Entry 3. Terror In The Night
Title: Terror In The Night
Entry Number: 03
Author: rsn_studios
Fandom: Original Fiction
Rating: PG-13, scenes of violence
Genre: military, science fiction, post apocalypse
Spoiler Warnings:
Word Count: 1729
Terror In The Night
By John Thomas Hill
Jerome Phillips couldn't get the sight out of his mind: the bodies hanging among the branches of the old willow tree along the highway somewhere in Mississippi. He had joined a group of soldiers in the hastily thrown together outfit months earlier when the Army shattered into dividing factions because of the assassination of President William Morrison, who was in the middle of a speech declaring America would become a theocracy when he was shot and killed by an assassin. The last few months had been maddening, as he witnessed soldiers once unified in a single army had fragmented into two loosely organized armies: the Fundamentalists and the Secularists. He was allied with the Secularists, because he had gotten tired of all the overt racism that he had heard in the months before the war started, and had joined up secretly before all hell broke loose.
“My God! They strung them up like sides of meat!” said Joey Chan, a third generation Chinese-American who was his best friend in the Army. Normally an easy going, funny guy, Chan was sobered by what was before his eyes. It was an early October afternoon, and while summer was long gone, the familiar mugginess of summer that Phillips knew from his life in South Carolina was still present. Clouds above indicated that storms were soon coming, so they would have to seek shelter soon.
“Bastards!” Phillips muttered, then continued on. The five young black men couldn't be helped now, and his team couldn't take the time to bury them, nor could they leave themselves open to be bushwhacked. Part of him chafed at not properly burying the poor souls who had been lynched, but the majority of him wanted them to remain there, so others could see what those damned racists had done to brothers of his.
That evening, as they decamped at some abandoned high school that Phillips didn't bother worrying to learn its name, the short, stocky frame of Lieutenant Colonel Jason Finch walked up to him. “So you saw those poor fellas strung up earlier today, huh?” he said softly.
Phillips nodded his head, and said nothing, which prompted Finch to spring his little surprise. “Would you like to get some revenge on the assholes who did this?”
That woke Phillips up out of his doldrums, and he shot up from his sitting position on the bench, saying, “Hell yeah, sir! Who's with me?”
“Come with me and you'll find out!” Finch said with a predatory smile. Finch was biracial, half black and half white, and Phillips had seen from his time in on the Secularist side that this was no man to mess with, as the forty year old was a black belt in karate and once upon a time considered going into mixed martial arts before his father put those ideas on hold by twisting the arm of Senator Lindsey Graham to get Finch into West Point.
Inside a classroom, Finch laid out the plan. “Intelligence has learned that those who have been going around rounding up black folks and killing them are nearby, set up in an elementary school. They're not professional soldiers, but there are a lot of them, and they're Klansmen. Not sure if they have had any militia training or if any of those in this group of thugs are former military, but we are going on the assumption that they've had adequate military training.
“What we plan on doing is to infiltrate their camp, bring out as many of them alive as we can, find out what those bastards know, then eliminate them. We don't have time for military justice the old fashioned way, so once we find out what we need to know from all those we round up, we take them out in a way that doesn't use bullets or any additional resources.” Finch said.
“Can we strangle the bastards?” some soldier said behind Phillips, and chuckles rose up from the troops.
“You sure as hell can, provided you have some buddies alongside to make sure that whomever we're killing doesn't overpower the executioner.” Finch replied.
Phillips hand shot up automatically, along with every black man's in the impromptu unit, as well as a few Hispanic guys. Finch smiled and said, “Atta boy! Let's go!”
Nightfall came, but not before a huge thunderstorm poured rain down upon the area where they dwelt. “It's fine. Muffles the sound, and since we'll get some fog, we have the element of surprise!” said Chan with a smile. He wasn't happy, though, but he believed in the men in his unit, and he wanted a piece of those who had murdered those poor souls. When the order came to move out, the soldiers did so enthusiastically, and Phillips had made sure to get as many clips as he could, just in case the firefight got really hot. Part of him really wanted it to, and the fear of death wasn't even creeping into his mind, for his rage was silencing the nervousness he usually got before going into battle.
