Apocalypse Rising

by J. T. Marsh

  Valeri’s heard the reports, seen the footage on his screen of the disorder gripping cities in other countries around the world, though none of the other powers are experiencing the open revolt here at home. What neither he nor any of the others in revolt know is this war was inevitable. It’s what major powers do to resolve internal crises and tensions brought about by decades, even centuries of corruption and exploitation. The announcement that war’s begun succeeds in calming the crisis gripping the streets, for a little while at least. But the corruption that’s been eating away at the innards of our way of life has left us weak and vulnerable, like the emaciated gazelle being stalked by ravenous lions. It’s enough for wealthy men to realize the futility of their struggle, and plan to take action anew. While they scheme, the world’s working men are made to march into the slaughter for reasons no one can understand even if there are those among the wealthy elite and their co-conspirators in government think they can.

  As the nation’s armies gather and make off for war, the screens of the world watch with a curiosity unlike that of a nation facing a life-and-death struggle. The popular front is vociferous in its opposition, its apparatchiks like Miguel Figueroa and Rose Powell denouncing the mass slaughter of working men by the hand of other working men. But in these uncertain times, the outbreak of world war strikes a mood none can read in the working class apartment blocks and the shantytowns rolling along the hills. Young men are marched three abreast in a long line along the streets, many still wearing civilian clothes, while women, children, and the elderly crowd the sidewalks. No one quite knows what to make of it. In his secret headquarters Elijah considers the timing of it all, and issues orders to the swelling ranks of the popular front to cease their attacks. “Cast off the crutch,” he says, “and the body shall learn to walk anew.”

  But it all comes down to the struggle of ordinary working men like Valeri and the other residents of Dominion Courts. With their limited armaments, they can’t hope to survive a resistance against a police raid they’re sure will come. In the lobby, Valeri stands with Tonya and Roger, the three of them having taken it on themselves to see all the residents through. “I won’t join the army,” Valeri says. “Nor will I,” says Tonya. “Nor I,” says Roger. “And if they come around to conscript us,” Valeri says, “we’ll fight. We were ready to fight them in spirit if not in form anyways, should they have come around to evict us. Now we’ll make a stand against them all the same.” It’s quickly agreed. But these are times more complicated than even they realize. While the rebel Elijah gathers his strength for his next move, men like Valeri plan for their own survival against odds growing longer by the hour.

  “We are dangerously low on food,” says Roger, “water could cut out at any time.” And it’s true; whenever a local store receives a rare delivery of foodstuffs, it’s quickly dispensed to the crowded and starving people who make it there first clutching bundles of cash. “Don’t fear starvation,” says Tonya, “there’s plenty of food stored in warehouses in the industrial quarter. If we need to, we can raid them and take what we need.” It’s not been all that long since Valeri had worked in one of those industrial estates, and still he has friends in those places who’ve kept their employment even through these difficult times. For a time, he thinks to place a call and arrange for a secret exchange, but then realizes these very warehouses may already be under siege by desperate workers seeking very much the same thing as he. “We’ll live,” he says, “and we’ll thrive. It’s only a matter of pushing through this difficult period and learning ascetic virtues.”

  They turn to other matters. Some residents in the building have already left, taking little but the clothes they had on with them. For the rest, this means their suites can be raided for supplies. “We’ve got enough arms to make a go of it now,” Tonya says. Valeri shakes his head and says, “no, we haven’t seen the sign yet.” Roger asks, “who will send this sign to us?” “No one,” Valeri says, “we’re supposed to know it when we see it. It’ll be unmistakable, I’m told.” Tonya lights a cigarette, taking a drag off it before handing it to Roger. “That’s all well and good,” she says, “but what do we do if the police force our hand?” Roger takes a drag, then offers the cigarette to Valeri, but Valeri shakes his head and says, “then we’ll fight.” The three nod their grim assent.

  After all that’s happened, it seems to Valeri that their deliverance is at hand, with it to come his personal vengeance against the apparatus that killed his parents fifteen years ago. In the midst of this, he realizes his roommate Hannah has come home, at last, the hospital having all but shut down owing to a shortage of critical supplies and equipment. “I’m not coming back for long,” she says to Valeri, “I’ve just come back to gather some things, get a night of sleep, and then say goodbye to you in the morning.” “Where are you going?” Valeri asks. “I’m not sure,” says Hannah, “but I’ve got to go somewhere. There’s too much fighting, too much death. It’s become unbearable. I can’t eat, even if there was anything left to eat. I’ll die here, and I don’t want to die here.” She looks away. As she looks away, there’s the distant rattling of gunfire to punctuate the moment, forcing her look back towards Valeri who meets her eye for eye. This is an uncertain moment, one in which the war abroad could seem to shatter families and break apart the flimsy bonds that’ve held together our lives for so long. But it’s a fraud. As Valeri is starting to realize, these are bonds that’ve never been even as they were, fictional creations even as their grip on our lives have always been real. In Hannah, he sees his equal, his opposite, the perfect complement to his burning rage, unlike him in every way and therefore exactly the right person to stand aside him as he takes these decisive next steps into the rest of his life.

