Rogers had killed three of the eight Oceanians(?), but fortunately not their medic. The medic was the one he had hit in the head with the butt of his rifle, and other than a slow trickle of blood from his nose he seemed okay. Certainly had the energy to scowl and shoot lethal looks at Rogers whenever he had the chance.
In the aftermath of the fight Rogers had gathered his four prisoners near the downed helicopter, throwing their weapons into the creek bed and confiscating their ammunition as he did so. Three of the prisoners were too hurt to resist, and while Rogers had left the medic free so that he could tend to his men, he had trussed the co-pilot like a turkey.
"I'm going to ask you some questions now," he said, keeping his rifle aimed steadily at the co-pilot, "who are you, and what is this…Oceania you belong to? Is it some sort of HYDRA offshoot?" As he aired his questions Rogers examined the rifle he was holding.
It wasn't dissimilar to a Nazi Sturmgewehr battle rifle, though there were clear refinements, like a carrying handle, and a smaller magazine. Turning it over in his hands, Rogers couldn't see any sort of identifying marks on it other than a serial number and the ever-present crimson V. No manufacturing company was named…
"Joycamp surely." The co-pilot hooked a thumb at Rogers, looking over to the medic. The medic nodded curtly, then went back to splinting the arm of one of the surviving prisoners.
"Speak normally." Rogers snarled, frustrated by the impenetrability of whatever dialect these people were speaking. He could make out enough to get the gist of what they were saying…but it was scattered and broken. Like a stroke patient trying to recite Chaucer.
The co-pilot just gave Rogers a murderous stare. Said nothing.
Sighing, Rogers moved over to the little pile of rucksacks he had taken off of the soldiers. There was nothing very exciting inside, just spare clothing, ration tins that wouldn't have looked too out of place in a U.S. Army camp, a few maps, binoculars, ammunition, books…all stamped with the crimson V.
Rogers took one of the books, a folded map and the ration tins. Setting them into the snow he tossed five over to the medic.
"Feed your men," he said, "it's cold. They'll lose energy soon."
Disappointingly, there weren't any fire starters amongst the belongings of the Oceanians. Unless…
Rogers took one of the binoculars in his hands and cheerfully smashed the front lenses. The co-pilot winced, clearly unhappy with Rogers' actions. But still he remained silent.
Binoculars, Rogers had learned long ago, used a series of curved lenses to magnify an image. It was those curved lenses he was after now, and after some careful fishing around in the interior of the mangled binoculars, he emerged with two little circles of glass, each about the size of a poker chip. The sunlight glinted off of them.
Next came the book.
Opening it up, Rogers scanned the title briefly, finding it to be some sort of ideological pamphlet, written in the same disjointed language that the Oceanians spoke in. He ripped a clump of pages out.
The co-pilot shrieked, as though he were physically connected to the book, eyes blazing with terror and anger.
"No! Big Brother! Big Brother!" He shouted. The medic and one of his patients chorused weakly along for a moment, then Rogers set the torn pages down into the snow, once again confused.
He had mutilated plenty of copies of Nazi propaganda pamphlets and books during his time in the war, but the Nazis had hardly ever gotten upset at him over it. They hadn't shrieked and wailed and gnashed their teeth. No…this went further. It was like he had just rent the Bible in two before a faithful Baptist.
Experimentally he reached for more pages. Received a further wail of indignation and outrage from the Oceanians.
"Who's Big Brother?" He asked.
The co-pilot sneered at him. Rogers calmly tore more pages. The man shook his head vigorously.
"Stop!" He cried, "stop…"
"Who's Big Brother?" Rogers repeated, and this time the co-pilot spoke.
"BB-" He began, but Rogers cut him off.
"Regular English." He growled.
The co-pilot gave him a vicious look of abject dislike.
"You can obviously understand me," Rogers said, "so you know English. Now speak it. Or else I'm gonna tear the rest of this book into ribbons." His fingers tightened on the next bunch of pages. The co-pilot winced at the mere sight.
"Stop," he said at last, "stop now. That is the word of the Party. Of Big Brother. Of Oceania."
Rogers smiled to himself, satisfied.
"Who's Big Brother?" He asked again.
"He is everything," the co-pilot gave Rogers a disconcerting look of utterly fervent belief before continuing, "He is the Party and the State and the World. He is Watching."