Phillips stepped over a scout that had been posted by the racists holed up in the elementary school, and smiled as he saw how deep the cut around the white hick's neck had been. He looked like a inbred from one of those B-movies his grandmother loved back in Gaffney, the ones that came out of a station based in Charlotte that could only be picked up by an antenna. He turned back to the slow walk he was making towards the school. No lights were seen in the school, and they were getting close.
Intel had said that the entire group was billeting in the gym, which was their mistake. If they had been smart, they would have had a watch, with some of the troops looking for the very kind of ambush such as this. They entered the school from a side entrance, and no alarms went off, which was a blessing. They searched each room, just in case someone had decided to sleep somewhere else, but all the classrooms were empty.
Finch had lucked up and found a floor plan of the elementary school in the principal's office of the high school, and he split up the troops to hit the fools inside the gym from the stage side. Phillips part of it took the stage, and he looked through the darkness at his friend Chan, and smiled, as they stood waiting for the curtain to literally rise.
One minute, the militia slept peacefully, with no idea what was about to hit them. The next, lights came up as the curtain rose, and doors flung open. “FREEZE!” was yelled out by the troops as the entered like flooding waters, and none of the militiamen had a chance to even get up from their cots, much less grab their guns. It had turned out that the troops outnumbered the militiamen two to one, so they were soon all sitting down on the bleachers, with zip tie handcuffs restraining them.
Phillips guarded the door as Finch and some of the other officers interrogated the prisoners, and he managed to catch some of what was said. The group was members of the relatively young Sons of the Confederacy militant group, which was formed after Barack Obama had been reelected president in 2012, and they had members coming in from all over not only Mississippi, but parts of Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas and even Texas. Their mission was simple: find any black folks and deal with them. Most of them died quickly, but the young women and, in some cases, young girls who were not of legal age, were raped before meeting their maker.
Instead of being filled with rage, he was happy, because Finch had put him on execution detail, and so soon he would have the chance to strangle the bastards himself. With a smile full of mischief, he looked forward to exacting some sweet revenge. He wanted to look into the faces of each of them as they died, so that their last image before they passed on was his face. He wanted to take out the fury inside of him that he had felt when he got word that his own family had been killed by some white hoodlums the night of the assassination, as they were sitting in the parking lot of the outlet mall, not realizing just how mad the world had really gotten.
But before Finch could issue the orders the next day, a large group of African Americans from around the area came up to the school, demanding to get their hands on those men who had been killing them. Finch turned to Phillips and asked, “What would you do?”
Phillips wanted to feel the heartbeat fade on some of the scumbags inside the gym, but these folks really wanted to taste the blood of their enemies. “Let them have it. We have more important things to do!”
“So be it!” Finch said, and had his troops move out. As they moved out that night, the first screams from the frightened white men started up as the black folks took out their rage and their frustrations for the deaths dealt them upon those who had done the dealing.
Phillips walked away from the school without a second thought as to what was going on. Maybe his soul was damned as he walked down the asphalt road for thirsting for the blood of those cracker fools, but he didn't care. Soon he would be in another firefight, against who knows who in this damned war, and the prospect of surviving the war didn't matter to him, because he didn't think he would.
Suddenly, the dark sky lit up, and the screams intensified. The avenging people had set the gym on fire, and left the militiamen inside, apparently. “Fuck them! Let's keep going!” Finch said, and the troops gladly moved away from the inferno. Someone behind Phillips asked, “What's the world coming to?”
“An end, man! It's coming to an end!” Chan said, but with a smile on his face. “Fuck it, we need a new world anyway! Let this old one die!” he added. Phillips nodded and moved on, wondering again how much longer he'd live through this.
