22 bullets.

He picked up a broken gun from the ground, turning and twisting it. Still loaded. Released the magazine, took out the remaining bullets.

32 bullets.

Instead of keeping the gun, he threw it over the edge, down into what used to be a forest. Now it was just a barren valley, filled with all the rubble they had thrown down there, together with anything else that was broken. Some would call it a dumpster, but it wasn’t that bad. If there were still children living around here, they would probably use it as a playground. There were huge rocks which you could climb upon, jump to the next one, take a broken gun and play soldier.

But there were no children here. So it was just a valley, which used to be a forest.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Today’s invasion had been harder. Lots of soldiers were being dropped upon them via helicopters and airplanes and since they didn’t have the ammunition to deal with aircrafts, they were limited to killing the soldiers on ground. It wasn’t always easy, but they managed to survive this battle like all the others.

Casualties were now a part of their lives, but he had been so lucky to not lose any of his closer friends. Yet.

He looked around for more bodies of enemy soldiers, but he had already looted all of them. Another team would come and bury the remains, so his job was done for today. He could return home.

Or what else he could call it.

Turning around, he started to ascend the hill, carrying his rifle over his shoulder and making sure not to trip. Most of the grass and earth was burnt, making it hard for him to find purchase, but he somehow made it. He had to.

He took a shortcut through the remains of the third building, which he had known pretty well. Some time ago, he used to study here, visiting this area five times a week, 30 hours a week. One never realizes how much one can get used to something, until it is gone.

The FH 3, the building that used to stand here, had been reduced to mere rubbles. Even the modern structure hadn’t been able to withstand the power of a nuke or two. The computers, the chairs, the tables, everything had been burned and reduced to ash. Now there were only sorry remains of a once tall and beautiful building.

He stopped for a second and took a breath, when he reached some kind of wall made out of rubble and metal. He lifted his hand and waved to a person standing inside of the building, where the wall had been broken, thus allowing the person to jump down if he pleased. The person acknowledged his action and gave him a thumbs up, thus allowing him to proceed further. Climbing over the wall, he was greeted by the only building that had somehow survived the bombs.

Just as he was stepping under the building inside the shade, he was greeted by yet another person going towards him, calling his name.

“Stephan!”

He knew the approaching person well. It was kind of calming to see a familiar face every now and then.

“Oliver,” he acknowledged the smaller man. The glasses, the brownish hair and the beard were something one could never ignore. Especially the mismatching colours…

“Back from the battlefield? And, found any top-secret plans? Maybe their self-programmed version of a DOM parser? I could use some frustration trying to decode their code”, the man jokingly said. He definitely wasn’t serious, but how could one stay serious all the time in this kind of situation?

“Some bullets and a really fancy hat, but no USB with a DOM parser. Sorry, Oliver,” he calmly replied and cracked his neck. “I would really prefer a good cup of coffee right now,” he mumbled to himself, thinking back to a time when he still had the material and the time for that. But those days were gone… just like someone he knew.

“Figured. Well, if you need a good laugh, look at the proposed plans of the ‘Chief’. Honestly, who put him in charge?” Oliver sighed and pointed to the double doors, which used to be glass doors, but due to the explosions, all of it had been shattered. Now they were patched up with some wooden planks. Notes were usually being hammered onto them whenever a new decision had been made.

Stephan approached the doors, looking for a new sheet of paper he hadn’t seen. There were actually a lot of others: Information regarding meetings, a memorial for the lost people, which people belong to which group, some kind of menu for the week, and some kind of Impediment Backlog for any problems.

The new paper was hanging on the top left, a pretty bad place to hang something, since short people had a hard time reading that. He didn’t have that problem, but he knew someone who would.

There were plans for leaving the town and sending people to scavenge in the other cities. Most towns had been evacuated after the first bombs hit, so the only people living around these parts were them and some who refused to leave.

The only reason why soldiers were being sent here was that they kept refusing to bow to the invaders. Seemed pretty cliché. Well, it wasn’t so cliché that Austria was being bombarded and attacked all the time, while the rest of the European union didn’t do a thing to help them. It was true that they were also being attacked, but not as bad as Austria. The whole situation was messy and confusing, and even they didn’t know what was happening or who was attacking.

The only things they knew were the following: Some nation dropped bombs on Austria and was now sending soldiers to destroy and occupy them, but there was also war happening in the other European countries. Radio and television were no longer running, just like the internet – so it was basically impossible to find out what really was happening. Even electricity was scarce nowadays. This whole situation wasn’t that much different from any 08/15 dystopian war novel.

They had spent the last few months just trying to build a base here, since it was extremely dangerous to roam outside the cities. Most of the forests had been destroyed by bombs and fires, thus making it hard to hide from enemy scouts.

However, there was one thing that allowed them to defend the base from following bombs that the enemies were dropping on them.

It was one certain thing, that was triggered inside of them during the first attack. One thing he himself was able to do, but not many others.

Shortly after the first bombs had fallen, he was patrolling nearby, when three enemy soldiers ambushed him. He was able to flee behind some rubble, but still got hit in the shoulder by a shot. The pain made his sight blurry and his aim shaky. He wasn’t able to hit anything in this condition, and the enemies knew. They were approaching him, only a few metres between them, when the final thought of dying hit him.

He was about to die. Probably a slow death, as they would take their time with him.

The thought of dying like this triggered it.

The first soldier finally jumped over the rubble, aiming at him with a grin, only for his head to implode into tiny bits.

Milliseconds passed, in which the second and third soldiers only had begun to realize that their companion had been killed, before it happened again.

It wasn’t their heads that were exploding. It was a bullet with an unimageable force that was destroying them, shot by a shaking rifle, but never missing its target.

He had the ability to hit any target with his bullets, no matter the condition.

The first time it happened, he said it was luck. The second time, it was per pure chance. The third time, he began to wonder how he had been able to hit the sniper hidden between rubble through a tiny crack.

And with the fourth time, he realized that some of his friends had their own abilities as well.

Whatever had happened that day when the first bomb had fallen – something had changed inside of them, giving them powers beyond imagination.

And sometimes, when he was about to fall asleep, a tiny, lost memory would appear before his eyes, the memory of a person surrounded by burning corpses, wielding some kind of power like all of them, but long before they had encountered it.

Slowly, he came back to reality, shaking his head and forfeiting the trail of memories he had been following. There was no time to get lost in the past.

Again, he looked at the announcement. The Chief had already chosen some groups which were to explore the area and find out what had triggered all of this tragedy.

He slowly looked at the short list of groups. Only four had been chosen, each having been assigned to one cardinal point.

West – Group 2, the Drunken Heroes.

East – Group 9, the Lost Memory Drive.

North – Group 11, the Stack Overflow.

He was still grimacing over those bad group names, when he reached the group assigned to the South. Group 7.

The Bible Study Group.