Nolo
Member
My first story thread, hooray!
Okay, I'm doing this mostly from memory (it's been three years since I wrote this all down, and I can't find the bloody paper) so bear with me. Here's the backstory:
You are all well aware, of course, that in October of 1962 the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics came as close as they've ever been to a nuclear conflict. The Cuban Missile Crisis was on the razor's edge of going South, and there was no one person who could say how it would end. Fortunately, we pulled through without annihilating the planet. Well, what if they did go to war? What might have happened? This is the premise of the series of novels I have named Out of the Ashes. In 1962, a U-2 high-altitude spy aircraft took photos of missile launch sites being built in Cuba. These photos prompted an enormous crisis, one that would forever change the course of human events. The United States imposed a blockade ("quarantine", used to avoid a technical declaration of war) on Cuba to prevent any more missile supplies from being shipped their. The Russian Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, responded by declaring the quarantine illegal. Tensions began to rise between the USA and the USSR until a large explosion in upper Kazakhstan caused outrage among the Soviets, who saw it as a "warning shot" from the United States. The United States denied that it had any involvement in the explosion, but the damage was done. After a continually rising threat level, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics went to war with one another on December 12, 1962. The attacks were of the nuclear variety, devastating much of the inhabited areas of both countries, as well as cities in allied countries of either nation. This left much of the "Western" world devastated. An enormous conventional war followed, with multiple factions and no truly large powers. This conflict lasted for several years, further decimating the population of the planet. In 1976, an Argentinian warlord by the name of Pablo Rodriguez organized his forces and marched through South America, conquering large swaths of territory and subjecting the remaining populace to his cold rule. Rodriguez, having now created the Coalition of God's Chosen Peoples, along with his military, the Military Enforcement League, continued into the former United States until he was met with resistance in the South. Rodriguez was able to defeat these lone ranchers with relative ease, until Ulysses Sturgis, a common farmer from Oklahoma, created the Liberty Rebellion, a coalition of various opponents of Rodriguez based upon the ideals of the original American colonists. Sturgis beat back Rodriguez's assault all the way to the Mexican border and was able to hold it there for nine years, until 1995 when Rodriguez made a breakthrough in the fight. The despot had made contact with a Middle Eastern warlord by the name of al-Nassim, who promised him two nuclear warheads in exchange for military aid and a promise not to attempt to take over al-Nassim's stronghold. Rodriguez, seeing the chance to rid himself of his vaunted enemy once and for all, agreed. Rodriguez planned to use the bombs on Sturgis' primary encampment in Phoenix, Arizona. Sturgis received intelligence of the plan, however, and was able to initiate a full-scale evacuation of Phoenix before the bombs hit. Frustrated by his enemy's escape, Rodriguez launched a military invasion of the Phoenix area, hoping to kill Sturgis and slay any of the refugees that Sturgis was harboring. The MEL troops burst through the dust of Phoenix and began to attack the Liberty Rebellion. Sturgis had sent the refugees ahead to San Francisco, and kept himself and his men behind to slow the advance of the MEL, allowing the refugees to make a proper escape. Unbeknownst to Ulysses, his 11-year-old son, Lukas, had followed him to the battlefield, after Ulysses had told him to stay behind. The Liberty Rebellion was slaughtered by Rodriguez's troops, and Lukas barely managed to escape to Las Vegas, where he remained for eight years.
Whew! Now that I have the backstory done, here's the actual novel:
Out of the Ashes: Book I, Phoenix Rising
Chapter I
End of Exile
I lay beside the broken block of concrete. My respite wouldn’t last for long. I had outrun the MEL troopers for the moment, but they would catch up soon.
I was always running away. I had been running so long that it was hard to conjure up a memory of when I wasn’t running. I had started eight years ago, when my father died. He will always be remembered as the hero of Phoenix, the great rebel, who died for a lost cause. Me? I was the brat. Little Sturgis. Always running around, fiddling with the weapons and armor, and causing mischief while my father fought for... whatever. I had always wanted to fight with my father, but neither he nor my mother would ever hear of it. They couldn’t be blamed, I was only eleven, and even if I had been immune to bullets, I wouldn’t have been much help. The night of the invasion of Phoenix, I snuck out of the shelter and followed my father to the battlefield. I saw him die the next morning; he fell only feet from where I had hidden. As far as I knew, I was the only person who survived the battle. My father had sent most of the refugees to San Francisco, away from the powers of the MEL, but in all likelihood the bastards caught up with them.
