Chapter Text
Collei had been too young back in 1985, seven years old, to ever have any kind of opinion when the rest of that decade had led to the terrorists winning against the American government and the force of the collective united against radical communism.
Now she followed the political praxis that was to be expected of a good citizen of the union while being made to honor the freedom fighters who had broken the chains of the colonial overlords that pretended to do anything but lining their pockets while the worker toiled away for nothing.
Growing up she had always seen those towering buildings as signs of what someone like her could one day achieve if she hadn’t come down with that illness that baffled doctors in her local area beyond offering words of comfort.
When one had been denied their due, what was one to do but fight back in any way they could against the masters that decided their fate before they were even born?
The day of reckoning came when she was in the city due to another flare up as part of the city that was to be untouched, now the hospital ran higher than any of the buildings that remained from the razing.
It was supposed to inspire some kind of anti-communist resistance but she had only been more enticed by the mystery people that had come to their great state of Indiana to free them from the Know Nothings that had regrouped in their state as the final holdout against foreigners.
But, hey, they weren’t Kansas.
What came from that city spoke of an almost mythical demon from scripture coming to haunt the country for their sins, if you believed the end sayers that had to pivot now that their operations were about to shut violently.
Considering how the Mojave was frozen in an act of god the idea might not be the dumbest idea in the world, and she had to believe in that crap because of that thing that continued to haunt her very being like on a schedule.
She met the woman that scared the entirety of the country when she was twelve years old in that hospital that was in the battlelines drawn by the rest of the country in an attempt to slow the tide of history that was soon to flip the script on the oppressors.
It was looking at a cracked mirror, while the issues weren’t the same she could see the madness behind those cold eyes that could freeze even the toughest of men with nothing more than a stare. Like staring into the abyss that drew men to fall for the rest of their mortal lives for nothing more than an attempt at bravery.
No lights were truly on beyond the ability to kill yet she still had the reaction to not handle her like an enemy soldier instead giving her what she imagined would be her idea of comfort despite the urge to commit all manner of murders on the child.
That day it dropped several degrees in an unnatural manner for the weather, but what did she know as a ten year old brat the hospital was sure to want to be rid of? It was hard to forget such a meeting and then the weather because where she went the cold continued to follow. Especially when she followed any scraps with great interest.
She needed to know everything she could about the woman about to go all the way after already having made it across the river in what was to be the natural border against any invaders from the west.
For nature’s sake she hoped the river would eventually flow once again as the animals in that river had certainly frozen to death and nature was having a hard time trying to deal with such a source of water being cut off from the natural route which most animals took.
Collei knew a lot of those facts because of her hospital visits.
She heard all kinds of rumors over their Jane Doe that had no information about them for obvious reasons and a lack of any reported history until about a year ago if one could find the library still standing and then finding the information about one of those terrorist groups in America that were a dime a dozen.
So, Collei was to be liberated real soon.
Her day continued it’s attempt at acting like nothing was wrong with the way she hid herself up in her room, doing nothing but reading whatever slop the Know Nothings thought was worth teaching the youth and dealing with the absolute trash approved for their broadcasts.
What was this garbage masquerading as a movie?
It seemed in today’s day and age you couldn’t find anything actually worth watching in the theater, especially when this trash was part of the acceptable line up for the citizens of Indiana. There used to be the potential for that one film from the woman but it was put off for being too weird for even them to understand.
And they were about to be replaced with another kind of moralism… end her now for these movies might just do so as well.
As a child who had no greater worries about the death and destruction that was sure to haunt the roads if she stepped outside her neighborhood the only real thing she had to worry about was these movies.
Instead she is a member of the youth guard, none of them want to raise the question of loyalty, made to be the next generation of revolutionaries in breaking the chains of what used to be American capitalism and its poisons.
Too young to hold a gun, something she has never been more glad for than recently, she is considered useful in the discussion of theory and keeping watch on those ‘subversives’ within her group.
She sees the stares from the imbalance of power, how can a girl younger than them be in charge of handling life and death for them?
The revolution has never needed to justify itself as Collei finds when the eye of the leader fell upon her and kept her as a rising star within her chapter of reorganized states and cultures for the new order.
Everyone around her is trying to avoid her age or use her gaze for their own desires, left alone in the middle of just one of many chapters but with the express gaze of the leader what is a young girl to do?
No one finds her until they check that old district with all those theaters playing whatever schlock the censors had decided was worth the hassle of correcting.
