Australia 2011 Collection. WRITERS READ!

Peterdea

New member
I rewrote this (or heavily edited it). My new idea is that I want other writers to help with the story rather then have me write the entire thing. You don't have to be a great or even a good writer. It's an idea I had to make a great story that has a lot of ideas involved.

PM me if you want more details about this.

And now, heres the intro:

In the year 2010, the Australian War finally came to an end. The Japanese were forced out after twelve months of intense combat. Due to a lack of support from allied nations in the war, Australia was left in a depression that left the Australian public in a worse state then they had ever been. Streets were crowded with those who had lost everything either in the war or after the war.

The Japanese government refused offers to return all the Japanese POWs that the Australia and New Zealand armed forces had taken over to where they belonged. The Japanese announced that all the POWs returned would be executed if sent home. So the Australian Government allowed them to stay, hoping to attract some outside help and support to get the country out of the depression.

The Australian public protested the keeping of the POWs due to the amount of them. No official numbers were given but the POW prisons were full.

As the government lost support, it looked like Australia was doomed. No countries wanted to help due to the severity of the depression and the costs involved in helping out.

In the year 2011, the Australian Government under went some unexpected changes. All of these changes were seemingly the answer to the depression.

In the last election, a new political party emerged out of what seemed like nowhere. They were a very wealthy party who promised the Australians a very positive future.

Their promises were so tempting that this new party won the election without any other party posing a threat. Everything seemed to be heading in the right directions.

Their plans were to guarantee a house for all Australians, whether it meant making mass amounts of apartments, units or just making mansions for people to share. They also announced that families were to be supported twice as much as they already were, average incomes would rise and interest rates would drop dramatically. When questioned about this they responded saying that “money is not a problem for us.”

There was much more they promised to sweeten the deal, however there was a dark side to the party. Everything they promised was real, but they silently demanded a sacrifice. It was something that was obvious yet nobody noticed due to the depression, and considering how desperate the Australians were, blaming them is the wrong thing to do.

The leader of the party, who’s name was Charles Bird had other plans for the country. He was also not the man he portrayed himself to be.

Evidence of this surfaced when Callum McGregor, a conspiracist from a small town in New South Wales who also worked for one of the top secret government forces could find no trace of Charles Bird when he was researching the new government. He was suspicious of the new party. He searched but found his face attached to another name. Stanislov Cheslav was the name Mr. McGregor found the photo to.

Upon reading on the internet that his true name was found out, Prime Minister Bird changed all the files. All the evidence Mr McGregor found was lost.

Mr McGregor quit his job to try and uncover the government, since he knew the truth even though the evidence was gone. He felt it was his duty to take these people down and uncover the truth.

More truths were briefly uncovered by many random people all over the country. The government was quick to cover them back up again.

In the end there formed multiple small teams of people dedicated to one purpose, and that was to expose the government. Although they knew the truth, there was no remaining evidence, and so far the only things they found had been small truths linking them to the Russian Government. This put the ultimate motives of the party in question in these groups. No group could come to a conclusion, many theories were in circulation.

The biggest discovery came around 28th December 2011 when a woman using the name “Michelle” sent videos to every group she knew of claiming to have documents that suggest Prime Minister Bird’s true intentions.

The video was short, but sweet. This is what she said:

“Mi name is not important, so refer to me as Michelle for now. You are right to be against this new political government, and now I have something that you can do for me. But first let me explain. I have evidence that suggests that they are planning to find a fairly small town and destroy it, using the townsfolk as slaves to build an underground military bunker for the Russian Military, blaming the destruction of the town of the United States.

I need you to expose this plan, get evidence.

Good luck.”

As you could imagine, the groups of people went crazy but decided not to release the footage or news anywhere else, at least until after it had been exposed.

At least this way the government wouldn’t know and wouldn’t be able to know that they had something going.

On the governments end, they were suspicious of the groups that they knew existed. It had been too long since anyone had accused them of something else since before that, they were accused of something at least once a month. Now it had been over 2 months and they knew something was up. There was so much that they almost accidentally let slip, it was obvious because of the way they cut interviews short and the Prime Minister would avoid public speaking as often as possible. There would be panic on their faces, and they would just say “thank you” and leave.

