As Rogers went he could see the road he was on growing more and more heavily traveled, cars tracks and bootprints and hoof prints pouring in from side roads. If he were to go up those pine shrouded tracks then he suspected that he would run into logging camps and other minor industrial facilities, the tire tracks were simply too huge and blocky to be anything other than work vehicles.

After a few kilometers of this, feeling more and more nervous with each turn of the road he made, Rogers eased the snowmobile off of the road and into the trees. There he sat for a few moments and thought.

The Oceanians were definitely on to him by now, and he'd left them a pretty direct trail of crumbs to his current position…the snowmobile wasn't exactly stealthy. All they'd have to do was follow the tracks and they'd find a wind ruffled super-soldier from the past sitting astride one of their vehicles, looking troubled.

It took Rogers just a few moments to decide what he was going to do. He was in a trafficked area, he knew this now. The Oceanians had ground units around here, that much was a certainty…and while he could dismantle those at will provided that he had at least something of an element of surprise, he'd still prefer for them to be weakened when the inevitable contact came.

Getting off of the snowmobile, he snapped a branch from the nearest tree, a smaller one with a feathery plume of needles at the end, and used it as a makeshift brush to eliminate his tracks from behind him while he retreated a few meters away, into the hollow of another cluster of trees.

This wasn't a complete obliteration of his presence, anyone who looked closely would see the difference between the pine swept snow and its surroundings…but it would do for what he had in mind.

Time for the toe-poppers to come out.

He had learned how to create them while being trained by the OSS, and while he had never had opportunity to use them before, he still remembered the steps to their manufacture.

First you took a cartridge, the larger caliber the better. OSS had recommended using machine gun bullets if at all possible, but Rogers had none of those on hand. So instead he emptied one of the Oceanian magazines. Spread the twenty rounds before him out in the snow.

Next you created a cylinder for the cartridge to rest in. In the end Rogers decided that this would have to be served by the earth itself, though there was a chance of the cartridge falling to the side when stepped on.

And lastly…something sharp to set the whole thing off. In the end Rogers removed the bullet from one of the other cartridges and set it at the bottom of the tiny hole he'd dug into the snow, just off of the road. He'd spent some time examining the snowmobile tracks before he disturbed them…so that he could try and predetermine where any Oceanian searchers would step.

He buried his toe-poppers carefully, sprinkling water over the disturbed soil so it would re-freeze and grow solid. At least until the Oceanians came knocking.

If anyone were to step on a toe-popper then the process was quite simple. The weight of their boot would press the buried cartridge down onto the point of the bullet beneath. The point of the bullet would set off the primer, the primer would set off the gunpowder…and the gunpowder would propel the bullet into an Oceanian foot.

OSS had admitted to Rogers that these mines were by no means the most effective ways of disabling an enemy, since without a chamber to be fired from a bullet lost most of its penetrating power, but the psychological shock for the enemy was always extreme. It told them that their enemy was smart and resourceful…that their enemy would never, ever stop trying to find ways to hurt and kill them.

Rogers put the snowmobile tracks back as best he could, then picked his way back around the snowmobile and deeper into the forest, erasing his footprints as he went.

Every now and then he stopped, listened to the forest around him. He was close to the road, but other than the occasional movement of a bird in the trees or an animal somewhere beneath the snow, Rogers heard nothing. Certainly no human activity.

Good.

He didn't want civilians mixed up in all of this.

He kept going, due south, tracing the path of the road as it kept going and going through an unending forest.

At one point he thought he smelled salt on the wind. Was he that close to the ocean? Dumb luck that he'd been able to pilot the crippled plane over land before its engines gave out. Somehow he didn't think that he'd have woken up if he'd crashed down into the North Atlantic.

Not unless he froze into a block of ice like a cartoon character. The thought made him smile, then melancholy struck anew.

People had to have worried about him. He could imagine Stark and Peggy darting all around eastern Canada, trying to find him. Could imagine…

Peggy…

He hadn't seen her for weeks before his final mission. That had already seemed like an impossibly long time. And yet…how could it stack up to forty full years?

