Archie’s War
Copyright© 2025 by Mark Gander
Chapter 1
Science Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 1 - Archie McDermott’s war has taken him a long way from his father’s barbershop since Fireball Day, including a new family, but geographically, he hasn’t traveled very far, from Wheaton to Peoria, fighting the neofascist Justice Party faction in Illinois. His pursuit of vengeance is almost done, but he has a new purpose: rebuilding again in love, lust, trust, and faith in the new Havenite religion…and Schumacher Syndrome. He also has to deal with the ghosts of his tormented family past.
Caution: This Science Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Consensual BiSexual Military War Science Fiction Post Apocalypse Sharing Rough Spanking Group Sex Harem Polygamy/Polyamory Interracial White Male Oriental Female Hispanic Female Analingus Pregnancy Big Breasts Politics Violence
0124 hours, local time
Tuesday, 9 June, 2015 (23 months after Fireball Day)
The Mosby Line
Peoria, Illinois
Private First Class Archie McDermott lit another smoke as he scanned the perimeter for more enemy snipers seeking to catch him in the open. Justice Party Militia snipers were more than a nuisance. They were a menace, a mortal peril to his comrades and himself in the Wheaton Havenite Militia. Archie still couldn’t believe at times that just two years ago, he was a barber working in his father’s shop alongside him in Wheaton. Now he was an infantryman, helping overrun the fascist paramilitary forces across the Land of Lincoln, shrinking the Justice Party’s corridor or zone of control further back by the day. Victory was closer than ever, but the enemy didn’t seem to get the memo.
Archie took another puff as he saw enemy movement, ever so slight, ghosting through the charred skeleton of the Peoria Heights water tower. He exhaled slowly, the smoke curling like vaporous worms in the humid predawn air. The silhouette paused behind a jagged piece of fallen masonry – just a trembling shadow against the deeper gloom. Archie’s pulse quickened. Was it a scout? A sniper setting up? Or just a starving dog scavenging among the ruins? He eased his M-16 forward, the familiar weight settling against his shoulder. Beneath his grime-streaked helmet, sweat trickled down his temple, mingling with the ash-scented breeze drifting over the Mosby Line.
A discarded Chicagoland Transit map fluttered against barbed wire nearby, its creases sharp with military folds. It caught Archie’s eye – a relic from when commuters worried about train delays, not mortar fire. He remembered tracing routes with his father on those maps before anarchy turned highways into graveyards. The nostalgia tasted bitter. He blinked. Focus. The silhouette hadn’t moved. Archie’s thumb brushed the rifle’s safety – click. Silent. Ready. The Justice Party prided themselves on stealth ambushes. He’d seen Tomás Gutierrez fall that way last week, clutching his throat as he choked on his own blood. Not today. Not here.
Static hissed in Archie’s earpiece. Corporal Pence’s voice crackled, low and urgent: “McDermott. Thermal drone pinged two hostiles in Sector Delta Seven. Confirm.”
Archie didn’t move his lips, breathing the response into his throat mic. “Affirmative. One visual, northeast quadrant water tower ruins. Possible sniper or spotter.” His gaze never left that jagged concrete slab. Was it leaning slightly now? Or was the dawn light playing tricks? Ash settled on his eyelashes. He tasted grit.
The shadow shifted – a deliberate slide, not wind-drift. Archie’s rifle tracked it, finger resting feather-light beside the trigger. He cataloged details: no muzzle flash, no glint of optics. Just darkness consolidating. Patience, his drill sergeant’s ghost whispered. Let them commit. Below the ridge, a rusted Pepsi vending machine lay gutted, its red plastic bleached bone-white by sun and phosphorus burns. When Archie blinked, he saw his father wiping condensation off their shop’s fridge, humming Sinatra. The memory evaporated.
The throat mic vibrated again, Pence’s voice sandpaper-rough. “Delta Seven hostile confirmed advancing. Second thermal signature stationary near the old pharmacy ruins. Designate yours Alpha-One. Hold position. Engage only on my mark.”
