Not sure why current foreign affairs would take a back seat
to 157 deaths in an unrepeated incident without an obvious target to
take retribution on.  For instance, Oklahoma City killed 169.  If that
were repeated today, in what sense would the WOT, Iraq, and Afghanistan
take a back seat (other than headlines for a week or so)?
Your narrator
is certainly allowed to be unreliable, but this doesn't seem (to me)
consistent with the tone.  Wouldn't THIS narrator assume that the youma
were Al Qaeda operatives, ignoring any evidence to the contrary until
after follow-on attacks, similar to the way many radio commentators
assumed that Oklahoma City was due to Al Qaeda or other Arab terrorists
for the first day or two?  Suggest that the attack is linked to Japan
very early, and confirmed to be a new enemy.

Might also help to have some idea how much later your narrator is
recounting events.  One or more decades later, for instance, nobody
would expect the narrator to be accurate.

Monsters on live news.  That's enough to grab for a few weeks, but the
second attack came only three days later.  Then accelerated quickly

Sure, the attack killed less than Pearl Harbor or September 11 did.
It didn't matter.

???  Both Pearl Harbor and 9/11 had "immediately"-known culprits.
You don't here.  To me, the comparison would be with Oklahoma
City in the absence of obvious evidence that this is a NEW, EXTERNAL
enemy.

How are 7-10 foot tall monsters slaughtering people on air not obvious
evidence?

 Sure, the mullahs whined that the 'Great Satan' was
reaping his just rewards.  They soon learned differently.

Suggest, given your narrator, "those damned ayatollahs over in
the mid-east".

It would probably only be the official Iranian ruling clergy
actually using this language, given these circumstance (to the
best of my knowledge, calling the U.S. the 'Great Satan' or
'Great Tempter' is not that common elsewhere), but your
narrator wouldn't be precise.

Yep, but he doesn't even know what a 'ayatollah' is. Yes, he's generalizing
over an number of events that happened, mostly in the middle-east,
Especially Iran, Saudia Arabia, and sections of Egypt.

 I had recently
read an essay about the "Jacksonian Tradition".  It rung a

chord in me.  It

was to ring a greater one later.

Me, I took stock of my finances, and ordered a .50 BMG sniper

rifle.  Cost

me close to $8,000.  Took every cent I had saved in my career.

After one attack on the west coast?  Didn't this narrator still
have the sniper rifle she or he bought after Oklahoma City?  Or
was this narrator too young back then?

Too young.  Didn't have the cash or credit for anything.  Was overseas
(unable to obtain weapons due to host-nation agreement breakdown) after
September 11.

On the plus side, this DOES effectively characterize the narrator
for us.  This is financially reckless behavior given very slight
reason.  The choice of an expensive sniper rifle is interesting,
though:  it wouldn't be the first choice of an untrained hothead,
suggesting that this narrator has a prior military or SWAT
background, where she or he could have had sniper training.
You might want to amplify on the narrator's background early on
(later it's clear that the narrator is in the military; this
should be stated every close to the beginning, IMO).

Reckless?  Reckless would have been hocking the car, getting a loan for it.
Well, maybe not the loan.

 Fortunately,
the same day, Barrett had announced that they were going to

sell at cost,

plus tool-up costs.  They were going to expand.

Precipitously.  The next

attack came three days later in Tuscan, just long enough for

the public to

start wondering if the attack was a once-only event.

An arms manufacturer announces a precipitous expansion after the first
attack?  And the FBI didn't investigate whether they were responsible
for the attack?

Barrett has a good rep.  They pressured the cops when California was making
moves to ban .50 sniper rifles.  Threatened to boycott (refuse service) the
police departments there.  California was doing this despite them having
been used in no crimes in the US.  This mainly due to the lightest one
weighing in at 22 pounds BARE, and 46.4 inches long.  They're HUGE.  It
can't be fired without the use of a bipod at the minimum.  And they have an
order list to back up their expansion.  If the FBI investigated them, they
didn't find anything and it didn't make the news.  Trust me.  Monsters show
up, arms are going to sell.

