Fabienne Gschwind - The Fallen Heroine

This was my first major operation. My baptism of fire, so to speak, so I would like to describe everything in detail.

Thibault received so many emergency calls in a short time that he had to evacuate the village. The Île de Ré is an island just off La Rochelle and connected to the city by a quaint concrete bridge.

When we arrived in the city, Tartelette immediately had the rest of the island evacuated and because of the new fish repro danger, the navy was also already ordered in. At the height of Saint-Martin, the traffic was so dense due to the evacuation that nothing worked. "And let someone else say that France is underpopulated," Gabin joked, alluding to the fact that only 10% of the world's population had survived the repro apocalypse.

"Damn it," Tartelette cursed. "Hey driver, turn on the hover unit. We're going through the Marais Salants."

Our vehicle was equipped with hover jets, but they were only needed in emergencies because of the high energy consumption. A little later, we were chasing across the salt ponds called the Marais Salants, where the locals skimmed salt and sold it expensively around the world.

We roared across a small field where the famous potatoes thrived in the sandy soil. To Tamara's great sorrow, our hover drive shredded the plants.

By then we arrived in Les Portes, the village at the very end of the island. It was dead quiet - everyone together, including policemen and firemen had left the village in flight.

"It seems that an elderly lady kept her infected cat with her for weeks instead of reporting it. Probably an incomplete expression," Tartelette, who had radio communication with ReS headquarters, informed us.

I had learned that the expression of repros was quite different, depending on the strength of the reprogrammation. There were weak transformations, where the animals had only little powers and moved even slower than usual, up to the aggressive, full expressions, where they had almost super powers. I mostly listened to the radio traffic of the overall operation, where the ReS headquarters coordinated everything. During such large-scale operations, Tamara took over the coordination of everyone involved. Tartelette was given the operational command in each case and was thus allowed to command everyone. This was accepted by everyone involved - police, army and navy. This was her profession and she was occasionally flown to various large-scale missions all over France.

Meanwhile, two decacopters carrying army soldiers had shown up over the village. They would not land until Tartelette ordered them to. We got out.

"Groups of two, we'll roam the village and kill as many repros as we can. We'll meet at the cat house in twenty minutes. We'll work our way from there. Moussaillon to me."

Obediently, I attached myself to Tartelette's heels.

We walked through the marketplace, the stalls deserted and a light breeze of repro smell wafting over everything. I successfully killed two repro cats.

Then loud barking. Three dogs, rushed at us. They showed the reprogramming with full expression. In a flash, they dodged the zapper beams. With an abnormal speed one of them accelerated and with its mouth wide open it threw itself at me. I was paralyzed, the primal fear of these super-powered 'zombies' gripped me like a nightmare from which one never awakens. There was a bang as the dog's teeth slid down my visor. My helmet bulged inward.

I threw up my right arm and it bit into it. The armor cracked. Helpless, I tried to grab the machete with my left arm and strike with it. I knocked chunks of meat out of the dog without being able to slow it down. I missed hitting the neck. The zombie jerked his head around and almost dislocated my shoulder. He kept tearing and just pulled me along with him, I lost the machete. I felt his fangs digging through the armor.

But Tartelette was there and decapitated him. The armor was cracked, my helmet was slightly dented, the fangs had left deep holes. My arm throbbed from the pressure pain, but I had not been bitten. I wondered if my brother was watching the show and if he had thought I was going to die.

I was shaking all over. So much training, and I was almost killed in the first attack.

Slowly I understood why even professional soldiers didn't want anything to do with repros: The animals were unpredictable, not deterred by slogans like 'hands up' - 'drop your weapon' or fancy firearms. The armor we wore was just reassurance. And these superpowers surpassed anything I had imagined. Of course, who hadn't seen the surveillance videos of people being blown to bits in seconds? But the intensity of this attack surpassed anything I had practiced.

But our gift for sensing the animals bought us the few milliseconds we needed. A few milliseconds that set us apart from everyone else.

We heard over the radio how Gabin was killing a flock of repo gulls. There was nothing else suspicious in the main street. Tartelette took some croissants from the vacant bakery.

Then we passed through a residential area with cute one-story villas. Our driver was behind us, following at walking speed. The armored vehicle was almost hermetically sealed and I had been told never to open the door during an operation. That could put the drivers in danger. Especially smaller infected animals could slip in at lightning speed.

Finally, we heard the some bells ringing. It was Gabin and Emily, who had grabbed two bikes from somewhere and caught up with us at the house in question. We went inside.

And almost at the same time I wanted to run out again. On the entrance floor lay the body of the old woman, her head was completely crushed and the skull was open. A rat was still licking out the rest of the brain. Gabin squished it with his boots. I choked dry. Emily patted me on the shoulders. Then the nausea subsided.

Only now did Emily give me the explanation of why we were even going back to the house where it had all started.

"It's not just that Tamara is a super fighter. She's the most decorated commander in the ReS, in part because she's been working hard on the spread of repros. She has developed a program to better understand and target the spread."

I nodded; I had picked up something about these programs in a ReS report. Tamara used them to record repros killed across Europe to predict epidemics. So the boss was not only a super fighter, but an above-average programmer.

"Let's get to the beach. The other ReS units will clean up the village and the surrounding area," Tartelette finally ordered after letting run several simulations in her software to help her to find the best next move.

A few minutes later we were already at the first beach called Trousse Chemise, as I could read on the superimposed map. "We're going to walk the shore now, and as soon as you see an aquatic animal that's a repro, you scream. It's all about finding out if the virus has jumped over yet."

The shore was one of those things. With the strong tides and shallow shores, the ocean was several hundred meters away, so there was quite a bit of shore to search. At a light jog, we hurried across the sandy bottom. I arrived at a small private oyster farm that now towered over water, and by then I smelled the foul repro stench.

"Oyster repro," I screeched in horror as several hundred oysters began snapping at me. Fortunately, they were firmly attached, or I probably would have been eaten by them. "Shit. That's all we need, all those fine oysters to be destroyed," Tartelette said disappointedly.

Suddenly our radios crackled rather loudly, "Everyone! Police, Military, ReS units present at Île de Ré. The German Emperor and his Merkelist party have given us an ultimatum; either we have the situation under control in four hours and prevent the virus from spreading to the sea, or they'll drop some hydrogen bombs on us."