Archie exhaled slowly, fogging his scope’s eyepiece. Alpha-One was bait. And Archie was the hook. The pharmacy ruins meant flanking fire if he moved too soon. Justice Party Militia loved crossfire traps. Like they’d sprung on the Galena supply convoy last month. He remembered the melted tires, the smell of roasting pork that wasn’t pork.
Alpha-One slid sideways again—a serpentine glide toward a collapsed stairwell. Archie’s knuckles whitened. Patience. Patience. The dawn light bled crimson through smoke plumes, staining the rubble. Below him, the Pepsi machine’s exposed wiring sparked faintly, a dying firefly in the gloom.
His father’s voice echoed, unbidden: “A steady hand wins the shave, Archie.” But this wasn’t a straight razor. This was kill-or-be-killed calculus. The shadow paused at the stairwell’s threshold. Head tilted. Listening.
Static ripped through Archie’s earpiece. Pence’s voice, stripped raw: “Mark. Now.” Archie’s finger kissed the trigger—once, twice. Sharp cracks split the air. Concrete exploded where Alpha-One had stood. Too slow. A ricochet whined off the vending machine. Archie swore, scanning frantically. Movement flashed in his peripheral vision—not from the stairwell, but from the pharmacy ruins’ shattered windows. Muzzle flashes. Flanking fire. He threw himself flat as bullets shredded the earth where his head had been.
The acrid sting of cordite filled his nostrils. Archie pressed his cheek against the cool, damp earth behind a crater lip, heart hammering against his ribs. He’d never imagined himself here—crawling through the carcass of American neighborhoods, trading shots across the ruins of a strip mall. Two years ago, his world was buzzing clippers and talcum powder, the warm weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder. War was flickering black-and-white images on his laptop: that haunting ‘93 film Stalingrad, Germans and Russians dying in frozen tenements. He remembered scoffing at the improbability—ordinary men reduced to rats in brick labyrinths. Now, breathing Peoria’s ash, the absurdity choked him. He wasn’t facing foreign invaders in a distant snowscape; he was hunting fellow Illinoisans in the skeleton of a Pizza Hut. The brutality felt obscenely intimate, like cutting hair blindfolded.
Bullets whined overhead, shredding the Pepsi machine’s plastic carcass into confetti.
Pence’s voice rasped in his ear, tinny and strained: “Report! Status, McDermott!”
Archie spat grit, scanning the pharmacy ruins. Movement flickered—not muzzle flashes, but the frantic scramble of boots kicking plaster dust. Alpha-One had baited him perfectly. The flanking fire hadn’t come from the pharmacy’s main floor; it was spewing from its intact basement access—a shattered service ramp he’d dismissed as rubble. His drill sergeant’s ghost hissed: Overlooked the cellar. Amateur. He’d mapped commuter trains, not kill zones. Below the pharmacy, a forgotten storm drain tunnel system snaked toward the river. Justice Party fighters weren’t fanatical ghosts—they were sewer rats exploiting infrastructure they knew blindfolded. Archie felt sick. This ambush wasn’t tactical brilliance; it was local knowledge weaponized.
Then, luck tore through the smoke. A figure burst from the pharmacy’s side alley—not retreating, but charging Archie’s crater position in a desperate flanking maneuver. It was a Justice Party rifleman, young, face wild with terror or fervor, sprinting over collapsed ceiling tiles. His boot landed on a loose chunk of drywall, slick with dew. Archie heard the sharp crack of bone even before the cry. The man went down hard, rifle skittering away as he clutched his ankle, writhing silently in agony. Archie didn’t hesitate. He lunged, driving his knee into the small of the soldier’s back, pinning him face-first into the ash-strewn mud. His fingertips dug into the thin fabric of the man’s militia jacket; beneath it, he felt ribs too sharp, a frame starved hollow. Archie yanked the soldier’s arms behind him, binding wrists with zip-ties pulled from his own belt pouch. Luck. Pure, dumb luck. The soldier’s breath hitched—not a sob, but a choked whimper of pain. Archie smelled stale sweat and despair.
His prisoner secured, Archie scanned the ruins. The basement firing had ceased abruptly. Alpha-One wasn’t advancing; the trap was void without its sprung component. Static buzzed in his ear.
