About a month ago I posted Justin Smith’s dystopian fictional
peek of an America experiencing a Dem-Marxist consolidation of power through
the eyes of the story’s chief character Maggie McGuire entitled, “Maggie's
Trials and Tribulations”.
A couple of days ago Justin submitted another short story
focused on an America essentially occupied by an UN-like governing force
managed by Chinese Communists with American Dem-Marxist acting as vassal
leaders. The central character is Axl married to Maggie (I am uncertain if
Justin intends Axl’s wife to be the Maggie McGuire of his previous story),
with a few older gents who remember America as the Land of the Free and the
Home of the Brave as veterans who served. This is a story taking a glimpse at
pockets of Americans resisting ChiCom occupation. One of these gents is named Sgt.
Maj. H.C. Donlon who Justin tells me is based on actual Medal of Honor recipient
Captain Roger H.C. Donlon whom he knew personally.
I see an irony reminiscent of the Afghan Taliban resisting
Soviet Communism then continued American troops lingering way too long among a
people more in love with Islamic totalitarianism than American Liberty.
I need to point out other online website publishers have
picked Justin’s submission of which they may or may not have selected a Justin-suggested
title. One such Website is The
Federal Observer that chose the title “To
Live Without Freedom and Liberty Is a Sort of Death” which I
use as a subtitle. I mention this because I enjoyed the dispersed photos so
well there, that I am collaging those photos as one here at the top.
This is a work of fiction which usually does not need info
links, but I did so anyway to hopefully add context to potential younger
readers that otherwise might be clueless to Justin’s train of thought.
JRH 5/4/21
I need your generosity in 2021 via - credit cards, check
cards
& debit cards are accepted by my PayPal account:
Or if donating you can support by getting in the Coffee from home
business making yourself extra cash – OR just buy some FEEL GOOD coffee,
that includes immune boosting products. Big Tech Censorship is pervasive –
Share voluminously on all social media platforms!
*******************************
The United States Unraveled
To Live Without Freedom and Liberty Is a Sort of Death
By Justin O. Smith
Sent 5/2/2021 1:06 PM
America had long ago slipped into the dark night of tyranny.
She had failed to heed the warnings offered by many of our ancestors, between
the years of 1979 and 2028, when Americans finally arose to fight a bloody
civil war, that ended with the defeat of those who stood for Liberty. And so,
the country had soon found itself under the "Protectorate" of the
sadistic Chinese Communists and the United Nations, whose leadership had been
found more than willing to go along with the push into the new world hegemon,
if it meant sharing in the spoils of all that followed.
By 2076, the American people were suffering unimaginable
cruelties, as millions of people were sent to the camps for political prisoners
that now scattered the countryside, from one coast to the other, on the
outskirts of every major city in what was once known as "the United States".
Not many referred to the "United States" anymore, after it had become
so apparent that it was anything but "united" and so many of its
people had fully embraced the ideas of Marx and Mao, while so many others
contented themselves in engaging in activities of no worth, as the nation
drifted along to its demise. Instead, the long active, still standing
resistance always spoke of "Free America", while to the vile and evil
forces who now occupied nearly the entire country, America was now known to the
world as Xindalu,
roughly translated as "New World".
Axl had grown to manhood often marveling at the drive and
hard-fought freedom his grandfather and father managed to protect, to some
degree, in the face of constant assaults and weekly and sometimes daily
firefights in the Basin of Middle Tennessee, where the people had successfully
managed to secure the area against the foreign invaders and their willing
amerikkan allies, the traitors. Other such areas that sprang up in similar
fashion, included the entire state of Idaho, Wyoming and South Dakota,
Southeastern Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle, and areas like the
Summersville Dam area between Summersville and Leivasy, West Virginia, and
parts of Arizona and Texas and most of Alaska, as well as several scores
more.