Raised on the dangers of FOREIGN INFLUENCES that seems to come to life with the armband weighing on her mind she comes to find these films with a bit of nostalgia…
Just keep those films rolling...
What remnants of Father’s church remained had come together in the face of the communists running through them in an attempt to start fighting the war against the rest of the country, reduced to nothing but a footnote in history and a roadblock on their campaign of conquest.
Were they supposed to take this lying down? Go down as nothing more than an interesting religion that died in the atheistic hell hole?
Never.
The fucking communists were supposed to be the ones that scared the children at night instead of the ones whose identity caused the women of California to clutch their pearls? Father would've never allowed for them to lose out on the public consciousness like this!
Yet she wasn’t here…
But they had survived through the action of their twin saviors that led the strong to survive their attempts to hunt them down in an effort to squash resistance, it is within that fight that they come to a realization to drive them in the next few months where they will make their legacy on the country.
They had spread too thin just conquering the rest of the country, because say what you will of the satanists, no one was ever willingly going to join them in their conquests meaning they needed a… different recruitment strategy.
A strategy that only produced deluded killers thinking they could ever scare the nation as much as that demon from hell, if only they had found such an anomaly in plain sight…
Not to say the other terrorists weren’t competent fighters but shock and awe had been the order of the day in uniting California and the West Coast all by the hands of that demon, but in the land of men none would be willing to do whatever must be done to win the civil war.
Perhaps before the confrontation they could’ve been the ones to win but now they can destroy everything that woman was working on in the Army’s stupid fucking pieces of paper that was worth dying for.
The siblings had no greater desire than to destroy the communists, turning northern California into a land of salt with nothing to ever provide those worthless cowards that spoke a big game and did nothing in the face of those that were nothing but humans that deserved the death penalty back in 1975
What those two did for them to survive the retreat from combat was why they were even alive to entertain their ride to make one final mark on the history of America aside from the location of a mass grave like they were sure the church would become.
Leaving her subordinates to clean up behind her had been a mistake and with her across the river time was only on their side to plunder the states before they all met their deaths like the commune in ice.
WIth the supply lines being as messed up as they were they just had to keep the pressure on them as they went around making sure order was kept even if they had to keep making examples of those uppity bands that would rather die than live under the new rulers.
Not these dead men and women walking around the state.
From their old ground of San Francisco they had to try and make contact with any old members still in hiding for the ride of their lives as they all knew about the destruction of their old church and the fate that befell them anyways with the way the people were almost throwing themselves at the mercy of the conquerors.
A bunch of fucking sheep if you asked them.
Their followers still exist in plain sight from the enemy, too far away to be raised in time for the battle, but they receive the genuine call from about the only people their father had ever shown anything that could be considered compassion to.
It was probably why they were the most fucked up in the head to consider such a program but it makes a lot of sense for these people that have thrown all delusions of surving the purges.
And going down in legend was an appealing prospect…
It was rather clear that these two had the analytical mind to make the offensive work, just as the retreat had proven their skill in avoiding the casualties that would've doomed the affair in the water, with the dissent and creation of examples the entire thing would be easy to crack.
No one was a bigger follower of crushing the enemy ruthlessly without delay than these two so it was no surprise they would receive the closest thing one could to whatever missing affection made them so… unique.
Riding down the Central Coast to where those Libertarians had established their own supply hub with their ungodly amounts of Koch money which was acting as supply for the terrorists, taking handouts too literally.
Knocking that out of commission would allow for them to have some fun with the hillbillies.
Leaving nothing of value in their wake for the citizens of that province that had been held together by Koch money and a desire to keep the state away had turned into a bunch of the biggest pussies once their leaders had been rounded up and killed.
Not that anyone with any sense would shed any tears over the death of the Koch brothers or the kind of ilk that advocated for their particular brand of madness.
When one took a picture from one of those satellites the intent of their wanton destruction could actually be interpreted immediately instead of the archaic methods of the past but some posh Israelite was surely dotting down what the damage meant.
An image to the big one down below in the image of their father, she would be waiting for them all once the fun came to an end.
And then they would get what they have been lacking since birth.
Gold Country was where the old government used to be run out of after collapsing, god only knows why anyone would willingly live in Sacramento otherwise.
Unfortunately the godless communists already took care of that problem with their own hands leaving them without many options for where to raise hell next except for leaving the actual state for ‘greener pastures’.
Los Angeles is a place no dares to go after the odd moves from the terrorists that gave that province a wide berth like a place that no one should enter if they dared.
