To Flee from the Phoenix's Nest

Preface: This story was originally posted on alternatehistory.com on April 17th, 2014, and was written for a writing challenge posed to Zioneer.

TO FLEE FROM THE PHOENIX'S NEST
BY SPANISHSPY

Tonie Ernande walked up the stone steps of the church, l’igles dų Sammarce (pronounced Sam-MAR-keh in his head) in his hometown of Pebledemai, province of Sananalo, in the Republic of Renacido, the foremost industrial and political power on this world. Beside him were his father, Perio, his mother, Maria, and his two sisters, Liana and Enif. He was young, only nineteen years old; during this time and in this place, his coming to church was utterly mandatory, and it wasn’t for Sunday services.

The Republic of Renacido was now at war with its mortal enemies, the Kingdom of Altavista and the Empire of Sligo. From the Republic’s capital at San Isidro, the call had been sent from the buildings of the National Assembly to the entire Republic for its young men, to be conscripted to fight for their country. They would be called on to fight for the Republic, for National Collectivism, and for Christ.

The church was draped with its old religious banners, and behind the altar was the flag of the Republic, a simple horizontal tricolor of yellow, red, and yellow. Since the Renacidan Catholic Church and the government of the country were so intertwined, the banner had the federal coat of arms on it. The emblem was likewise on the sides of the pews in which parishioners sat and prayed.

The emblem was one he was most acquainted with; it was on school books, on government buildings, and on bibles, and anything else regarding either the Renacidan state or the Renacidan Catholic Church. It was the symbol of the social order he begrudgingly lived under: the phoenix grasping crossed sword and gavel, with a shield in front of those with a crucifix on it. There was a motto on this emblem, a motto he could see clearly written, carved into the podium where the priest would deliver his sermon:

“Un spada dų iêŕ, un lei dų iêŕ, un fe dų iêŕ”

“An Iron Sword, an Iron Law, an Iron Faith”

Tonie felt nervous. All his friends were at the foreground of the church, parting ways with their parents. His father came up to him. “Don’t worry, son. You’ll make us all proud on the front. I’m certain.”

He blushed. His mother added, “We can run the farm ourselves. Make your country and your God proud.”

His sisters said little. In fact, they appeared to be happy he was leaving. Well, he was happy that he would be away from them.

He took his place up in the front of the church in the rows of young men of Pebledemai. He, like his fellow townsfolk, was well-built and reasonably dark-skinned, with universal black hair. Some of them were lighter-skinned, betraying ancestry of those who here in the province of Sananalo before its incorporation into the Republic fifty or so years ago.

Sananalo was for a long time its own Republic populated by those from another ancient nation than those that settled what would become Renacido; they were unified under the old empire that had one united the entire world they lived on. The name Renacido, even, harkened back to it; the government in San Isidro claimed to be the only legitimate successor state of that old nation. Sananalo’s old name was Dodsonia, and names of that variety were often seen in historical markers and history books. Pebledemai was founded only twenty-six years before Tonie’s birth, as a union of several small farms that grew wheat, the Republic’s premier food, and corn, its fuel that powered its vehicles and appliances. The name

‘Pebledemai’ was a literal description, meaning “town of corn farmers.” The priest came to his podium. Father Fraico was an older man who was young and studying for the priesthood when he came to Pebledemai to serve in the parish.

“The lord Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew that he came not to bring peace, but the sword. So will these fine young men, but not with swords. They will do so with rifles, with grenades, and with bayonets. They will conquer for the Republic of Renacido, the only truly holy nation on this world. They will conquer for our lord and savior Jesus Christ, whose gospel will be spread to the heathen Altavistans and Sligans. They will conquer for National Collectivism, whose egalitarian ways in the face of God are the only holy form of economics and politics. They will conquer for our President Iose Desot, who God has chosen to lead us. They will conquer for Pope Degiu the second, the manifestation of our faith.”

The Lord’s Prayer was said, and then the Hail Mary. They bowed in prayer; they sang hymns and the national anthem. They did as they were told, and Tonie did so only because of that reason. He frankly didn’t care that he was serving some ideology or deity; he wanted adventure away from this country town that was Pebledemai.

Then came the choir girls with their long flowing white dresses embroidered with gold and red, the national colors, arranged in a cross, carrying baskets filled with a traditional Renacidan farewell package: wheat and corn seeds, loaves of bread, ears of corn, farming tools, a bible, a small flag, and a modern addition: bullets for the standard rifle in the Renacidan army.