Upon being the way they are, the government decided to take action the only way they knew how. Realizing that the silence probably meant their biggest plan had been found out, they made a fake identity for another video.

They sent it to the groups they knew about. It said something along these lines,

“We have found something big, I want to tell all of you, this is a must for all of you. Tell all groups like yourselves. You must come to see us.”

Along with the where and when detail, the message was also short, and sweet. The day of the so called meeting was the last time that all of the groups were seen by friends and family again.

Or so thought the government…

I spent a lot of time locating those who made it out of there. All of them were still on the same mission, only now they were on their own.

These are their stories as I have been told and read in journals. Not all of these stories are from the living, or known living. Nor will they be completely accurate or finish at the end. I only have so many resources.

Keep in mind some of these are from journals. This means they could start before or after the start of the government’s reigns.

These people deserve to have their stories shared. This is the only place you will find them. Please, hear me, and them out, for the sake of the country.

 

Ravynlee

New member
So let me see if I got this straight;

Japan waged war on Australia? It ended (after indeterminate amount of time) in 2010 when the Japanese were defeated and sent packing empty-handed. Victorious yet depleted from war, Australia suffered heavy losses, both in population and economically. The Japanese prisoners were kept here on our shores, following their host country abandoning them (in shame, perhaps?) The camps were crowded. We have obviously hundreds of thousands of alien immigrants now that neither country wants - and here they are now along side the very people they had been fighting against, and lost to.

So following the victory, but with the economy having been ciphoned to support this war, and with so many alien immigrants, we have a recession/depression. Morale is low. Hundreds (of thousands, I assume) of Aussies are dead, and we have the Japanese POW's here now bolstering numbers. Mass destruction, massive debt, massive loss of numbers, resources low, people starving and mourning in the streets, there would be near martial law. The government doesn't handle the crisis well, and people have already lost faith in them thanks to the war. Former allies have turned their backs, we are on our own. Faced with this a new government emerges. They promise wealth, they promise stability, and to return the values lost to us during the war.

Life is for a time good under 'Bird' and his party, and hope is temporarily restored. But with stability comes suspicion and this reporter finds links to the Russians, who want to build an underground bunker beneath a small country town, and then to cover all tracks of this, and to ensure absolute silence of its existence, they plan to slaughter all the townspeople in it, and blame it on the USA, our former allies.

This of course leads to further trouble when the supposed conspiracy (or conspiracies) are leaked. The government, once shining beackon of Australia, is now acting suspicious in front of the media (more so than usual ;) ) In attempting to downplay such theories they in turn fan the flames and momentum builds. Conspiracy theorists band together trying to uncover the evidence to bring about the downfall of Bird (or Stanislov Cheslav, as he is known - is that correct?)

The government gets wind of this and sets a trap; tricking these theorists into attending a rally where the theorists are essentially 'dealt with' (and never seen or heard from again).

Now where we are up to, which I think is what you want, is for the 'survivors' or Australia, whether the survivors from the war, or the country town, or the POW camps, or the rally of conspiracy theorists, or even other journalists maybe who noticed something amiss, to "recollect" their struggles, in journal format, or letters to loved ones, or likewise, and have YOU (Pete, your central character) compiling all these recollections together to finally expose the government and Bird once and for all... is THAT right?

Sorry if it's what you already said but I NEEDED to clear it up, I think I had to analyse it aloud to 'get' it, so if that's what you want, then sure, I'm on board. I reckon I could knock up a few things, letters, transcripts, accounts, or something from fictional characters, to suit your purposes. I am sincerely intrigued. This is probably the most original idea I've come across in... ages!

I'm in, definately... just... need to think now... and maybe do a bit of quick research myself. Got the cogs in my mind turning over now.

Brilliant. Lets brainstorm. Hit me off. Lets do this. :D

 

Peterdea

New member
So let me see if I got this straight;
Japan waged war on Australia? It ended (after indeterminate amount of time) in 2010 when the Japanese were defeated and sent packing empty-handed. Victorious yet depleted from war, Australia suffered heavy losses, both in population and economically. The Japanese prisoners were kept here on our shores, following their host country abandoning them (in shame, perhaps?) The camps were crowded. We have obviously hundreds of thousands of alien immigrants now that neither country wants - and here they are now along side the very people they had been fighting against, and lost to.

