by SOW
Jacob’s grandfather had just been used, and he clearly wasn’t a member of a terrorist group. There was someone who knew the old man’s feelings; someone who had lived in town for long enough to take advantage of him without raising suspicion—an actual spy must be here in town.
Chapter 4: Monster
Meanwhile, Lud had left to search for Sven, and thinking she had probably barged into the church in her rage, he headed there first. Sven got carried away when she was angry, so it was likely she was causing trouble for Marlene. The thought of Sven rampaging through the church made Lud’s face pale.
He rushed to his truck and turned the key, but the engine responded with a faint, rumbling sound and wouldn’t start. With one final pop, it went silent.
Why at a time like this? Lud wanted to hurl abuse at the truck. Instead he got out and began to run. Lud took a back road that wasn’t in use. It was pitch black outside, but compared to the night marches back in the military, this was easy. The ten-minute drive up the beaten road took about thirty minutes on foot.
Then he stopped. A familiar feeling ran down Lud’s spine. He sensed the presence of someone, and felt a mixture of fear and hostility. The intuition he had forged in the military informed him of this presence, even after two years of civilian life. He crouched down to keep out of sight and used all his senses.
There was someone there! Some men... carrying weapons. There were three... no, five of them. They weren’t moving away but they were fidgeting as if they couldn’t settle down.
Looks like guard duty... What are they guarding?
He envisioned a map of the neighborhood and concluded it could only be Marlene’s church.
Why are they surrounding the church?
Lud suspected that these men were not soldiers but knew how to fight. They were possibly armed punks but definitely just amateurs without formal military training. Or thieves? No, Lud didn’t think so. Those types were more cunning. They would know that the church had nothing worth stealing.
But Lud felt uneasy. It was precisely because of this precognitive ability to sense what was ahead of him that allowed Lud to survive as he had up to this point.
Without making a sound, almost without disturbing the air itself, Lud cautiously advanced, reaching the church. There was no one around, but Lud took precautions and waited until the moon disappeared behind the clouds before he climbed through the window and inside the church.
“..................”
The chapel looked the same as always. It was completely dark, but otherwise nothing was out of the ordinary. Lud crept silently across the floor like a cat. There were no signs of a struggle.
“What’s this... tea?”
On one of the pews sat a mug of unfinished tea that had long gone cold. Lud tried to silently pick up the mug, but it tipped and the tea poured onto the floor, leaving a pool of brown liquid.
Lud decided to find Marlene and tell her about the men outside the church. But he also needed to apologize to her for sneaking in and dirtying her floor. Just then, the moon peeked out between a break in the clouds, and bathed the chapel in a pale blue light. Lud felt as if he was at the bottom of a deep ocean, and unthinkingly looked down at the spilt tea.
“?!”
The tea was flowing towards the altar.
Given how old and decrepit the church was, it was no surprise that the floor was warped and uneven. What was strange was that as the tea reached the altar, it disappeared, as if sucked in. Lud tried quietly pressing the area between the altar and the floor with his finger, when he noticed there was a slight crack.
Lud didn’t want to think about it. Just thinking about it was awful. But Lud had spent most of his teenage years as a soldier, so his thoughts could only work out one answer to what this meant.
Lud tried to push the altar with his shoulder. The altar moved and underneath was a space just big enough to fit a single coffin. But, inside was a stockpile of firearms.
“This is... an AK21 assault rifle! Why are these here?”
The AK21 was the rifle of choice for the infantry of the August Federation, but this model was from the weapon’s previous generation. It was out-of-date but you could still kill someone with it.
Lud had blurted out the question, but there was only one possible answer. Since ancient times, churches and other religious buildings were well-suited as hiding places. It was something Lud had seen often during the war. This church must be some sort of base for an irregular military.
“Mr. Lud?”
A voice called and when he turned around, he saw Marlene.
It had been two years since Lud had left the military but he still had the instincts of a soldier. During that time, he fervently tried to forget his past and live his life as a baker. However, in an abnormal situation, the old, ingrained habits in his body would pull him back to his time as a soldier.
But the demands of his body were suppressed by his thoughts, which aligned more with his wishes.
This is wrong. She isn’t an enemy.
Even though there was no way this could be the case. Lud completely let down his guard and started to say, “Good evening,” to Marlene.
Marlene shot a bullet from her handgun into Lud’s laughably defenseless stomach. It was pathetic. A comedic tragedy.
When Lud regained consciousness, he was sitting on a chair in the dark. He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened. All he knew was that he was in a dark room, tied to a splinter-covered, old chair, and that he had been shot in his side.
“Umph... U-Ugh...”
Blood oozed from the wound. The bleeding wasn’t severe, but he couldn’t ignore it.
With a click, the lock turned and the door opened. Light entered the room for a moment before the door closed and it was dark again. Someone walked past Lud and lit the lamp behind him.
“Hehehe... What a pitiful looking creature you are now, Mister Silver Wolf.”
He recognized the voice and the laugh. Standing there was Marlene.
“I thought you would be more surprised.”