So, they'll continue to make a name for themselves in what happens when one is not thorough in pest control, utilizing the ones they forgot about in the war like they were less than nothing.
This ground is theirs to hunt rats in until the end where they will prepare their defenses to make sure no one can ever touch their hallowed ground again especially by that monster that should be euthanized for everyone’s sake.
No one will ever be able to forget what they have done in this day and age as the last organized resistance to their rule.
The dream was dead.
It had long since died the moment she had cut her teeth on her fellow pennamite forced into the war by their collapsing government, after those years it was impossible for her to return to using her hands for something that didn’t involve those faces she had seen during the war.
The victor was irrelevant to her when the rumblings of the east were an ever present threat to the little stability they had managed to get after the ending, she could see it in the malaise at the idea of fighting another war even if it was against communists. Everyone in the state was tired of the fighting but they had heard what happened in that territory…
She goes underground, tired of the meeting of minds on the battlefield to advance the frontlines only a few miles before another doomed band of soldiers is asked to die in order to stop the advance until they can call upon another band of conscripts to to take their place in holding the lines for the grand resources of nothing.
What significance did her campaign add to the overall war effort?
Nothing.
Beyond the nighterrors that haunted her along with her daydreams, what was the point of continuing in this damned world? Each and everyone that ruined what had been her reason to keep on living through their encouragement was ruined by those scenes of war that drove her to the edge of a cliff she couldn’t come back from.
A dark world that one did not escape from.
When they finished their polite romp through Indiana, a place she would forever hate for the Know Nothings continued survival, and after making sure no more people got any funny ideals like that rebellion over in Northern California they continued moving west in what was blatantly becoming the end of the old order.
Even then she had to listen to the government claim order in the face of an existential threat, that they would raise enough armies to deal with the threat before they even got the chance to threaten their state with the amnesty of any former soldiers in the wars because of the threat coming to them.
It was almost nostalgic, as in a mockery of her dreams that showed a unified confederation unlike this world, yet they sit on the edge of their state for the states in front of them to be destroyed. Yet they have to deal with the failures of these states to recognize their national sovereignty means nothing to these terrorists so they should let them in.
But alas, the previous generations of men and women have doomed them all to die a quick death at the very least, when united nothing like this could’ve ever gotten out of hand.
Their biblical flood envelops those Masons in Ohio, too much secret society for her tastes, and the tribal land of the Munsee. Presumably too American for their fickle tastes if the manifestos and declarations from the underlings were to be believed, so it comes down the East to hold the line in a defense they will speak of for centuries.
At least if she had any say in the progress of the war at their footsteps making everyone make peace with their makers, she wondered if she would get to see the people in her dreams when she died sometime soon.
Somehow she knows it would be a betrayal of the highest magnitude if she took the easy way out as the statistics imply along with the government’s desires that they desist for obvious reasons when faced with something that challenges their way of life.
She leaves throws whatever amount of money she has for her project, no way those pieces of paper would come to be official currency anymore after the collapse of decedent American capitalism.
A new currency would be required for a new day.
The bombs fall and she is out in the wilderness, collecting any other of the lost and damned who had the same idea, together they may just put up enough of a fight to make someone think the idea is not worth the struggle to deal with a bunch of wilderness.
What drove these men, women, and families together to the woods was irrelevant as there was something banging over all of their heads. Where would they go and who would lead them to the promised land of the north?
Canada was always too cold for her but desperate times call for desperate measures as there was no closer country than their northern neighbors in accepting refugees fleeing the nature of the new regime to the south.
At the very least all of them could agree on the location upon which to aim for in their escape from the battleground state, the numbers were good for their little war band if they could get past whoever acted as local security for the moment, she would be watching their backs in their position if she was forced to ponder it.
Going west while a good idea on paper functioned on the idea they would take the time to consolidate their forces and the deluge had proven that assumption wrong but while they were fast resistance was still alive and they just had to find the pockets that would work on leaving the country.
She ran through her personal stash as the strong personalities between them all held a council between them all for leadership, democracy was inconsequential to the survival of a bunch of refugees working to make their way to a safe haven.
On the road it was smart to have one central authority.
She should go over there
It is these clear suggestions that she hates the most.
Usually she can barely make out the face, shape, or voice of the one occupying her dreams as part of whatever the doctors diagnosed her with as a child, doctors speak using their fancy words that hides whatever could be explained in a few words.