“McDermott?” Pence’s voice was taut wire.
Archie thumbed his throat mic, low and urgent: “Hostile neutralized. One captured. Leg injury. Ambush stalled.” Silence stretched for a heartbeat, thick with disbelief. Then confirmation crackled back: “Hold position. Keep him alive. Intel priority.”
Archie pressed his prisoner deeper into the mud, shielding him from potential fire. The young soldier trembled violently beneath him, gasping through clenched teeth. Archie’s own hands shook now—not from fear, but the adrenaline crash. He’d captured a ghost, made flesh and suffering inches away. The intimacy of it was worse than gunfire.
Blackhawk rotors thumped overhead as Corporal Pence arrived fifteen minutes later with two Wheaton Havenite medics. Archie hauled his prisoner upright; the soldier cried out, ankle buckling unnaturally.
Pence didn’t flinch, barking orders. “Secure him. Medic—stabilize that leg.” Hands clamped the prisoner’s arms. Archie released his grip, knuckles aching.
Pence surveyed Archie’s ash-streaked face, the bloodied scrape along his jawline. “After-action report, Soldier. But first—” Pence jerked his chin toward Archie’s left hip pouch. “Eat. Ten minutes. Then debrief.”
Archie blinked, numb. He fumbled open the pouch, fingers clumsy as he extracted a crumbly ration bar. Victory tasted like stale peanuts and salt.
Static ripped through Archie’s earpiece as he chewed mechanically. Pence leaned against a shattered brick wall, scribbling notes on a waterproof pad.
“SITREP, McDermott. Start with Alpha-One.”
Archie swallowed dry paste, his throat tight. “Ambush confirmed coordinated. Alpha-One was bait. Flanking fire originated from basement pharmacy access—concealed storm drain tunnel.” He spat grit onto scorched earth. “They exploited municipal infrastructure. Maps are outdated.”
Pence’s eyes narrowed. “Tunnel network confirmed? Depth? Access points?”
Archie shook his head. “Unknown, Corporal. Prisoner might know. Seemed ... familiar with the terrain.” Below them, the captured soldier whimpered as a medic injected morphine. Archie avoided looking at the wound.
Two hours later, Archie crouched behind the same crater lip, guiding Sergeant Wayne Bain’s patrol into Sector Delta Seven. Dawn light now scorched the ruins amber, stretching shadows like claws across the rubble where Alpha-One had bled the squad dry. Bain’s unit moved with cautious precision—eight Wheaton Havenites spread thin, rifles scanning shattered storefronts.
Archie traced their path on a laminated sewer map Pence had thrust into his hands; red grease-pencil circles marked suspected tunnel entrances near the pharmacy basement. He remembered the prisoner’s feverish glare as medics loaded him onto the Blackhawk—a boy really, younger than Archie’s sister. The map’s wrong, Archie had insisted. They’re using storm drains we don’t have charts for. Pence just grunted: Then you’ll draw us new ones.
“Hey, McDermott, do you know the difference between a Czech and a Slovak?” Private First Class Eustace Potter joked.
“Just tell us all, Potter,” Pence answered for Archie, feeling impatient.
“You can’t pay your rent with a Slovak,” Potter grinned impishly.
The sergeant didn’t smile. Neither did Archie. Not with Justice Party sharpshooters likely zeroing in from the pharmacy’s skeletal second floor. Potter’s chuckle died mid-breath as Bain signaled freeze—a single raised fist cutting through the smoke-laden air. Archie’s gaze snapped to a flicker of movement behind the pharmacy’s remaining display window: A gloved hand adjusting a scope’s elevation turret, barely visible against shredded insulation foam hanging like guts from the ceiling. Archie’s throat mic hummed alive—no words, just two deliberate pressure pulses from Bain directly into his jawbone. Target acquired. The storm drain trap had been blown, but the rats still had teeth in the attic.