Drifting into a daydream, as he momentarily stopped chopping
wood, Axl looked back on his childhood, sitting on GranPa Grover's knee, while
GranPa spoke to those nearby and explained how their current misery at the
hands of the world's Fascists and Communists was the result of the previous
generations of Americans forgetting God, even turning their backs on God, in
favor of immoral pursuits and the much ballyhooed "Free Entitlements"
offered by the Marxists and Maoists. This had opened the door to every kind of
evil imaginable, and each time cracks appeared obvious in the "perfection
of Marxism", the Ministry of Truth's Cultural Control Commission rapidly
struck down any voice that dared to speak of it or challenge the tyranny that
had replaced a government of the people and self-determination, many terrible
and sad decades ago.
The beginnings of this ongoing civil war were such that it
had kept nukes of any type from being detonated, although the Democratic Party
Communists in control of the military had suggested using tactical neutron
bombs on certain regions; but then, someone got the bright idea of calling in
"U.N. Peacekeepers", who then turned to China for the bulk of its
"peacekeepers" ...
"And there it was. Here we are", Axl said out loud
to no one in particular, since there wasn't anybody for miles around, not out
this far where he'd set up an outpost and a farm of sorts, that he enjoyed
calling "Axl's Freehold".
Axl had been fortunate to have had parents, whose own folks
and relatives had been deep in the many years long fights to rid the country of
its invaders, and it had made him want to do all he could to gather more
recruits to the effort and build an army of men, who were willing to kill for Freedom
and Liberty, every bit as much as they were willing to die for America. And
even now, as he thought of how easily the largest part of the country had
fallen to the Communists and One-Worlders, he shivered in his anger, as he saw
these radical, red Communist bastards as the enemies of Liberty and Humanity
and Justice and Truth. He knew America's occupiers to be the Handmaidens, the
Manservants, to the cruelest Evils his country and his people had ever seen.
Ambling on to the rough-hewn rustic cabin he had built with
his own two hands, he didn't think much that day of any impending danger. Oh
sure, there were the occasional incursions by the hard-core True Believers who
would come charging in on a Ministry operation to see how many more Free-Born
Americans they could kill. But technically, they had an ongoing
"peace" and this area was largely seen as a "free autonomous
region"; and still to this day, the "peacekeepers" were
supposedly still bound by U.S. Constitutional law, which meant any incursion
required a search warrant. Today would be different.
The dawning of the day saw sunlight shining through the
arbor window and warming the hardwood floors, where Mudflap, the house cat,
napped and where Axl studied a painting he'd been working on. He turned to
smile at his wife, Maggie, as she approached him and they embraced and
kissed.
"You better not have paint on those hands, Big
Boy!", Maggie playfully warned, kissing him again and moving away to do her
chores, as he gave her bottom a bit of a squeeze.
Deciding he'd dallied about the house for too long already,
Axl thought to go set some traps and then head down to the nearby river to
catch enough fish, hopefully for lunch and dinner, for today and maybe
tomorrow, too, and he headed to retrieve his gear. If he hadn't been thinking
so hard on what needed to be done to prepare for the meeting of the local
resistance that evening, he may have paid more attention to Sweet Mutt, a half-pit/half-coonhound
mix, who normally just laid around all day; but now, Mutt moved from his spot
near the fireplace, barking and looking out the multi-paned door that led into
the backyard, literally the back forty acres.
Sweet Mutt's barking was most usually due to some squirrel
gathering food within eyesight of the backdoor, at least ninety percent of the
time, or some other equally harmless annoyance. But his tone today finally got
Axl's attention, especially when it changed to a low guttural growl. Telling
Mutt to stay, he grabbed his shotgun and headed towards the barn where Sweet
Mutt had been intently gazing, his senses on full alert, standing next to the
barn for a few minutes, before deciding nothing was out of sorts.
He turned to head back to the cabin, taking about five steps
before he heard the crackle of leaves and twigs behind him and was knocked out
cold, as something hard and solid hit him in the back of his head.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid" he thought as time seemed to stop, with him
falling through thin air grasping for anything to stop a hard impact with the
ground, and he heard the voice of Elvis softly singing:
"We're caught in a trap ...
I can't walk out ... because I love You too much Baby ..."