"Good for him," Rogers said, mentally noting that this 'Big Brother' seemed to be a dictator…with an especially vicious cult of personality, "now tell me. What's Oceania?"
The co-pilot gave Rogers a strange look.
"You must know this already," he said, "why are you asking?"
"My last memories are crashing that bomber over there into the ground. Then I woke up and met you jokers. Now tell me…what's Oceania?"
The medic whispered something indeterminable to the co-pilot and the co-pilot nodded.
"The bomber…" he said, seemed to be struggling for words, "is oldstate, yes?"
Oldstate? Was that how these people referred to the Nazis?
No, Rogers told himself, a thread of worry curling up into his stomach, not just the Nazis…
"It's a Nazi bomber," he said, "I hijacked it. Stole it."
The co-pilot and medic were staring at each other, looking frightened and utterly confused all of a sudden.
"No," the co-pilot said, with a shrill laugh that sounded utterly forced, "doubleplusyoung, unantewar…" He'd slipped back into his original language, but Rogers once again got the gist of what he was saying.
These people, these Oceanians, had clearly heard of the Nazis…but not as more than a distant myth. They thought he was lying about being in the war…or at least were hoping that he was.
Because standing before them was a young man claiming to have fought in an old man's war. And that was deeply frightening. Deeply wrong.
Rogers could feel his gut roiling, terror buzzing through him like an electric shock.
"What year is it?" He asked, when he finally managed to get his mind working again. The co-pilot pointed silently to the book he was holding and Rogers flipped to the inside cover…where publication dates usually were.
June, 1984
Rogers let the book drop from numb fingers.
No.
No!
No!
None of this made sense. None of it was possible. How had he managed to drowse for forty years in a downed bomber? How?!
He took an unsteady step back, suddenly aware that the Oceanians were watching him, half frightened, half fascinated.
"It's 1945," Rogers said at last, voice blank with shock, "April of 1945. It can't…cant be 1984."
He stared down at the co-pilot, who shrunk back instinctively, perhaps frightened that Rogers would hurt him for revealing such an unpleasant truth. But Rogers did nothing. Just asked:
"What's today's date?"
"December…sixteenth?" The co-pilot said uncertainly.
"Fifteenth." The medic corrected quietly.
December…
Why was it so mild out then? The volcanic eruption could only explain part of that.
None of this made any sense. It only fed the chaotic whirl of thoughts buzzing around his head.
"So…you must have come to look at the bomber." He said. Wasn't sure why.
The co-pilot gave Rogers a strange look. Shook his head.
"The test site." He said.
Rogers looked behind him. At the snowless peak in the distance.
"Test site…?" He asked.
"Bigbomb," the medic said quietly, "doubleplusgood ante. Doubleplusgood post."
Rogers felt a powerful chill roll down his spine.
He had been wrong.
So very, very wrong. The peak hadn't been ravaged by an act of nature…but rather by the actions of man. The Oceanians had set off a bomb atop its summit, one big enough to excavate hundreds of thousands of tons of rock and dirt and snow. One big enough to erase all life from its slopes.
Suddenly small things began to make sense. The little crust of ice atop the snow…where it had melted and then refrozen in the wake of the blast. The bomb, he realized, had probably accelerated the process of thawing him out.
But if the weather was any indication, then he would have woken up sooner or later. Probably sometime before the year 2000. Maybe.
God it was all so surreal.
He unfolded one of the Oceanian maps, desperate to distract himself. But rather than a great big world map like he had been hoping for, all that it showed him was a great big stretch of Canadian wilderness, crisscrossed by a few roads.
Forty years might have passed, but the wilds remained the same.
What caught his attention was the mountain range that the Oceanians had bombed. On the map it looked very familiar…and it took him a moment to figure out exactly why.
He, Rogers realized, was looking at the Laurentian Range. A belt of mountains and hills that stretched from southern Quebec all the way to the U.S. border, where they turned abruptly into the Adirondacks.
He managed to smile, but that smile froze.
According to the map there was no such thing as the Laurentian Range. What he was looking at was the Comrade Ogilvy Range…
He set the map down, suddenly aware that he was shivering.
But try as he might, the shakes did not go away.