Archie watched Bain’s squad fragment into overlapping arcs of fire—silent, fluid, rehearsed. Private Choi slid sideways into the corpse of an overturned UPS truck, her M4 tracing the window’s fractured edges. Corporal Hatch melted behind a scorched ATM, his shotgun’s muzzle drifting toward a collapsed service stairwell Archie hadn’t scouted. Every movement felt like chess pieces sliding across concrete, deliberate and lethal. Archie’s own rifle rose, crosshairs settling where the gloved hand had vanished. His father’s voice resurfaced, unbidden: Measure twice, cut once. Except this wasn’t hair. This was threading a bullet through rotten drywall into living tissue. He inhaled cordite, exhaled stillness.
The pharmacy window exploded outward in a shower of glass and splinters. Archie’s finger tightened—but no muzzle flash followed. Instead, a tarnished coffee thermos tumbled into the street, clanging hollowly against asphalt. Distraction. Instinct screamed trap as Archie’s gaze snapped left. Too late. From the UPS truck’s shadowed undercarriage, a Justice Party rifleman erupted—not toward Bain’s men, but up, scaling Choi’s flank like a spider. Her startled curse died as his knife flashed toward her throat. Time fractured. Archie’s shot rang out, wild and panicked, punching brick dust three feet wide. The rifleman recoiled, stumbling backward into Hatch’s waiting shotgun blast. The thump wasn’t cinematic; it was wet, visceral, folding the man like discarded laundry. Choi scrambled clear, pale but alive. Archie tasted bile. Luck again. Ugly, undeserved.
Static screamed in Archie’s earpiece. Bain’s voice, stripped to gravel: “Second floor! Active sniper! Four o’clock, pharmacy attic window!”
Archie pivoted, scanning the jagged hole where stained curtains flapped. Nothing. Then—a fractional shift in the gloom, like oil shifting in water. His scope caught it: the matte-black barrel of a Dragunov protruding six inches, steady as death’s grin. Archie’s breath hitched. Distance: eighty yards. Wind: negligible. Shot placement: lethal. But the sniper hadn’t fired. Why not? Archie’s mind raced. Bait. Again. He scanned the street—Potter crouched behind a melted bus bench, exposed. The sniper’s crosshairs weren’t on Archie; they were painted on Potter’s temple. Patience, hissed Archie’s ghost-sergeant. He wants you to rush.
Potter’s cocky smile wasn’t reassuring, “Chill, McDermott! I’ve got luck.”
Archie shook his head at the man’s irritating arrogance.
Potter’s skull disintegrated milliseconds later. A suppressed crack echoed—not the sharp report of a Dragunov, but the wet slap of a high-caliber bullet impacting bone and tissue. Archie watched, frozen, as Potter’s helmet spun away like a discarded toy, his body collapsing sideways behind the bench, a crimson mist hanging in the air where his head had been. Luck had run out. The sniper hadn’t been in the attic window at all; the Dragunov barrel Archie spotted was a decoy—a wire-and-pipe dummy rigged to draw fire while the real shooter lay prone in the pharmacy’s collapsed loading dock, concealed beneath a moldering tarp and a pile of rebar. Archie’s throat tightened. They weren’t just rats. They were spiders, weaving webs in the ruin’s shadows.
Bain’s squad erupted into disciplined chaos. Choi and Hatch laid down suppressive fire toward the loading dock, their bullets sparking off concrete while Archie scanned for movement. Nothing. The sniper had vanished like smoke, leaving only Potter’s cooling body and the faint scent of cordite mixed with copper. Archie’s fingers trembled against his rifle’s grip. Two years ago, he’d held a straight razor to old Mr. Henderson’s wattled neck, joking about Cubs tickets. Now, he’d watched a man’s consciousness evaporate in the time it took to blink. The intimacy of violence was suffocating—closer than a lover’s breath, louder than his father’s Sinatra records.
The memory ambushed him like a sniper round: Friday, July 5th, 2013. Heat lightning flickered over Wheaton as Archie fumbled with Bethany Carmichael’s bra clasp in her father’s borrowed Impala, parked behind the shuttered Baptist church. She was nineteen, a summer-break theology student with freckles dusting her shoulders like cinnamon. Her deacon father thought she was at a prayer vigil. Archie, twenty-three and virginal, tasted cherry lip gloss and guilt as her sundress pooled around her waist.