BTW, the site of the second attack confuses me.  Did you mean "Tucson"?
But, if so, it is in Arizona, not Nevada.  I'm not aware of any
"Tuscan, Nevada", so presumably it's a small town.

Misspelled.

 Aliens, monsters,
radioactive mutations, all the theories expressed in the movies were
proposed.  The fact that the bodies decomposed to dust so

quickly didn't

help.  We didn't know anything but that it took large amounts

of damage to

kill them.  Until then they were a nightmare out of hell.

How little we

knew, and yet, how right we were.  The second attack was with

six of the

suckers.  But Nevada was a different proposition than

California, and they

had some warning.  Only seventy-eight people died that day.

Eight civilians

opened up on the youma, delaying them long enough for many

people to escape.

Curiously, one man was more effective that what seemed right.

Pastor Jack

Newman's bullets, from a unimposing .38 revolver, did more

damage than the

.45's fired by several others.  But it was several weeks

before this news

came out.

At this point, President Bush started calling up military forces.

From where?  Aren't we straining to keep up force levels in Iraq?
Suggest "Congress rapidly reinstituted the draft and" inserted into
above sentence.  Or, alternatively, "This would have been difficult,
but that tens of thousands of young, patriotic Americans rushed to
enlist."

They weren't young.  Average age was over 30 ;).  And the problem with Iraq
isn't us not having enough people, it's not having enough of the proper type
of people.  We're dripping heavy armor out of our ears.  We don't have much
light/medium infantry anymore.

 Every
base was in Charlie, with west coast bases in Delta.  We were scared.
Troops overseas were clamoring to come home and help.

Now that one rings VERY true to me (especially the ones in Iraq) ;).

I know that I wanted to come back...  If troops aren't griping about
something, there is something SERIOUSLY wrong.

The attacks accelerated and spread.  We learned that Japan had been
suffering from them, and some 'Sailor Scouts' or 'Sailor

Warriors' had been

fighting them.

This really ought to have been announced after the first attack.  It
would make many of your narrator's descriptions of the sequence of
events more plausible.  It also sounds to me that your narrator,

>from a vantage point of decades later, would remember this being

discovered earlier.

Not really, Japan kept a tight lid on it.

 It was discovered that blessed bullets, especially from
certain pious individuals, were more effective.  It certainly

resulted in

certain priests being, well, marked as fraudulent.

This implies an "either/or" effect rather than a "strength
of faith" effect.  (In either case, your average television
evangelist would simply hire some simple saint to bless the
bullets BEFORE the televangelist does so on camera.)

It didn't work.  As for the either/or, well, when the guy's bullets don't
work any better than straight out of the package...

It would further characterize your narrator to pick out one
or two American frauds here as standing out in his or her
recollection:  a southern televangelist, a Catholic pederast,
a main-street Protestant cleric of thin and insubstantial
faith, whatever.  Might want to tell us which denomination
your narrator belongs to, possibly at the same time.

Unfortuantly, I haven't watched TV in years, much less televangelists.  Any
suggestions?
As for the narrator, he's an agnostic with christian teachings early in
life.
Disillusioned by structured religion.

Alternatively, could mention that the narrator was surprised
by some of the frauds uncovered.  Maybe personally disappointed
by one or two?

More likely suprised by some of the successes...  Give me candidates.

 Our reaction was, well,
extreme.  This was a HOLY fight.

That WOULD make a difference!  :)

 Many mullahs were torn apart after their
'blessings' proved less than effective in killing the beasts.

Again, suggest you add either country where this occured, or further
characterize your narrator by vague "somwhere in the mid-east".
"I remember reading somewhere along in here about some
popular mullah torn apart by an angry mob in some mid-east country
when his 'blessing' proved less than..."

I stuck a sandbox comment in there.