So following the victory, but with the economy having been ciphoned to support this war, and with so many alien immigrants, we have a recession/depression. Morale is low. Hundreds (of thousands, I assume) of Aussies are dead, and we have the Japanese POW's here now bolstering numbers. Mass destruction, massive debt, massive loss of numbers, resources low, people starving and mourning in the streets, there would be near martial law. The government doesn't handle the crisis well, and people have already lost faith in them thanks to the war. Former allies have turned their backs, we are on our own. Faced with this a new government emerges. They promise wealth, they promise stability, and to return the values lost to us during the war.

Life is for a time good under 'Bird' and his party, and hope is temporarily restored. But with stability comes suspicion and this reporter finds links to the Russians, who want to build an underground bunker beneath a small country town, and then to cover all tracks of this, and to ensure absolute silence of its existence, they plan to slaughter all the townspeople in it, and blame it on the USA, our former allies.

This of course leads to further trouble when the supposed conspiracy (or conspiracies) are leaked. The government, once shining beackon of Australia, is now acting suspicious in front of the media (more so than usual ;) ) In attempting to downplay such theories they in turn fan the flames and momentum builds. Conspiracy theorists band together trying to uncover the evidence to bring about the downfall of Bird (or Stanislov Cheslav, as he is known - is that correct?)

The government gets wind of this and sets a trap; tricking these theorists into attending a rally where the theorists are essentially 'dealt with' (and never seen or heard from again).

Now where we are up to, which I think is what you want, is for the 'survivors' or Australia, whether the survivors from the war, or the country town, or the POW camps, or the rally of conspiracy theorists, or even other journalists maybe who noticed something amiss, to "recollect" their struggles, in journal format, or letters to loved ones, or likewise, and have YOU (Pete, your central character) compiling all these recollections together to finally expose the government and Bird once and for all... is THAT right?

Sorry if it's what you already said but I NEEDED to clear it up, I think I had to analyse it aloud to 'get' it, so if that's what you want, then sure, I'm on board. I reckon I could knock up a few things, letters, transcripts, accounts, or something from fictional characters, to suit your purposes. I am sincerely intrigued. This is probably the most original idea I've come across in... ages!

I'm in, definately... just... need to think now... and maybe do a bit of quick research myself. Got the cogs in my mind turning over now.

Brilliant. Lets brainstorm. Hit me off. Lets do this. :D
you summed it up really well...

the survivors (though not all are known living or dead) are in the groups of conspiracists and either escaped or didn't. The ones who did escape have interviews and all that kind of thing, those who didn't, have their journals discovered, letters from friends/family/fellow conspiracists etc. and anything else that could be valid evidence.

 

Peterdea

New member
have to apologize about that, I haven't had a good sleep in a few days now so as you could imagine, my focus is on sleeping. I might do an example one tonight if I feel up to it, but expect one to be done by the end of the week.
 

Ravynlee

New member
Well I've started. I have maybe 3 pages so far. Trying my damnest to keep it short and to the point but its a lot of ground to cover so to speak to start (I mean explaining the war and how the government crumbled from a layman's perspective) but am really enjoying it actually! Have an early start tomorrow (4:45am) so won't be posting it tonight but next few days. Maybe tomorrow night if all goes well.
 

Peterdea

New member
Well I've started. I have maybe 3 pages so far. Trying my damnest to keep it short and to the point but its a lot of ground to cover so to speak to start (I mean explaining the war and how the government crumbled from a layman's perspective) but am really enjoying it actually! Have an early start tomorrow (4:45am) so won't be posting it tonight but next few days. Maybe tomorrow night if all goes well.
pm it to me, or something like that. Unless you really wanna post it, then go for it.

Also you don't have to make it short. It can be as long as you want and as detailed as you like. Thats part of the reason I want to get different writers in on it, so that there is an extremily noticable difference in the way it's written, and also I generally think the idea is good lol.

