J Marsh: Apocalypse Rising

It may seem Valeri’s instincts have become honed to the sensitivities of this fight, but it’s not so simple. In fact, his instructions were to take this moment to rise, as part of a wider offensive about to take place here in this city and across the country. We have reached this stage, when not all is as it seems, when our enemies in state have grown overconfident and have come to foresee in their own actions victory where there, in fact, lies only the inevitability of defeat. When the night is upon us, men like Valeri can sleep but can never rest. As night comes, the dark essence chooses this moment to complete its descent into our world, reaching out to the working man in his moment of weakness to inhabit him with the ultimate strength. For when there’s no clear way forward, there can be only one choice for the working man: resist.

In the night, Valeri feels the tightening of his muscles and an electric sensation running the length of his spine at precisely the moment this dark essence has come to him. But still he lives in a world hostile to his way of life and to his quest for liberation, in this moment of weakness the dark essence choosing the most pathetic among us to serve as a vessel with which to grant itself form. There’s more gunfire, rattling off through the night as troopers stage attacks on holed-up workers who’ve taken over factories, warehouses, yards, and apartment blocks across the country, some attacks failing to dislodge the workers, others succeeding with deaths on both sides. But, this is by design. As the working man rises to no clear end, around the city and across the country the rebel lies in wait, about to spring his own trap. Taking stock of their situation, Valeri meets with Roger and Tonya on the roof, Roger there to say, “I’ll be damned if we lived through that,” Tonya nodding before saying, “but what’s next?” Valeri’s first thought is to admit he doesn’t know, but he pushes doubt from his mind and says, “we wait for help. If they attack again, then we’ll fight them again. So long as we fight for our homes and our families, we can never lose.” This may not have been where any of us thought it’d take us, but it’s where we were, all along, destined to be.

As the last of the rebel’s known strongholds in the area are ferreted out and destroyed by the reactionary’s troopers, all seems lost for the way of the future. Continuing his speech to the world, the wealthy man lays out his case for reconciliation with the working man, promising change even as all who listen know it a false promise. Even the wealthy man knows it a false promise. Still he is compelled to promise change, just as an apple falling from the tree is compelled to drop to the ground by the immutable laws of nature, the wealthy man rendered impotent in his own words, the rebel lying in wait, licking his lips as the appointed time draws nearer by the second.

As if he knows what’s to come, the wealthy man finds himself roused by an ever-mounting passion, screaming himself hoarse, his lies burying upon lies, he becoming an absurd caricature of himself. Meanwhile, the residents of Dominion Courts look to Valeri for their next move. Valeri, Tonya, and Roger agree to tell the others to keep watch and send runners out for supplies, but until the rebel reaches into the city to relieve them, they must posture themselves as though the next attack could come at any moment. Valeri doesn’t know what to expect but he puts on a brave face for the others, only letting it down when alone on the roof standing watch for the next attack never to come. The dark essence from above lives in Valeri, now, as it lives in men like him around the world who’ve irrevocably pledged themselves to the task of their own liberation.

Already teetering on the edge of collapse, the way of things needs only the gentlest nudge to send it plunging into the abyss. Naturally, the rebel intends not to give the slightest nudge but the hammer blow. Tonight, as the wealthy man declares to the world that the revolution was well and truly finished, his ally, the reactionary, knows better. As the wealthy man finishes his speech to the world, already the first shots mark this new and dramatic escalation of the revolutionary war, bullets tearing through the wealthy man’s lies as though they’re tissue paper, shredding the last, best hope the way of things have and clearing the way forward to a new beginning.

At dawn’s first light, it begins. Gunfire rattles through the air and columns of smoke rise into the sky. As the first confused reports filter onto screens across the country and around the world, it seems, to some, this is but another of the episodic outbursts we’ve all grown used to, but these first confused reports are wrong. As the day wears on, the attacks only intensify, the number of the rebel’s gunmen in the streets only multiplies. They strike at police stations, at public halls, at government offices and at docks and airports, all at once. By the time the day’s out, most of the rebel’s gunmen have been killed, taken prisoner, or beaten back, but that matters little to the rebel himself, as he watches on the screens breathless new reports of the carnage and the chaos the sly grin on his face only growing wider with each passing moment on this decisive day. Still on the ground, Valeri greets the arrival of the rebel’s offensive by flying the red flag from one corner of the roof using a hockey stick as a makeshift pole. With the rest of the residents in the building, they’re tired and they’re hungry but the promise of liberation keeps them all going strong.

Meanwhile, on board the cruiser Borealis , Dmitri and the others have been released from their quarters, allowed to return to duty on account of the severe shortage of manpower crippling the navy. But still they can’t put to sea on account of yet-unrepaired battle damage. “Our moment is at hand,” says Dmitri to the crewmen with him in the ship’s forward compartment, “and we must not miss it.” Having established contacts with the rebels in the popular front, Dmitri and the others on board must now seize the moment. Breaking free, they reach the cruiser’s armoury and arm themselves with rifles, then leave a pair of their own to guard the armoury while Dmitri leads the rest to the bridge. On arrival, they find Captain Abramovich and the other officers gathered, unarmed. It seems they were expecting exactly this when ordered to release the crew from confinement. “Do what you’ve come here to do,” says the Captain, looking Dmitri right in the eye. “I haven’t come to kill you,” Dmitri says. “Oh?” the Captain asks. “No,” Dmitri says, “I’ve only come to see to it that the crew of this cruiser are fighting for our own people for once.” He orders the Captain and the other officers taken into custody, and soon the whole lot of them are being led at gunpoint down to the ship’s brig. But on the way past, the Captain shoots Dmitri a mean look, filled with venom and bile, the glare of a man impotent with rage.

As this day dawns, Valeri hears the rattling of gunfire, the residents manning their apartments defences as though they could fight off a determined attack. Without ammunition for their few guns, they couldn’t withstand another attack, were the police not consumed in the rebel’s offensive. Valeri’s acutely aware the police could come again at any time, and if they should try the residents of Dominion Courts would make for easy prey. But still it escapes him the ease with which they fought off the first attack was owing to the working man’s own determination to survive, not anything conscious in their planning. The working man knows, fully knows that his is a struggle not only against the truncheon of the trooper’s physical oppression, but as well against the vast continuum of ideas meted out upon him, ideas posed as natural, healthy, yet which are designed by their very nature to instil in him a division against himself. Struggling, always struggling, the working man pledges to ignore the growling of his stomach and the fatigue behind his eyes, so sure he is of the honesty and the nobility of his cause that he’s willing to put himself through an untold suffering to see it through. As the day drags on and the rebel’s attacks don’t peter out but escalate, the air fills with the endless chattering of gunfire and the thumping of exploding bombs blending into a terrible cacophony of hell building until there’s nothing but death sounding out.