The troopers’ footsteps became audible. Clumsy fools, I could hear them coming a mile away. None of the MEL soldiers were well trained, but they could carry out orders. I knew that they thought that I was a group of insurgents in the borderlands, not just one rebel teenager. Heaven knows that the MEL was far too egotistical to believe that one man could hold out in a post-radioactive city for eight years.
Bu-thoop!
The familiar sound of a rocket grenade signaled the end of my brief rest. I would have to move—or fight. There was at least five of the MEL bastards, and I was running low on ammo. Better to run this time, save my neck.
I waited for the familiar “BOOM!’ as the rocket hit a concrete wall almost a hundred meters away. Man, those troopers were bad shots. That blast couldn’t have hurt me even if it had been a frag round, which, of course, it was not. I decided to take my flight after the rocket hit. I ran for the north most shelter. There were three shelters in the former Las Vegas: one in the south, that was in MEL hands, but they didn’t know about it, one in the west, which they had discovered but hadn’t controlled, and one in the north, which remained both hidden and out of reach. I had moved all of my equipment to the northern shelter about three months before, in anticipation of the MEL advancement.
I ran swiftly to the bomb shelter. The doors were covered by concrete and rubble, but not too much that I couldn’t throw it all off quickly. I pulled on the rope that was attached to the door of the shelter and slid in. Inside, the walls were crammed with all sorts of armaments and weapons. Soviet-made assault rifles, American semiautomatics, Browning Automatic Rifles, machine guns, bazookas, RPGs, grenades and many others covered the walls. Basically anything I found on the battlefield, I took, never knowing when it would be needed. I set my primary weapon—a Russian AKM assault rifle—on a folding card table in the den. Already on the table was my most coveted weapon: my father’s Thompson submachine gun. I had pried that gun from my father’s dead arms after he’d been shot defending Phoenix and I had kept it ever since. I used it occasionally, but I preferred the AKM and so usually took that one out instead.
The MEL goons wouldn’t find me in my shelter; it was too well hidden. I stumbled past the pantry and sat on my bed. My head throbbed. I had never been well adjusted to dust and smoke, and I often returned from battle with a headache. Beside the bed lay a bottle of forty-year-old aspirin. I popped one of the pills into my mouth and swallowed. Dusk would fall soon, and the MELs usually didn’t go out after dark—they didn’t have any night vision equipment, so I would be safe to go to sleep. I lay back on the bed, trying to catch some rest before I had to start fighting all over again tomorrow.
~ ~ ~
Chu… Thunk!
…
Chu… Thunk!
…
Chu… Thunk!
I woke to the sound of a war.
Chu… Thunk!
The distant sound of gunshots echoed through the hollow wastes.
T-chinkchinkchinkchink!
Machine gun rounds rattled the hatch, as if commanding I open the door.
BOOM!
They had brought out the heavy artillery.
Firing was significantly closer now.
Chacka-chacka-chacka! Chacka-chacka-chacka!
Someone was using a .50 caliber machine gun very close to my shelter.
Thwiiiiiiiiiiii… BOOM!
Now THAT was rare… the MELs were using air power. Whoever was fighting them had really pissed them off.
Fine. If they were good enough for the MELs to use whatever decrepit, rusty WWII-era air force they had on, then they might be able to help me. I got up.
Chu… Thunk!
Someone was using a grenade launcher.
I packed water and some mags and grabbed my AKM. Starting for the front hatch, I thought better of it and turned around. The back hatch was towards the rear of the building, past the pantry and beyond the freezer hold. The ladder was long and the entrance came out of a shelled high-rise that still had about three of its stories left. As I opened the outside end of the hatch, it seemed as if Hell had come knocking on my front door. The ground was shaking, concrete was falling everywhere. I climbed the broken steps of the building and looked out of a second story window. MELs were everywhere. They had brought everything they had: jeeps, old cast-iron tanks, lots of infantry, and even a small airplane. All MEL equipment was ancient; nothing was any later than the ‘Geddon. Rodriguez and his goons didn’t tend to innovate much, and so pretty much used what had been made by the great superpowers before they all blew each other to kingdom come.
