J Marsh: Apocalypse Rising

But Valeri is never alone. “At last, at last, we have our vengeance!” shouts a voice, squawking over the radio. “At last, at last, we fulfill our destiny!” the voice shouts. That night, the world burns brighter and hotter than ever before. Reaching out, Valeri finds himself marching along a path, a narrow, winding path, his brothers and sisters at his side, the voices of the thousands carrying as they all stride into their future, together. But then, we all have our roles to play, and play them we must even as the futility of our efforts becomes clear to all but the most deluded among us. The wealthy man, once so much wealthier than he is now, must continue to muster all his remaining strength against the forces arrayed against him, forces which, once so arrayed, are become all but unstoppable. It’s a small thing, a simple truth, meaning so little when held up against the vast continuum of our shared history, our history which once seemed so impersonal but which now seems to know us so well it’s frightening. But we’re not afraid. We can’t be. Fear has come to be an excess, an indulgence we can no longer afford. Along the way through to our common future, we must discard our fear and embrace the horror of all that’s come to pass; it’s only in rejecting our own narrow, personal self-interest that we can come to earn the future we’ve so long deserved.

After the night has passed and the new day has dawned, Valeri takes stock of what’s left. Among the remaining residents in the buildings under his stewardship, there’s enough canned food to keep them all alive for a few days, perhaps a week or so, if rationed carefully. The electricity’s still off. The water still runs, more or less, but the foul smell means no one will drink it; Valeri orders coffee filters used, assuring the others they’ll make the water drinkable. They’re out of coffee, anyways. Until the provisional government can restore service, they know they’ll have to survive with what they have. But when Valeri meets with Roger and Tonya in the lobby, theirs is a conversation short and to the point. “We can’t survive much longer,” Roger says. “And the others are going to figure it out pretty quickly,” Tonya says. “That doesn’t matter,” Valeri says, first looking Roger, then Tonya in the eyes with a steely glare of determination, “we tell the others whatever they need to hear. So long as they continue to believe there’s hope, there is.” Tonya and Roger nod. For now, it’s all they can do. This is not what Valeri would’ve wanted, but if it’s the way to the future then he pledges to embrace it with open arms, no matter the hardships it’ll bring. And so we look to the future no longer with fear but with a mounting anticipation. Even among the still falling-apart ruins of the old way, there’s hope.

Novel among our heroes is the determination not to be deified by the passage of so much time, the rebel and the working man alike knowing theirs is struggle born out of greatness and is not yet won. As the government teeters on the brink of its inevitable collapse, its apparatchiks offer the working man and his natural allies the student and the parishioner a concession; they offer to outlaw foreigners from owning homes and promising a basket of measures to prevent wealthy foreigners from absconding with their ill-gotten capital beyond the country’s borders once the war has ended. But it’s too late for reconciliation. At the church repurposed as an ad-hoc headquarters, Valeri receives this news on his screen but then promptly discards it. The fires of liberation, once lit, can’t be extinguished by half-measures. But as this provisional government forms, the working man fulminates, Valeri already pledging himself that this is not the end of his struggle.

In the night, it’s always in the night, the Popular Front’s attacks subside, his guerrillas remaining in place dotted around the city. They occupy parcels of land, in places no bigger than a street corner, in other places whole neighbourhoods under their control. They’ve seized spots of territory, here and there, and in anticipation of the enemy’s counterattack they dig in, turning apartment blocks into ramparts, storefronts into bunkers, roofs into lookouts. The rebels have given Valeri and the other residents of Dominion Courts a few rifles, some ammunition, but no food or water; there’s none to be given. As Valeri watches through binoculars from the rooftops, looking out for any sign of troopers, he looks upon a street with two armoured cars parked blocking the road, the troopers using them as makeshift fortifications. “They’re sealing us in,” he says, “they’re going to starve us out.” As if to accentuate this moment of realization, his stomach growls. He takes a drink of water from his bottle, forcing it down despite the bitter taste. (There’s a ruptured pipe somewhere, but he doesn’t know that.) Overhead, an air force bomber flies low enough to make its point but still high enough to pass cleanly over the tallest buildings. At this critical moment, all seems to teeter on the edge of collapse, with hunger in the streets and with the bodies of the dead still lying wherever they’d fallen. Still the sound of gunfire rattles out through the night, leaving Valeri, Tonya, Roger, and the other remaining residents of Dominion Courts to look ahead to an uncertain future, one governed not by the whims of the wealthy man’s greed but by forces of nature unleashed in this, the beginning of our history’s end. No more are they slaves in their own homes; now comes the hard part, the part where they must overcome the divisions within. But in an office overlooking the floor of a still-operating warehouse across the city, there takes place on this very day a meeting taking place between a very wealthy businessman and a mid-level officer in the army, a meeting that’ll have grave repercussions for us all.

Looking out over the floor, the owner of the warehouse stands at a panel of windows and watches the day’s work. Every day fewer workers show up, what’s left the skeleton crew needed to keep operations running. The owner, a man named Nathan Williams, has chosen this day to meet with Douglas Schlager, a colonel in the army recently returned from the front after being wounded. As Williams sips on a glass of single-malt scotch, Schlager stands aside. “You should indulge in the finer things in life,” Williams says, “war can be a rather thirsty endeavour, I find.” He offers Schlager a drink. “No thank you,” Schlager says. “So be it,” Williams says, then turns back to the floor, then says, “how many brigades can you call on to support us?”

“Six,” Schlager says. “Only six?” Williams asks. “The rest will follow once we eliminate High Command,” Schlager says. “I suppose that’ll have to do,” Williams says, before turning back to look out over the warehouse’s floor. He doesn’t sip on his drink, but tilts the glass around a little to hear the clinking of the ice cubes. At this particular warehouse, only one of many Williams owns, the product shipped is ammunition, bullets for small arms used by the army. Factories elsewhere produce the ammunition, then ship it here where it’s sorted and forwarded to the army’s own supply chain. War can be profitable business, but with so few workers still reporting for work it’s becoming harder and harder every day for men like Williams to fill their quotas and make good on their deliveries. But this is by design. As the workers from one shift make way for those of the next, the warehouse floor quiets, leaving Williams and Schlager to stand in a momentarily awkward silence, this budding alliance between wealth and power now almost ready to coalesce around these men. These men have a knowledge that comes from an open secret; though Britain is consumed by war, at home and on the continent, they see the neutral Chinese, on the other side of the world, as the real enemy. They’re at least half right.