Was she even still alive? Something told him that if Oceania existed then she wasn't. Even that bleak bit of speculation burnt a dark hole in the bottom of his gut.

Rogers clenched his jaw. Forced himself to continue on. There would be time for grief later.

Froze as he heard an engine. Listened carefully. Definitely a truck, not too far away. He moved closer to the road, just enough to where he could see slivers through the trees.

Tracked a lumber truck with his eyes, stacked tall with pine trunks, engine coughing athematic bursts of black smoke into the air behind it. It kept going, then was lost from sight.

There had to be a mill nearby. A town too. The workers for the mill had to live somewhere after all.

Rogers kept moving. Hung onto his rifle. Tried hard not to think of the past.

He could do that later. Once all of this was over.

Once Oceania fell.

...

They had just barely gotten airborne when news of the fuel depot explosion reached them.

"Possibly our capitalist, brother." Said Waters' companion. Comrade Waters nodded, a little distracted. He was running over the co-pilot's description of their attacker. Dressed in red, white and blue. Carrying a shield with a white star in the center.

He wondered how such a deranged individual could have learned so much about the oldstates and their champions. And why they would want to target anything up here. This was the back of the beyond so far as Oceania went.

There were mills and clearcutting operations, factories and sites for testing the bigbombs, but not much in the way of infrastructure or importance.

Waters unclasped a briefcase that shared his seat, set it in his lap. Within was a lovely dictation device, and a little black Party issue notebook. He took out the notebook. Opened it up. Jotted down his first few observations on the lunatic:

Likely prole. From area perhaps. Must learn where he acquired shield.

Destroyed Victory Air Guard crew with ease. Former Victory Guard(?)

Deep interest in oldstate decadence. Was a thought criminal long before this.

Conclusions: issue kill on sight order for units within five hundred mile radius. Issue lotto style reward for proles who give info concerning criminal. Must contain this.

Waters tore the page out and put it in his pocket before rewriting his notes in Newspeak. He gave this version up to the pilot, who dictated it to Party command. The Newspeak version contained only his recommendations; he doubted that the Party would welcome anything approaching speculation.

Besides, what he had written in his third bullet point was treason. Professing any casual knowledge of the oldstate at all was tantamount to becoming a thought criminal. The oldstate had existed, that much was readily apparent. After all, what else did the Party ever start their Two Minute Hates railing against? But at the same time, any sort of recognition of it as a previously existing entity was frowned upon. Was acted upon swiftly. Anyone who knew things about the oldstate became an unperson.

Anyone who knew things about the oldstate was a good comrade. Anyone who knew that the oldstate used stars and stripes and flags and ideology to persecute their citizenry was a very good comrade indeed.

Anyone who knew things about the oldstate was a thought criminal and an unperson. Anyone who knew that the oldstate used stars and stripes and flags and ideology at all would soon have never existed.

Waters put one hand atop the pocket in which his notes were. They seemed to contain a curious sort of energy. A warmth.

They passed over the fuel depot, staying studiously away from the plume of oily black smoke rising from the ruined fuel pumps. Down below Waters could see a small cluster of men sitting miserably atop a hill just next to the depot.

"Can you land there comrade?" Waters asked the pilot, shouting over the chop of the rotors. The pilot eyed the hill for a moment. The top of it was flat enough, and free from trees. He nodded.

"Yes brother," he shouted back, "doubleplushasty."

They set down. Waters learned something interesting from the only uninjured soldier present before he executed him for thought crime and aiding the enemy.

The remaining three soldiers stood very still and looked Waters in the eyes as he shot their comrade. Waters cocked his head at them.

"You are true arbiters of the Revolution, comrades." He said, and left them alive.

"Captain America…" He said, low under his breath as the helicopter lifted off once again.

"Brother?" His companion asked him.

"Oceania prevails." Waters said with a smile.

They kept going.