The two left the general tied to his seat and told the two young soldiers who were still guarding the door to head back and help the others train all of the new recruits. Mike and Tim hopped into the Jeep and headed back to Mike’s house. While they were on their way Tim called Mark on the radio and had him round up Steve and Tom with orders to meet them at Mike’s.
Once they had all assembled at the large house that Mike was calling home they talked over everything the general had said while eating dinner. Mike could tell that Steve was upset but what he couldn’t determine was whether he was more upset that he wasn’t the one to kill the prisoner or that he had lost his toy. Either way while the others talked Steve mostly sat in silence and barely ate which was a sure sign that something was not right with him.
The other leaders felt the same as Mike did and seemed grateful to know that they would still be underestimated by a powerful nation that appeared as if its government and military would see their victory in Seattle as nothing more than a fluke. Mike was more than happy to let the Chinese view him and his army as a group of untrained people with a few guns who could only defeat an unsuspecting group of guards and soldiers.
As for the plans that the Chinese had for their country everybody at the table was noticeably upset by the news that this government saw them as a sort of parasite that had to be irradiated down to a small number left only to serve a foreign people. While it stung all of them to hear this bit of information it made them stronger to know the true intent of their enemy.
When dinner was finished the five leaders went to visit the graves of the Americans who had given their lives during the battle of Seattle. Only Tim had been in Seattle for the funeral. Three of their men lost in battle compared to over a thousand enemy soldiers seemed like great odds but Mike would never be able to see any of these men and women as mere numbers. To him every American life that was lost would be a tragedy, one he knew he would encounter even more so in the coming months. Even though these men willingly risked their lives for something that they believed in Mike felt sadness that they would not be alive to see their nation free once again.
Second battalion had done a great job picking out plots, carving headstones, and landscaping. There were flowers all over all three graves and the headstones all talked about them being members of the Middle Militia and had their hometowns listed. Tim had personally trained a firing party and taught a handful of volunteers how to properly fold an American flag. Twenty one shots had been fired for each of the deceased and each had a flag folded and placed into their caskets before they were buried.
Tom said a prayer as the other leaders bowed their heads. Steve even shed tears as the crazy look that had glazed over his eyes disappeared. Mike saw the man he had grown up with for the first time since the prison camp and only hoped that he would be able to shake whatever was causing his recent personality change. All of the soldiers knew that these would not be the last of them who would give their lives but at the same time each one of them held onto the hope that they would live to see their nation free once again.
After paying their respects to the first three men who had given their lives during this second American Revolution all five leaders went back to Mike’s house to decide what their next steps would be. With the information they had managed to gather from the Chinese general they had much to discuss. They now knew what to expect in the coming months and what the Chinese government had planned for their nation. Tim and Mike set out to begin the task of planning for the next movement and the upcoming battles while Tom would oversee the training and organization of the new troops and Steve and Mark would start finding vehicles that could be used by the army.
Mike ordered every member of the Army to have one week of downtime to rest and try to have some fun. The soldiers had not been able to have time just to find a few drinks and relax for quite some time. Over this down week many of the soldiers found local movie theaters and watched films while others spent their days playing pickup games of football and basketball. While the rest of the army enjoyed this R and R time the five leaders continued to work on their assigned task.
When the week off ended it seemed as though it was over in the blink of an eye yet the members of the New American Army were eager to get back to the task at hand. The men and women who had joined from the last camps were healing much faster than previous recruits with the medical facilities in Seattle being at their chosen medic’s disposal. As they healed they continued to learn from the more experienced troops. Tom spent day and night organizing, leading, and overseeing their training.
With Steve and Mark in charge of finding and preparing vehicles the two men had led a group of Steve’s soldiers out of Seattle and took them through Fort Lewis to scrounge up any weapons and equipment that would be useful. On Lewis they were able to find large machine guns and the tools they would need to attach them to pickup trucks. When Mike saw the group drive back into the city on trucks with fifty caliber machine guns placed over their hoods he knew that they now had a much better chance against the Chinese army in the coming battles.
As the next few months went by the army became well trained and organized as a whole. The soldiers were becoming increasingly ready for battle and Mike did not want to waste anymore time before moving out. Mike and Tim went over their movement plans with the other leaders and through them orders were put out to the rest of the army. Rick and his scouts were sent south to begin mapping out the coming path of travel and then to Portland where the army would see its next major battle. The scouts were sent out two weeks ahead of the main element and when the day came for the scouts to move out the rest of the army watched them leave knowing that the war was about to continue.
