Chapter 1: New Beginnings

I don't know why but I keep having these dreams of warped versions of past events. They aren't nightmares and they aren't keeping me up at night but they are making me wonder about my recent past. That's part of the reason why I'm keep this journal and keep a camcorder I found close by, the other part of the reason is because of our mole in the "Tower" as they called it. I just thought it was really cool how they kept record of pretty much anything note worthy that happens, it would be pretty annoying for us to do something like that daily considering we're constantly mobile. But who knows maybe years from now we'll have little...what did those "Tower" assholes call us again...oh yeah "Mallers" because of our old fortified strip mall, A lot of people seem to like the name and it's become common to misspell it as "Maulers" and leave that as our tag on places. But anyway maybe years from now we'll have a bunch'a little "Mauler" boys and girls running around and they'll obviously wonder about our history so we might as well keep some record/documentation and go off that when the time comes. Well we are stopping here for the day and the only thing I have to do today is go on guard duty at noon so I might as well waste some time with this for the next 4 hours...I think we should skip the Eastern Bay part though, not because of what whoever we tell our origin story too may think about us but because its not relevant to anyone now and hopefully it never will be again. All that matters now is that we're surviving...


"Yo Aussie! Wake the fuck up and get out here!" Yelled an annoyingly familiar voice.

"What the hell could you possibly want with me now child?" He said in his thick Australian accent.

"The names J-Pop, and what kind of name is Aussie anyway? Were you in a band or something?"


"Aussie, what an unoriginal nickname, I shouldn't complain though considering I named myself that. I'm one of the original Mallers from Eastern Bay. Now I shouldn't have been been in there in the 1st place, yet there I was lying in a cell surviving off of taxed money for crimes I didn't even commit! Sure I'v done the turf in my day, drove hot cars to and from Mexico, sold illegal firearms, and was a soldier for hire once in Mexico when a gang was moving up on a rival cartel. I wouldn't have ever complained if I was actually in that prison for what I did. But no, the fucked up system threw me in there because some prick that happened to look like me was caught doing some low time drug selling. Doesn't matter now and hopefully it'll never matter again."

"Damn I didn't ask for your life story I just wanted to know where the name came from. And don't be mad at me because Scratch called a meeting."

"Seriously? Why this early? Didn't her convoy just get back?"

"Just go to the center of the perimeter like usual, I'm sure she'll explain." J-Pop said as she walked off.


I grabbed my Full auto rigged M4 style AR-15 and headed towards the mass of familiar faces. It was about 2 minutes before Scratch and Durai made their way to the center of us, that's when Scratch made her "announcement."

"Well I guess I'll just cut to the chase. Me and my convoy took down the Tower yesterday!" She said with enthusiasm to say the least.

"It was easy to tell who already knew and who didn't by the number of dropped jaws. I don't know what I was more surprised by though the fact that those assholes had been eliminated and nobody so much as invited me to the attack, or the fact that it was clear that Durai didn't know about this any sooner than the most of us."

"Now before you all completely loose your shit let me explain. Now lets not kid ourselves somebody had to do it sooner or later, and sooner was obviously the better choice. To confirm what some of you are thinking yes we used the RPG's in the process along with one of our tankers. We were planning on using the RPG to...soften up the tower and the tanker was going to finish it. Now this didn't exactly go according to plan, but regardless the Tower came crashing down along with the zealots inside. The only catch is that 1 of those helicopters was able to get away. But there's no way there were any more than 4 or 5 people in there. Sadly what we thought was confirmed, 1 of our moles betrayed us, not like it matters anymore though, at least we got the info about those choppers that they had before they betrayed us. We were even able to salvage the contents of a safe that they used as an armory." There was a moment of silence before "ClearSights" interjected.

"What the hell were you people thinking!? Were you thinking? Do you think Rocket Propelled Grenades just grow on trees or someth...you used all of them didn't you? Isn't this just fucking perfect? It was 1 building! 1! How do you end up using 8 rockets + a tanker to take down 1 fucking building!? Wait! You said 1 of the choppers got away please tell me you at least took the other one out."

"You could say we did, and why are you making sound like we don't have any other weapons like it?"

"What are you talking about? The LAW that we found at that military base? That's a 1 shot disposable anti-tank weapon! Almost nothing compared to that REUSABLE RPG-7!"

"I agree but we know where we can get another one...isn't that right Durai?"

"I knew you were going to bring this up sometime soon. I don't approve of going off on missions like that without telling anyone especially me, but since you did complete this mission the timing couldn't be better."

"Lets just consider it a covert operation and put it in the back of our minds while we move onto far bigger and better things. Besides we have far bigger fish to fry, isn't that right Durai? Ha that rhymed."

"OK enough of this insider shit, if one of you doesn't mind could you inform the rest of us?" Said Reaper before everyone's eyes and ears shifts from him to Durai.

"As all of you know we are constantly monitoring radio transmissions on all frequencies. What almost none of you know until now that is, is that we have discovered another group not far east of our current location. From the information that we have been able to obtain from the transmission, our scouts, and a captured member of this group we know that this group has something to do with the Mexican drug cartel known as Los Zeta's. I suspect that this group is a faction of the cartel that split when the everything happened. They could be what's left of the cartel, they could be 1 of the Zetas allied enforcement gangs who knows? Not that it matters anyway. But what Scratch is referring to is a transmission we monitored last week where 2 members of the group were arguing the use of an RPG-7 and 1 member stated that "it wouldn't be a big deal it's not like we don't have more ammo."

"So we gonna go attack these guys and take their shit or what? Said Reaper with an eagerness in his tone.

"My thoughts exactly, even if we don't salvage anything from assaulting them we need to get them out of our territory. So other than the guardsmen I want all of you armed up and ready to roll out in the next 30 minutes. Dismissed."

The giant mass of people dispersed. Most went to get they're weapons some headed directly to the vehicles. Durai's personal security squad gathered around him and followed him and Scratch to his armored limousine. Durai used his personal radio to inform ClearSights that his long distance accuracy would most likely be needed more than his skills as a tactician. He then told Tardust to retrieve the LAW rocket launcher from the 2nd armory, when asked why he simply responded "El Monstruo."




To Be Continued...