"A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,
Staring across the morning blear with fog;
He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;
And then, of course, they started with five-nines
Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.
Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape,—loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead." - Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack
"…BDA, one hundred over one hundred, enemy mortars have been suppressed. Record as target, end of mission, out."
"Roger that, Knight 1-3, end of mission…"
A chorus of whoops and cheers rang out in the small office room, lit by a single hanging lightbulb. Men expressed their joy with peals of tired laughter, pats on the back and a rumbling of the table they stood around.
One man amongst them sipped on his mug of coffee and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Thank God, that's one problem taken care of," Madsen placed his figurative two cents into the pile, but quick was he to reign in the celebration, "Now we'll have a chance to make some moves, and get some payback on those Reds for what they've done to our boys up until now."
"Corn," David addressed, "have you been given any new intel on our current defense-line to our north?"
"Nothing of note," Corn replied, "The line's been holding. I have been getting conflicting reports of men being given enough supplies and ammo only for there to be a lack of said supplies—some men have been given too much, some aren't given enough."
"I'll leave it to you to get that sorted out," Madsen impressed the importance of this task with his tone, and Officer Corn was quick to nod in acknowledgement. The Head of the Militia switched course, "Don, how many of your men are willing to take the fight to the Reds?"
"All of 'em," Collier replied, "But if I had to give an estimate of those able-bodied and ready, I'd say a battalion's worth, some few hundred or so. I could call upon Delaire and Petersen and have a head count done."
"That's good enough," David assured, "The plan is to hit the Reds where it hurts, and this means a coordinated strike."
Madsen then gestured to a spot on the map laid over the table, "There's a small ridgeline running parallel to Third Street, no more than a hundred meters west of it. Behind the reverse slope is where the Reds are funneling men and material to strike our positions further east. If we can cut them off at this point, or at the very least push them back, then we'll disrupt their attempts to encircle the town and force the Reds to retreat, easing pressure off the boys manning the line. We'll draw militia from the southern defense line and have them form up as reserves for the attack. They'll be stationed here, here, and here," David marked three locations for these reserves on the map.
He addressed to Don, "Our mortars have free reign now, so they'll soften the Reds with a barrage before your boys begin the attack. I'd like to get this started tomorrow morning, so round your boys up as soon as possible and be ready. We'll start early, once the fog starts lifting."
"Right, you heard 'im," Collier spurred his aides, and with them did the old veteran take his leave out of the office.
"Corn," David addressed, and Officer Corn stood at the ready, "Round up as many able-bodied men from the southern line and have them be on standby. I'm looking for anywhere between two-to-three hundred if you can."
"Understood," the lieutenant was quick to leave, him and his own detachment filed out the door within seconds.
"Matthews," David addressed the recently promoted cadet, who had been silent up until now, "how're the boys over by Blackwell?"
"They're holding fast, sir," Skip Matthews replied, "The mortars didn't reach them. I've now got Anderson Berry's son—Andrew—and his pals taking charge. There's a bit of animosity between them and the other boys, but they're managing. Most trouble I've had is getting the chance to have them write letters to their families."
Madsen raised a curious eyebrow at this, "Come again, son?"
"The boys have been asking for a chance to write, since their phones are either dead or they don't have good cell service," Matthews explained, "They've been asking when they can write letters, so that they can assure their families they're still alive."
Madsen seemed stunned by the request, and took a moment to compose his thoughts. The abrupt silence left Matthews to gauge David by his furrowed brow and tired eyes, and the deep pondering the older man was afflicted by. But something caught his eye, and the Head of Militia shuffled quickly to a spare filing cabinet off to the side.
"Are you ready to leave?" he called, searching for something Skip could not see.
"Yes, sir."
"I've got some spare pens on top of the drawer you're standing next to, grab them," Skip looked, and beheld a cup of pens and a framed picture on top of the wooden desk he stood by. He took a handful of pens and spared a moment's glance at the photo framed beside the cup, this being a photo of Madsen, his wife, and his daughter. Matthews could've sworn he'd seen this daughter of Madsen's before, but thinks no more of it, for the man in question calls again, "Alright, I've got the paper, let's go."
"But sir, aren't you needed here?" Matthews asks. He had not expected David to outright join him in this endeavor, for it was but a simple request—
"I've kept my word to them," to whom, Madsen did not clarify; but it did not impede his gait to the door, "Come on, now. Time is of the essence."
Skip followed the Commander of the Militia out the door.
Victoria turned her head to the sound of footfalls, coming from the entrance to the church. Hopeful emerald-green eyes quickly became dismayed, for it was just a handful of officers who were searching for any men who had recovered from their wounds to be sent back into the fight.
"…you're still looking for them?"
Chase huffed, "Caulfield said she'd be back soon. I'm starting to think they've been caught up in something really bad."