[Blog Editor: Justin and I are old enough to visualize in
our mind’s eye the old King of Rock-n-Roll
singing the above lyrics from “Suspicious Minds”. For you youngsters who
are clueless, here is a 4 and ½ minute clip for you to hear that which Justin
and I can recall by our memories:
Youtube VIDEO: Elvis Presley - Suspicious Minds (Audio)
Posted by Elvis
Presley (Channel)
2.12M subscribers]
Axl awakened sometime later in his own living room, to the
sound of Sweet Mutt barking and growling from inside a nearby coatroom, his
hands and feet bound with zip ties and his head pounding like a big kettle drum
on the 4th of July, giving thanks they hadn't simply killed his dog. Seven black
clad thugs from the United Nations Firearms Confiscation Bureau (UNFCB) stood
staring at him, with their faces hidden behind balaclavas and sunglasses,
holding their QBZ-191
assault rifles -- the same standard 5.8x42mm with an effective
range of 400 yards that they'd been using since 2021, capable of firing 750
rounds per minute. They were the new enforcers for the Communist People's
Republic of Xindalu, largely comprised of foreign private military contractors
from Europe supported by a large contingent of Chinese military
"advisors", who had pretty much abandoned all pretense of being
"peacekeepers" in the earliest years of the Times of Trouble.
Communist Chinese QBZ-191 assault rifles 2021
The UNFCB's motto said it all: "A Friendlier, United,
DISARMED America".
Through split lips and a few loose teeth, Axl demanded to know
where his wife was, which got him another hard crack to his jaw from a short
wooden club. One of the foreign thugs leaned in close to his face and shouted,
"Tell us where your group's unauthorized radio site is located,
asshole", as he flexed and unflexed his right hand, preparing to deliver
more abuse.
"Show me your warrant, you rat bastard
sonuvabitch", came Axl's reply and the huge smile that followed. He knew
they didn't have one, but such demands always served to remind them that they
were occupiers without any real popular support.
After all the ensuing failures over the decades under their
control, even their initial allies in America's own Communist and Socialist
ranks had soon become highly disillusioned with what was actually unfolding in
the name of Marx, Mao and an all-consuming Communist regime, that abandoned all
semblance of truth and with it any chance for real justice for anybody; it was
a regime that destroyed love and compassion wherever it was found and never
exhibited any human kindness or mercy for anyone.
In Xindalu's occupied land, it was "legal" to own
slaves, and sex slavery had grown into a massive and lucrative business. It was
also legal to murder a slave for any reason. All women were treated like
chattel and baby murder was a regular occurrence, especially when those babies
were female, since the goal was always to strive to reduce the country's
overall population, and in theory, to reduce the world population to a mere 500
million people. And for this reason, the Western and Judeo-Christian principles
and virtues that once flourished openly across America were the targets of systematic
eradication and being thought to be a Christian always marked one for death, in
just as cruel a manner as took place during the era of Christianity's earliest
martyrs -- thousands of bodies each year appeared along the roadsides hanging
from inverted crosses.
Upon witnessing the upside-down crucifixions, one old man
was heard reciting the following to all who would listen:
"Things fall apart; the
centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is
drowned;
The best lack all conviction,
while the worst
Are full of passionate
intensity.
Surely some revelation is at
hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at
hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are
those words out
When a vast image out of
Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of
desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the
head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the
sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while
all about it
Window shadows of the indignant
desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now
I know
That twenty centuries of stony
sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a
rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour
come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be
born?" [From W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”]
One of the black clad PMCs came into the room with Maggie,
hands bound behind her and a gag in her mouth, still kicking and screaming
through the gag with the fierceness of a wounded panther. "Get your hands
off me, you commie bastard" came her muffled words.
God how Axl loved her right at that moment, as he saw what a
strong woman he had married. It made him smile again, this time with all the
warmth and love that he held for Maggie. And, as one of the PMC cowards made
her scream with pain from having her hair pulled back quick and hard, Axl
jerked against his ties as hard as he could, wishing to be free so he could
bite the bastard's neck in half and watch him bleed out, but once again, his
efforts brought him another good clubbing.