 

Ravynlee

New member
pm it to me, or something like that. Unless you really wanna post it, then go for it.
Also you don't have to make it short. It can be as long as you want and as detailed as you like. Thats part of the reason I want to get different writers in on it, so that there is an extremily noticable difference in the way it's written, and also I generally think the idea is good lol.
Can we submit more than one piece, meaning, I had it in mind, at least at this point, to write several different pieces, all from different people, all talking about different experiences in different ways, is that okay?Plus I can't pm you it, it'll be too long. I'll email or attach or sth. We'll figure sth out. First let me finish writing it - then I'll get back to you :)

 

Peterdea

New member
yeah do as many as you want! Thats the point of this, to get as many parts not written by me as possible!

update: i have about 5-7 more people doing it!

 

Ravynlee

New member
I have a part done. 11 pages. Too long to PM. Let me know what you want me to do / how you want me to send it to ya. Don't think I have your email. Lemmie know. Thankies :)

Edit: Oops 9 pages. Had to take your initial post draft out (was my 'guide' for writing this). As I say, it may be waaaay off base to what you originally wanted (even the timeline for me is sketchy but if you read the last part you might get some indicators as to the central characters state of mind and such, so it's feasable / explainable), but anyway, still it's what I came up with. There's sure to be others as mentioned below utilising other characters and other points of view. I just grew up in the country (changed the property name, the location's the same though), so this was far too easy to construct imaginatively ;) There's more **** like that coming, no wait, not like that, different types now, have to see what you make of them chief. Let me know if there's something that needs changing / fixing and I'll jump right on it. Have the day off tomorrow so I can work on it more should the need arise. Right now am tired after 4:45am start so am off to beddy-byes. Nite-nite.

Catch up with you again soon, one hopes :)

Thanks brother. Nite.

2nd edit: emailed ya. Format sucks major **** but oh well, you should have it now anyway. Up to you, sir, to do with it as you see fit. Thanks again.

 
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Ravynlee

New member
Hey brother, what's happening here? Lost interest already?! Are we just posting our individual chappies here now or are you still doing your collection thing?

Lemmie know :)

 

Peterdea

New member
either way im fine. at the moment im trying to advertise it within my school. not having a lot of luck but ima keep trying.
 

Ravynlee

New member
So what happened to the others who were coming on board? Hmm... this sucks. But hey, I'm still here, that's one, and a start!

Well after some thought - and at the risk of ruining your grand design - I thought I would just go ahead and post that short that I wrote weeks back - if nothing else it might get others here to read it and hopefully pen something of their own. That's the hope anyway. As I said, this has great potential, it's just a shame in some ways that many non-Australian members wouldn't have the slightest inclination to step across the continents and write themselves into this somehow, but I get it, it's hard to write what you don't know. Still, shame.

So, after some deliberation and lots of waiting here's mine. Yes, brother, I know you've read it.

I still think you should post that short you sent to me here too, just to get feedback if nothing else.

*hugs*

Here it is.

(BTW this is one 'story' but spread over a few posts, its 10 MS word pages, that's all, won't all fit into one post as I had planned it)

***




War. On home soil. I never thought it was possible in my lifetime.

Growing up in Australia, the concept of war and what it meant to me and my family was remote, it was something out of a textbook, never did we think it would arrive unannounced and unprovoked on our very doorstep.

Before the war beckoned all we knew was what gossip had told us. Japan they said was taking over. It was like WW2 all over again, but even that was a vague notion for us, something straight out of a Hollywood movie. We laughed it off as nonsense, surely it was a political stunt, we joked, this wasn’t possible in this day and age, not in the 21st century, it just wasn’t possible.

I remembered telling a friend with a laugh that Pearl Harbour was a good enough movie, but I never had any intentions of actually living it, with or without a well-cut Ben Affleck as our co-star. Our laughter had been trite but just as nervous as in the back of our minds we, or I, thought it tragic that history repeat itself a second time in as many generations. To me Japan had always been a silent adversary but nothing directly, generally to the Western world. Aside from what I’d gleaned from the occasional late night movie it was no longer any kind of threat to us, we were supposed to be under the protective umbrella of America, of NATO, and above all of basic level commonsense, especially in this day and age of information and technological advancement. As far as I could see we as a country were of no real use to anyone, producing, exporting and importing enough to keep the general way of life flowing, and life so far as we knew it was as it had always been, we saw no indication that anything should change that.