Taylor hummed in agreement, "I wouldn't worry too much, Vic. Bad things happen when you start to worry."
"I know," the pixie blonde cut her off. Yet, her voice was tainted with doubt, and Taylor looked over to see her dear friend fidgeting nervously with her hands. Light-blue eyes narrowed with concern, for Victoria was not one to accept platitudes for what they offered; it would take a true measure of assurance to pull the Queen from her doubts.
So, Taylor tried introspection, "It's weird, seeing you like that."
Chase turned to her, "What?"
"Sorry, just thinking."
"Don't just pull my leg like that, Tay'," her squad-leader huffed, "What is it?"
Christensen rolled her head back, her long blonde locks curling on the floor as she thought aloud, "I'm thinking of last week, or sometime around then, when you and Caulfield were supposedly sworn enemies. How you'd vent to me about all the things she does so effortlessly, how she competes with you despite your unequivocable position as Queen of Blackwell—"
"You're really setting the stage, aren't you?" Victoria jabbed.
Taylor snickered, "I'm just saying, you really had it out for Max back then. Now, you're worried sick for her. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you consider her to be a friend—"
"Uh oh~!" a third voice interjected, so full of mischief that it was nauseating, "She said the F-word!"
"Court', I'm begging you," Victoria sighed, "Spare me the misery."
It seemed that Courtney was also keen to the Queen's troubled state, for she took her spot beside Taylor and looked defiantly to her friend, daring this pixie blonde with a cheeky grin, "Tay's got a point, you know—Caulfield's been living rent-free in your head for a long time."
"No," a shake of the head in absolute denial, "Absolutely not."
"Hey, Taylor, remember that time when Vic when on that drunken rant about how Caulfield keeps a whole collection of selfies in her room?"
"Court', I swear to God—"
"Oh yeah, I remember that!" Taylor continued, "I also remember this one time, when Vic almost smacked her car against those concrete parking bumpers because she was raving about how Caulfield was taking better pictures with an outdated camera than she was with a two-thousand-dollar DSLR, or whatever it was."
"You two are so merciless," Chase commented, accepting an unconditional defeat. Anything to save herself from the pain of remembering old transgressions. It was enough that the pixie blonde hung her head in shame, and her stature shrunk from its regal poise.
"Hey, we only learned from the best," Taylor tried to nudge her back to life, but it wasn't enough. Glancing back to Courtney brought the same conclusion, that they'd have to try something else to perk their best friend up.
"…hey, Taylor."
"Yeah, Court'?"
Wagner stood from her spot, and angled herself towards the two blondes, "Have I ever told you about the time my family went to see my aunt and uncle in Germany?"
Victoria glanced to her friend, curious but still trapped in her woes to give more than this. But Taylor was quick to catch on, "No, I don't think you have. What about it?"
"My aunt and uncle told me that their lineage comes from Prussia, which lies to the east of where Germany is now. My uncle spoke of how his father, and his father before him, were both witness to the end of the Great War, and the end of the monarchy. He told me about how the Polish in Silesia rose up and began a campaign of terror against civilians, of anarchy ravaging the whole of Bavaria after the communists seized the local parliament. My uncle told me of stories about my ancestors being a part of the Freikorps, who'd put the torch to anyone who opposed them."
It seemed as much as a surprise to Taylor as it was for Victoria, for both of them looked to Courtney with wide eyes and furrowed brows.
"Can I just ask, Court', what is the meaning of this—?"
"Wait, wait, I'm not finished yet," Wagner held their attention with a raised hand, beckoning them to hold their concern, "What I'm trying to say is this—it was a bad time to be there, no matter who you were. Everywhere you went, there was just suffering, and war, and all kinds of bad things—but even then, nobody wanted to give up. So, my uncle had talked about when things got really bad for his father and his grandfather, they'd try to combat it through jokes, through positivity—and through singing."
"And I found it interesting, because my dad never told me about all this," Courtney continued, "He was intent on trying to keep it all in the past, because he was afraid of having to explain it to me. To be fair, I was just a kid at the time, but I genuinely wanted to know—I felt like I was being left out on who I was, and where I came from. Whenever I'd ask him about my ancestry, my dad would give this half-baked answer—well, your mom's English and your dad's German, so you're half of each—and that's all he ever said. But when my uncle told me about what he'd been told, it was like I was looking back, and seeing who my ancestors were and what they did to survive. How they fought, how they cried, how they did all the things we're doing right now."
Taylor and Victoria were enraptured by this sudden telling of the past, and were blindsided when Courtney pulled them back to the present with this question, "Did you know, whenever I get really upset about something, I find that singing is the best remedy for me? Before, I used to believe it was an unnatural method of dealing with stress, but now I see it as me reflecting on the past, and that makes me feel grateful to be alive, to be here with my family and friends."