I peeked out the broken window to see who—or what—had pissed off the consul so much that they would send out a force this size. What I saw astonished me: a lone woman, armed to the teeth and gunning a bed-mounted .50 cal machine gun in one hand and a M79 grenade in the other, was fighting off MELs from the back of a jeep. She popped off shots from the fifty cal in bursts—smart, I thought, you wouldn’t see a MEL doing that, they’d fire until the gun jammed or overheated. The back of the jeep was filled with weaponry and rations—she was planning on being out here for a while. Whatever, she was fighting MELS, I was fighting MELS; we’d already found enough in common to become allies. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? Okay, well maybe just fire support. I pulled off a few shots from the window of my decrepit building, hoping she’d notice. She didn’t. Good enough, I supposed; she was paying attention to what she was doing.
Chu… Thunk!
Amazing, she could fire that grenade launcher one-handed.
I stayed behind the window, hoping the MELs wouldn’t notice the extra fire coming in their direction. By this point, the woman had abandoned the grenade launcher and was solely using the fifty cal. She managed not to get hit, something I thought was incredible. She picked up a BAR and abandoned her position at the gun and rushed behind the building. Getting cover—smart, I thought. I continued to press fire on the MELs, dropping any who got too close. I was just about to pop off a shot when…
“Hey.”
I just about jumped out of my skin. No one had ever been able to sneak up on me like that, it was one of the reasons I was still alive. She was standing behind me, BAR in hand, just standing there, not even taking any cover.
“It’s time to go, Lukas. I’m here to get you out of here.”
“Wha—who are you!?”
She knew my name.
“That doesn’t matter right now, let’s go. We’ll be overrun in a couple of minutes, come on!”
She grabbed my arm just as I heard the whistle of a shell falling from the small prop plane overhead.
I ran down the stairs with her, not knowing what was happening, who she was, or what to do, just running. We ran past the rear entrance, and I broke from her arm.
“No, there’s no time, Lukas!”
But I didn’t listen, I wasn’t leaving without my father’s Thompson, it was the last thing I had of him. I grabbed the gun and a few magazines, and fled. She was waiting in the driver’s seat of the jeep, engine gunned, almost moving. I hopped in the back and manned the fifty cal. My mind was a whirlwind. Who was she? How did she know who I was?
Advanced critique is encouraged, I'm looking forward to what you guys think of it.
Okay, I'm doing this mostly from memory (it's been three years since I wrote this all down, and I can't find the bloody paper) so bear with me. Here's the backstory:
You are all well aware, of course, that in October of 1962 the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics came as close as they've ever been to a nuclear conflict. The Cuban Missile Crisis was on the razor's edge of going South, and there was no one person who could say how it would end. Fortunately, we pulled through without annihilating the planet. Well, what if they did go to war? What might have happened? This is the premise of the series of novels I have named Out of the Ashes. In 1962, a U-2 high-altitude spy aircraft took photos of missile launch sites being built in Cuba. These photos prompted an enormous crisis, one that would forever change the course of human events. The United States imposed a blockade ("quarantine", used to avoid a technical declaration of war) on Cuba to prevent any more missile supplies from being shipped their. The Russian Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, responded by declaring the quarantine illegal. Tensions began to rise between the USA and the USSR until a large explosion in upper Kazakhstan caused outrage among the Soviets, who saw it as a "warning shot" from the United States. The United States denied that it had any involvement in the explosion, but the damage was done. After a continually rising threat level, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics went to war with one another on December 12, 1962. The attacks were of the nuclear variety, devastating much of the inhabited areas of both countries, as well as cities in allied countries of either nation. This left much of the "Western" world devastated. An enormous conventional war followed, with multiple factions and no truly large powers. This conflict lasted for several years, further decimating the population of the planet. In 1976, an Argentinian warlord by the name of Pablo Rodriguez organized his forces and marched through South America, conquering large swaths of territory and subjecting the remaining populace to his cold rule. Rodriguez, having now created the Coalition of God's Chosen Peoples, along with his military, the Military Enforcement League, continued into the former United States until he was met with resistance in the South. Rodriguez was able to defeat these lone ranchers with relative ease, until Ulysses Sturgis, a common farmer from Oklahoma, created the Liberty Rebellion, a coalition of various opponents of Rodriguez based upon the ideals of the original American colonists. Sturgis beat back Rodriguez's assault all the way to the Mexican border and was able to hold it there for nine years, until 1995 when Rodriguez made a breakthrough in the fight. The despot had made contact with a Middle Eastern warlord by the name of al-Nassim, who promised him two nuclear warheads in exchange for military aid and a promise not to attempt to take over al-Nassim's stronghold. Rodriguez, seeing the chance to rid himself of his vaunted enemy once and for all, agreed. Rodriguez planned to use the bombs on Sturgis' primary encampment in Phoenix, Arizona. Sturgis received intelligence of the plan, however, and was able to initiate a full-scale evacuation of Phoenix before the bombs hit. Frustrated by his enemy's escape, Rodriguez launched a military invasion of the Phoenix area, hoping to kill Sturgis and slay any of the refugees that Sturgis was harboring. The MEL troops burst through the dust of Phoenix and began to attack the Liberty Rebellion. Sturgis had sent the refugees ahead to San Francisco, and kept himself and his men behind to slow the advance of the MEL, allowing the refugees to make a proper escape. Unbeknownst to Ulysses, his 11-year-old son, Lukas, had followed him to the battlefield, after Ulysses had told him to stay behind. The Liberty Rebellion was slaughtered by Rodriguez's troops, and Lukas barely managed to escape to Las Vegas, where he remained for eight years.