In the bush where I had been born and raised and where I now raised a family of my own, we were a small community of farmers, we raised cattle and sheep as had generations before us along the wheat and cotton belts of Central West Slopes and Plains. Life, though at times difficult, was for the most part good to us.

We lived on a property called Calabar some 600klm west of Sydney New South Wales, myself, my husband of ten years, our two wonderful kids, and a menagerie of animals that Old McDonald would have been proud of. We were happy, and our future, as challenging as it was after years of drought and financial instability and so on, was realistic and set on course. David and I had planned to grow old together, we had full intentions of watching our kids Devon, 8, and Jack, 6, grow up into fine strapping specimens; Devon wanted to study law before she married and settled down, and rambunctious Jack, ever the mischievous child, had it in mind to follow in his father’s footsteps and take over the property when he was old enough, at least physically. Though it was a tough ask, especially with so many people my age and younger walking off their farms and seeking relief in the cities, we thought that together as a family we would somehow manage to overcome and hang on when so many others were just giving up. But life on the land shows you what you’re made of, and as in nature only the tough ever survive. David and I, both in our early thirties, had fought hard to earn a living in a place that hadn’t seen decent rains in some parts in well over 5 to 10 years, but it was ours, it was our piece of Australia, and we were going to die here old and withered, chasing grandkids and stray chicks and baby lambs until we drew our final breaths, at least that had always been the plan anyway. Never in a million years did the notion of war enter our minds let alone in jest. We were a civilized nation, a globally insignificant island, our home that was girt on all sides by sea, ‘who would want to take us to war?’ we thought with ignorance. Maybe it was arrogance that condemned us, thinking we were untouchable, invisible, maybe we thought that our allies of the past would jump in to save us, maybe we thought we were somehow safe in this modern multicultural society - how wrong we were.

In 2009 it started, or so they say. Like so many of us the battle came initially in the form of words, of idle gossip. It’s hard to know exactly when the actual bloodshed itself started. A friend of a friend knew someone who saw the Japanese landing and take out entire cities within days but we back home in the red dust and heat of the outback could only scoff at such claims. No, we said, it wasn’t possible; young people today with all their drugs and virtual reality addictions, they needed to sober up, we laughed. We kept our heads down tending the farm, tending the animals, keeping food on our table and a roof over our kids’ heads and would sleep peacefully in our warm beds at night. Our only worries were about the usual things; bills, stock, trivialities, until the sun rose and brought with it the familiar set of melodramas; the price of wheat, the lack of rain clouds in the sky, or another head of cattle that had wandered off or got bogged in the dam or had died during labour in the chill dead of night. When the Capital was attacked, a few scant weeks after the start of the ‘conflict’ or so talk went, panic started to sweep across the land like a plague. Our smiles of earlier had become a little nervous. Now we were seeing pictures and hearing actual tales bombarding us on TV, on the radio, and in newspapers. It was unavoidable, and yet we still somehow felt protected.

“Don’t worry,” David said one night once the kids were in bed sleeping. “We’re safe here. If it really is as bad as they say the government will do something. They’ve got hundreds of thousands of troops all out there right now doing what they’ve been trained for, what they’re best at. Besides, we’re so far inland we won’t even matter to them. The enemy won’t come this far in, we’ve got nothing out here for them. If they want to take over and plant rice farms or whatever the **** it is they do out here then I say good luck to them. I’ll sit back and laugh. This is Australia, Chloe, they’re not going to take over, the pen-pushers in Parliament won’t let them.”

But again he, and we as a nation, was so very wrong.

