Dopass.com

My Daughter,

My god, child, the horrors I have seen! As I write this now, fully half of our number lay dead on a field of battle not far from here, a dry lake bed in the Nevada desert. I had hoped to find you there, but what we found instead was terrifying beyond belief.

We arrived in Las Vegas to find it abandoned. Though the city showed no sign of any sort of catastrophe, the streets were lined with the corpses of its citizens. Someone - no something - had killed them all! At first, we thought we were looking at the results of some biological weapon, but upon closer investigation we found them all shot dead, riddled with bullet holes.

I cannot describe the horror we experienced. The realization that something would systematically hunt down and kill everyone in the city chilled me to the bone. I knew we could not stay and I ordered my army to find us enough operable vehicles to leave this accursed place, as quickly as possible.

My plan was to investigate the base where I had hoped I would find you. With my army now mobile, I had hoped we could scout the base quickly on our way out of this god forsaken hell. We set out that morning and approached the base cautiously. We took position on a nearby ridge that looks down upon the lake bed and began to observe the camp. At first we thought perhaps the camp was deserted; nothing moved. But as night fell we began to see lights moving inside the base. They were dim, red lights, and it was hard to make out what they were, but as we watched we realized we had become careless.

A UAV flew overhead, easily spotting the ragged horde that is my army on the other side of the ridge. Soon, the lights we saw in the base began to draw closer. As we debated whether we would stand and fight or flee we realized that the lights were coming from a platoon of small tanks. Painted a drab black, each tank was hard to spot in the darkness save for the red lights of their targeting systems - the lights we had seen inside the base.

We assumed the soldiers of this base were building new weapons of war, small and fast moving one man tanks. I knew immediately that I would not find you there and so we decided that we would flee. As we loaded the vehicles again, the first of these tanks reached the bottom of the ridge. Our scouts atop the ridge cried the alarm and turn to scramble down the ridge towards us, but soon the fell, one by one. As we cried out to them, we heard the buzz of a UAV in the darkness. We knew then that we would not escape without a fight.

I tell you now, my Daughter, none of us would have survived if it had not been for your cousins. They had spent the previous night scavenging arms and ammunition from every gun store in Las Vegas. We were lucky. As I turned to order my army to flee, Eli stood and rallied them all. He screamed at them to arm themselves and began to fire at the UAV roaring overhead.

That was the start of the battle. As we tried to flee the area, Eli and others fired at our pursuers. These tanks, and the UAVs we would later discovered were armed to attack, they were hard to destroy. A tour bus we had taken from the Las Vegas strip, carrying the young and the old, was the first of our fleet to be destroyed, the cannon of the lead tank making short work of it with a single shot. 50 of us died in that fireball; I realized our vehicles would be picked off one by one if we continued this single-minded flight and I saw that Eli agreed. Without a word to each other we moved ordered the army to break in two, each going a different direction.

I took my detachment around the ridge. My intent was to circle behind the tanks, putting the ridge between us. If I could get behind them, I reasoned, we might have a chance to disable them and flee unharmed. I was so wrong.

As our elements of the convoy came around the ridge I saw the full extent of the forces arrayed against us. A dozen of these small tanks and a small flight of 5 of the armed UAVs. The lead tank we had seen earlier and his 2 followers were a small element of the full force, but they had already done so much damage. We were doomed.

We had no choice but to fight; fleeing was out of the question. Those tanks were fast and the UAVs could follow us out of the range of our pitiful rifles and pistols. I directed my forces to charge the base. My hope that we could get inside and take it by force, forcing the pilots of the tanks to stand down lest we kill the forces still in the base.

Eli must have reached the same conclusion, for I soon saw his half of our army wheel around and move towards the base. We breached the fence from two separate directions and roughly the same time and met surprisingly light resistance. We found out why as soon as we got inside the base hangars, which had been left open when the tanks charged us at the ridge.

Everyone in the base was dead. Shot like those in the city or crushed beneath the treads of these tanks. The soldiers fared better than us, however for we saw several of these tanks destroyed within the hangar. As we dismounted our vehicles and sought defensible positions I got a good look at one.

When I saw it, I knew the pilots of these tanks would never stand down. Tank and pilot were one. Each tank is controlled by a human being, as I thought, but not in the way I expected. Instead of a cockpit there was a... receptacle for a heavily shielded canister about the size of a keg of beer. One of these canisters laid cracked open and exposed on the hangar floor and within I could see the shriveled wrinkled mass of a human brain, a thousand small filaments of wire sprouting from its various folds and leading into the depths of the canister.

What monsters would imprison someone so?! I had no time to consider it, I could only focus on mounting a defense. As the tanks caught up to our force, I found Eli scavenging what high explosives he could find quickly. The look on his face told me that he had seen the same thing I had. We both knew surrender was an unlikely option. How could anyone remain human stripped of their body like that I can tell you now with certainly, dear one, they cannot. These tanks must also have been the same force that killed everyone in the city. Our only hope lied in defeating them.

And we did, though it cost us dearly. Eli is... I shudder to think it... Eli is dying. Though his minor wounds heal at a remarkable rate, he has lost too much blood and his kidneys are destroyed beyond repair. The few doctors among us have done everything they can to make him comfortable but they tell me that even healing as fast as he is, he will not survive the day.

Aaron has suggested we remain at the base until we are healed, but I don't think we've seen the last of these monsters, these brains in cans. I have told Aaron that we will leave tonight, under cover of darkness. We will take whatever gear we can from this base, but we cannot stay. We have to flee.

My plans... Our hope... What do they matter in the face of such uncaring things? What has become of the nation I called my home? What has happened to the world that such beasts could exist unchecked?

I fear the end of the world has come, my Child. I must find you before it is too late! But... where are you?

My love, Daughter.

- Michael Mendoza