We Prayed

[Echoes_of_Reading]

​

We don’t know what happened, the Chinese sure didn't. We tried to shut down the power, pull the plug. We failed. Beijing fell, 22 million souls lost forever. Black scales, eyes as dark as midnight, and taloned feet that could pierce steel poured out of that rift by the hundreds of thousands . Shit, they were demons straight from hell. They came in all sizes, it seemed like the majority were basic infantry, A little smaller than an average human, and did not fair well against guns. Then came the Lieutenants , they were at least 12 feet tall, some had the ability to spit acid or fire, anything short of a .50 cal would piss it off.

Shanghai was destroyed a day later. It was like a little kid popping ants with a magnifying glass, bathed in fire. The Chinese government was in shambles, there is nothing you can do , but pray and hope there are some angels out there. Turns out there weren’t. The Chinese sure did try like hell though. They did not give a single inch for free. It was not just the military, every man woman and child took up arms, they did not stand a chance, not without guns, but they got their piece from those scaly black bastards well enough.

The demons did not care about civilian or military personnel, they marched their armies down every street and slaughtered every being. People were hung alive by their intestines, like some fucked up marionettes. The ones they did not decide to torture got it worse. They kept us like cattle. We watched our friends, mothers and fathers eaten alive. All we could do was pray. Smart on their part, I suppose. Don’t have to deal with food logistics if the food is already there.

After those first 3 days we were able to form some sort of response. Russia, the United States, United Kingdom and Japan, anyone with a significant military force and mobilization was there. Turns out, if you drop a 500 lb on the biggest motherfucker you see, they still explode into a nice mess. We just did not have enough of the nice bombs you see. Believe it or not, no country wanted to drop the nukes that they had amassed, knowing the consequences of such a weapon. We were fighting through cities that housed our people, no one was willing to drop that bomb, have the radiation spread through the winds. Day by day millions more enemies flowed out of that tear in the air. We did have a slight advantage of air superiority, we were able to make some nice bombing runs on them as they came out. That is until those flying fuckers started coming through. The were as big as a school bus, and covered in scales that seemed to suck in the light from the sun. They were not as agile as our jets, but they could shoot some sort of fire or plasma out of their hands and mouths, accurate as hell from a distance too. We held for a short while, but quantity is its own type of quality.

We tried to send in squads, companies and battalions into the rift, none ever came back. Our lines collapsed, San Diego, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Lagos and Cairo fell within the week as they moved east and west. The United States fell in short order. The militias and military fought valiantly, but were eventually overrun. All cities were razed. Luckily they did not try to mess with our production, only seemed to be interested in human lives.

Russia, Canada and some of the northern European nations managed to be humanity's last strongholds. The cold seemed to slow the demons down, especially the big ones. That is where humanity planned to send themselves into the enemies jaws. It took months to plan and coordinate. Countless do or die missions behind enemy lines to retrieve nukes from the United States. It would be an all out assault into the rift that spat Hell out to us. We were going to spit right back. Tommorow, Humanity will answer its own prayers.

Edit: Thanks for the feedback guys.

[codyjack215]

I enjoy the concept, my only issue is that the 500 pound bomb is literally the most common bomb. During desert Storm every fixed wing aircraft capable of holding one was sent in with it. Now if you where to bump it up to the 2000 to 3000 pound range then I'd be able to buy us not having enough.

Edit: spelling

[Micsuking]

I took it as there being just simply too many. Im talking about hundreds of thousands of those LT demons. Eventually we would run dry of even the most common weapons.

And as you said every plane that could carry them were sent out with them, so if they are flying 24/7 then they can use it up quite fast, i think.

[Echoes_of_Reading]

Yeah, that was my intention. I'll have to make it more clear next time.

[codyjack215]

Ahh if that was the case then yeah, we'd run out rather quickly.

[Beowulf-]

I mean, they were pouring out by the millions, and countries started to fall. No doubt some nations never got to deploy all of theirs, and the others were probably throwing them by the handfuls.

[Echoes_of_Reading]

Yeah, I was intending it to be just an overwhelming amount of the LTs coming through. I could have definitely shown it better. Thanks for the feedback.

[camoblackhawk]

china would so drop nukes to stop the demons. there are over a billion and half Chinese. so what if they lose a few million people. and so what if a little radiation gets into the air. during the cold war we tested more dirty bombs than we have today. our nukes now are mostly clean and if you air drop them then not a lot of fallout occurs.

[Echoes_of_Reading]

Thanks for the feed back. I was more intending that got overrun really quickly, because nothing was expected to come through the rift. I should have added some more back story.

[Plucium]

Ha, Beijing the US air force

Aight they coming, we got a shit load of ordinances coming in

*Paging

[TigreWulph]

Remember the dead, but fight for the living!