Whew! Now that I have the backstory done, here's the actual novel:
Out of the Ashes: Book I, Phoenix Rising
Chapter I
End of Exile
I lay beside the broken block of concrete. My respite wouldn’t last for long. I had outrun the MEL troopers for the moment, but they would catch up soon.
I was always running away. I had been running so long that it was hard to conjure up a memory of when I wasn’t running. I had started eight years ago, when my father died. He will always be remembered as the hero of Phoenix, the great rebel, who died for a lost cause. Me? I was the brat. Little Sturgis. Always running around, fiddling with the weapons and armor, and causing mischief while my father fought for... whatever. I had always wanted to fight with my father, but neither he nor my mother would ever hear of it. They couldn’t be blamed, I was only eleven, and even if I had been immune to bullets, I wouldn’t have been much help. The night of the invasion of Phoenix, I snuck out of the shelter and followed my father to the battlefield. I saw him die the next morning; he fell only feet from where I had hidden. As far as I knew, I was the only person who survived the battle. My father had sent most of the refugees to San Francisco, away from the powers of the MEL, but in all likelihood the bastards caught up with them.
The troopers’ footsteps became audible. Clumsy fools, I could hear them coming a mile away. None of the MEL soldiers were well trained, but they could carry out orders. I knew that they thought that I was a group of insurgents in the borderlands, not just one rebel teenager. Heaven knows that the MEL was far too egotistical to believe that one man could hold out in a post-radioactive city for eight years.
Bu-thoop!
The familiar sound of a rocket grenade signaled the end of my brief rest. I would have to move—or fight. There was at least five of the MEL bastards, and I was running low on ammo. Better to run this time, save my neck.
I waited for the familiar “BOOM!’ as the rocket hit a concrete wall almost a hundred meters away. Man, those troopers were bad shots. That blast couldn’t have hurt me even if it had been a frag round, which, of course, it was not. I decided to take my flight after the rocket hit. I ran for the north most shelter. There were three shelters in the former Las Vegas: one in the south, that was in MEL hands, but they didn’t know about it, one in the west, which they had discovered but hadn’t controlled, and one in the north, which remained both hidden and out of reach. I had moved all of my equipment to the northern shelter about three months before, in anticipation of the MEL advancement.
I ran swiftly to the bomb shelter. The doors were covered by concrete and rubble, but not too much that I couldn’t throw it all off quickly. I pulled on the rope that was attached to the door of the shelter and slid in. Inside, the walls were crammed with all sorts of armaments and weapons. Soviet-made assault rifles, American semiautomatics, Browning Automatic Rifles, machine guns, bazookas, RPGs, grenades and many others covered the walls. Basically anything I found on the battlefield, I took, never knowing when it would be needed. I set my primary weapon—a Russian AKM assault rifle—on a folding card table in the den. Already on the table was my most coveted weapon: my father’s Thompson submachine gun. I had pried that gun from my father’s dead arms after he’d been shot defending Phoenix and I had kept it ever since. I used it occasionally, but I preferred the AKM and so usually took that one out instead.
