There were three of us this morning.
I’m the only one this evening.
The easy choice was utter and complete surrender. Giving up our way of life in exchange for living. Yet what is life when surviving means adapting to a reality that no longer felt like your own? Could it even be called living, knowing you traded your integrity for a few extra days? A few extra days under coerced existence, where your entire society is replaced by something unrecognizable. This I could not do.
On the day they came across the boarder, I made this choice. I packed up, I left, vanishing over the horizon. I told my family to accept them, to follow their orders. I’ll return, and free them, free us, free everyone from our new masters. Our way of life will return, and I will fight for it.
I have changed my name. At this stage, I don’t even remember what my name was before they came. Every encounter I am a new man. After every fight, I am someone different. The wounds I have sustained fighting tell of a past I can’t remember. All I know now is fighting and death. Death of those I called friends, death of those who came for us, death of those who helped us.
A few years ago, I got word that I had lost my wife and children. I had made a mistake, been connected me to them somehow. And forced my family to pay for my crimes. With nothing left to lose, I became even more bold. Bold, or stupid. I can’t tell anymore.
We started off seeking shelter with those who would harbor us. Now, I keep to myself. It’s better this way. An old woman took pity on us, knowing us only as a band of traveling refugees. She took us in, fed us, and sheltered us. Our mistake was thinking we could rest for a few days, instead of leaving the next morning. Two nights in, sheltering us in her basement, they came for her. We heard the commotion, the shouted accusations. She stood, silent. Not accepting nor denying anything that she was accused of. I was sure she knew we were part of the resistance. Why else would she hide us so well? The basement was not on any plans. Its door, small – claustrophobic, and disguised as well as I have ever seen. The space itself setup for some sort of doomsday. She said she lost her husband, but didn’t go into details. By the looks of it, he was with us. She said he built this basement when they first arrived.
We heard it all – the voices of the soldiers, starting off so calm, telling her to give us up. Growing louder, more frustrated. We heard the whip being cracked, again and again, yet she remained quiet. She knew her time had come. The soldiers, getting nothing from her, must have given up, for a single shot was heard, then the stomping of boots going up and down the house above our heads. The sound amplified in the dark. We waited, not daring to breathe on the chance that we be discovered. They left the house, never finding the trap door. We waited until nightfall the following night to make our escape. Coming up from the basement, the site of a upturned house greeted us. There in the center – what remained of her. Broken, bruised, and bloody, the soldiers hadn’t even bothered to clean up their mess. Leaving her as a warning to those who harbored criminals. We left the house, set it ablaze. Easier than burying her. It helped to cover our tracks too. The locals will think the soldiers did it. The soldiers will think the locals did. It provided the perfect cover for our escape.
I never got the chance to thank her for what she did. I wish I could have given her my real name, explained our cause, given her a reason for her sacrifice. But I knew she was aware of who and what we were. We all signed our death certificate the moment we weren’t obedient dogs, rolling over to be conquered. Hers had just come earlier.
Still, on we go. We lost some in a skirmish a few days back, those too wounded to go on were given a swift out. We can’t afford the bullets, but we can’t afford to be discovered more. So each man accepts that one day he will get to the point where a brother gives him the quickest, and cleanest out of this fight.
It’s been a few years, how many, I cannot say. I can no longer tell if we’re making headway, if anything we do is making it better or worse. We’re constantly moving, grouping, fighting where we get the chance, retreating where we can’t, and dispersing into the wind. We seen once major cities in ruins. We’ve seen towns on the frontier boom under their leadership, locals openly hostile towards our cause. Never would I have thought humanity turn on one another so quickly to appease our new masters.
Do we keep fighting? Do we continue this tirade? The rest of the world looks, on the surface at least, to have moved on, to have accepted them. Even embraced everything they bought from beyond the stars – good and bad. All it took in return was giving up everything we have ever known. Trading our free will for our survival. Survival as their slaves. After all, they say that is all mankind is good for.
This story was inspired by Mick Gordon’s cover of The Partisan.
It has a great western feel to it, even though it’s originally a French resistance song. Some lines are lifted directly from the song as I think they’ve got their own sense of beauty, and I didn’t want to take that away.