Potter’s blood pooled black on the asphalt ten feet away, snapping Archie back. The pharmacy loading dock remained still—no muzzle flash, no shifting shadow. Only the rebar skeleton beneath the tarp, mocking him. Corporal Hatch’s shotgun roared again, peppering the tarp with useless buckshot. They’re ghosts, Archie thought, scanning the rubble-choked alley beside the dock. No. Ghosts don’t rig decoys.
Choi cursed beside the UPS truck, reloading frantically. Her hands shook; Potter’s death had rattled her.
Archie’s throat mic vibrated—Bain’s orders, clipped and icy: “Flank left. Choi, Hatch—suppressive fire on dock. McDermott, clear alley.”
Archie hesitated. The alley was a kill funnel—collapsed brick walls narrowing to a dead end choked with debris. Perfect ambush terrain. But Bain’s command brooked no argument. Choi laid down covering fire as Archie lunged forward, boots crunching glass. Every step screamed trap.
Then it happened...
A muzzle flashed from a collapsed HVAC vent halfway down the alley—not at Archie, but angled toward Choi’s exposed position near the UPS truck.
Archie screamed, “Down!” but the burst caught Choi high in the right shoulder, spinning her like a broken doll against the truck’s fender.
Blood bloomed instantly across her uniform, dark and wet. Her rifle clattered to the pavement as she slumped, gasping.
Archie didn’t think. He lunged forward, bullets kicking up concrete chips around his boots as he sprinted the fifteen yards to Choi. He hooked his hands under her armpits, dragging her backward behind the truck’s engine block. Her breaths came in ragged, wet hitches. “Armor’s ... cracked,” she choked, fingers fumbling at her bleeding collarbone. Archie ripped his own field dressing from his belt pouch, pressing it hard against the wound.
“Pressure here,” he ordered, guiding her shaking hand. He scanned the alley—the vent was silent now, the shooter vanished into the ductwork.
Seeing Choi stabilized for the moment, Archie scrambled back to his original position behind the crater lip. His movements were frantic, haste overriding precision, gravel scraping his knees as he slid into cover. He didn’t glance back—Choi’s muffled groan was confirmation enough. Rifle up, he scanned the HVAC vent, its twisted metal maw dark and taunting.
“Hatch!” he barked into his mic, “Cover that vent! They’re using the ducts like arteries!” A shotgun blast answered, peppering the vent’s opening with buckshot. Nothing stirred. The silence was thicker than the cordite haze.
Hatch shifted position, darting from the scorched ATM to a low concrete planter ten yards closer to the alley. It was a bold move—too bold. Archie saw the glint too late: a tripwire stretched ankle-high across cracked sidewalk tiles, camouflaged by shredded insulation. Hatch’s boot snagged it. A sharp, metallic snap echoed—not an explosion, but the sickening clatter of something mechanical. Archie’s eyes locked onto the rusted industrial spring trap hidden beneath loose bricks, its jaws snapping shut on Hatch’s calf with brutal, bone-crunching force. Hatch screamed—a raw, animal sound—as he collapsed, blood jetting onto the concrete. Before Archie could react, a single suppressed shot cracked from the pharmacy’s second-floor window—the real sniper this time. A neat, dark hole appeared in Hatch’s temple as he convulsed once and went still. His shotgun slid from limp fingers.
The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by Choi’s shallow gasps and the drip of Hatch’s blood pooling around the sprung trap. Then the distant, hollow thump reverberated through the ruins—a sound Archie knew intimately. Mortar tube discharge. Seconds later, the first round shrieked overhead, detonating farther up the Mosby Line near the gutted Pepsi machine. The Justice Party weren’t retreating; they were unleashing hell indiscriminately, scorching earth they couldn’t hold. Rubble rained down like dirty hail. Archie flattened himself against the crater lip as another mortar landed closer—thirty yards to his left—showering him with grit and acrid smoke. Desperation had teeth.
Bain’s voice screamed through Archie’s earpiece, tinny and frayed: “Incoming! All units—cover! Get Choi to the storm drain access! NOW!”