 After Fort
Carson was attacked, killing 12 soldiers, I was issued an

M-16.  But that

was discovered to be capable of little more than harassing to

the youma.

They had gotten tougher.  Well, so did we.  You quickly started seeing
weapons worn openly by people.  First it was mostly handguns,

but people

started carrying the heaviest rifle they owned.

Might want to add a remark here about "the American frontier heritage,
when every man carried his rifle" returning, (never mind the historical
reality).

Historical reality:  They had guns.
As for the frontier heritage, it's over the top.

 I started carrying my
Barrett instead of the M-16, and nobody questioned me.

Anti-firearm laws

were repealed at a local level as a fast rate if they weren't ignored
completely.  The youma mostly hit population centers, but

anywhere people

gathered was a target.  We, the military, just couldn't cover

everywhere

sufficiently.  The NRA and other groups started setting up

carefully staged

'parties', complete with .50BMG machinegun demonstration

centers...  It was

the rebirth of the militia.  In Colorado Springs, the local

Class 3 arms

dealer happened to be close to a youma attack with his... vehicle.  He
managed to dust 3 youma in short order with the two machine

guns mounted on

his SUV. This, to me, marked the start of the full

restoration of the 2nd

amendment.

Suggest you add something about how your narrator thinks it's
been under
attack:  ", which had been under attack by those commies for decades."
or ", which had seen steady infringement ever since the
frontier closed."
or whatever.

It was fixed, it's over with, time to move on.  Even the liberals are
convinced.  No need to rub salt into the wounds. ;)
it seems going over the top for me.

Meanwhile, every scrap of evidence about the attacks were

gathered up and

analyzed.  I heard rumors of new weapons, even as

precision-guided artillery

was being set up in strategic points in and around cities.

Police were

given GPS devices and hasty training in calling in fire support.

The analogy seems to be with the Afghanistan use of Special
Forces calling
in precision attacks.  But didn't they use lasers too?  And weren't the
attacks they called in aerial, using smart bombs?

Afghanistan is a big country.  Planes can cover more territory with bigger
bombs.  Problem is that most bombs are overkill (as in friendly) in this
situation.  Artillery has smaller rounds, can fire for a longer period of
time, and don't need loiter ability.  This is turn up GPS accuracy, and have
the cops call in strikes to the professional artillery.  Who hopefully
spotchecks the coordinates with a calibrated city map.

I tend to agree with other reviewers that actual artillery use in
cities seems improbable.

Not sky-scraper cities, but out in the 'burbs.  And cities without too much
in the way of skyscrapers.  The artillery boys are not without their tricks.

 I still
remember the how the youma looked shocked when they were hit

with the first

artillery strick.  For all of six seconds, when the second

shell hit.  Heck,

at Minot AFB we had a B-52 flying at all times armed with

JATO laser guided

bombs.  And people around with radios and pointers.

Washington D.C. had

alot of the protection, of course, with an A-10 constantly

circling between

the white house and congress building.

"Capitol"  And White House should be capitalized.

Capped.

 The 30MM rounds from the GAU-8 don't
need any blessings to kill youma.  Hotlines were set up so

people could call

in attacks.  Fast reaction heavy weapon patrols were formed.

They usually

finished up what the citizens didn't kill.  Youma started to

learn, but they

didn't have much of a learning curve, that's for sure.  They

had a hard

time, even when they popped up in the dozens, learning to

keep out of view

of rooftops and towers.  Most of them had snipers firing

blessed ammunition.

One round usually wouldn't kill one, but they would do rather serious
damage.  Three or four rounds would finish most of them off.

Of course, it

would be all over when the FRHWP, or 'FRAP', showed up.

Heavy machine guns

would keep the youma from charging the HMMWVs long enough for

the others to

nail them with RPGs and wire-guided missiles.

Construction codes have been revised again.  What, with the

attacks, most

public places are guarenteed to be attacked sooner or later.

We refuse to

"guaranteed" (sp)

fixed.

give up our lives for the youma.  And that includes gathering.