The one in charge told Axl, "I'll ask one more time and
then we're all going to take turns with your wife", which brought forth a
gleeful, raucous laughter from the group of deadly agents, reminiscent of a
pack of hyenas. Maggie's eyes narrowed down into two hot glowing embers filled
with a venomous hatred that Axl had never seen in her.
Across the way from Axl's little homestead, some twenty miles, at his nearest
neighbor's spread, another similar situation was unfolding.
Eighty-seven-year-old Sergeant Major H.C. Donlon, retired
U.S. Army and Medal of Honor recipient, sat on his back porch, drinking coffee
and looking at old family pictures, especially those of his wife, Libby, who
had been dead these past ten years. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he looked
at her grave in the backyard, now marked by a large boulder he'd painstakingly
rolled to that spot and chiseled her name, along with the sentiment "loved
and cherished forever". His dog, Bowser, a wolfhound mastiff crossbreed,
had been his only companion all these years, and as he took in the group of
rolling thunderheads from the east, he saw the rapidly approaching blacked out
suburban heading his way, and with a crystal-clear clarity, he knew danger was
coming with it.
Bowser started barking and growling like he was on a bear
hunt, and so, following his usual procedure for whenever he had the rare
visitor, he quickly put Bowser in his bedroom and closed the door. H.C. donned
his Iraq War Veteran cap exhibiting his rank and a Combat Infantryman's Badge
displayed and went back outside to see just what would be, taking time to
untangle his American Flag from around the pole.
Before he could turn around, H.C. heard the much familiar
sound of a command booming from a loudspeaker. The anonymous voice ordered,
"Put your hands on top of your head and slowly turn around to face
us." He hesitated just a moment too long, as he studied how he wanted to
play this confrontation out, and the voice immediately screamed, "Hands on
top of your head NOW!"
H.C. slowly turned and let his enemies see the smirk and
disdainful look on his face, for to be sure, he had always known these UNFCB
boys as "the Enemy", target practice and rabid vermin to be put in
the ground, tout de
suite. He had to admit his surprise at seeing a man wearing no
identifying patches in multi-cam camouflage and body armor with a snazzy
high-tech assault rifle moving his way.
"I never would have dreamed I'd be such a scary thing
for boys like Y'all, all fitted up to storm the Reichstag. Who could have known
that an arthritic old man was such a threat to national security", H.C.
asked as the rest of the group gathered nearby?
"Are you armed, sir?", came the question as they
gruffly began to search his person. "Not this very moment" came
H.C.'s response. "You can lower your hands now" he was told.
"What do you want?”, H.C. asked fairly impatiently.
Pretty soon he knew he was just about to be deep in the mix,
that point between life and death, where the slightest miscalculation would
mean the difference between seeing the moon rise this evening and the sunrise
tomorrow.
The UNFCB Commander asked about contraband and weapons in
the house, as he explained that the area surrounding H.C.'s home harbored an
armed insurrectionist group that also was operating an unauthorized radio
broadcast site, and as such, they were going to have to search his entire
property, just as they planned to search every home in the area, to flush any
member from hiding. It was also suggested that his Veteran status placed
him under heightened suspicion, while the Commander also informed him that the
American Flag was "a piece of capitalist, racist shit" and flying it
was grounds to be arrested and taken to the "re-education"
camps.
H.C. knew he had just been swept up in the latest crackdown
on civilian ownership of firearms. He stalled for time, laughing in the
Commander's face, as he stood his ground and declared: "I'm eighty-seven
years old, you crazy horse's ass. If you think I'm part of some crazy
resistance group, y'all are dumber than a bag of rocks."
H.C.'s mind drifted back to years gone by, when he had
stacked the dead carcasses of Chicom and Eurofascist trash all about him for as
far as the eye could see, and he found himself longing for the feel of a BAR in
his hands, so he could dispatch these self-made sonsabitches on their way to
hell. He snapped alert, seeing a glint of light from the western crop of hills,
just as one of the PMCs headed toward his front door, and he hollered out in
his best command voice:
"Now wait just a damn minute here! I don't give a good
damn who you work for or what misguided authority you believe you are operating
under, but you sure in the hell don't have any right to barge into my home.