I remember the first day it really hit home, the day I first saw the pictures of children lying dead and dying in the nation’s capital’s city streets. The Japanese were a merciless lot, strategically taking out everything that would create the most impact in crippling our comparatively fledgling nation. Power plants were attacked; airports were next, followed by hospitals, schools and our water and sanitation grid. Schools were shut down, shopping centres were overrun in the frenzy, the cost of basic food and water skyrocketed and people were turning against each other, attacking their former friends in the street for that last litre of petrol or bottle of water or can of processed Spam in order to survive like third world citizens. Public transportation grinded to a halt and there was no way in or out of the country, the sea and the sky above was now enemy territory. There was chaos in the streets as panic took hold and any sense of sanity, and sense of false security, was reduced to rubble in a matter of months. The government was in no position to control it as worldwide condemnation and beaurocratic red tape had politicians in arms against each other. There was talk of NATO involvement and trade embargos and peace talks circulating in the media but no one knew quite what to believe or where to turn. Basic broadcasting streams ended two months after Japan attacked and pirate broadcasters soon took up the call. I don’t know how long the actual war itself lasted but the last thing I remember seeing on the evening newscast, before the station’s closure, were the familiar white sails of the Opera House in flames after another bombing and my legs turning to jelly as I hit the carpet on my knees in a stunned, awe-struck silence.

As if they weren’t bad enough, things became desperate soon after that.

Financial supplements was the government’s initial reaction, enforcing taxes no one could afford to hastily train and recruit soldiers to keep up the fight against the invaders. Young people, initially high on a sudden **** for revenge followed by an insurgence of national pride, signed up in droves. The plan was to take what a generation of virtual warriors had learned in front of their Xboxes and Playstations and put into practice on a real battlefield - but the reality of death wasn’t anything like a Steven Spielberg movie. When this failed along with a flagging morale, and the activists began their demonstrations to find a peaceful and democratic solution, the government’s response was sudden and just as predictable; just as it had in the previous conflicts it resorted to the age old method of communism and enforced a final low act on it’s suffering people; Conscription. Suddenly the war had taken on a very real and frightening reality that no one could avoid. Fight or the government would make you, they warned - and the streets were in turn decimated by a flailing Government’s wartime response.

Since the war had started we here in the bush had remained largely sheltered from the brunt of the impact. To us, especially when the schools closed and the outside world began to unravel, David, the kids and myself pretended as if what was happening was a minor setback, it was as if the rains had come and closed us in for a while, or so we pretended. Though we were optimistic we were, even in the early days, referring to the war with Japan outside as nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

“When this is all over and you go back to school again missy, I don’t want you falling behind,” I remember lecturing Devon one day as she lamented over her past semester notebooks, “The other parents may let their kids slack off but I want you to be ready. If you want to get anywhere in this world in this day and age you have to be smart and you have to have a good education behind you.”

Though I hadn’t done much after my 10 formative years of study other than work various jobs before moving out on the land with David and starting a family of my own, I wanted what I guess all parents strive for, for my kids to have an easier and brighter future than the one that I had endured. My mother, *** rest her soul, had often touted the same thing to me when I was a kid, and like my daughter I had dismissed it as senile old ramblings. But there was no pride in thinking the war had proven her wrong. In my mind, whether a direct result of the conflict or whether it was something more inherently stubborn within, I refused to believe that this war was going to last let alone leave such a significant impact. I had always been tough, I had always been a fighter, and in this climate of tension and instability I wanted to reinforce these qualities in my children, because, as I said, only the strong survive, whatever the circumstances.

 

Ravynlee

New member
For months we lived as we had always done, feeding off the land that had always provided for us; drinking milk from the cows, carving the lambs of age that were ready, collecting eggs and meat from the chickens, stockpiling wood and collecting water from what dams weren’t dry and syphoning through appropriate filtration systems. For power we had diesel-run generators, but given the price hike and the sparsity of it we were soon forced to adopt alternative methods to cook, heat, and by which to see with at night. Over candle light we gathered as a family, and for those few months’ life was blissfully simple, albeit a little rustic, like the Ingals on TV’s Little House on the Prairie.

Inevitably one day all that changed. Telecast on the radio we heard the Prime Minister’s heeding all able-bodied citizens to answer the call to war – or face possible fines, imprisonment and unspecified forms of persecution. Apparently the first call hadn’t yielded enough and we had suffered such heavy losses the government had taken the unprecedented step at accepting partial liability for the mass slaughter, in misjudging the capabilities and the sheer force of the sharply trained Japanese soldiers.