Each choir girl was around the same age as the prospective soldiers or a little younger; Tonie guessed the range between fourteen and twenty. There was one for each soldier; each would have his own choir girl bestow upon him these gifts. They would all need them at the front.

The girls lined up and bowed before their assigned soldier. He recognized many of the girls from his youth; they went to a different school than he did. All education in the Republic was segregated by gender; mixing the sexes in that manner was ‘un-Christian’ in the words of the Pope. Tonie waited anxiously for his; would it be somebody he knew?

He recognized her as she came through the line. Carla Charso was an old friend of his; he was beginning to think that this was very deliberate.
She came up to him with the basket, her neutral expression gradually morphing into a smile. “I always thought that you would make a good soldier, Tonie,” she remarked, with more than a little rebelliousness.

“Well, thank you,” he replied, nervously.

She bowed and placed the basket at his feet. He nodded as she came back standing.

“Much obliged,” she said, a smile on her face. She put her arms around him, something utterly none of the other choir girls did. “Now don’t you die out there,” she whispered.

And then she kissed him on the cheek.

He didn’t think it would matter much. Just a simple display of affection. It wouldn’t hurt anyone.

This was quite the misinformed assumption.

“Sodomite!” yelled Father Fraico. “How dare they defile this holy place!” he seethed, religious fervor overtaking him. The crowd gasped. The new conscripts and the choir girls looked at them with horror. The crowd of their families did much the same.

The ceremonial guard, armed with the most advanced weaponry the Republic army had, charged at him. The new conscripts pinned him down, as they did to Carla.

He was hit in the head and almost fell unconscious, but held on with all the might he could. He was pounded with the mass of what seemed to be a hundred men. Then the world fell black.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

He woke up some hours later. It was dark, or at least at first. The floor was metallic and cold, as well as rusty. He peered at the walls after rubbing his eyes in an attempt to decode where he was. He heard a rumbling noise.

There were small slits in the wall, the space between the metal bars that formed the room, giving the room the little light that it possessed. There was noise. Talking. Cheering.

He gradually deduced that he was in some small building outside of a celebration. He recognized an instrumental tune, a patriotic song he had learned in primary school, and that people were singing along.

The door was a sliding door, and it was locked, apparently by a long metal bar. He pounded on the door, and nobody noticed as it did not budge in the slightest.

He sat down and thought to himself. He hated society, and always did. This country was puritanical and dogmatic, and prone to hero worship and the idolization of its leaders, the President and the Pope. The Church meddled in state affairs and the state in Church affairs. The government was imperialist and militaristic, and eager to start wars for territory, much like the current one. He didn’t want to fight, he resolved. He wanted to escape.

The crowd outside’s cheering ascended to a thunderous roar, devoid of any unified theme or thought. Then the room began to move, he could tell. There was a putrid smell of smoke and a blast of hot air from one end.

It wasn’t a room. It was a boxcar on the train.

The train that would take the soldiers off to war. Its engine sputtered rhythmically, signifying the pistons had begun oscillating and the wheels had begun to spin. It accelerated, leaving what little Tonie could see outside of the car a blur. He could make out the occasional Renacidan flag or some building, but all in all it was utterly unrecognizable.

Then the muted gray and brown tones of Pebledemai turned to green and light brown. They had entered the countryside, heading northward and eastward. This is where the war was, he had gleamed from the newspapers, where Altavista and Sligo were assaulting Renacido’s newest acquisition. It was an acquisition out of a sham election, or so that is what Tonie could tell. The inhabitants of that small Republic most likely did not want to join Renacido; that meant nothing to the men in San Isidro. The Gold and Red banner would fly over their city just as it did in so many others.

The hours passed, and Tonie fell asleep, likely multiple times. It was not a comfortable sleep; the floors of the car were cold, and made only colder as the day turned into the night. He dreamt of home, of being free of the oppression and pettiness of the Renacidan state.

But how would he escape? Could Altavista or Sligo or any other nation be better or more frighteningly to consider, worse? Ritteria? Sallingford? Chernovia? Dreiseen? He couldn’t say. He didn’t know where to flee too, but he knew he had to flee.

Perhaps in the chaos of battle he could do so.

He fell asleep again, and was woken up with a violent clanging on the door. “Get up, sinner!”