Stop NOW and there won't be any hard feelings."
A split second later, a rifle butt was swung into H.C's
stomach, forcing him to one knee to vomit, and a flash later shots were ringing
through the air dropping one PMC after the next, as angry and anguished cries
of pain filled the space between shots. The exterior window to H.C.'s bedroom
crashed outward, as Bowser entered the fray, in a mad fury, sensing his master
was in danger and slashing at every throat he could reach, even after taking a
slug in the side -- one angry yelp and on he raced, bringing several to the
ground from behind as they tried to run.
The mass confusion of hell and fury raining down on the
enemy gave H.C. time to reach inside the front door and come back out with his
MK47, unleashing his own brand of hell on these Communist rat bastards, who had
dared to interrupt his daily conversation with his precious dear departed
Libby. And oh, how the colors made him feel alive again, the flash from the
muzzles, bullets flying by, and the red splashes of blood as bullets hit areas
unprotected by body armor. He was so in the moment that it barely registered
when a bullet went through his left oblique and another scored his ribs.
What did fully register was the sight of his grandsons, Jack
and Bobby, running through the tall grass, rifles in hand and dropping every
government agent that moved in the least bit, shouting out for them to drop
their weapons and lay face down. But between them and H.C. and Bowser, they
were shouting out to still warm corpses, in the last moments of bleeding
out.
"Get the men together, send out the call and get over
to Axl's place now", H.C. could hear himself ordering. And no sooner had
he said the words, his grandsons were on their motocross motorcycles and into
the wind.
In the meantime, Axl and Maggie had held up well as they could in their captors'
hands, until they overheard the radio transmission, between the UNFCB Commander
and his controller back at headquarters. The Commander told someone: "Yea,
it's negative in this sector and we've searched everywhere. There's no
semi-autos, no insurrectionists, no radios." Shaking his head in disgust,
he added, "10-4, secure search."
The group of UNCFB and PMC agents cut Axl and Maggie loose
saying: "It's your lucky day, but don't think you've fooled us. We'll be
back and when we catch you acting against Xindalu, we're going to plant both of
you in your own garden out back."
Incredibly, these fools had missed the two semi-auto rifles
in the front coat closet. A sigh of temporary relief rose from both Axl and
Maggie.
For some reason, in a quick mental flash, Axl couldn't
help but recall reading some of his mother-in-law's old keepsake letters that
told of many of her relatives being lined up against a wall between 1953 and
1980 and murdered by Josip
Broz Tito, president of Yugoslavia, and his Communist forces.
Croatia, then a part of Yugoslavia, is where we got the word
"partisan". He remembered the old books he'd found that told of the richest
South American country of Venezuela becoming a miserable,
impoverished death
camp, after its leaders took their nation down the path to Communism
at the turn of the 21st century. And he wondered, when would all this madness
stop in this America he and Maggie, and so many others, loved so well.
He understood his life belonged to God and to himself as
well, not to those Communists who claimed our lives belong to the collective
hive, to our neighbors. We have never been meant to be slaves to any state, or
to be used as sacrifices to an all-consuming Leviathan, ever increasing in its
insatiable demands for more, in its efforts to prevent men and woman from
living righteous lives as they choose and see fit. His life had purpose, and he
intended to not only save his and Maggie's lives, along with his friends' lives
too, he intended to preserve Freedom and Liberty and one's ability to fulfill
and enjoy one's life, to the best of his ability, or die in the effort.
He found it incomprehensible that so many Americans failed
to see the new leaders that emerged in 2021 were always working for the ruling
elite, just as they always had previously worked to the benefit of the one
percent. And the new collectivists under Ol' Uncle Joe Biden, the dictator who
emerged, had worked even harder for the one percent than anyone had ever done
under the free market system, eventually beating the middle class down to the
same level as the little man on the street, attaining "equality and
equity" through the lowest common denominator in a miserable state of
poverty.