Chapter Sixteen
During their last week in Seattle the new soldiers were trained around the clock with only enough time left to get a full night’s sleep. They were eager learners and all of them wanted to get south and begin taking their country back. All together Mike was now in command of seven thousand or so troops. This seemed like a large number but Mike hoped to have at least doubled that before taking the fight into the city of angels. With this many troops Mike and Tim were able to train up support battalions. They would now have entire medical, supply, and the weakest of the soldiers would be in a training battalion and used as backfills until they were ready for battle.
With so many soldiers Mike split them into two regiments each containing five battalions. Each battalion was given between five to seven hundred soldiers and had their own medical and supply companies and one platoon of scouts that Rick himself had handpicked and trained. Mike put Tim in charge of second regiment while he himself would lead first regiment while training Steve to take over for him. The crazy man that Steve had morphed into seemed to have disappeared and Mike hoped that by training him for a larger command that maniac would stay gone.
Steve began to shadow Mike and Tim, learning everything he could, knowing that the day would come to lead a large element and be forced to make decisions without the tutelage of these two experienced leaders. He picked their brains, watched as they planned, and joined in all of their planning sessions. Steve was a bit nervous knowing that by the time they had taken the entire west coast, and he had faith that they would succeed, he would be left in charge of a small army and told where and what cities to head towards while Mike and Tim would spread the rest of the army across the country and leave their faith in his leadership. His nerves only made him work harder to learn and as he learned he became eager to begin the task they lay ahead of him.
Even Steve’s sense of humor was back. He regularly found his way onto Tim’s nerves by constantly joking around with the old marine. Mike was happy to have his friend back but after the acting session that Steve had performed after taking prisoners at the camp Mike was afraid that this could just be another performance. Training Steve to take over a Regiment was not only necessary for him to learn but it gave Mike an excuse to be watching over him as often as possible.
They were able to find and modify pickup trucks and large vans to use for ambulances and supply trucks. The trucks that Steve and Mark had modified with makeshift armor and heavy machine guns could now be used to put heavy fire down on larger enemy targets. The gun trucks would also be able to lay down heavy fire into large groups of enemy soldiers to thin them out before the ground troops moved in and even carry squads into battle quickly. These tools combined with the ever growing numbers were quickly turning what started as a small militia into an army that was becoming a force to reckon with.
The marine leader in Tim came out more and more with his personality. It was common to see Tim out and about pulling random men aside and drilling them with questions about everything from the next order of movement to room clearing tactics. Some of the younger men were intimidated by the old devil dog and Mike couldn’t help but smile when he remembered the same scared looks on new soldier’s faces when questioned in the same way by their leaders, during his time in the army.
With the large numbers of men and women now fighting in the army even the large amount of uniforms that had been found on Fort Lewis were not enough to clothe everyone of the new recruits and many of them began wearing some of the uniforms that had been left in the buildings once occupied by the Chinese soldiers that once made their homes in this city. By the time Mike was about to lead them out of Seattle every soldier had some kind of camouflage uniform to wear but many were mixed and matched between the uniforms of different services as well as the colors of the enemy.
When the day came to leave Seattle it was a new army that stood ready to follow Mike into battle. He looked at the large amount of troops and vehicles that were staged as far as his eyes could see and knew that they would be successful in the coming months. Mike only hoped that the Chinese would continue to underestimate them for as long as possible while they freed and trained more men and women to take the fight down the west coast and then spread out and begin to move east. As movement began Mike looked back into the city of Seattle and felt confident that it would not be the last time he was able to look back on a free American city as he moved out to free another.
Epilogue
After the day the Chinese government had taken over control of the United States Mike Hoffman Senior sat on his porch staring out towards the town that had been almost completely empty since his son had lead the majority of its people to seek a new life away from crime and oppression. Not a day had gone by that he didn’t think of his son and feel an immense amount of pride for the man he had become. With this recent news he knew that his son had done the right thing in leading this town into the wilderness and hopefully out of the sights of the new government.
As he sat on his porch holding an assault rifle that he had kept to protect him and his aging wife he wondered how long it would be before he would have to use it to defend his home. Mike’s mother had managed to continue acting as if nothing was happening, which Mike Senior felt was probably for the best. He could smell the dinner of venison stew that she was currently inside preparing like the culinary experts she had become after cooking for their family over the course of many years.
