guys doing!" A voice called out to us as we were tending to the wounded.

"What are you doing to those people!" The voice came from one of the doctors at the hospital.

"Who are you?" Karl asked.

"I'm Clement, a doctor in this hospital. You shouldn't be doing what you're doing. Do you even have a license?" He replied.

Clement was a tall man with brown hair and brown eyes. He wore tired eyes and looked like he had been working for days on end. Dressed in a blue shirt, a black tie and black trousers which was all rounded up by his blood stained lab coat. The sheer amount of wounded was taking its toll on him.

"We were helping these guys. They need help immediately and you guys are simply not enough to take care of all of them." I replied.

"No, just leave them alone, we'll get to them eventually, they'll all be attended to soon." Clement said

"No they won't, look at how many people you and your co-workers are dealing with, when do you think they'll be attended too." I replied.

"In due time, don't worry about it" Clement said.

"They don't have that time! People are dying as we speak and you're doing nothing about it but going back and forth with me. You guys are ill equipped to handle these number of people, I know first aid and I'm helping them out." I quickly responded.

"No one said you weren't helping out, what I'm telling you, is that your help is not necessary." Clement responded in a way that denoted he was getting tired of this whole exchange.

"Look, we are just helping out." Karl said.

"I know and I said it's not necessary." Clement responded sharply.

"You took a vow, you should be giving it your all to save these people but you can't, so we are trying to help you. We're trying to help you keep your vow." I said, slightly raising my voice in the process.

"Look, I am keeping my vow. Even if we gave it our all, there's no saving these people. We are attending to those who actually have a chance of living, the people you're helping, they don't have that chance. You would know if you were a real doctor, first aid is not going to cut it. I'm telling you not to waste your time." He calmly responded.

"Look you can keep helping these people if you want but it's not going to do anything in the long run. Half the people you've helped have already lost their pulse." He said.

Those words immediately reverberated in my ears as I checked the bodies of the people I attended to and true enough, Half of them had already left this world. I now understood what clement was trying to say.

"You get it now huh, ambulances just keep coming here dropping off people that are already at the reapers door step. We help those we can but most of these people are beyond saving. It's a terrible sight really. Some of them even came here with all the willpower they had left and died at the entrance." He said.

"Come morning this whole place is going to reek of dead bodies. Honestly, this is a sight no human being should see. Bodies everywhere, most drained of fluid, some having body parts fried off, just looking at this makes my stomach turn."

During Clement's monologue, an ambulance arrived filled with people in critical condition. The drivers of the ambulance unloaded the bodies and took them into the compound. Just like Clement said, most of them looked like they could go at any minute. The doctors quickly rushed to attend to those that could still be attended to.

At that moment, Karl and I could hear the faintest sound of wheels rotating. The robotic sound of wheels rotating towards us. They were here.

"Everyone run!" Karl screamed as loud as he could. In that moment, a hole was blown through the chest of one of the female doctors. They had started attacking. Everyone screamed and scrambled around, trying as hard as they could to get away from the area.

"Come on!" Karl shouted to me as clement was still dazed after witnessing another one of his coworkers drop to the ground. I grabbed his hand as we headed to one of the ambulances. Karl got in the drivers seat and hotwired the vehicle to move, clement got in the passengers seat while I got in the back.

"Everyone get in!" I screamed to the remaining doctors that were running around as I opened the back door of the ambulance so they could get in.

They started running in the direction of the ambulance and the cylinders followed suit. About twelve doctors ran towards the ambulance but only six managed to make it on. Half of the original number. As we were driving away, a woman started to scream.

"No! that's my husband!" She said, her husband on the ground as one of the cylinders approached him.

"Please turn back! Don't leave him!" She screamed.

A tentacle came out of the cylinder that approached him and pierced his stomach.

"Gyyaaaaahhh!!" He screamed in agony. The tentacle began to drain him of his blood as we watched in horror. The lady began to weep as Karl drove away.

I looked back through the window at the hospital, the other cylinders gathered around the man and also began to drain him of blood, all while he was still alive. Truly a gruesome sight. The man screamed and screamed till he could scream no more. He was probably already dead.

The place where victims of these attacks were to be treated and taken care of, was victimized by the very creatures that caused all these casualties. I felt pity for the people who were still inside the hospital building. I couldn't imagine the terror that they would all be feeling.

As Karl continued driving away, another thought was stuck in my head. Why did the other aliens drain only the man of blood if there were multiple bodies littered around the hospital? There were so many other bodies around but they all came together to drain from one person?

What was the logic behind that decision?

Karl drove off into the sunlight as I continued pondering over that question, remaining puzzled by the irrationality of the decision taken by these sentient beings that have come to wreak havoc on our world.