Marlene looked a little bit disappointed.
Another man in Lud’s situation might lash out, saying that he was betrayed or tricked, or he might try to appeal to Marlene’s heart by saying how much he had trusted her, but Lud had been raised on the battlefield.
“I just don’t show it on my face.”
A soldier always prepares for the worst-case scenario and knows that anything can happen. Lud was made up of forty percent pessimism and sixty percent pragmatism. He kept his optimism as a secret ingredient.
“So I guess this makes you a member of that Pelfish militant group?”
Lud’s tone didn’t reveal any despair or fear; he spoke as if he was pointing out that Marlene enjoyed football when she was a student.
“We’re the Pelfe Liberation League.”
Marlene’s voice was cold, and something hard pressed against the back of Lud’s neck. Lud knew it was the barrel of a gun.
“For how long?”
“From the beginning. A lovely sister, bravely taking care of a group of poor, wretched children... It’s effective, is it not?”
“Then the children... just a cover? No... just props?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Why else would I look after the brat of some traitorous Wiltian supporter?”
A traitor’s brat. The daughter of the Wiltia-supporting militiaman. Milly.
“I see.”
There wasn’t any particular emotion in Lud’s voice.
He wasn’t trying to act cool. He was disinterested. He sounded as though he just wanted to confirm the facts.
“Do you have any idea what Wiltia’s colonization policy has done?”
Marlene seemed impatient when Lud didn’t give the reaction she hoped for, and began answering questions Lud hadn’t asked.
“Last I heard, it was annexed, not colonized,” Lud said, as though he was simply correcting her misinformation.
The two words meant someth
ing completely different under international law.
“Hmph! So that makes Wiltia our benevolent ruler, is that it?”
This time Lud’s answer appeared to be the one Marlene wanted.
Marlene continued as if she was trying to convince the arrogant Wiltian of the crimes he had committed.
“We lost our pride...”
Wiltia had employed many Pelfish people in the top levels of Pelfe’s ruling government to avoid rebellion among the subjects. They did this because they did not want to turn the population into guerrilla fighters, but that plan backfired.
Soon the Pelfish people thought that if they wagged their tails and catered to Wiltia, they would be rewarded. Bribery became rampant and some people even offered up their wives and daughters. Wiltia strictly forbid this and sent out proclamation after proclamation. Those who accepted these bribes were severely punished, but the practice continued in secret, where prying eyes couldn’t see.
Of course, not all the people of Pelfe did this. However, even if only one person out of a thousand participated, when you took Pelfe’s population of three million into account, it was more than enough to make Pelfe look like Wiltia’s shameless lapdogs. As a result, enmity built up between the Wiltians who already disliked the Pelfish, and the Pelfish people who considered Wiltians to be unjust conquerors. This was why the townspeople ostracized Lud, and what gave birth to terrorist groups like Marlene’s.
In the end, the only way for a people to truly live in freedom was for them to have their own self-reliant country.
“All you did was lengthen the chain on our collar and tell us you were giving us freedom!”
“That might be true, but it’s dangerous to get close to August.”
“They actually listened to what we had to say.”
Marlene came around in front of Lud, and showed him the gun that had been pressing into the back of his neck.
“Do you know what this is? It’s called a ‘liberator.’ It’s funny, isn’t it? Even though it looks like this, it’s still a gun.”
Composed of iron pipe, wire and plating, it was far too crude to be called an actual gun. It looked like something an intelligent child could construct. It was nothing more than a bullet ignition device.
“We made contact with an alliance of countries that stand against Wiltia. We said that if they gave us weapons, we would kill Wiltians. They responded by giving us this crap! You people from the bigger countries always treat us like this!”
High performance weaponry increases a soldier’s survival rate. To every country that values the lives of its military, providing first-rate weaponry is the highest priority. But weapons like the gun Marlene held said exactly how much they valued the guerillas.
“I’m sure that August listened to what you had to say, but they aren’t ones to keep their promises...”
Lud knew how that country operated.
“What do you know? They gave us a plenty of weapons, and trained us in how to use them!”
“...That’s not what I’m talking about.”
If there were an armed uprising, the August Federation would use that as an excuse for military intervention. If by some chance they achieved independence, the new administration would simply be a puppet of the Federation.
If another independence movement emerged, a merciless and relentless purge of the dissident elements awaited them. In the name of ‘thought control,’ they already had a track record of killing their own citizens in the millions.
Marlene and her group didn’t understand what they were doing. No, Lud thought. They knew. They just didn’t have any choice. They were trying to endure beneath all the misery and misfortune, and hurled their anger at the colossal thing known as the nation-state. By playing God, they were escaping their hopeless reality. Lud knew that anything he said would be a waste of breath.
“Marlene, do you mind if I reminisce a little?”
“What? Are you planning to repent? You know I’m not a real sister, don’t you? I can’t pass anything you say on to God.”
“I know.”
Lud had no intention of being forgiven. Marlene was pointing her gun at him, but she stuck out her chin, as if telling him to say whatever he had to say.
“I’m the third type of soldier.”