Archie scrambled toward Choi, dragging her by her uninjured arm. She stumbled, teeth gritted against the agony. Another mortar screamed—closer. Fifty yards? Less? The world dissolved into dust and concussion. Archie shielded Choi’s body with his own as debris hammered his backplate. When the ringing subsided, Archie glimpsed Bain’s silhouette darting across the street toward Choi’s position—reckless, exposed. A third mortar shrieked.
Archie yelled, “Down, Sarge!”—too late. The round struck the melted bus bench Potter had died behind. The blast vaporized the bench, the concussion hurling Bain backward like a ragdoll into a mound of shattered cinder blocks. Archie watched, frozen, as Bain’s helmet rolled away, his body limp and still. Two more Wheaton Havenites—Privates Rios and Vance—vanished in the dust cloud, swallowed by the collapsing facade of a Dollar General store. Eleven minutes stretched into an eternity under mortar fire.
The mortars ceased abruptly. Not a tapering fade, but an instant, deafening silence. Archie counted the seconds—eleven minutes exactly—before the answering roar tore the sky apart, distant howitzers unleashed their fury, massive shells screaming overhead like vengeful spirits. Archie felt the ground tremble as Justice Party positions west of the pharmacy erupted into boiling geysers of earth and concrete. Secondary explosions bloomed—ammo dumps cooking off. The pharmacy ruins shuddered, raining plaster. Justice Party radio chatter dissolved into panicked shrieks in Archie’s captured earpiece.
“Artillery! They zeroed our tubes! Fall back to River Tunnel Delta!” The fascists’ indiscriminate hellfire had painted a target on their own backs. Archie hauled Choi toward the gaping maw of the storm drain entrance Bain had identified earlier. Salvation smelled like damp concrete and rat piss.
Choi stumbled, her shoulder wound weeping crimson through the pressure dressing. Archie shoved her unceremoniously into the drain’s cool darkness just as a Justice Party straggler emerged from the pharmacy’s smoking cellar ramp—wild-eyed, clutching a rusted AK-47. Archie’s rifle swung up, but fatigue and adrenaline betrayed him; his shot clipped the man’s thigh instead of center mass. The militiaman screamed, stumbling back into the shadows. Archie hesitated—pursue or secure? His drill sergeant’s ghost snarled: Secure the asset. He slid into the drain after Choi, kicking aside soggy cardboard and syringes. The darkness swallowed them whole. Above, the artillery thumped its relentless heartbeat. Justice Party screams echoed down the tunnel—not defiant, but terrified. Retreating rats abandoning a sinking ship.
The storm drain’s damp concrete pressed against Archie’s back as he dragged Choi deeper into the suffocating darkness, her ragged breaths echoing off the curved walls. Water pooled around their boots, thick with the reek of sewage and rust. Distant artillery thumps vibrated through the earth, shaking loose grit from overhead pipes. Justice Party shouts faded behind them—panicked, disorganized. They’re running, Archie realized, his own pulse hammering against his ribs. Not toward them. Away from the hammerfall of their own obliterated mortar positions. He propped Choi against a slimy wall, fumbling for a chem-light. The green glow revealed her ashen face, the dressing on her shoulder soaked black.
“Hold on,” he muttered, though he wasn’t sure she heard. Above, the world was ending in fire and steel. Below, it stank of decay.
Thirty minutes later, Wheaton Havenite medics stretchered Choi into the triage tent at Firebase Badger, her eyes fluttering shut as morphine flooded her veins. Archie stood dripping in the command bunker, rain-slicked poncho clinging to his shoulders. Corporal Pence’s face was granite under the fluorescent lights as Archie delivered his clipped report: Choi stabilized, Bain and Hatch KIA, Potter’s head vaporized by a decoy sniper trap. The Justice Party’s storm-drain networks were worse than feared—arteries of death beneath their feet. Pence listened, scribbling on a map stained with coffee rings.
Then, as Archie finished, Pence’s radio crackled with static-laced triumph. “McDermott,” Pence said, a rare ghost of a smile touching his lips. “Wisconsin Free State Militia just rolled their Paladin howitzers onto the I-39 overpass. Leveled the Justice Party’s riverbank artillery nest. Whole west flank’s collapsing like a rotten porch.” Archie blinked. Artillery. Not just answering fire—ending it. The fascists had gambled with mortars and lost. Now Wisconsin’s steel fists were rewriting the battlefield’s grammar.