Entry Number: 03
Author: rsn_studios
Fandom: Original Fiction
Rating: PG-13, scenes of violence
Genre: military, science fiction, post apocalypse
Spoiler Warnings:
Word Count: 1729
Terror In The Night
By John Thomas Hill
Jerome Phillips couldn't get the sight out of his mind: the bodies hanging among the branches of the old willow tree along the highway somewhere in Mississippi. He had joined a group of soldiers in the hastily thrown together outfit months earlier when the Army shattered into dividing factions because of the assassination of President William Morrison, who was in the middle of a speech declaring America would become a theocracy when he was shot and killed by an assassin. The last few months had been maddening, as he witnessed soldiers once unified in a single army had fragmented into two loosely organized armies: the Fundamentalists and the Secularists. He was allied with the Secularists, because he had gotten tired of all the overt racism that he had heard in the months before the war started, and had joined up secretly before all hell broke loose.
“My God! They strung them up like sides of meat!” said Joey Chan, a third generation Chinese-American who was his best friend in the Army. Normally an easy going, funny guy, Chan was sobered by what was before his eyes. It was an early October afternoon, and while summer was long gone, the familiar mugginess of summer that Phillips knew from his life in South Carolina was still present. Clouds above indicated that storms were soon coming, so they would have to seek shelter soon.
“Bastards!” Phillips muttered, then continued on. The five young black men couldn't be helped now, and his team couldn't take the time to bury them, nor could they leave themselves open to be bushwhacked. Part of him chafed at not properly burying the poor souls who had been lynched, but the majority of him wanted them to remain there, so others could see what those damned racists had done to brothers of his.
That evening, as they decamped at some abandoned high school that Phillips didn't bother worrying to learn its name, the short, stocky frame of Lieutenant Colonel Jason Finch walked up to him. “So you saw those poor fellas strung up earlier today, huh?” he said softly.
Phillips nodded his head, and said nothing, which prompted Finch to spring his little surprise. “Would you like to get some revenge on the assholes who did this?”
That woke Phillips up out of his doldrums, and he shot up from his sitting position on the bench, saying, “Hell yeah, sir! Who's with me?”
“Come with me and you'll find out!” Finch said with a predatory smile. Finch was biracial, half black and half white, and Phillips had seen from his time in on the Secularist side that this was no man to mess with, as the forty year old was a black belt in karate and once upon a time considered going into mixed martial arts before his father put those ideas on hold by twisting the arm of Senator Lindsey Graham to get Finch into West Point.
Inside a classroom, Finch laid out the plan. “Intelligence has learned that those who have been going around rounding up black folks and killing them are nearby, set up in an elementary school. They're not professional soldiers, but there are a lot of them, and they're Klansmen. Not sure if they have had any militia training or if any of those in this group of thugs are former military, but we are going on the assumption that they've had adequate military training.
“What we plan on doing is to infiltrate their camp, bring out as many of them alive as we can, find out what those bastards know, then eliminate them. We don't have time for military justice the old fashioned way, so once we find out what we need to know from all those we round up, we take them out in a way that doesn't use bullets or any additional resources.” Finch said.
“Can we strangle the bastards?” some soldier said behind Phillips, and chuckles rose up from the troops.
“You sure as hell can, provided you have some buddies alongside to make sure that whomever we're killing doesn't overpower the executioner.” Finch replied.
Phillips hand shot up automatically, along with every black man's in the impromptu unit, as well as a few Hispanic guys. Finch smiled and said, “Atta boy! Let's go!”
Nightfall came, but not before a huge thunderstorm poured rain down upon the area where they dwelt. “It's fine. Muffles the sound, and since we'll get some fog, we have the element of surprise!” said Chan with a smile. He wasn't happy, though, but he believed in the men in his unit, and he wanted a piece of those who had murdered those poor souls. When the order came to move out, the soldiers did so enthusiastically, and Phillips had made sure to get as many clips as he could, just in case the firefight got really hot. Part of him really wanted it to, and the fear of death wasn't even creeping into his mind, for his rage was silencing the nervousness he usually got before going into battle.