For the most part the couple stayed to their own property and avoided going into town. Most of what they needed had been on the land anyway. Occasionally Mike Senior would carefully sneak into town for any extra supplies that he felt they needed and of course replenish his supply of beer and whiskey for his basement bar. He hated leaving his wife alone in the house for longer that a couple of hours at a time and had managed to convince her to help him on most of his hunts so that she would not be alone, but he never took her into town with him. For the most part his trips into town were uneventful but there had been times where he would spot outsiders that did not appear to be as neighborly as the people who had followed his son to Montana.
Now with the new news of the Chinese Mike Senior knew that the day would come when a foreign army would march into his town, but he could only guess at how bad things could get from that point on or what the Chinese governments true intentions were. One thing was for sure, this land belonged to him and his wife and nobody was going to take that from them without a fight.
Over the weeks that came after the news the town stayed mostly quiet as if nothing had really happened and it had all been just a bad dream. Mike Senior could have almost believed that if it wasn’t for the propaganda he heard every time that he turned on the radio listening for news reports. At first the radio reports were not too alarming under the circumstances but with every week that passed Mike was able to catch something that caused him concern. The first time an alarm went off in his head about the new government was when the man on the radio began talking about these work camps that the Chinese were constructing to feed and house the nations immense homeless population in trade for work.
It was said that these camps were voluntary but that the Chinese were encouraging all Americans to participate even if they were not yet without a home. Mike Senior hoped that somewhere in the mountains of Montana his son was hearing these same reports and doing everything possible to keep their friends and family as far away from these so called work camps as possible. He knew his son would see that these camps were not the new opportunity that the Chinese wanted them to think they were but only a means of condensing as much of the American population as possible into controlled locations away from areas that the Chinese would want for their own people.
Not long after the camps were constructed the news reports changed from asking people to come and work them and now began telling people to leave their homes and move onto the camps that were being built at an alarming pace. The fears and suspicions that Mike Senior had were being confirmed.
Still Mike and his wife continued to stay on their land. They made sure that no lights were left on at night to avoid anyone passing through to notice that there were people refusing to leave their homes, and they began to hunt further away from their property. Mike Seniors wife was now starting to let their situation set in and was no longer pretending that all was normal. She was a strong woman and had always been that way. She felt the same as her husband did that this was their land and they would never willingly leave the home where they had raised a family together.
As the year 2027 came to an end the couple had yet to see any Chinese soldiers or police on their dirt road but knew from the radio that the new government had begun the task of forcing the people who had tried to stay in more urban areas into the camps. It would only be so long before they would finish with the cities and begin moving out towards the Hoffman’s land. The couple refused to give up on what was left of their way of life though. They still made a thanksgiving dinner together and they still managed to smile and kiss each other under a plastic mistletoe as they had done on Christmas since before starting a family together.
While they knew the time would come that they would have to fight to keep their freedom they refused to give up hope. The decision had been made that when the time came that Chinese police or soldiers came to their door and ordered them to leave they would fight back. They both would rather die as free people in their own home than to give in to the modern slavery that they understood was taking place in the camps.
Spring was in full bloom the day Mike Senior had finally witnessed Chinese police forces on one of his trips into town. He managed to hide from them and carefully make his way back home without being noticed. When he arrived at his house he walked in and told his wife what he had seen and that it was time to defend their home together. They each grabbed
an assault rifle and a pistol, checked to make sure they were properly loaded and sat on the couch together waiting for a knock on the door.
It took over three hours before the knock came while the couple held each other knowing that they may never be able to again and hoping that there was a heaven where they would be instantly reunited. The knock was ignored by both of them and continued only once before the door of their home was kicked in and three foreign police officers walked through the door obviously expecting the home to be vacant as the rest of the homes on the street had been. Mike Senior fired the first shots without hesitating killing all three men while his wife ran around to the other side of the door and stood behind the kitchen wall to make two targets and have another view to aim from.
In less than a minute five more men barreled through the door way, this time with their weapons aimed up looking for someone to shoot. Mike’s wife fired the first shots this time, killing two more before retreating upstairs while her husband ran across the room to her position killing one more and missing into another’s shoulder. The couple ran upstairs with Mike quickly catching up to his wife before both of them slipped into their son’s old room at the end of the upstairs hallway.
As they waited in silence they could hear the downstairs floor boards creak as entire squads were called from the rest of the street and ran into their house. The stairs groaned when teams began carefully moving up them in stacks and the couple raised their guns to the doorway ready to put up a final stand. Their son’s room was pitch black with almost no light coming in from the broken window that Mike Senior had boarded up over the winter. When the door swung open the aging couple was still hidden in darkness while the light from the hallway illuminated the intruding police making easy targets of the first few and causing a small obstacle of human flesh in the doorway.
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