Chris Stone awoke to ice cold air flowing freely through the cracked window. He could feel the snow falling outside without having to get up and look. Frozen flakes of water blanketing the apartment building and abandoned streets. He once welcomed the snow every year. As much as he hated driving on New York's winter roads, it always made everything so picturesque. Like something out of a Christmas Card. Hollywood use to make Christmas movies set in New York, making sure to get all the landmarks. Happy little stories of love and family. The American holiday dream. A dream that had turned to a nightmare just a little over a year ago when the Soviets invaded.
New York was never a happy-go-lucky town. But now it couldn't even pretend to be. Even with the Resistance's latest victory, a victory they all said wouldn't have been possible without him, Chris knew it was little more than a pin-prick to the Soviets. They were coming back. Many were already there. With more tanks, more guns, and even more cruelty. Even that lying blonde bimbo on the news was back. An improvised news station somewhere in the Soviet held quarts of the city. Chris doubted the war would ever end as he huffed a deep sigh, visible in the chilled air.
A warm hand gently brushed up his belly and onto his chest, resting over his heart. The soft moan of the most beautiful woman in all of New York hummed in his ear. "Are you alright, Chris?" Isabella asked.
"I'm fine," Chris snapped, instantly regretting it. "Just a little cold." She softly kissed his cheek. He knew she was smiling without having to look. Before he could say he wasn't in the mood her hand smoothly brushed back down his chest to his belly then went even further down.
"You won't be for long," she said. Chris returned her smile. His mood had changed. Several minutes later both were sweating in each other's arms and panting for breath but still snuggling under the blanket as best they could.
"I'd better start a fire," Chris said, reluctantly pulling away from the woman he loved. He threw some splintered wood and dry paper into a barbecue grill in the middle of the room, struck a match and had a fire crackling in seconds. Making love was a bad idea. Getting themselves all sweaty in this cold could be lethal. And if a KGB sniper spotted the light…
Isabella gently put her arms around him as he stood brooding into the flames. She wore the blanket like a cape and kissed his neck. He was helpless in the arms of a stunning temptress. Chris blushed as he realized he'd been standing their staring for some time. Hadn't even gotten dressed. Didn't even feel himself shivering. But then he had grown numb to a lot of things in the past year. One of the few things he still felt was his love for her. He could only hope that love would never be overpowered by pride in his country or hate for his enemy.
"Come back to bed, Chris," Isabella whispered.
"Is this a good idea?" he asked, his doubts returning. She giggled.
"You want to wait until we get hitched?" she said with another kiss. Chris shrugged with a bitter laugh.
"Not like we can! All the churches are shut down. All clergy have either been arrested or shot. Or BOTH!"
"Maybe we could pull another jail break. Bound to be some locked up in the prisons and camps. Or maybe we could just stroll downtown disguised as two good little communists and ask for marriage licenses," she giggled.
Despite himself Chris couldn't help but laugh and turned to embrace her. "They'd recognize us both immediately. You know that." She nodded and kissed his nose.
"Imagine the looks on their faces!" they both laughed. But soon Chris' face went grim again.
"What if you end up…you know…" Chris struggled to find his words. "Is this any kind of a world to bring a child into? What kind of hope would he have?"
"It could be a girl!" she cut him off with a playful jab to his shoulder.
"Be serious!" he rolled his eyes. Her gaze hardened.
"I am, Chris. Maybe we can't take our country back quickly. Maybe even not within our lifetime! Not entirely at least. But then isn't it all the more important we bring another generation into the world? To finish the fight if we can't!"
Chris bowed his head, resting his forehead against hers. He just couldn't beat her. She had always been the strongest of the resistance. Chris still said she should be their leader. But she believed in him with all the strength and passion he believed in her.
"Isn't that damaging to women?" he asked playfully. "Taking them back? Putting them back in the kitchen and stuff?" Isabella laughed.
"What, instead be another cog in the machinery of the state and bureaucracy? Besides you know I couldn't cook my way out of a wet paper bag! We'd probably starve."
"Hey, I can cook!"
"You?"
"Sure! Who do you think did the cooking when Troy and I were roommates?" again she gave that beautiful giggle.
"Somehow I can't see you as the stay at home daddy."
"Well you could always do pizza rolls."
"PIZZA ROLLS! That's what you'd feed our child?" Isabella gasped wide-eyed.
"What's wrong with Pizza Rolls? Hey, if this is going to work out I cannot have you disrespecting pizza rolls!" Again her hand swept down below his belly.
"What are you going to do about it?" Isabella asked with a menacing smile. She gasped a playful scream as he toppled her over onto the mattress, pinning her down like a panther. Neither of them noticed the fire flicker out.
…
After an exhausting ordeal of blissful pleasure Chris awoke to a bad dream. His head throbbed. The room was plunged into darkness. What he first thought was a ringing in his ears turned out to be the blaring of an air-raid siren. His mind snapped into focus. Were the Soviets finally doing it? Leveling the city with heavy bombers? No, they wouldn't! Not with so many Soviet Troops and workers in town! Or would they?
Turning frantically, he felt for Isabella. Not there. He cried out her name. Nothing! The siren's wail was deafening, he could barely hear his own shouts. Then the noise vanished. Chris was left in visual and audial oblivion. He groped for his clothes, snatched up his flashlight and clicked it on. The room was empty. He turned to where she had been lying and stumbled up from the mattress in horror. The mattress looked even more worn and beaten than before, but worse still was the red stain! Like a bucket of blood had been poured out exactly where Isabella had been lying. None touched where he had lain.
"What in the hell?" Chris gasped in horror.
"CHRIS!" he snapped around at the distant echo of Isabella's voice.
"ISABELLA!" he bellowed. Again her cry echoed. "ISABELLA WHERE ARE YOU?"
"HELP ME!" Chris loped to the window in hysteria. Outside the streets were pitch black. Faint fires flickering in rusty barrels cast just enough glow for outlines of shadowy figures to be seen. Again Isabella screamed. A faintly feminine figure rushed down the street with limping figures in pursuit.
In an instant Chris had grabbed his pistol and dashed from the room. Barely conscious of his own nakedness as he trampled through the hallways and took the flights of stairs several at a time. Hardly noticing the building had decayed several more years over night! Peeled wallpaper, torn carpeting, holes in the wall not from bullets or shells. The rebel's mind dismissed everything but his lover's safety.
Bursting out into the shadowy streets he followed Isabella's cries into the shadowy street. Feral snarls and growls echoed in the ceaseless night. Chris came to a shocked halt as he reached the literal end of the road. Nearly tumbled into a pit of blackness, coming to a stop in the nick of time. The broken asphalt ran over the ledge of a chasm that hadn't been there at sunset. No explosions big enough to make such a crater had woken him from sleep!
A soft whimper echoed behind him and he turned to see Isabella, naked as he was and helpless in the grip of two hulking figures. They stood between two blazing trashcans, Chris had rushed between seconds earlier. He nearly dropped his pistol in horror at his beloved's captors.
They weren't Soviet soldiers, only looked vaguely human! Naked and almost apelike but with leathery hides that looked as if they had been slow-roasted on a spit. Both brandishing weapons in their free hands. One a rusted hammer, the other a blood-soaked sickle. Blood red inverted triangles freshly painted on their scorched chests. Their faces had no eyes, noses, or mouths, yet guttural moans and groans seemed to vibrate from their throats.
"CHRIS!" Isabella's cry snapped him out of his horrified trance.
"LET HER GO!" Chris roared, leveling his pistol to the brute on his right. Neither monster noticed him. He fired. The bullet lodged wetly into the dense flesh of the beast, it didn't even lurch in pain. Again Chris fired, another splash of metal on flesh with no response. Before he could fire again, the monster raised its sickle and swung a downward arch into Isabella's stomach. Her eyes widened in an agonized gasp.
"NO!" Chris cried. Blood redder than her own hair trickled from her belly as the beast withdrew his weapon. Isabella fell to her knees, her eyes locked pleadingly with the man she loved. Chris stood dumbstruck with grief. The opposite monster swung his hammer into Isabella's face, her skull splattered like a piñata of meat and bone! Her headless corpse slumped backwards.
Chris crumbled to his knees. His eyes flooded with tears. He sensed the two monsters turning to him without looking up. Their faceless stares of triumph in his greatest failure. Everyone saw him as a hero, a savior. But he couldn't even save the one life that meant more to him than any other! He looked up through teary eyes and scoffed in disappointment that neither monster had taken a step towards him. Through whimpering gasps he pleaded them to finish him. Neither moved.
"DO IT!" he roared. They stood still as statues. Chris huffed a bitter laugh as he realized they wouldn't make it that easy. He looked down at the pistol still grasped in his hand. It looked friendlier than ever. In an instant he pressed the barrel to his temple. Squeezed his eyes shut as his finger tightened around the trigger.
"Oiy!" a thick accent snapped as an arm snatched the pistol from his gasp. Chris looked up to the shadowy image of a man wearing a village cap and leather jacket. The mysterious man and world of darkness vanished in a flash of awakening.
Chris found himself panting desperately on the mattress back in the apartment. The light of early morning shone faintly through the window. The room was no longer as worn and dilapidated as it had been when he dashed desperately from it! Chris sat up straight, taking in the restored environment with painful gasps.
"Chris, what's wrong?" Isabella's warm hand gently touched his shoulder. He snapped his head around to her beautiful face. The face he had seen pulverized with a hammer! "Bad dreams?" she asked. Chris lurched forward and kissed her passionately. Tears flowed freely down his face as he pressed it against hers. "Babe, what's wrong?" she pulled away to ask. He couldn't answer, only threw his arms around her and buried his whimpering face in her chest. She asked again to no avail. Moments later she returned his embrace and kissed his head. The two of them just laid there for nearly an hour.
"It was only a dream! It was only a dream!" Chris repeated over and over in his head.
…
Shamus Devil awoke in the boathouse. One of his more bizarre nightmares. Certainly a more original one. Most of them ended with his death by Soviet firing squad or ground to a paste beneath tank treads. And most of them lit well enough for him to see. But this one, ended with him stopping a bleeding yank from offing himself! And after wandering through a dilapidated apartment complex filled with faceless, twisted, monstrosities that looked like they'd just crawled out of the fires of hell! The shadowy city-scape was itself rather like a vision of hell! The seasoned IRA fighter stood to yawn and shrug the silly dream off. Most likely his subconscious ego telling him how much longer these yanks would last without him and the Irish Republic!
The Americans had only suffered the occupation about a year. The Irish had been in it since Britain capitulated. Years ago when it happened, his grandfather Sean had laughed that he never thought he'd live to see the day he actually missed Winston Churchill. But there it was! The infamous Black and Tans replaced by KGB maniacs! SAS commandos replaced by the even more ruthless Spetsnaz. Out of the boiling pot and into the fire! Only good news had been that the local protestant militias obligingly hopped on the bandwagon. Not much sense in squabbling over denomination when the Soviets wanted both locked in the gulags. Not that Shamus was as good a catholic as his dearly departed mother would have wanted.
"Top-a da morning to ya, Captain!" Liam Dillion entered with a smirk. A gust of the frigid New England air intruded with him.
"And a fine morning it is for not knocking!" Shamus said, without any venom.
"Technically not even your room," Liam huffed.
"Appropriated for the war effort, it was!"
"Should be getting a move on all the same. We have the rendezvous at the bookstore in half an hour. The boys are all set."
Shamus slung on his aviator jacket, wrapped a green scarf around his neck, and dawned his grey village cap with a flourish of finesse. "Well let's be off with us then," he huffed. Paused abruptly at the sight of a mug being held out to him by Liam and accepted it with a grateful nod. The steaming hot tea was refreshing as a full breakfast of bangers and mash! Three sugars, just like he liked it!
The two rebel leaders exited onto the wharf where their fishing boat the Irish Red was tied off. Captain George Killian waved a greeting from the bow of the cleverly disguised raider. Shamus' remaining three squad-mates stood ready on the on the dock. Mikal Cussane snapped off a crisp salute. The half-Russian guerrilla fighter of Belfast prided himself in professionalism. Beside him the twin brothers Connor and Murphy Kelly smirked with half-salute/half-waves and chuckled good-mornings. Shamus returned a soft but sincere salute with a slight eye-roll to the twins. He often wondered how two such brothers could have ever escaped Dublin Gulag (as the Russians had ungraciously repurposed the castle that once stood for Irish national pride). He had come to the conclusion that they took nothing seriously! Cussane, on the other hand, was almost too dedicated. It was all practically a religious duty for him, Shamus suspected in another life he might have become a priest.
"Everyone ready?" Shamus stopped to ask with another sip of tea. All four of his men drew their pistols. Cussane smartly drew his old Nagant revolver, the Kellys playfully raised their Berretta 9mms, and Dillon pulled and quickly replaced his Colt 45. Shamus nodded, knowing his 44 magnum was secure in his shoulder holster. "Well we're off then. Like me lovely English governess once said, 'a leisurely morning's stroll is a blessing!'" he finished before leading the way down the dock to lovely little town of Portland, Maine.
Closer to a city than a town, but with the New England town aesthetic one would expect. Mostly cute little houses, quaint little mom and pop shops, local diners and restaurants; some of which smelled delicious. The Soviet customs house at the edge of the dock was long since abandoned. Even if the locals weren't a problem for the party (which they were) Boston and New York (especially the latter) took priority. An equally abandoned and dilapidated Soviet Police Station stood on the main road along the waterfront, less than a hundred yards from the customs house. New Englanders shuffled about their daily lives in relative peace, though none could be certain the other wasn't a KGB agent.
The five soldiers in plain clothes casually greeted and waved to passersby as they made their way up Main Street to a bullet riddled brick building with boarded up windows. The faded sign above the double doors read Mason's Bookstore. Hardly a surprise to any of the seasoned communist fighters. As a private business and outlet of literature, stores like this were always among the first targets on the Commissar's clip board.
"Be on your best behavior, lads," Dillon said, getting the door. "I hear the landlord's daughter is a fiery one." He finished with a roll of chuckles from the twins.
"Come now, lads!" Shamus softly scolded. "Let's be proper gents. I understand the Resistance leader and proprietor of this establishment is a writer of some repute. Let's us pretend we represent the Republic or some such!" he gulped down the last of his tea before leading the way inside.