Axl pondered the surprise that came to many Americans as the
United States began to unravel, after they realized the ruling elite had lied
to them all, in their ready eagerness to supposedly benefit the poor of
America, only to turn on all Americans to enslave them more than they ever
could have imagined. He also found himself quietly chuckling in a sad manner as
he realized how far ahead of his days Winston Churchill had been, when he
noted that "... the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal
sharing of miseries."
And a snippet of a speech given by Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, on May 10, 1983 in London came to him noting:
"Dostoevsky warned that
'great events could come upon us and catch us intellectually unprepared.' This
is precisely what has happened. And he predicted that 'the world will be saved
only after it has been possessed by the demon of evil.' Whether it really will
be saved we shall have to wait and see: this will depend on our conscience, on
our spiritual lucidity, on our individual and combined efforts in the face of
catastrophic circumstances. But it has already come to pass that the demon of
evil, like a whirlwind, triumphantly circles all five continents of the earth."
He and Maggie watched in silence for a moment, as the agents
of America's Enemies prepared to leave their home wrecked in their search.
Maggie could stand it no longer and unleashed her scathing condemnation of them
and everything they represented, yelling loudly and clearly: "You're
nothing but Commie Coward Trash, every damned one of you -- coming in here
threatening us, beating my husband and trampling on the rights of free men and
women for your Chinese stooge and Marxist whore in D.C. and Luxembourg. You'll
all pay a price one day, and I can only pray it's soon."
Axl addressed the Commander, asking him: "What am I supposed
to do, when me and my family, my brethren and fellow Americans, only want peace
and to live and let live, but you and your kind only understand the language of
force and war? Your chosen path leads to your own downfall, but you may well
discover this for yourself in the coming days, as you continue to press tyranny
upon my people, leaving us no choice but to resist, to fight back and to make
war upon you, for the good of all who desire to live free.
Yes ... soon enough, not only will you see my righteous
anger, you will also see the same in every man, woman and child in the Basin.
And even now, as I see my reflection in your eyes, I know that a new day is
dawning in America, with swords heating up in the furnaces waiting to be
tempered by your blood, as my people are weary of this deep and bitter cold
tyrannical existence and prepare to dance their maddest dance yet. We shall
sing a song of the sword and of death for you, so that we may awaken each
morning with a smile, and bliss in our hearts."
They watched the PMCs exit their house, laughing and
slapping each other's backs over a mission well done, mission complete, only to
hear the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns on the other side of their front door,
as the entire UNCFB Group was cut down by Jack and Bobby and forty-four other
Free Born Americans who had quietly set up a perimeter and quietly waited, as
they sized up the situation. Axl ran through the door, low and to the side to
catch the one's he could, in a cross fire, without hitting his neighbors, who
had come to the rescue, while Maggie, who had grabbed her AR-15, provided cover
fire from the front window.
After what seemed like an eternity, everybody's adrenalin
was returning to normal levels and the cleanup had begun. They stopped and
downed some quick rations and attended to the most seriously wounded first,
before they undertook the grizzly task of disposing of the bodies of the UNFCB
and PMC agents and sending the vehicle and the firearms where they could be put
to good use. They knew it wouldn't be long before a scouting team was sent out
to discover what had become of this "lost group".
Free Born Americans had long been on analog old school
communications, never looking back, although they had found there were times
they needed to run silent for a litany of reasons. But for the most part, their
Resistance relied on the radio waves, dead drops and good ol' fashioned spy
tradecraft that was developed and perfected by the Office of Strategic Services
during WWII and the Cold War, and it had served America well.
The next morning, H.C. met with Axl and Maggie and the rest,
and it was agreed that every Free Born American needed to be called to a
gathering to plan their strategy for the days and months ahead. They set a
dozen tires on fire with five gallons of gasoline, sending up a smoke signal in
the same way the American Indians used to communicate, since they had
temporarily silenced all radio communications. This was the best way to let
everyone know that this area was safe and well -- as well as could be expected
given the times -- and that a meeting was needed during the next day, at a
previously agreed upon location. H.C. called it "haji smoke” because he
remembered how it was used by the Islamic militias and warlords of Mogadishu,
the day they downed one of America's helicopters, later dragging one of our
soldiers through the streets.
