C A S E U LT R A
THE QUIET WARS SAGA
ISSUE
5
he two rebels kept looking at the little girl the entire drive back to camp. They were sitting in the rear of the truck like they always did but their new passenger had their routine in pieces. She sat quietly gripping a teddy bear close to her chest. The gas mask she wore was foggy but the two men could make out her eyes watching them closely.
T
Everything about the girl was startling. They rarely encountered women this far from the city, so seeing a female was surprising enough, but to see a little girl was amazing. Few people were allowed to or capable of having children and you rarely saw them anymore. They found her crying in the forest. It was fortunate they got to her before anyone else did. The men stared in wonder as she sat clutching her teddy bear. No one ever saw teddy bears anymore either. The truck pulled up to the side of a large hill and waited in silence. A light blinked from up above and one of the men in the truck signaled back. A door of brilliant light gradually opened up in the side of the hill and as soon as the truck was inside, the light was quickly gone and all that was left was darkness. An army of rebels were lined up on both sides of the truck, their blue camouflaged uniforms gave the impression the vehicle was being swallowed up by the ocean. The men in the truck filed out to join the rest of the men. When the little girl hopped out the entire base was as silent as a cemetery. She took off her mask, adjusted her eye sight and waited. “Who is this? Where did you find her?” Suddenly all of the men woke from their momentary stupor and stood alert, their right hands in salute. “At ease.” General Lobo made his way through the crowd and stood in front of the little girl. One of the rebels cleared his throat and said, “General, we found this girl crying in the woods just outside of that old abandoned village in the east. We gave her some food but she still hasn’t said a word.” The general looked over the men and did not see Gutierrez with them. He wasn’t at the pick up point, as expected. It was a suicide mission after all. The rebel leader took the cigar from his mouth, crushed it under his boot and looked at the little girl. “Do you know who we are sweetheart?”
The girl nodded. “You’re the good guys.” He smiled. “I’d like to think so but these days I’m not sure how many guys are actually good anymore. We’ve been through hell and back a hundred times over and seeing the kind of stuff we’ve seen leaves a certain stink.” He looked down at his uniform and then turned to his men. “The bad guys polluted our air, our water, our food. They taxed us, chipped us, enslaved us. Did everything silently, hitting us on every front. No one saw it coming
until it was too late. We’re all that’s left. Pretty soon there ain’t even gonna be this.” His mind flashed back to images of economic collapse, fluoridation of the world’s water supply, the new world order, mass starvation when the price of wheat skyrocketed, the third world war, the fourth. It was stuff for the history books but who was left to read them? “I can help,” said the little girl. The men laughed, including the general. “I’m sure you can sweetheart but we’re gonna need a lot more than some spunk and a teddy bear.” The little girl held her teddy bear out in front of her and said, “He’s special.” “He certainly is. They don’t make toys anymore. At least not the kind for kids.”
“That’s not what I mean. He’s special, really special. He’s going to win the war.”
To be continued...