“Can they do that?” I asked in disbelief. “Can they really make anyone just sign up and die like that? That’s insane. This whole world’s gone crazy. I won’t be a part of that. None of us will.”

I sat stroking my son’s hair back from his face as the four of us sat around the kitchen table listening like mourners at a loved one’s funeral. David, who up until this point had been his usual steadfast tower of strength, dredged his eyes up from the floor with a look in them that lingered somewhere between amusement and hostility.

“They can do whatever they want, they’re calling the shots,” he said with a forced smile. “We’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t. Either way...”

Though he had meant it to sound brave I alone knew the vulnerability in such a statement. He was scared, and he had a right to be. His country that had already demanded so much of us and given so little by way of aid or support in times of hardship was asking the ultimate sacrifice, and they were doing it without arbitration.

“Are you going to go to war too, daddy?” Devon, perched beside her father had asked him.

David shook his head and slid an arm around her and nuzzled a comforting kiss against her crown.

“No baby,” he said, his eyes determinedly set across the table bored into mine. “I’m not going anywhere. Let them come. I’m not leaving you guys. **** ‘em, they can go to ****, every last one of ‘em.”

“Daddy, don’t swear. You said a bad word,” Jack reminded, and we had smiled at that, we even laughed but it was uneasy and didn’t last long.

“I’m sorry big guy,” David had said, nursing a child on each leg, under each arm, holding them to him with his smile like his dark eyes tentative but struggling to regain normalcy.

In bed that night we lay awake, the darkness sheltering our fear and anxiety. Outside the window the country lay silent; it was as if the world was holding its breath, awaiting the outcome of this senseless travesty.

“You know what’s gonna happen,” he said. It was more a statement than a question, with his voice lowered so as not to wake the children that lay sleeping between us.

I nodded feeling the tears welling in me but was rendered speechless from the force of them. We had heard the radio announcer say that armed patrols were sweeping inland hoping to snare as many people as they could to use as pawns in their war, but people here were already steps ahead of them. In the darkness now it was too easy to break down, to feel the weight of expectation, the burden bearing down upon us and simply give in to it as all our friends and neighbours had done. Despite the fact we lived too far away from anyone to see neighbours in a traditional sense we had been visited by one or two familiar faces beckoning us to follow as they made their way further inland to escape this second wave of conscription. For two days this happened until people stopped coming altogether. Looters and pillagers would soon follow, reaping what they could from those left behind to survive, or to use as leverage, or just out of sheer greed. Laying in bed at night all we could do was hold our kids, and hold hands, and pray for a miracle to save us – but *** it seemed had abandoned us as a nation altogether.

---

It must have been a month later that we saw him staggering from the wilderness bloodied and weak. He wore civilian clothes but by his very complexion we immediately knew him to be one of them. The inevitable had happened – the enemy had broken through and entered the heartland of Australia.

“No! Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed! I don’t- mean you any harm!” the man said in perfect English. He even spoke with an Australian accent.

He wore jeans and a tee shirt and his skin was red and blotchy from days, maybe weeks worth of continuous sunburn. He raised his hands as he saw me standing by the back door, Jack and Devon freezing a step behind me in their pursuit with seed for the animals spilling from their plastic containers down into the red dirt. Devon screamed, the noise causing cockatoos to fly from nearby treetops in panic. The young man, who looked to be no older than maybe 19 or 20, dashed forward begging her to be quiet. Though I was too panicked to move Devon back peddled to hide behind me as Jack sprinted as fast as his little legs could carry him, the seed scattering and forgotten in a plume of choking dust behind him. The man said his name was Ken, that he lived in Sydney, that he had gotten out when the war started but I absorbed very little of what he was telling me. Wrapping my arms around Devon I stared back, my mind reeling that this man who sounded so like me but looked nothing ethnically like me could claim to be one of us, an Aussie, when all I could feel, all I heard, all I saw in those terrifying moments was fear.