Might want to remark here on a (further) resurgence in church-going,
especially if most churches are immune from attack (I guess that can't
be true, though:  youma in SM attacked the Hino Shrine successfully).

Blessing, not penetrating the body at most cause an itch.  Given two equal
targets, they'll take the other, but if it's juicy, they'll attack anywhere.
And despite this, he's still leery of organized religion.  Supports others,
but doesn't see it for himself.

 Anyways,
public places have all been reinforced.  After all, they have to take
monsters, and the high-caliber response to them.  The

highest-risk sites

have guards armed with machine guns just in case.  Crime has

dropped to just

about zero.

"Armed robbery" has dropped to just about zero.  Conmen and fraud
would be doing a booming business.  Of course, your narrator might
not care or know.

'buyer beware' has always been part of his worldview.  Conmen and frauds are
in deep shit if they're caught selling 'anti-youma' products.  They get sent
to prison, the one place where they can't be armed, and the guards aren't
necessarily tough or fast enough to protect them from Youma.

 Everybody's armed, and any gunfire attracts an overwhelming
response.

Sure, we still take casualties.  But we're in a fight for

HUMANITY.  Many of

us view it as the preview of the final coming.  Praise god

and pass the

ammunition type of thing.  Even now, less than a year later,

there's talk of

a monument to all those who've fallen to the monsters.

Wouldn't take a year; it would start a few days after the first attack.

And the talk about pulling out of the other countries

evaporated once we

learned that other countries were suffering attacks as great,

if not worse

than us.

Not clear to me why this would be.  Wouldn't the prevalent mood be
"Now those free-riders have to spend what we do on defense"?  And
you wouldn't get that many US volunteers to stay (some, of course,
mostly those already there who can see the suffering in front of
them, but without family at home to worry about).

Read a little deeper.  "They were feeding on us, on humans.  Our energy is
what fuels their attacks.  Attacks elsewhere only fueled further attacks, on
us and others."
Thus, any country that can't hold it's own is the source of further attacks,
including on us.  We can't allow that.

 China was direly struck, and became our ally once more.  They were
unable to maintain their state as it was under the assault.

Everybody had

to be armed to hold back the tide, and you can't oppress an

armed people.

The average Chinese doesn't think of him- or herself as exactly
"oppressed" today, more simply as poor and getting richer.  And I'd
think the conditions described would actually strengthen the
authoritarian capabilities of the regime.  The Chinese already have
a LOT of people under arms, far more numerically than the US does, but
has sophisticated social control mechanisms to avoid trouble with
their weapons.  And, under these circumstances, I'd think that
Cultural Revolution-era practices (mutual workgroup inquisitions)
would quickly return.

Don't really know.  China is the main fuel point.  They're the hardest
struck.  Even the old leadership was more than decimated.  It involved some
luck and good work on the part of some people who remembered the flying
tigers.  China, like Russia, was once our alley, and can be again.

You can't fool all the armed people all the time, but you CAN
fool all the armed people some of the time, and you can fool
some of the armed people all of the time, and the Chinese rulers
have always been very good at the latter two.

Alot of them are dead.

It does seem to me realistic that your narrator would not view
China as an ally of the US at present, and might do so under the
circumstances presented, though a remark about how little
help China sent to US might be appropriate (allies actually
fight together, not just share an enemy).

China couldn't send any help.  They still haven't gotten a complete handle
on their end.

The USA showed once again how much war material it could produce when
threatened.  We're the largest arms exporter in the world now.

"Now"?  Suggest "We were already the largest arms exporter in the
world, but now we make three times more than the rest of the world
put together" or some such.

Hmmm....

Hope this helps.  I'm sure my own political biases crept through,
but hopfully you'll find some useful comments in here anyway.

Well, I disagreed somewhat.  But that's okay.  It's what makes America
great.

btw:  what is your background?  I'm a midwest agnostic libertarian.


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