The evening sun soon set, and many of the gathered locals
sat around campfires, strategizing and often just going over old times and
reminiscing of loved ones too far away to be seen with any regularity or long
dead and lost to the fight that had been waged for so many years.
Axl was gazing into one of the fires with that twisted smile
on his face again, when Maggie asked him: "What in the world are you
smiling about? Those murderous jackasses beat the sense right out of you,
threatened to rape and murder everybody for miles around and pillage our
property, and you sit there with that silly smile on your face" -- her
voice cracking with the strain of it all and her anger renewed, softly quieted
as Axl gently touched her cheek so that their eyes met.
"Sweetheart -- this is our struggle in the here and
now, for everything we hold dear, for any hopes we hold for any family we may
eventually raise. And as ugly as it gets some days, we stopped them yesterday,
They hurt us, but we ended up putting them under ground where they belong. And
when the time is right, one day soon, we will drive every Commie son of a bitch
in America from our land or kill them where they stand."
Axl's words hung in the air for a few good moments, as
Maggie stared into his eyes. Finally, she smiled and her breathing returned to
normal, while the little crinkle lines around her eyes faded away, and they
kissed and hugged each other for a good, long ten minutes, happy to still be
alive and happy to have each other to rely on and love.
"Better dead than red", she whispered, snuggling
her head on his shoulder, which made him squeeze her ever so slightly firmer in
his embrace, as he prayed to God that it would not need to come to that end.
Three days after the killing of government agents the entire
nation was lit up by drones, aircraft and soldiers on the march, heading to any
and every city or small-town thought to even have the slightest connection to
the Resistance. And they were being picked off, one by one, a dozen or a gross
here and there -- always with fierceness of purpose, unrelenting and merciless
with no quarter given.
On this same day, Axl arrived at Cooper's Mine, population
587, a small town forgotten by time with locals long since worn to a frazzle by
the many battles they had already volunteered to enter. The local hardware
store also served as the local firearms store, coffee shop, auto parts place
and grocery store too. Oh ... and a great place for gossip, and sometimes
important information.
Axl walked in, expecting to see the familiar faces of many
grizzled old men drinking coffee and telling tales, but only Glenn Climer, the
owner, was there behind the counter, while his old coon dog Rufus was stretched
out beside a pot belly stove. Coming out from behind the counter to shake
hands, one could see that Glenn was still in fine shape for one pushing
seventy-five. But as soon as Axl saw him limping, he knew what had
happened.
Taking one look at Axl's face, an angry scowl came across
Glenn's face as he stated, more than asked, "So, the bastards made it by
your house too, huh?" Already shaking with his own anger, Axl ignored the
question, for his own, "What happened?", as Glenn motioned him to a
chair and poured them both a good, strong cup of coffee.
"Their Nazis came in here asking all kinds of questions
about firearms sales and ransacked my accounting books. I tried to stop them
and got a few good whacks from the butt of a rifle in the process." It
looked like it had been some fight from the looks of Glenn's own face.
Glenn added, "Don't worry. All they got was a notebook
full of old receipt carbons from 2015."
"Those Commie Bastards" was all that Axl could
say, as his breathing revealed his blood pressure had just shot sky-high.
As the numerous stories and local intel arrived, it was soon
discovered that the UNCFB thugs had hit three other houses in the Basin,
besides Axl's and H.C.'s, and as angry as they were over H.C. being shot, many
also were infuriated that Bowser had been shot while defending his master and
his home. It also became apparent that they had little real or accurate intel
of their own, and so they were attempting to draw the locals into a fight they
couldn't win, and so the calls went out for an increase in guerrilla tactics
and operational security; and everybody was soon making mental notes on each
strange vehicle or person that entered the area and every drone that passed
overhead, passing the info verbally across the community.
