The Fall of Sheen

Chapter 1 - Fall Like A Thunderbolt

“It ain’t me!” - unidentified American soldier, 1967

Life was never the same after the... event. Allow me to unfurl the threads of time and take us back to an era before the disaster, before my life was forever plunged into the void.

The year is 1968. The Vietnam war is climaxing.

I was born in Nuremberg, Pennsylvania. I was made in the US Marines.

The gunfire was at the back of my mind as we charged the enemy. The explosions, usually so loud and so shocking washed over me like the horrors of cannibalism bounced off Hickey.

There were explosions to the left of us. Explosions to the right of us. Explosions in front of us.

We weren’t outfitted for full combat, carrying just 2 ever-reliable M16s, a pair of trustworthy Magnum 44 revolvers and a wad of whatever currency those savages use over there.

Bullets rang around, thick as mosquitos, and we had to duck into the undergrowth just so we could avoid detection, jungle camo and a ghillie suit was all that stood between me and a horde of roaring vietnamese artillery.

The south Vietnamese cannon fodder fell like flies, but that was acceptable. They existed to be killed, a fate all soldiers share. My erstwhile friend Private O’Brain was cut down by a hail of bullets, ripping him apart even as he ran. He looked quite the fool as he ran along, clutching his intestines to his stomach and both Viet Cong and American soldiers took a moment to have a chuckle at young O’Brain’s goofy predicament.

Explosions to the left of us. Explosions to the right of us. Explosions behind us.

Martin Sheen himself led our gang, and as we crested the sandbags protecting the Communist fortification, he kicked one of those frickers in the head, his superior American strength smashing straight through the skull, sending brains flying into the small eyes of his Viet Cong comrades.

They fled in fear just at the sound of the shockwaves Sheen sent out with his American ferocity. I have never met a man so fierce and so honourable since.

We had stormed the Viet Cong camp, eradicated the scum from their dirty holes and took a moment to reflect, Sheen - the most capable general I’ve ever served under relayed - an old war story of his, all the way back to 1945 where he was air-dropped into Tokyo and infiltrated the Japanese palace; in the middle of the night he seduced the Emperor and convinced him to make peace with the civilised world.

Chapter 2 - Adrian Cronauer

“The valiant never taste of death but once” - unidentified American soldier, 1965

“Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood Morning Vietnaaam!” the joyful tones of Sergeant Allister rang throughout the cluttered streets of Saigon, a voice we’d all come to know and love by now. A sweet sound to my ear, if I may say so, between the barrages of Viet Cong bombs dropped near Saigon, the foreign tongue of the locals (one that brought a disgusting taste to my mouth even after everything I’d seen) and sound of my fellow brothers locking and loading, ready for the next strike from the commies.

Chief Gunnery Sergeant Forster called me into his tent.

“Look, Kearney, I need to take you off active duty. You’re gonna be on garrison in Saigon from now on.” he said, his grey eyes bearing down on me.

“I...What, Sarge? I love fighting those goddamn barbarians. You can’t take this away from me” I said, my voice rising as I became angrier at the situation.

“Look, I know. You and Sheen have been doing some damn fine work. But a lot of what you’ve done...it um...it breaks this thing called the Geneva convention. You know. All of that torture, that weird stuff with the open mouth napalm…”

“What? So just because some village in Germany says they have ‘rights’, we’re being taken away! This...this is a breach of my human rights, Sarge.”

“Sorry but that’s just the way it goes sometime. Look, enjoy the city, cool off for a few months and you’ll be back in the jungle in no time.”

I was fuming as I left base and entered the city and stormed towards the McDonald’s that had been set up when the US soldiers arrived.

Everything was calm in Saigon, an oasis away from the bloodshed and warfare, I can’t say I was all that disappointed to be away from it all; however the thought of leaving my brothers to fight off those savages alone brought a tear to my eye. It was hard to adjust to the tranquility of it all, it was as if an eagle had escaped the blizzard, only to discover a desert… I knew that I was a soldier, through and through. There was no way I could be taken from active duty for long, not while my m16 was loaded with hundreds of Viet Cong names.

Then all went dark.