But even Wagner was not immune to the weight of reality, and the lack of her mother and father's presence shocked her from her spiel, "Or, well, just you guys, in this case."
Now it was she who was sapped of her strength, and Courtney sat down next to Taylor, muttering harsh nothings to herself. Christensen was too lost in thought to see the sadness of her companion, but Victoria was awakened to the full sincerity of this admission.
It was not ideology nor madness that fascinated Courtney, as they had first assumed: rather, it was the glimmering hope shining through the actions of people who could do no better than what they could in the moment. And that they could somehow retain their sanity, their hope and joy through such simple acts—
"…sing."
Courtney and Taylor snapped from their stupor, and the former asked of Chase, "W-what?"
"Sing," Victoria commanded, "I order you to."
What once was confusion, then transformed to subtle understanding. Wagner nodded ever the slightest, and gave her friends a brief prelude, "I…I don't remember the whole of most the songs my uncle knew. By that, I mean I know how to sing them in German, but I don't know how to sing them in English—"
"It's alright," Taylor assured, "Just go with what you know."
Courtney's brows then furrowed in thought, recalling moments that only she could see, and began humming a solemn tune. Slowly, like a flower blooming in the light of Spring after a bitter cold night, she sings.
We march on with solemn gait,
Through the darkness, through the rain.
Fires of evil re-vol-u-tion,
Burn our homes and hearts away.
Hums followed, solemn and alone. A melody carried forth after years of dormancy.
Stand we at the gates of hell,
With our rifles laid in hand,
We think of our friends and family
And our once-beloved land.
The past ripples, breaks away, and is replaced with the present. But still, the same motions are made, the same feeling burns in hearts. Where might they speak different tongues, have different names, follow different paths in life; there still lives the flickering flame.
Through misery, we now march past,
Our regret is the last to go.
Forwards now is our endeavor,
We shall reap what has been sown.
Victoria and Taylor, though they've not heard of this somber melody in all their lifetimes, begin to hum along. They impart their sympathy to Courtney's gentle voice, as she sings the song of ancients past.
Shells fly over the empty streets,
Our land is painted blood-red.
But the freedom of our people,
Means more to us than our deaths!
The flame swells in their hearts, burning bright against the doubts, and the pain. There is no regret, no remorse for the past, only a steadfast adherence to what was, and what might have been, and what must be.
But the freedom of our people,
Means more to us than our deaths!
Max and the others of First Squad enter the church. Immediately, Caulfield spots Victoria and her friends, and makes her way over to speak to them—but she stops short of greeting. Her sisters were in the midst of a moment that had been carved from memories, like a candle that has yet to give up its light. To interrupt it would be a great dishonor to herself, as a fellow Angel of Blackwell.
Distant gunfire rumbles in the distance. A few pops and cracks denote an ongoing skirmish between frontline militia and the Reds, but otherwise, the night is quiet.
Candlelight flickers from the church windows. Where she stands, she can barely see the office buildings, with curtains drawn over the glass panes to shield the interior from prying eyes. Not that she was looking for anything within these two-story office structures, mind you, but the animosity she held in her heart was just as rigid as the delusions that gripped this town and its people.
Sara cast a glance this way and that, checking both ends of the street before she crossed over, the straps of her rucksack digging painfully into her shoulders. Behind her, Jenny and Jasmin trudge with their own rucksacks bearing down on them. The three girls are silent as they shuffled between abandoned vehicles and across the asphalt.
The sidewalk is lined with a wooden fence, which continues down a ways to the left before being replaced with a chain-link fence, this stretching further until reaching the church's open parking lot. To their right, the road goes eastwards some three blocks up to Blackwell's heights, lined all the way with suburban homes.
The girls seem ready to walk to the comfort and safety of the church, but Sara suddenly raises a hand up to stop them. The brunette turns, eyes searching for unknown figures in the dark. It was once she was sure they were alone that she dared to speak—
"We'll leave most of it here," she gestures to a gap between the wooden and chain-link fences, where shadows covered anything from sight, "The rest will be enough to not warrant suspicion."
Quickly they shrugged their packs off, and set to work hiding their spoils.
It was almost too easy, being able to convince people that all the extra food they had could be better used in the hands of the Angels, specifically for Sara and her companions. Give enough believable sob-stories, and even the most cold-hearted and stubborn will cave in out of guilt, and hand over whatever Sara and her posse wanted. Canned goods were their preferred choice, because unlike the other packaged foods in their plastic bags and containers, the metal cans held their shape when buried under other things they might need. Empty houses with unlocked doors solved their problem of finding bare necessities as well.
"Jenny, get your shovel."
Some fiddling, and the short-haired blonde pulled out her new spade, requisitioned from a shed in one of the houses they ransacked. It was a small spade, no more than an arm's length, but it served its purpose well: Jenny tore at the soft dirt until she had made a big enough hole to Sara's liking.