Later, after a well deserved nap curled in the claustrophobic warmth of Firebase Badger’s supply closet—cotton wool stuffed in his ears against distant shelling—Archie woke to Pence slapping a soggy map onto his chest.
“Sector’s ours,” Pence rasped, reeking of stale coffee and cordite. “Justice Party remnants fled east through the river tunnels. Coalition flags fly over the Caterpillar HQ ruins.” Archie rubbed grit from his eyes, the words sinking in. Victory tasted like exhaustion and mildew. Central Peoria had fallen. Only eastern Peoria was left in enemy hands in the area.
“The Justice Party can’t win this war anymore, but they can still make us win only a Pyrrhic victory,” Archie blurted, “they still hold the rest of this town, plus Springfield and Vandalia. That’s still enough to bleed us white.”
Pence nodded grimly as Archie traced a grease-pencil line over Peoria’s eastern districts—riverfront warehouses converted into fortresses, linked by those cursed storm drains.
“They don’t need corridors,” Archie insisted, jabbing at the map. “They need time. To rebuild. To recruit. Or just to make Illinois uninhabitable.” The corporals nodded gravely, faces etched with the same fear: that winning acres of poisoned rubble might cost more than it was worth.
“Fear not. The enemy shall do no such thing. Your prisoner spilled the beans. We will break them here before Friday. We know where to hit them on all sides to destroy them in detail,” a stranger declared, his uniform catching the light to reveal the brigade commander, Colonel Damien Walenska, announced now.
Walenska strode into the bunker, jabbing a grease-stained finger at the eastern riverfront warehouses. “Justice Party Sector Command bunker’s confirmed beneath River Terminal Seven. Prisoner confirmed their entire eastern command staff shelters there nightly. We hit them tonight—with everything.” He smiled, chilling Archie to his core. “They taught us to fear tunnels? Good. Now rats die in their burrows.”
Orders snapped like gunfire: final equipment checks, infiltration routes assigned. Archie filed out into the drizzle, the map’s damp paper clinging to his palm. Victory smelled like wet asphalt and cordite.
Inside an auxiliary bunker repurposed as a holding cell, Archie saw him: a slumped Justice Party rifleman, wrists zip-tied to a folding chair. Not the injured boy from earlier—this one was older, gaunt-faced, eyes hollowed by defeat. The stinging scent of disinfectant couldn’t mask the sour tang of fear-sweat. A sergeant slapped a sheaf of papers onto a field table.
“This one’s singing, McDermott,” he muttered. “Sang the whole damn choir about Terminal Seven’s ventilation shafts.”
Archie watched the prisoner flinch at every sharp sound. More captured, he realized—the war machine grinding prisoners into intelligence grist.
Justice Party atrocities flooded Archie’s mind unbidden: the video from Nauvoo—bodies stacked like cordwood, throats slit ear-to-ear; the Hells Angels found crucified on telephone poles after the fall of Dixon into their hands. Fascist brutality had painted Illinois red long before artillery did. Yet here, in this dank bunker, the Havenites hadn’t broken bones or used pliers. They’d offered water, a bandaged shrapnel wound. The prisoner trembled, but he wasn’t bleeding. Archie’s fingers traced the cold steel of his rifle sling. His side hadn’t sunk to their level. Not yet. But Walenska’s whispered command—”Make him sing louder”—hung like a shroud in the damp air. Tonight’s assault demanded more than maps. It demanded darkness.
Archie closed his eyes, the antiseptic stench dissolving into memory: the cold plunge of Wheaton Creek waters during his baptism earlier that year, The Prophet Charles Tremaine’s booming voice blessing him as a Havenite. He’d surfaced gasping, reborn, as Tremaine laid calloused hands upon his brow. A profound warmth had flooded him—undeniable, purifying. And the miracles: old Mrs. Henderson’s wasting sickness vanishing overnight after Tremaine prayed over her frail frame; the withered apple tree behind Wheaton City Hall budding impossibly in winter snow.