The voice wasn’t enthusiastic. The man’s face was paler than that of most Renacidans, suggesting a conquered foe made a servant, a slave. Renacido was peculiar in that manner. National Collectivism promoted collective ownership, and that was what happened in all of its settlements, Pebledemai included. However, only a few had the class of slaves that were publicly owned, who served the state and those who ran it. He was one.

Tonie muttered, “I’m coming, I’m coming.” He didn’t want to come. He wanted to remain unconscious, to leave this hellish world. But he didn’t. He got up and followed the man to a small building to the side of what appeared to be a barracks. He heard the drill instructor yelling to the new, innocent recruits. But he was not among them for the most flippant and frivolous of reasons.

He was escorted to this small building, made of planks and rusty nails and clearly not cleaned in a long time if at all, and was left with several other men. They were in tattered clothes, and their appearances suggested they were from all parts of the Republic. They looked at him angrily. They looked at everything angrily.

He didn’t speak to them. He was not a talkative person, Tonie. He didn’t like crowds and he didn’t like the false sense of duty that the Republic tried to instill, and he definitely did not like the haggard, seedy appearance of many of these men.

He took a seat on the ground and scrounged for something that could be food. Nothing. He was but a sinner, a heretic, a traitor to the military. They didn’t care about him, nor did they care about any of these men.

So he waited until something happened. Something happened in the form of a drum, cymbal, and flute cadence. A man dressed in a Renacidan officer’s uniform, with tan-colored jacket and pants, white shirt, black tie, and tan officer’s cap with black rim with the coat of arms of the country on it. He wore a sash on his outfit in the gold-red-gold of the Republic’s flag. He had the appearance of every officer he saw in propaganda posters in Pebledemai and in the other small towns he delivered wheat to on occasion; the loyal defender of the Republic and of Christian virtue against the barbarian hordes and agents of Satan.

“Good morning, sinners!” he called out. “I see you have freshly come from whatever town in whatever province you have come from. I will be frank with you, as lying is a sin: you are the shames of your hometowns, your families. You are disgraces, the scum of the earth, the parasites that cling to our society while failing to realize the nobleness of the Christian faith and the Republic’s values.”

“Well, you are no longer in your hometowns. You are in the little town of Mcryvil, outside of Spoln. Spoln, as you must know, is a small republic that has voted to join our own republic, but the oligarchs and heretics in the Kingdom of Altavista and the Empire of Sligo say otherwise. They fabricated a defense agreement and called the expansion of the true faith illegitimate. They are the ones who are illegitimate; their monarchs claim a divine right that God did not bestow upon them.”

“And yet, in their infinite mercy, the President and the Pope have authorized the creation of the Sinners’ Brigades, which you are now a part of. You may redeem yourselves on the battlefield and wash away the stain of evil. You may see Christ and die fighting for his light, and when you die you will be accepted into heaven by Saint Peter and all the saints and all the angels and by the Lord himself. This will, however, hinge on you accepting his word. Follow your orders and this will be easy.”

For days he trained, being abused by the officer, whose name turned out to be Ramre. He was given only the blandest of gruel to subsist on, with disgusting water that wasn’t bothered to be cleaned by the authorities. He gagged when he drank it, and on at least one occasion vomited; he couldn’t remember how many times he did. Sleep was erratic and often interrupted by a sadistic call from the officer, who made them exercise in the depths of night. They were never with the regular troops; they were sinners, the regulars were not.

He didn’t talk to his fellow members of the Sinners’ Brigade. Nobody talked to anyone. Ramre would not let him talk to anyone. They were quiet, speaking only to vent about their troubles, and when that happened it was to nobody in particular, for they didn’t dare start conversations lest Ramre bring down the whip, or worse, the pistol.

One day Ramre declared it was time. “Get onto the vehicles that are outside the base. They will take you to Spoln. Your chance at redemption will be initially to guard a local government building, their former capitol and now the provincial assembly. Don’t waste time, for idle hands are the Devil’s tools.”

And so they left for the trucks in silence for the most part. Tonie boarded the metallic hull of the one he was assigned. It wasn’t a ‘truck’ in the traditional sense; in the front it had wheels, but on the back four fifths of the vehicle, it was treaded. There were four or five of these trucks loaded with the Sinners’ Brigade. Inside, they were given rifles and helmets and reasonably well-preserved military uniforms, although nowhere near the quality that the regulars would get.

He changed with the others in the dark, dusty confines of the truck as it went towards the city. He strapped on his belt, finding bullets, grenades, and rations clipped to it. He coughed when he inhaled, leading him to hold his breath as much as he could. Eventually, he had to breathe and erupted into coughing fits.

