World War Three Story...uhhh...Marines story...hmmm...Part 1...

Toldya there'd be a new story, soon...

I don't know. I've been playing too many games. Thinking about the US Marines for a while, so I decided to write this. It's, uh, from the perspective of me, not a Marine, though.

Edit: The Russians get such a bad rap, I swear. About half the games and movies focused on fictional wars have the Russians invading America... I'm sorry, I really am- but it was either Russians or aliens with AK's. And let's face it, alien's suck at using assault rifles ;D

Enjoy!








I leapt.

Blue sky, my sunburnt country, air rushing past me- and then I stopped falling and flew.
The clouds were at my fingertips, the ground far below, and death and destruction far, far gone. Day turned to night in a second, and then the starry sky was my surrounding, the huge moon looming closer and closer. I was almost there. Almost.
A deafening wail, a noise of utter evil and despair rang out, rising and falling in its metallic screech. The moon in front of me faded, melted, and reformed, becoming a gaping vortex that began to suck the the stars and night away from me, dragging the clouds and the hills into it.

I screamed and awoke, but the siren drowned me out instantly. With sudden confusion I rubbed my eyes and groggily looked at my surroundings. With a pang, it all came rushing back to me.
The year is 2016. Two days ago, Russia declared war on the United States of America, launching three nuclear missiles to the eastern seaboard and invading instantly to try and catch them by surprise. It had been inevitable, most people believed- Russia and America had been hostile to each other for over three years now.
Russian forces were scattered all over the states, and the evacuation had only really just begun for civillians. That's where I came in- I had been on a trip to America, to find some friends when the Russian attack had occurred. Michelle, my good friend of two years and one of the people I had planned to meet, was next to me aboard the huge military cargo plane that was transporting civilians out of the states to an undefined location. My attention focused as the siren blared above us once more,and lights flicked on around the loading area, bathing everything in red. Pandemonium spread as people that had been sleeping fitfully awoke and tried to find out exactly what had triggered the alarm and lights.
I nudged Michelle next to me, and she murmured in her sleep, somehow still not awake. I looked around fearfully at the panicked people struggling to unclip the harnesses that were being used as seatbelts to hold civilians steady while the huge plane was in the air. 
I nudged her again, harder this time, and she sat bolt upright, eyes wide open. "Whut?!" she said, and I could see that she had momentarily forgotten her surroundings as well. In the meantime, I unclipped the harness I was strapped into and climbed a little way up to a tiny window in the hull of the military craft. Outside, I could see the starry night blanketing the far below city, and could glimpse the burning buildings and towers of smoke spiraling upwards. I looked further up, and by pressing my face directly on the cold glass I could see the edge of the moon, low on the horizon to the left. That little bit closer, I thought.
Something streaked past the window, faster than I could follow, and the pilot's voice was put through a speaker above us.
"Everyone get back in their seats, now!" he said, sounding worried. "Marines, secure the civilians!"
There were fifteen soldiers in all, and they each unclipped their harnesses and stumbled to a civilian, or 'civvies' as they called them. The one that reached me and Michelle was tall and broad-shouldered, and had a piece of crinkled paper strapped to his helmet with the name 'Montes' written on it. I opened my mouth to ask him what was happening, and then another streak hit the wing of the plane and we were launched off our feet.
He was up in an instant and pulled us up as well. "Shit," he cursed. "That's AA they're throwing at us! Blackburn, you seeing this?"
Blackburn, another soldier, stumbled to us and pressed his face onto the window. "We're hit bad," he reported. "Byrnes is gonna have a helluva job getting us outta this mess ali-"
The plane shook again and I barely managed to hold onto the harness. There was a moment of pause, and then the unmistakable whine and mechanical coughing as both engines cut out simultaneously.
People screamed and over the speakers the pilot's voice was shouting "Marines- chutes, now!"
Montes and Blackburn shoved us aside and reached to the things we had been sitting on all along- I had assumed they were just heavy bags- and started strapping them onto their backs. Montes hefted one of the packs and threw it to me. He picked up another and started to fix the straps onto Michelle.
"You got thirty seconds, Marines! Make it count!" the pilot's voice said. The Marines around us were working without pause to secure the civvies in their parachutes. The entire plane was shaking now, and the back of it suddenly began to open up as the ramp was lowered, revealing the burning city below and explosions dotting the air space around them.
The red lights flicked to green, and the soldier and civilian pair closest to the ramp looked back at us grimly before jumping, they're bodies instantly whipped away and out of sight. Montes and Blackburn turned to Michelle and me and shouted over the wind. I fixed the straps over my shoulder of the parachute and listened to their voices.
"Try and follow what we do when we're in the air," Blackburn said. "Wait until we pull our chutes for you to pull yours, alright?"
Michelle nodded next to me and I followed suit.
Montes was securing a large bag to his front- I could barely see his face over the top of it. "The black handle is your chute- pull it hard and it should work the first time. Don't try and aim for a spot to land, we'll find you, don't worry. The red handle is your reserve chute in case things go sideways."
"What?!" Michelle yelled back. The last civvie-soldier pair had just jumped, and suddenly, love of flight or not, I didn't want to follow them.
"But they never do!" Montes finished, and without pause, grabbed her arm, ran to the edge, and disappeared over it, her screaming and him laughing crazily.
Blackburn had stumbled to the cockpit and was slamming his hand against the door, calling the pilot's name.
"Get out there! There's one chute left! Come on, Byrnes, you can mak-"
Another shot of Anti-Aircraft fire hit the left wing, throwing me off my feet and sending me skidding to the edge of the ramp. I panicked and grabbed at a safety rail installed inside the plane, and gripped it until my knuckles were white.
"Help!" I shouted. If I feel out of the plane like this, I would be sent spinning into the air and wouldn't have a chance to balance out before I hit the ground.
I could see the conflicted look on Blackburn's face when he turned back and looked at me. He swore and ran to me, pulling me without effort back to my feet. He put an arm on my back, steadying me, and held up his hand, three fingers sticking up. Then two. Then one.

And I leapt.