Phillips stepped over a scout that had been posted by the racists holed up in the elementary school, and smiled as he saw how deep the cut around the white hick's neck had been. He looked like a inbred from one of those B-movies his grandmother loved back in Gaffney, the ones that came out of a station based in Charlotte that could only be picked up by an antenna. He turned back to the slow walk he was making towards the school. No lights were seen in the school, and they were getting close.
Intel had said that the entire group was billeting in the gym, which was their mistake. If they had been smart, they would have had a watch, with some of the troops looking for the very kind of ambush such as this. They entered the school from a side entrance, and no alarms went off, which was a blessing. They searched each room, just in case someone had decided to sleep somewhere else, but all the classrooms were empty.
Finch had lucked up and found a floor plan of the elementary school in the principal's office of the high school, and he split up the troops to hit the fools inside the gym from the stage side. Phillips part of it took the stage, and he looked through the darkness at his friend Chan, and smiled, as they stood waiting for the curtain to literally rise.
One minute, the militia slept peacefully, with no idea what was about to hit them. The next, lights came up as the curtain rose, and doors flung open. “FREEZE!” was yelled out by the troops as the entered like flooding waters, and none of the militiamen had a chance to even get up from their cots, much less grab their guns. It had turned out that the troops outnumbered the militiamen two to one, so they were soon all sitting down on the bleachers, with zip tie handcuffs restraining them.
Phillips guarded the door as Finch and some of the other officers interrogated the prisoners, and he managed to catch some of what was said. The group was members of the relatively young Sons of the Confederacy militant group, which was formed after Barack Obama had been reelected president in 2012, and they had members coming in from all over not only Mississippi, but parts of Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas and even Texas. Their mission was simple: find any black folks and deal with them. Most of them died quickly, but the young women and, in some cases, young girls who were not of legal age, were raped before meeting their maker.
Instead of being filled with rage, he was happy, because Finch had put him on execution detail, and so soon he would have the chance to strangle the bastards himself. With a smile full of mischief, he looked forward to exacting some sweet revenge. He wanted to look into the faces of each of them as they died, so that their last image before they passed on was his face. He wanted to take out the fury inside of him that he had felt when he got word that his own family had been killed by some white hoodlums the night of the assassination, as they were sitting in the parking lot of the outlet mall, not realizing just how mad the world had really gotten.
But before Finch could issue the orders the next day, a large group of African Americans from around the area came up to the school, demanding to get their hands on those men who had been killing them. Finch turned to Phillips and asked, “What would you do?”
Phillips wanted to feel the heartbeat fade on some of the scumbags inside the gym, but these folks really wanted to taste the blood of their enemies. “Let them have it. We have more important things to do!”
“So be it!” Finch said, and had his troops move out. As they moved out that night, the first screams from the frightened white men started up as the black folks took out their rage and their frustrations for the deaths dealt them upon those who had done the dealing.
Phillips walked away from the school without a second thought as to what was going on. Maybe his soul was damned as he walked down the asphalt road for thirsting for the blood of those cracker fools, but he didn't care. Soon he would be in another firefight, against who knows who in this damned war, and the prospect of surviving the war didn't matter to him, because he didn't think he would.
Suddenly, the dark sky lit up, and the screams intensified. The avenging people had set the gym on fire, and left the militiamen inside, apparently. “Fuck them! Let's keep going!” Finch said, and the troops gladly moved away from the inferno. Someone behind Phillips asked, “What's the world coming to?”
“An end, man! It's coming to an end!” Chan said, but with a smile on his face. “Fuck it, we need a new world anyway! Let this old one die!” he added. Phillips nodded and moved on, wondering again how much longer he'd live through this.