A week after the UNCFB had hit Axl's and H.C's homes, along
with the others, the Ministry of Truth Headquarters was demolished by a massive
explosion, killing five-hundred and fifty-three Eurofascists and three-hundred
ninety-seven Chicom Commie Rat Bastards. Simultaneously, across the region and
in several parts of America, eleven UNCFB outposts came tumbling down in fiery
explosions that killed eleven hundred and sixty-five more of America's Communist
invaders. The ripple effect was worldwide and virtually immediate, given the
breadth and scope of what this meant.
H.C. opened his copy of The
Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Russian
dissident and read, the
following passage with a twinkle in his eyes and a smile on his
lips:
"And how we burned in the
camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security
operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain
whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if,
during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested
a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs,
paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs at every step on the
staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set
up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers,
pokers, or whatever else was at hand? ... The Organs would very quickly have
suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of
Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If ... if ...
We didn't love freedom enough. And even more -- we had no awareness of the real
situation .... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
The next day, Ira Hayes burst through the door to the Quonset hut,
with his arms full of firewood, startling the two young men to attention who
had come to see him. One might have thought Ira was a three-star general or
something. He apologized for having them led there with hoods over their heads,
by explaining it was as much for their own security as his.
"Cold as a stripper in a brass bra, isn't it" he
joked.
The boys remained silent, shaking and shivering, uncertain
on how to respond, which made Ira burst out in laughter.
Feeding wood into the potbellied stove, Ira told them to
come on over by it so they could get warm. He studied them for a few minutes,
while he let them get warm by the fire that was now blazing bright inside the
stove.
"So you two young rascals are Glenn Climer's grandsons,
are you?"
"Yes Sir" came from the oldest boy.
"Your GranPa is a damn fine man. It's purely a shame
what they did to him in his store the other day."
Ira's words were met with more silence. He smiled to himself
over how intelligent and respectful these two had grown to be. Glenn's only
daughter and her husband were killed by a drunk driver just this side of
Christiana on I-24 when they were just toddlers still, ages three and
five.
The boys were now fifteen and seventeen, and it didn't take
a rocket scientist to know they had come to join the fight and get some revenge
for what those Fascists had done to their GranPa. And they did get around to
asking, just as Ira expected. The problem remained that Glenn had anticipated
this day coming several years back, and he'd asked Ira to keep his boys out of
the Resistance no matter what happened; they were quite literally the last of the
Climer bloodline, and aside from that, he couldn't bear to lose them because he
loved them so much.
Ira did his best to let them down easily, finally coming
right out and telling them: "Sorry young men, but your GranPa doesn't want
you anywhere near this mess, especially when the real fighting breaks out. I
promised him I'd keep you both out of it, and that's going to have to be the
end of it."
The oldest boy, Bailey, didn't miss a beat and came back
with, "It's our lives. Shouldn't it be our choice?"
Ira stood up and signaled the meeting was over, telling them
to get ready for the return trip, as they objected and asked if there wasn't
anything they could do to help the Resistance win the day. And the more Ira
studied the situation, sensing their disappointment and their excitement, he
told them that they could keep a look out for anything unusual, relaying any
such development to their GranPa straight away.
The uneasy silence hung like a heavy anchor in the night
air. The boys turned to the door, but Sam, the youngest, stopped and told Ira
in a firm and determined voice: "We'll both be back to join you
eventually. I love GranPa, but he has to understand -- I know he does because
he's the one who taught us -- that some things in life are worth dying for
because to live without freedom and liberty is a sort of death in itself,
anyway one looks at it."
The boy's words -- the young man's words -- struck Ira just
as hard as a left hook from Clint Jackson, one-time middle weight contender,
and Ira stood speechless as those two brave brothers stepped into the cool
night air. And he was sure as anything he'd ever been sure of that they would
return. He was just as sure that he wouldn't be able to turn them away when
they did, since he had no right to make a promise for how one defended one's
own Liberty, one's family and this America they all loved so well.
By Justin O. Smith
_____________________________
Edited by John R. Houk
All embedded links and text embraced by brackets are by
the Editor.
© Justin O. Smith
No comments:
Post a Comment