Together, the three piled their goods into this hole.
"Jasmin, cloth."
The quiet girl pulled from her rucksack a piece of cloth, which once belonged to a family of three. They know this because of the family picture hanging over the drawer, from which the cloth had been swiped from.
This cloth was laid out over the treasure, and pulled tightly at the edges to make it flush against the ground. Sara secured it with a couple rocks lying nearby, and once this was done, Jenny took her spade and gently dribbled the dirt over the cloth, so as to make it appear like flat ground.
"We'll come back for it once I finish the next stage of the plan," Sara started up, "We'll incite the others to rally against River, and keep her from trying anything against us. The boats come and go, we just got to time it right."
"Why don't we just go now?" came a whisper, and before its owner could retract her words, Sara seized them by the arm, and reeled them in.
"Have you already forgotten what I told you, Jen'!?" Wilson hissed into the blonde's ear, "We still have to save as many as we can from Max and Victoria, before they get sent into the meatgrinder like the militia. Think of Emilia, the poor girl—she'll be fed lies and deceit right up to the moment a bullet strikes her down, and then what excuse will her parents be given, when this town gets put to the torch and they find out her death was for nothing?"
"Come to think of it, she's a lot like you, isn't she, Jenny?" Sara pressed to the trembling girl in her cold grasp, "All alone, no family within reach, barely holding it together. It'd be wise to lend a helping hand to her, just like what the Christians say: do unto others as you'd want done unto you. Don't you agree?"
"Yes, yes—I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that, I'm—I'm so sorry," so the brunette let go, and the blonde held her head down, and sniffled. The bitter cold of night was touching her nose, and shadows shielded her tears. Jasmin said nothing, and looked out for any unwanted guests, if only so Sara's ire didn't lash out against her as well.
"Let me do what I must, and everything will fall into place," Wilson capped her tirade, and leveled her rucksack back onto her shoulders, "I'll find an excuse for Victoria, you two just lay low and out of sight. Something tells me we won't have to wait long before things begin to work in our favor—"
From the north, past the streets and the angled silhouettes of roofing, a spark of red light popped up from the horizon. It sailed up into the sky at a steep angle, then it burst into a great shining star of red. The whole town was illuminated in bright red color and accented with black shadows.
"What…what is that?"
"A flare," Sara noted. She knew it was a flare, but as for why it was there and by whom it was fired, she hadn't a clue.
"Is it ours?"
"I don't know," and Sara decided it to be of little importance, "come on, let's move—"
From above, a sudden chorus of whistles came. Instinct guided them to throw themselves to the concrete, and brace for the impact. But this barrage was unlike the others, for the word had spread of the militia's resounding victory over the Reds' mortars earlier in the day. The idea of the Reds striking back with a vengeance had been pondered, but not for long, for it was thought to be impossible; but here it came, and with all the viciousness the Reds could muster!
First, it was the wails of the heavy shells, crashing towards the ground. Then, the impacts came; great ear-splitting THWUMS that shook the earth and the bones of the poor souls on the receiving end of this monstrous barrage. Voices faded, whatever had been upon the lips of them was lost to the noise. No matter how hard one clung to their ears, the sound jolted their nerves and bounced around in their head, echoing the promise of assured death. And what a tremendous cannonade that came from this decisive moment—it was a symphony of destruction; the likes of which Arkadia's militia had not experienced before.
When she gathered enough of her strength, Sara looked up from her spot on the ground, and beheld a most terrifying sight: the incoming rounds were striking closer, and closer. One shell would land beyond where they could see, the next would strike near a house a couple blocks down. The following shell now landed within throwing distance of the office buildings.
A stream of figures came rushing out from the church, and the brunette recognized them as First and Second Squads. The Angels rushed quickly to the trenches dug around the church building, and dove into the earthworks as fast they could, before the next shell would fall. They didn't have to wait long.
One great THWUM later, and a house from down the street exploded into chunks of wood and debris, another shell came after and sent a geyser of mowed grass and dirt into the air. Another shell struck the asphalt, and great chunks were lifted up into the air to come crashing down upon windshields and roofs.
A shell howled in the night, low and deadly amongst the sweltering noise of its ilk; with a terrible clamor it struck the church's block tower and detonated upon impact. Hot chunks of stone fell on the old structure's wooden roof, the rest were sent flying. The tower crumbled under the sudden lack of integrity.
Another shell followed.
The three girls witnessed the moment this shell impacted the roof of the church, and a fireball blew apart the whole of the church's upper exterior. Black and white smoke swirled up in large plumes, and the groaning of wood and stone breaking under pressure echoed in the night.
The shelling died as quickly as it came. Its noise was replaced by the crackle of flames, and the screams of the dying.