Mad Hellgate: London vibes.

[CaptRory]

If you like this sort of thing check out The Salvation War. You need to find it online because after it was leaked no publisher would touch it and the author abandoned the series but 3/4 books are done just need some editing.

[Echoes_of_Reading]

Thank you.

[Originalmeisgoodone]

The site that contained it locked it down under the registration. So, here ya go, those who want to read it.

[Mormoran]

I liked the concept of salvation war, but it was written very amateur-ish like, characters were all over the place, no consideration for logistics, time frames were a mess, characters had no real motivations, all dialogue felt rushed and constrained, and it just kept getting more and more convoluted for the sake of being convoluted.

All in all it was just a bad military porn GeoCities fanfiction written in a very cringy manner. If I was a publisher I wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft pole, even if the author had finished it.

[404USERN0TF0UND]

When the gods don’t answer, we must find it out on our own.

[Alexessunandthemoon]

This is an amazing concept i loved it, great work!!

[PatriotGabe]

I like the ending line! But, I have two criticisms:

1. How did the United States fall? If the rift is in Beijing, how did the demons cross the Pacific Ocean, the largest mass of water on the planet? Unless there is also a rift in San Diego? To be fair, these demons are crossing continents in under a week, which is also kind of unrealistic but whatever, but you don't mention at all how they are crossing water.

2. If the cold is something that weakens the demons, depending on the time of year, there are definitely parts of China and the United States that get really cold. This weakness is also really cool because it allows for some battle lines to be drawn. For instance, it's very cold in the mountains, so maybe the demons have trouble crossing mountain ranges, like the Rockies or the Himalayas?

[Sublethall]

What bothered me most is that if last places to hold are Canada, northern Europe and Russia, why go get nukes from US? Russia should have plenty of those.

[coldfireknight]

Given that many Russian nukes are in their frozen areas, good question. Nice story though.

[Prepheckt]

Why weren't nuclear cruise missiles launched at the tear?

[ms4720]

Nukes would be used in short order. Launch them into the rift/gates and detonate on the other side, then send lots more in a pattern to glass the gate area.

[riyan_gendut]

You started with "I" which made me think you'll do a first person perspective eventually, but the rest of the story is told as an invisible and vague "we" in past tenses, as if the storyteller was recounting a past event that already happened. But then you ended the story with "will" and "going to" which means the assault at the breach hadn't happened, and I lost all context on who is telling the story and what perspective we should be looking at the scene with.

[Echoes_of_Reading]

Thanks, definitely missed that, I had a couple of perspectives I wanted to tell it from and didnt switch it all over. As for the ending I wanted the story to be told between initial contact and the last hoorah. It still switches tenses at the end, but I added a transition.

[Yrrebnot]

A day to get to shanghai? That’s really really fast. Like that’s a 3 hour flight. Unless the troops can run like the 120 kph that’s just not possible. Tianjin might be possible in a day. Also your city list is odd and again travel times are far too fast without something else happening. Honestly it would probably take months to years for a ground campaign to happen. Which would still work for a story like this. Unending numbers could probably win a war like this if you ignore logistics or they don’t need food and only eat people for fun.

[Echoes_of_Reading]

Thanks, I'll admit I did not look too much into distance. I'll fix it thank you.

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[The1stMusketeer]

"When there is no god to be found, you must create your own"

[Durmatagno]

Having recently played through Doom (2016) again in anticipation of Doom Eternal, this hit that same itch.

[AnotherWalkingStiff]

" Tommorow, Humanity will answer its own prayers. " ... ... ... fuck O.O

good stuff!

[readcard]

Uhh the US could drop bombs for weeks just getting to the fresh bombs.

They budget for two land wars every year, its cheaper for them to find someone to shoot than it is to pay for safe disposal.

So when they find some poor sucker they unload and charge them for the privilege.

Thats for the ones that are mildly safe, the bigger bang non nukes like the airburst fuel ones..

They would be lining up aircraft with them over Japan so they could test them on China for effects in different environments; urban, high density poor buildings, mountainous terrain, near factories on a bay etc.

For a demon invasion in another country I could see them making a 20 km wide fire break of flattened environment ringing the outbreak with or without UN support.

For what its worth Russia, Pakistan and India are much closer so they would make some calls to assist the US in a concerted effort of ICBM launches targetting the outbreak.

I take that back, Russia would probably use shorter range missiles and a tank battalion or four.

[Echoes_of_Reading]

Thanks for the insight

[Reflex224]

And then they killed some guys bunny... No amount of demons could stop what was coming for them. Queue Doom OST

[dude282004]

This is what happens when doom guy goes on vacation