The MEL goons wouldn’t find me in my shelter; it was too well hidden. I stumbled past the pantry and sat on my bed. My head throbbed. I had never been well adjusted to dust and smoke, and I often returned from battle with a headache. Beside the bed lay a bottle of forty-year-old aspirin. I popped one of the pills into my mouth and swallowed. Dusk would fall soon, and the MELs usually didn’t go out after dark—they didn’t have any night vision equipment, so I would be safe to go to sleep. I lay back on the bed, trying to catch some rest before I had to start fighting all over again tomorrow.
~ ~ ~
Chu… Thunk!
…
Chu… Thunk!
…
Chu… Thunk!
I woke to the sound of a war.
Chu… Thunk!
The distant sound of gunshots echoed through the hollow wastes.
T-chinkchinkchinkchink!
Machine gun rounds rattled the hatch, as if commanding I open the door.
BOOM!
They had brought out the heavy artillery.
Firing was significantly closer now.
Chacka-chacka-chacka! Chacka-chacka-chacka!
Someone was using a .50 caliber machine gun very close to my shelter.
Thwiiiiiiiiiiii… BOOM!
Now THAT was rare… the MELs were using air power. Whoever was fighting them had really pissed them off.
Fine. If they were good enough for the MELs to use whatever decrepit, rusty WWII-era air force they had on, then they might be able to help me. I got up.
Chu… Thunk!
Someone was using a grenade launcher.
I packed water and some mags and grabbed my AKM. Starting for the front hatch, I thought better of it and turned around. The back hatch was towards the rear of the building, past the pantry and beyond the freezer hold. The ladder was long and the entrance came out of a shelled high-rise that still had about three of its stories left. As I opened the outside end of the hatch, it seemed as if Hell had come knocking on my front door. The ground was shaking, concrete was falling everywhere. I climbed the broken steps of the building and looked out of a second story window. MELs were everywhere. They had brought everything they had: jeeps, old cast-iron tanks, lots of infantry, and even a small airplane. All MEL equipment was ancient; nothing was any later than the ‘Geddon. Rodriguez and his goons didn’t tend to innovate much, and so pretty much used what had been made by the great superpowers before they all blew each other to kingdom come.
I peeked out the broken window to see who—or what—had pissed off the consul so much that they would send out a force this size. What I saw astonished me: a lone woman, armed to the teeth and gunning a bed-mounted .50 cal machine gun in one hand and a M79 grenade in the other, was fighting off MELs from the back of a jeep. She popped off shots from the fifty cal in bursts—smart, I thought, you wouldn’t see a MEL doing that, they’d fire until the gun jammed or overheated. The back of the jeep was filled with weaponry and rations—she was planning on being out here for a while. Whatever, she was fighting MELS, I was fighting MELS; we’d already found enough in common to become allies. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? Okay, well maybe just fire support. I pulled off a few shots from the window of my decrepit building, hoping she’d notice. She didn’t. Good enough, I supposed; she was paying attention to what she was doing.
Chu… Thunk!
Amazing, she could fire that grenade launcher one-handed.
I stayed behind the window, hoping the MELs wouldn’t notice the extra fire coming in their direction. By this point, the woman had abandoned the grenade launcher and was solely using the fifty cal. She managed not to get hit, something I thought was incredible. She picked up a BAR and abandoned her position at the gun and rushed behind the building. Getting cover—smart, I thought. I continued to press fire on the MELs, dropping any who got too close. I was just about to pop off a shot when…
“Hey.”
I just about jumped out of my skin. No one had ever been able to sneak up on me like that, it was one of the reasons I was still alive. She was standing behind me, BAR in hand, just standing there, not even taking any cover.
“It’s time to go, Lukas. I’m here to get you out of here.”
“Wha—who are you!?”
She knew my name.
“That doesn’t matter right now, let’s go. We’ll be overrun in a couple of minutes, come on!”
She grabbed my arm just as I heard the whistle of a shell falling from the small prop plane overhead.
I ran down the stairs with her, not knowing what was happening, who she was, or what to do, just running. We ran past the rear entrance, and I broke from her arm.
“No, there’s no time, Lukas!”
But I didn’t listen, I wasn’t leaving without my father’s Thompson, it was the last thing I had of him. I grabbed the gun and a few magazines, and fled. She was waiting in the driver’s seat of the jeep, engine gunned, almost moving. I hopped in the back and manned the fifty cal. My mind was a whirlwind. Who was she? How did she know who I was?
Advanced critique is encouraged, I'm looking forward to what you guys think of it.
Last edited:
