Wilder K Introduction
One hundred million.
Wilder K lifted up a thick soda bottle to his bronzed and chapped lips, taking a pause from panting for air to drink it down. It was always good to take advantage of a break in action to relax.
The sugary elixir trailed down his throat, his mouth wrapped tight around the glass container. It was sweet. Of course it was sweet, it was soda. But it had been a long time since he had something so sweet.
He pulled the bottle away and licked his lips, savoring the taste. He could already feel the caffeine surging through his body, giving him a second blast of energy.
He heard a squawk of protest next to him.
“Hold your horses, geeze. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
With half the drink gone, he went back to his previous thought.
One hundred million.
He had done a lot of thinking about that number over time.
One of the biggest thoughts that had stuck in his mind was about how damn high an amount it was. It was so high, in fact, that the human mind was physically incapable of processing an amount that size. It would simply see a gigantic swathe of it, a large pile rather than individual pieces one after the other. It was still an amount that would be reached one step at a time, though, one after the other, gaining in size and adding to the stack before it became a pile that the mind refused to register. It went from tens, to hundreds, to thousands, and anything after that was simply a blur. Maybe people with a better memory could keep track to the ten thousands or hundred thousands, but for the most part anything after that ceased being individual–it was simply an “amount”.
But it was still a number he was aiming for, one by one at a time.
One hundred million people saved. Innocent lives, rescued from peril and brought into safety once again.
He could still remember the conversation that spawned it all. Voices from years ago drifted into his ears as memories took control. He could still hear his daughter’s voice perfectly, as if she was right there next to him. Soft. Gentle. Beautiful. As beautiful as any sound that could ever have been heard, as if the sirens themselves had delivered their voice into a little girl.
“Daddy, you’re going to retire eventually, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, eventually. Every man and woman retires when it’s time to finish up their job, sweetie. Sometimes they’re just not capable of doing it anymore, or sometimes they want to spend more time with their family.”
“But there’ll still be people that need helping! You couldn’t help them while you’re retired…”
“I know, sweetie. I don’t plan to retire for a long, long time.”
“As long as there’s people that need helping?”
“Well, I don’t know if I have enough years in my life for that. Or in anyone’s life! But I plan on helping as many people as I can.”
“Daddy, you should set a number! A large number! The BIGGEST number!”
“The biggest number? What do you have in mind?”
“Ten people!”
“I’ve already saved ten people, pumpkin.”
“More, then! A lot more! Ten tens! A hundred tens! No, a hundred hundreds!”
“A hundred hundreds? That’s ten thousand.”
“More than ten thousand, then! A hundred of a hundred thousands!”
“One hundred million? That’s quite a lot.”
“How much is it, Daddy?”
“More than you and I will ever know. That’s enough people to fill entire countries. It’s even larger than our home.”
“Then that! Do that, Daddy! Promise me! You’ll save an entire country!”
“I promise, baby. Before I die, I promise. I’ll save one hundred million people.”
It was easy to pass it off as just the rantings of a little girl, proud of her Daddy and wanting more to be proud about. Of course she wouldn’t realize the magnitude of what she was asking him, not until she was older. It was easy to just forget about it as time passed.
It was more difficult to forget about it after she died.
A father should never have to bury his family. It was the natural law that the ancestors went before the descendants. And yet…
Another squawk of protest.
“Oh, fine, fine. Breaktime’s over.”
He lifted up the soda bottle and quickly finished it, then looked down. In his arms, held in a cybernetic-arm headlock, was a monster. A ‘Dimenian’, they called it. Looked like a nasty shark creature with scythe arms–black flesh, pulsing with unnatural forces, and glowing abdomens. Nobody knew what spawned the vile things, and simply being around them made a lot of people uncomfortable.
Wilder took his finished bottle and smashed it into the creature’s face, spraying shattered glass all along it. He was rewarded with a wail of agony. A quick twist of the neck and the screaming stopped, and he dropped the creature’s limp body to the ground.
He lifted up his hands to clutch the strap of the rocket launcher hanging off his backside, and he looked around the room. Charred corpses lay everywhere, flesh and blood spattered about as chunks of frag lay imbedded in their cadavers, while other beasts were struggling to lift themselves up off the ground. Wilder waited patiently as they lifted themselves up and then charged blindly at him in a single defiant act.
One creature was met in a clothesline, his forearm connecting with its face and emitting a disgusting crunch–the brain crushed and the skull splintered. It flopped over instantly on the ground, not even able to comprehend what happened before death.
Another creature met with a less-quick death, a rocket burying itself deep into its torso and detonating, sending shrapnel and flames all about its internals and externals. Its flesh smoked and its body blackened even further.
The third creature tried to come in from above. It found itself snatched forcefully out of the air and bent backwards, its head plowing into the ground in a pin-point suplex. Its spine snapped forward at the impact, jutting into the head and impaling the brain.
The fourth creature tried to take advantage of the mayhem to try and escape, pressing up against the walls and then trying to skulk away through the doorway. Three shots sounded out, and blood spurted out of the new holes in its side. It flopped over as well.
It had only taken half a minute. But that half a minute was all that was needed to finish the room.
Wilder K holstered his pistol and strapped his rocket launcher across his back again, heading out through the doorway and further into the ancient ruins.
There was a hostage in here somewhere, and he’d get to saving her–even if he had to go through entire waves of these monsters to do so.
And then, he could add one more notch to that one hundred million.