This eventually subsided, and he took the time to take a look out of the slits on the truck’s walls.

He was in Spoln. It was an old city, with archaic-looking buildings on the streets. He saw a street sign upon entering the city itself, with the name “McCrearyville” pointing in the direction that he came from and the name “Spaulding” pointing towards Spoln. Older forms of the names, he gathered.

There were few people on the streets initially, but as they approached the city center they came to notice the trucks coming in. They glared at the trucks, occasionally looking Tonie right in the eye. They clearly did not want to be inside this country, this city in its current state. The election was obviously faked, Tonie reasoned, and this was the reaction to it.
The trucks came to a stop outside of an utterly opulent building, with splendid columns leading to a very large domed building. Atop the dome, he could see a flag, green, blue, and red in color, being lowered and taken down by some official. In its place rose the gold-red-gold of the Renacidan Republic.

“Get out, sinners, get out!” yelled an officer. “You are to take positions around this building and guard it should any of the civilians decide to disrupt the transition, or should the Altavistans and Sligans dare try to take it.”

And so he took his place, hating the necessity of doing so. He took his rifle and rested the handle on the ground, the barrel facing towards the sky, kept upright by leaning on his leg. He sighed. He wanted to be away from this wreck of a civilization. All the clichés of his anti-establishment thought began manifesting themselves in him, the very same loathing of the Republic and the Church and all the other institutions that ruled the country. There was nothing new. Only old hatred.

Little by little, a trickle of civilians came towards the building. The trickle became a wave, a mob of people chanting slogans and throwing obscenities at the soldiers. Then came the eggs, which pelted the ground.
He did nothing. He did not want to hurt these people with whose cause he sympathized. He respected their desires for independence, unlike San Isidro.

The demonstration continued for a while. Still nothing. The stairs to the capitol building were a mess of food products and what was likely human waste and gave off an absolutely putrid smell, but he still did nothing. His fellow guards did the same. There was no motivation. Frankly, they didn’t give a damn about what the officers promised about ‘heaven’ or ‘salvation.’ They just wanted to be out of everything.

He heard a rumbling noise coming from one of the side streets. Out of an alley came several Renacidan armored vehicles, APCs, tanks, and a myriad of other types. Atop one of the APCs was a man with a machine gun. Out of another alleyway came many of the regulars equipped with their full battle dress, prepared for urban warfare.

The noise from the rioters crescendoed into a rage. He heard shots fired from the crowd, although he couldn’t tell who had fired first, the crowd or the regulars.

Nevertheless the bloodbath ensued. The machine gun on the APC began spewing its bullets, the regulars began their assault, and tanks began charging into the crowd.

“Fire, sinners, fire and redeem yourselves!” yelled an officer.

“No!” Tonie screamed. He didn’t want to be a murderer. He didn’t want to fight for this evil regime.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning his head, he saw the officer. “Fire now,” he growled.

“Okay, then, sir,” Tonie replied, turning the honorific into a pejorative. “I’ll oblige you.”

He took his rifle and shot the officer.

In the chaos of fight, he gloried in the newfound feeling of control over his own life. He could defy the state. He could defy the church.

But he knew that he would be pursued. He darted off the raised plaza in between two columns and then ran off into an alleyway with nobody in it.

He sat down and breathed heavily. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to rest.

He looked up to see the sky.

He was greeted with an airplane flying over. It was a small plane, only a scout. Its propeller whirred like a horde of bees.

On its wing was a roundel. It was not the gold and red roundel of the Renacidan Republic.

It was a blue and white roundel of the Kingdom of Altavista.

He shivered in fear. Now the Altavistans had come. Now how would he escape?

The realization of the situation terrified him. Soon after the coming of the scout plane, seemingly a million Altavistan bombers came to blot out the sun. The bombs made a screeching noise that made him recoil. He heard the sounds of death, of destruction, of murder.

He hid behind a dumpster in the alley that smelled of rotting food and other things that he would rather not speculate what they were.
He saw smoke rise over the buildings that enclosed the alleyway. He saw fires. He heard the pounding of anti-air guns that were meant to defend their conquest. He saw planes dogfighting over the city. He saw planes careen down towards the ground, and heard the muffled screams of their pilots. He heard planes crashing into buildings. He heard screams of anguish.

He had to get away from all this. He had to free himself.