‘You’re crazy in the eyes of society’ that would be the simple explanation!
There is one thing she can never come to learn no matter how long she has dreamed until today.
No names.
She can never learn them and break through whatever in her mind censors that word and the name of that place she sees, there’s always a break in whatever conversation plays in her head when it comes up.
To see everyone in the clearest vision ever for her… she can take the hint at what to do next on the road.
Just like back then…
“Holy shit.”
He has read about the ways choose to express themselves in war when one finally breaks under the pressure of the horrors amplified by man’s contempt for morality, some part of his mind must be broken when handling the humans around him but that was a consequence of his birth and not lives taken on the trip to the Northern Cascades.
It is that mental instability that has him pushing both Yoimiya and Nilou from seeing their leader in such a compromising position.
Ayaka crying her eyes out? Sure, whatever they want to do in that case is their issue. Ayaka coming from that college with nothing but a desire to get into an argument? He’ll take whatever she has for her brother as his stand in for all that. But that scene before them?
He’ll leave that for the ‘adults’ to deal with as he plays with the ‘children’ in an attempt to keep what little purity they still have without being required to pull the trigger on someone even as they chafe under the need to be protected from the war that has already claimed whatever could be considered ‘normal life’.
It hasn’t even been long and the idea of ever returning to what they used to do seems almost comical? How could they ever pretend to go back to normal and their professions when everyone has disappeared?
“Stop ignoring us!” Between their two beautiful voices he can hear the broken current underneath their shouts.
Ayaka always had this undercurrent of danger when she returned from her brother’s place that was plain to see, none of them would ever push her to the extent that she broke on one of them, waiting to strike precisely to get whatever she needed along with some personal satisfaction at forcing the government to acknowledge their worth.
She was working her way towards getting what she needed without any of their comrades needing to uproot their lives and take up arms, to have that ripped away by a bunch of fucking worthless terrorists looking for nothing more than getting off by the amount of people they murdered in support of their revolution… a paradise lost.
Whatever the story of the grunt’s corpse, whether conscript or volunteer, did not matter to her the moment they had discovered the iconography of their rulers. She had gone to work on that thing in a bloody scene he could appreciate from an objective point of view but as the tiniest bit of cover from their virgin eyes it was the stuff of nightmares.
He supposes the adults must be giving her the talk for the moment.
“What you saw,” They both snap to attention at his command. “Ayaka needed that,” Something like guilt passed between the both of them. “she was real close to getting that law passed.” He hates the way they swallow their own feelings on what they’ve seen because of how he reframes the nightmare facing them in the future.
Watching the scenery for anyone sneaking up on them he goes silent as they converse with one another about the information that warps the idea of who Ayaka was to her friends and family she would go to war for.
In this new reality what use was the kind and patient women that while running on very little sleep made time for all of her members' concerns and dealing with those too dumb to understand they had to work through the white men allowed to vote in the elections instead of something much more dangerous.
Being in the forest had proven her warnings against taking up arms as a rash response against the government. Only if they failed in dealing with the Hindus would it be clear as day that the time was right for them to strike against injustice.
Ayaka comes to them still covered in the blood that she had taken from the corpse, as always he has to make sure she is presentable to the two of them, behind her is her brother’s little posse from that school with them serving as the first warning sign of what was coming for them all.
He studies the cause of her pain, who she looks at with something approaching a smile that was on the verge of turning back into tears. A warzone was usually a good enough reason for reconciliation with someone who needed to have your back.
Although he doubts they would ever not have each others backs if worse came to worse.
They push past their willing roadblock to see their blood covered leader where no words are used between them, coming to an understanding between them that he cannot help but be happy for.
At least they’ll make the trek into the communes better than if he had to keep playing negotiator between the two sides.
Once all the tears in the house have dried up they continue on their path to avoid the patrols and decrease the chances any of them have to do any of that once more.
Oddly enough he finds himself sandwiched between her brother and the rest of his little posse, he remembers why he hates their school even more than the racists as, stranded between that German of Japanese descent and the sisters with delusions of grandeur about returning ‘home’ to a place they had never been raised in.
They make for decent enough conversation now that he’s out of the kids table for the adults table instead.
For now they keep moving for the holy land that awaits them in the Cascades if they can just get through Puget Sound before they come back and cross into that land of untamed nature reclaiming what has been lost in man’s advancement they just might live long enough to actually process what they seen and done as soon as they reach that shining house on the hill.
Ecotopia.