“Third type? What’s that?”
The first were voluntary recruits and the second were drafted.
“Whether they’re war orphans or something else, the third type are the neglected children taken and raised to be soldiers.”
Lud’s family was reasonably wealthy but they tried living on money they didn’t have and ended up bankrupt. His father chose to take his own life, and his mother soon followed. Lud was the only survivor.
“Oh... well it’s not that uncommon, right? I don’t have parents either. That doesn’t—”
“Yeah, it’s something that happened all the time back then.”
Lud sounded indifferent. His face had even less expression than usual.
“But, well... The food I ate, the bed I slept in, the sheets that covered me, the roof that kept out the rain and the walls that protected me from the wind—it all went to pay their debts, and I had to find another way to survive.”
Even as a child, he was given extensive, rigorous instruction. He endured such brutal training that only one out of a hundred could make it through. By the time he was thirteen, he could kill several adults with his bare hands. He was sent to do the dirty jobs, the missions that had little chance of success.
“One mission... Ever heard of the city called Lapchuricka?”
Lapchuricka wasn’t on any map. Wiltia had used Lud to wipe the city from the face of the earth.
—It was before Lud became a Hunter Unit pilot. The city of Lapchuricka was in a section of the Kingdom of Haugen, which directly bordered Wiltia. The town had an anti-Wiltian resistance organization. The residents and the Haugen government thought they would show their patriotism and spirit by disrupting Wiltia’s military operations.
In order to solve the problem, Lieutenant General Genitz at the western front headquarters came up with a strategy that even his own troops were against. His plan called for complete and utter annihilation using large railway artillery, newly-developed incendiary artillery shells, and biological weapons.
The city was completely destroyed and the entire population eradicated, along with the resistance. Hundreds upon thousands upon tens of thousands of people. Everyone in Lapchuricka was killed and everything was destroyed. Men, women, children, the elderly, the sick, priests, pregnant women, mothers, teachers, book stores, fruit vendors, fishmongers, general stores, and bakeries...
As a member of the Special Forces, Lud snuck into Lapchuricka to investigate the resistance in preparation for the attack. Lud was a soldier, but he still looked like a young boy. He lied about his identity, and got a job as an assistant at a bakery called Tockerbrot. It was a small bakery, owned by an old man and managed by his granddaughter. While he was there, Lud was taught to bake bread.
“You’re a quick learner, Lud, you’ve got talent. Especially this rye bread, it’s super tasty. It might even be better than Grandpa’s.”
“If he can make my own specialty better than I can,” the grandfather laughed, “there’s really nothing more I can do, is there? How about it Lud? You want to take her for your wife and inherit the store?”
His infiltration was flawless, and the two of them treated Lud well, never suspecting he was a spy. Lud gave them his artificial smile. He didn’t feel guilty at all.
These two are fools. They know nothing about who I really am.
On the day of the military operation, Lud ran to the bakery at the edge of the strike zone. It was already gone. The first round of railway artillery had destroyed the entire area.
“Wha... Ah... Aaaaaahhhh!”
Lud screamed. He was in tears. He vomited up his insides and tore at his body. In his head he had known that it was all a lie. But in his heart, he had thought of
them as his family. Even as he deceived them, his affection for them had grown. He had finally found a warm place of belonging and he destroyed it. It was small, and it hadn’t enjoyed great success, but the simple, honest Tockerbrot Bakery that he had helped keep afloat was now gone.
“What do you expect me to do, hearing a story like that?”
Marlene looked uncomfortable and appeared at a loss for words.
“Nothing, it’s just...”
He wanted her to understand that Organbaelz was in danger of repeating the same mistakes as Lapchuricka. The nation-state was a giant monster that could wipe out an entire town as if that was its only course of action. If Organbaelz lit the spark that ignited another war, then either the Federation or Wiltia would wipe it off the face of the earth too, along with everyone who lived there.
“It’s just... I’m the monster who did those things. That’s why... I want you to kill me.”
Lud meant it. He believed he was evil and shouldn’t be forgiven for what he had done. He didn’t want the deeds of his past to be forgotten or forgiven.
“Just as I said, I’m a monster in human flesh. So, let’s put an end to it here.”
“Are you offering to be the scapegoat so I won’t harm any other Wiltians? Hah! Such admirable patriotism,” Marlene sneered.
“I’m not as patriotic as you are, that’s for sure... Although, I don’t hate my country either.”
He needed the strength of his homeland in order to survive. That was all. He didn’t love it enough to sacrifice his life for it.
“That’s why... When you finish this, go back to being a sister. For the children’s sake.”
Lud’s words touched a part of Marlene’s heart that she didn’t want him near.
“Don’t judge me, you Wiltian scum!”
Marlene struck Lud’s face with the grip of her gun, and Lud took the hit without moving.
“Do you think if you put it like that, I won’t kill you?”
“How many rounds are in that gun? First, shoot me in both legs; the thighs are best, the bullet will entwine with the muscle and double the pain. Also, shoot me as if you are whittling down my body. The pain is sharper near the edges.”