  But Valeri takes her hand in his. “I can’t predict the future,” he says, “but I can tell you I won’t let go of anything. When the police come around here next time there’s no guarantee of what will happen. I’m glad you’re leaving, you need to get yourself out of harm’s way.” Even as he says it, Valeri doesn’t believe it, chiding himself inwardly for encouraging such selfishness in even as his good friend and roommate. Though he wishes there was something he could say to keep her in his life, he knows the fight has frightened her too much for her to stay at his side. Theirs are concerns of a new manner, the hardening of the steel in their nerves contrasting sharply against the gnawing of their guilt against their innards. It’s a terrible, terrible time to be alive, aligned with the forces of evil who strike back against the forces of good. In the end, announces her leave, in the coming weeks to move to be with an old family friend in the Canadian city of Winnipeg. Though Valeri doesn’t know when, or if, they’ll see each other again, he looks on her fleeing the war zone of the streets for the safety of the Scottish highlands as but the end of one chapter in their lives, not the end of their own story. They’ll see each other again. Even if she dies, or he dies, they’ll see each other again in the next world. Their salvation is had not by deeds but by faith.

  No matter, he decides, as he turns to Roger and says, “we’ll go without her.” Roger nods. “Gather whatever weapons you can find,” Valeri says, “and when Tonya comes back, we’ll have enough to make a stand.” “And if she doesn’t come back?” Roger asks. “Then we’ll fight with what we have,” Valeri says. Roger nods. “We should secure the doors and finish boarding up the windows now,” Valeri says. “Agreed,” Roger says, and turns to head down the hall and see to it. But as Valeri himself turns back to his work, there’s the sound of a thunderous explosion and the sudden rattling and rumbling of the floor, the walls, the ceiling. It’s over in an instant. A bomb somewhere nearby, set off by one of the rebel’s remaining cells in the city. Through the night there’s the intermittent sound of gunfire, punctuated by the dull thud of distant blasts. Half a world removed from the fighting on the front lines, Valeri and the rest of the residents at Dominion Courts prepare to join in on the war in the streets, a war over little more than the right to live in
their own homes. But even they are aware their struggle has taken on a new character in these recent months, with the residents here preparing for the next showdown while still crowds of demonstrators vent their anger at the slaughter around the world.

  Defiant, the working man raises his fist in anger. Dedicated, he marches in the street with the other working men and with the allies of the working man, the student, the parishioner, the soldier, and the migrant the lot of them shouting slogans until their voices are hoarse; still then they shout. At street level, the sound of their shouts dominate the scene and overpowering all others, yet high above the street in the glass and steel skyscrapers that house boardrooms and bright, expansive corner offices the sound of so much rage has softened until barely audible over the subdued thrum of an air conditioner and the swinging of doors open and shut. In the navy, the cruiser Borealis is one of the ships docked in harbour when first the word comes around that war’s been declared. On board, Dmitri is working when a fellow sailor bursts in to tell him. Sometime later that day, Captain Abramovich announces over the ship’s speakers their orders to put to sea immediately and join up with the rest of the fleet for a decisive first strike at the enemy. In the mess hall when the order comes down for all crew to their stations, Dmitri declares, “now we have the privilege of fighting to make sure our people can keep on dying in our own streets.” There’s a chorus of agreement from the others, met with a sharp glare but nothing more from the officer on deck. A year ago Dmitri might’ve been put in the brig for such a remark; things have changed.

  “I don’t even know why we’re going to war,” Dmitri later says, manning the gun after a drill’s ended, “so the enemy’s country has attacked a government we’ve got a treaty with. So what? We die because one group of wealthy men need to grow their power over another group of wealthy men. It’s all a crime.” As they steam towards battle, the same sentiment is echoed by crewmen in compartments from bow to stern, the crew almost ready to throw their lot in with the working men dying in the streets. While the working man vents his rage at the world having left him by, the wealthy man plots the next scheme to enrich himself. It seems almost a parody, a caricature of the life the wealthy man leads, yet still it’s not even close to the truth. In this hardened discourse, filled as it is with impassioned pleas and inflamed tensions, the wealthy man still seeks to wring every last pound he can from the working man, chewing up and spitting out so many carcasses until the time comes to reach his next goal. To men like Valeri, these times see him tired and sore, but ready to fight as ever.