Chapter 3 - The Struggle For Saigon

I struggled to my feet. My ears were ringing and my sight was blurred, but I could see… no!

No!

Those bastards had bombed McDonald’s. They’d struck where we least expected, right in the heart of the US regime. Now...no. Now...now I would have to consume the...

I felt sick to my stomach even thinking about it.

I would have to consume… local food… to survive. Oh God. Those Viet Cong were even more barbaric than I had thought. I knew… I knew I must exact my revenge for they had struck down the loyal workers at Mcdonald’s, but more importantly it was a blatant attack on the American Dream. Our honour, our freedom was at stake, and it was time to act.

I was part of the garrison now. It was my duty to get to the bottom of this mystery.

I stormed back into Chief Gunnery Sergeant Forster’s office, fire in my eyes. He looked up at me in surprise, but he’d heard the explosion. He knew what had happened.

“Chief, you need to send me back out there, I can’t stand it. My gun craves the blood of those wretched savages. I’ve gotta whip out the old techniques and find out which one of those gosh darn fricks bombed the Mcdonald’s.” I said to him, my words coming out loud and proud.

“You know this goes against international law, don’t you Kearney?” he retorted, the sternness in his voice echoing between my ears.

I looked him straight in the eyes, our cold glares meeting in frozen matrimony.

“Sir, yes sir! Requesting permission ASAP sir!”

He replied, his cold eyes not moving an inch, “Corporal, no one must ever hear of this, keep it on a strictly need to know basis. You have authorisation to apply any tactics necessary to gather intel and react accordingly, just don’t let the Swiss hear about this or it’ll be both our heads on a pike you hear me? You gotta use your powers responsibly!”

I wanted to thank him but all the only words that could squeak out were “Sir, yes sir!” in a desperate attempt to hide my excitement.

Chapter 4 - The Means Justify The End

I was no longer a Corporal, although the records would state so. Chief Gunnery Sergeant Forster had given me special privileges and so I took it upon myself to bear the role of detective as I had to unsheath my inner sleuth upon the unsuspecting populace.

My methods weren’t conventional. They were controversial and unparalleled in any other field. I took on many names with the locals, some called me the ‘Terror of Tuy Hòa’, others the ‘Horror of Hanoi’. One universal name stood out among all of the populace, American and Vietnamese: I was known as người bán thịt - The Butcher.

I had to start the investigation quickly and use my reputation to “persuade” the locals - after too long, the trail would become cold. Luckily for me, I’d recently watched all of the Poirot movies, even the rather underwhelming Kenneth Branagh adaptation of The Orient Express, so I was ready to get to work. I started with eyewitnesses. It took a few minutes before I found a good American who wouldn’t speak in tongues.

“Hey, you see that explosion brah?” I cooly said to him, effortlessly blending in to build trust.

“Like, yah dude,” he said, “I’m on my gap yah and I was loving life out here - it’s so real you know, like I got malaria and it was so authentic you know - and anyway, I was walking down the street and boom! Explosion! Crazy, right?” he smiled as he talked to a man seemingly so in-sync with himself.

“Hey, that sounds sick brah! But look, you see anything strange or anything catch your eye before the explosion?”

“Um, yah dude! I saw this guy run out of McDonald’s like 30 seconds before the explosion. Oh my gawd like… do you think he… no… he couldn’t…”

“What did he look like? Brah.”

“Oh, I recognised him instantly dude. He’s the Vietnamese guy who runs the local radio station, Radio Free Saigon.”

I had my man. Time to use some... enhanced interrogation techniques.

Chapter 5 - Hunter Killer

I knew who I had been hunting this whole time, I now knew where my final bullet must land, one shot to free a nation from this tyranny. Or so I thought…

The man’s name was Will ‘Ace’ Trong, though he went by “alistair2511” on his radio station. He was my target. I went to his office and kicked in the front door. I stormed up the narrow staircase and busted through the door to his office. I rushed past his secretary, grabbed Trong who was standing by his desk with a stupid look on his face and bodily threw him out of the window. He rolled down the crenellation and hit the ground like a sack of turd. His secretary started screaming so I punched her in the face and walked past and out of the house. Trong was trying to pull himself along the road but a few beatings with my baton sorted that problem out. I threw him over my shoulder and dragged him to an abandoned basement in the East of Saigon. He was mine now. I would extract everything from him. He was not about to get away with his desecration of the American Dream.