He stood up, resolving to flee the battlefield. From there, he would decide what to do next.

He picked up his rifle and checked to see if it were loaded. It was. He checked his grenades. They were fine.

He ran out of the alleyway, and was greeted with hell. There was the blazing husk of a tank, its occupants long since dead. The cityscape was pockmarked with craters from the bombing. Buildings had collapsed. The magnificent dome of the Spoln capitol building lay in ruins. Its pillars were strewn all over the ground.

He ran in an arbitrary direction following a large street. It would have to lead him away from the carnage. If only there was a vehicle that he could steal. There was none, unfortunately, and he continued running. The pain was a hellish affliction, but he endured. He kept his rifle close to him.

The road soon came to be blocked by hastily dug trenches made in a crater. Renacidan artillery emplacements were set up, and the gunfire was much louder; this is where the fighting was. This is where he would have to escape.

At this point they had to be on alert for him. He would have to fight Renacidan and Altavistan alike. If that’s what it took to liberation, so be
it. He would do whatever he had to do to break free.

He snuck past an artillery emplacement. One of the men there kept his eyes towards the gun, hauling a heavy shell into the gun. Tonie took a few steps forward, stepping on a mound of dirt. There was noise.

He panicked silently. They saw him. The two men manning the gun peered over at Tonie. They weren’t sure who he was.

That didn’t matter. Tonie took a grenade from his belt, pulled the string, and threw it into the artillery nest. He ran wildly away to avoid being caught in the blast. It exploded in yellow and red, leaving the two poor men in a fiery haze.

He remained away from the battle, but the way Spoln was laid out kept him within several yards. On the street he followed was a firefight between Renacidan and Altavistan infantry, backed by tanks possessed by both sides.

The Renacidan soldiers were of the Sinners’ Brigade; he could tell by the uniform and by some of the faces. The capitol riots had dispersed or had died in the bombing, leaving the Sinners’ Brigades to fight the invaders (not that they were any less invaders themselves).

One of the men branded sinners was clearly a coward. A tank round came dangerously close to him, and he jumped out of the way. He broke down screaming, running in the opposite direction like a child.

How the officer in charge reacted horrified Tonie. He took out his pistol and shot the poor soul, causing his head to explode, giving it the look of a rose or other vibrantly red flower.

Tonie could not let this happen. He hated the current government and its policies, but he had standards of human decency. He knew his pistol would be too loud and conspicuous coming from this direction. He took a grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it at the officer. He ran.

Several men died in that explosion. His heart ached for the souls of the innocent men he had killed, but only briefly. Desire for escape made that disappear.

He ran. He continued to run. Time became irrelevant to him. All that mattered was running.

He then came to realize that he could not run much longer. He had to find a vehicle. He knew how to drive; his family had owned a small truck to sell the harvest.

He was in Altavistan-held territory. He saw their blue-white-blue flag over an encampment, and tanks and artillery with their insignia on it.

He’d have to steal from them. So be it.

He dashed around the barren land, looking for a vehicle he could hijack.

He wandered the area, looking for something, anything.

After what felt like days but was probably only an hour, he came upon something. Not a vehicle, but a small, unattended tend with a myriad of supplies in it. There were tracks of some sort of truck leading from it. It was a supply depot, he concluded. Follow the tracks, and there would be a truck. A truck he could take as his own.

He followed the tracks with haste but also carefulness lest he veer off course.

There it was. An Altavistan truck.

He waited for it to come to a stop, if it did.

It did.

He saw the driver push the pedals with his foot, causing it to come to a stop. He jumped at it, smashed the window, and threw the driver onto the ground.

He brandished his rifle, unstrapping it from his back. The driver was unarmed, and cowered on the windswept land.

Tonie felt pity for him, and regret that his death would come by his own bullet.

He didn’t have to do this, he thought. He could let him go. The Altavistans didn’t care for a single rouge Renacidan soldier running away. He could leave the man alive and nothing would happen either way.

He pulled the trigger. The man died.

He suppressed the feeling of guilt and clambered into the truck. He rammed the pedal to the ground, sending the truck zooming into the wilderness.

He heard things being run over, perhaps even a human. He hit trees, bushes, animals, and anything else that could conceivably get in the way.
The truck’s fuel ran out. It stopped. He would have to survive on his wits alone in the wilderness without the comforts of home, of family, of country, of faith. He would have to eke out a living in this challenging environment.

But it didn’t matter to him.

He had escaped.