  25. Hope and Fear

  Early news arrives from the front, the nation’s armies having faced off in a faraway land against its declared enemies. A much smaller force humiliates us, routing our troops on the battlefield, scattering our men and massacring them. As news filters back, the wealthy man’s apparatchiks selectively omit certain details and exaggerate others, putting the best possible spin on this humiliation, stopping just short of outright fabrication. But it’s all in vain. The working man and his natural allies the student and the parishioner can’t be convinced by these lies, so many years of being subjected to it having desensitized them to the power of the apparatchik’s so carefully chosen words. And there’s one thing the apparatchiks can’t conceal, can’t omit, the deaths of so many young men, the families of each receiving the news no family should ever receive. Amid crying and shouting and the raising of fists and the scattering of voices into the wind like so many grains of dust, the rebel watches, planning his next move carefully, so carefully, choosing his target like a surgeon about to make an incision with no margin for error. Limping home, the Borealis is part of a retreat disorganized and haggard. Caught in an ambush by a Russian fleet, they fought a confused action in a thick, night-time fog and suffered several direct hits. Once docked, the crew goes ashore, and later that night Dmitri holds a meeting of dedicated crewmen who agree they won’t put out to sea again. “If the order comes down, we must occupy our own vessel,” he says, “and we’ll refuse our orders. Others will see us, and they’ll join in. With no fleet the government will have to declare a truce.” Nods go around the room. It’s decided. There’s no vote taken, but there needs to be no vote.

  It’s all come so suddenly, or so it seems, the months, the years having led up to these difficult, impossibly difficult times. As the ghosts of our history’s past linger in the streets, the moment comes when the rebel’s gunmen mount their next attack, their first since the war had begun. But this attack is different, this attack is unique, striking not some random scene in the street nor some of the patrolling storm troopers, instead the rebel focusing his arms on a recruiting office for the army somewhere deep in the city’s centre. A few rounds crack through the air, a crude bomb is thrown into a window, but none of this matters much when held against the grand scheme of things. As the rebel gathers his strength, his is committed only to the minimum needed to keep pressure on his enemies, on the storm troopers who serve the interests of the wealthy man. Never seeking much for himself, the rebel is content, for now, to dwell in his squalor, living underground, using the sewers as roads for his bands of gunmen who leap out of manholes to fire their volleys before disappearing again beneath the streets that produced them. But the Borealis was too badly damaged in action, and isn’t to be ordered out to sea for a while. In the morning, the crew pack the pier and watch as her sister ship, the Australis, puts out to sea, missing her aft gun and steaming under half-power. Parts had been scavenged from the Australis to make the Borealis fully operational, but the Borealis had been so badly damaged there was little of value to be returned. Dmitri watches along with the rest of the crew as the Australis disappears over the horizon, and he says, “we may never see them again.” Though he’s never been one to believe in superstition, Dmitri can’t help but imagine the shiver running down his spine as proof his brothers and sisters at arms will soon meet their end.

  The working man is lost, still yet committed as he is to the cause of taking on the way of things. But we must never allow ourselves to be seduced by the notion that the way of things was peaceful before all this started; this is the insidious temptation offered by they who would dream themselves our masters. Even back in those times when there were no gun battles breaking out in the streets, no hit and run attacks by the rebel’s gunmen, no storm trooper’s massacres of the young and the innocent. For, you see, our way of life is one of force, with the wealthy man and his servants in the apparatus of the state relying always on the threat of force to have their way. And so, too, will the working man of the future rely on this threat to have at his way, to safeguard the future he will have built for himself and to lay down the path through to a stage of historical development even more advanced than what he will have built for himself. And Dmitri’s intuition should soon prove right. But in the meanwhile, at home events soon come to a head. Captain Abramovich has gotten wind, somehow, someway, of the planned mutiny, and he’s acted to head it off. “All you better think twice about it,” says the Captain, “if you all don’t muster for duty in the morning then I’ll put you all in the stockade. And you’ll be hanged after you’re court-martialed.” But threats have long since lost their power. “There’s not enough room in the stockade for all of us,” Dmitri says at the next meeting of co-conspirators, “and unless we want to wind up dying for the sake of some rich man’s wealth, I prefer the hangman’s noose to the enemy’s guns.” All are in agreement. The mutiny will go ahead as planned, but with one key difference.

  Amid the carnage, news breaks of the current government’s troubles, of backroom dealing and of petty squabbling the likes of which the working man has become used to by now. But after another defeat on the battlefield and another round of attacks by the rebel’s gunmen, the remaining recruitment centres grow desolate, the invalids and the retired soldiers manning them spending their days alternating between fearing for their lives and fighting off sheer boredom. It’s a far cry from where we’ve been, where we’ve come from,
the scene around the city and across the country the way of things, the glass and steel towers that once so threatened the essence of the working man’s way of life. It’s under these circumstances that the announcement comes of compulsory service, with the first of the young men to be inducted within days. In the morning, the time comes for the crew to muster outside the barracks at the base. But Dmitri and the others are already on board the Borealis. “No more the enemy can kill us,” he says, “than can we be provoked into killing them.” News comes of the next battle, in which the Australis has been lost. She took a missile right to the forward magazine, not far from the very spot on the Borealis where Dmitri serves. In this same battle, one of the Royal Navy’s mightiest class of ships, a massive aircraft carrier with unreliable, near-useless stealth fighters sinks, too, a single enemy missile striking at exactly the right spot. When he reads the report on his screen, that same shiver runs the length of his spine, the knowledge he’d have died had the Borealis received that hit instead in his mind confirming every instinct he has to rebellion.