The basement was dark, a murky atmosphere that almost left the soul agape as to what horrors had gone down here under its previous Viet Cong ownership. For me, my spirits were high, the jubilation I felt at “extracting” some information from America’s number one enemy was unmatched. The light shone through a small crack in the brickwork - I could see my workplace perfectly; all he saw was the darkness, and in that darkness his own fear - just how I liked it.

I strapped him into a small chair and brought out my toolbox; I would find out just why he attacked the heart of the USA and who was giving the orders. Time passed and I still had no answers, the pain I had inflicted was immeasurable but still he persisted to hide his knowledge under a false cloak of ignorance. Forster’s word’s rang out in my head - “any tactics necessary”. I won’t document the following steps but no matter how hard I pressed I couldn’t get an answer, the numbing thought that I had the wrong guy gnawed through my brain, this brainless idiot couldn’t coordinate an attack on the United States of America. Not even the napalm waterboarding, a technique that never failed me in the 10 years I’d been in Vietnam, could break him. Someone else was pulling the strings… But who?

I had to get more information from this guy.

“Why did you leave McDonald’s in such a rush? Don’t you know that they provide the only proper food in all Saigon” I screamed at him, even though he was already fully broken. “Dey...dey were out of chicken McNuggets,” he spat out through broken teeth, “so I got angry and left.”

Damn. That made too much sense. Maybe he was innocent.

“Did you see anything strange there?” I shouted at him, slapping him to prevent him from falling into unconsciousness.

“Well...no, I mean - yeah. There was a guy there, dressed in a hoodie. Looked shifty… he left a minute before I did…” he mumbled out.

“Who is he?” I loudly pushed. “Who is he?”

“He...he’s that big soldier...Martin Peen I think...I…” came the reply.

No. It couldn’t be.

But the evidence was there.

It was Sheen. Sheen had planted the bomb and attacked the US. But why?

Chapter 6 - Apocalypse Soon

I stormed back into camp. Justice had to be served.

But Sheen’s tent was empty. He was gone. But there was a small note tucked away on his desk, past where any mere soldier would dare to enter due to the awe-inspiring gravitas a figure like Sheen naturally exuded.

Meet me in Ngô Đình Diệm square. 10 mins.

The game was afoot. Rain started pouring down, the dark clouds circling the city.

10 minutes later, I came to the square and I saw him there. He stood like a dying star, the last vestiges of prestige washing off of his glorious body like water through the Niagara Falls. The rain and wind were uncomfortably loud and everyone else was indoors, but he stood like an immovable boulder, intrappable by mere nature.

“Why did you do it, Sheen!?” I screamed at him. “You betrayed everything you stand for!”

“You know why, “ he spat back at me “they betrayed me! They put me on garrison duty for God’s sake! I am a SOLDIER! I was born to kill, bon to vanquish a communist soul beneath a hail of capitalist glory.”

I stared at him silently. I knew he loved his work, but this? This was too far. Innocents had died.

“Well, ” he said quietly, barely perceptible over the gale “I’ll be back on the front soon. They’ll have to keep me here, haha.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, even as the disgusting answer dawned on me.

“They’ll be here soon. I gave them the passcode - ‘liberty’. Ha. How... basic. They’ll be here soon, and the fighting will start again.”

No. He’d betrayed the war! The glorious war! He’d given the codes to those bastards and they were on their way!

“Look,” he said, louder now as confidence bloomed “join me! We’ll be back together, the dynamic duo, Sheen and Kearney, ready to conquer once more. We’ll kill and we’ll kill, ‘til there ain’t nothi-”

The first bullet took him in the heart. The second in the head. The third in the crotch.

I put the pistol away slowly, my palms shaking. There was no recovery from that.

There was no recovery.

In the distance I heard gunshots and screams.

Getting closer.

That was the last time I ever played Minecraft Survival Games.