With shotgun in hand David appeared, and Jack clinging to his father’s pant leg hiding a step behind. Seeing the gun aimed at his head, at his face as David rounded on him the man named Ken panicked. He began to cry. Tears choked him but I saw no evidence of them coursing their way down his bloodied and dirtied and sun-scorched cheeks. Though in hindsight now I think it could have been more due to dehydration, back then caught up in that moment of fear with my heart pounding and my mouth pasty and dry, my only thoughts were instinctive and reactive, I wasn’t really thinking coherently at all, I couldn’t, this man has come to hurt my family I thought – and in that heightened state of tension I actually believed it.

“What are you doing here? What do you want? This is my property; this is my home, my family you’re ******* with!” David warned, his focus like his finger poised on that trigger, never leaving its target for a split second.

Again Ken pleaded for reason with his voice now so ragged, so parched, it was obvious he had come out of desperation, but all he got in return was hatred. He explained that in his hometown he had been targeted by both sides, by the Red Army (of Japan, the name itself was something I had heard on the radio that had references to the equally bloodthirsty Russian forces in the Cold War) and by the native Australians for his Asian appearance. People had run him and his family out of their home, his friends and his family were murdered, clubbed to death, set on fire, but somehow by some miracle Ken had managed to escape. He patted his pockets to prove his identity but somewhere along the line, somewhere in his arduous trek across the wide open plains of the Macquarie Shire he had lost his wallet – and he had lost his life, and his future, in doing so.

“Take the kids inside,” David ordered as he grabbed a sobbing Ken by the shoulder from behind and pushed him brusquely into compliance. With fingers interlocked behind his head Ken pleaded, begging for us, for me to call people, call his lecturer at the University of Sydney to verify his story, to ask him anything, even to plead with David when I knew with a cold sinking feeling in my stomach that there was no alternative – and the look in David’s eye reaffirmed it.

“Go inside,” he urged.

His big shoulders stooped a fraction as if defeated. The Smith and Wesson .22 calibre rifle clattered as David regripped it in his hands. His arms were shaking and in that instant I knew exactly what David was going to do. He grabbed Ken by the collar and shoved him forward.

“Don’t do this, please let me go, I won’t tell anyone, I’ll keep going, I swear,” Ken was sobbing, but I had to turn away from him.

Dragging Devon and Jack inside the house I closed the screen door, locked it and followed it by locking the back door as well. Inside I stood against it, waiting and holding my breath. An hour seemed to pass before I heard it. Every muscle in me jumped as a squeal escaped. The screech of wild birds, and the echo of the gunshot, and the sound of my kids sobbing had me finally breaking down in tears. Lowering to my knees I held them to me, my mind reeling, spinning out of control as I waited for David to come back. I was too terrified to check and see if he was okay, yet equally terrified about the consequences if he were never to return. Inside my ribcage my heart was exploding, thinking that Ken would burst in at any second and slaughter all of us with a malicious grin upon his face. The enemy from the TV had a face now and suddenly this war that everyone else had been talking about, that had pared our lives down to what they now were, had become altogether too real and too personal to ignore anymore.

An hour, a day, a year later the door creaked open and David emerged. The kids ran to him in tears, causing him to stop mid-stride half way through the kitchen as they clutched to his legs, one wrapping around each thigh, and clung on in jubilation. The rifle hung low by David’s side and flecks of red speckled his tanned face and neck. There was a smear of red on the back of his right hand. A struggle must have ensued, I guessed, noticing the way he was breathing. His limbs were shaking ever so slightly. On knees too weak to hold me I staggered towards him, tears freely flowing down my face. Wrapping my arms around his neck I held him, crushing him against me, trying for what it was worth to take some of that guilt and responsibility I could feel compressing the air away from him - but the damage had already been done, and in that moment our lives had changed irrevocably altogether.

 

Ravynlee

New member
Killing a stranger in a time of war whether out of necessity or greed was still murder, but David couldn’t be assuaged either way. Later as the kids bathed in tepid water reused from the night before, he and I sat at the kitchen table, me squeezing his hand between the both of mine, our chairs practically together, struggling to keep our voices lowered and nondescript while the silence around us was pierced by the shrill ring of cicadas in song.

“You did what you had to,” I said, rubbing his hand, his knuckles that were swollen now, his arm toned from years of manual labour, and his face so haggard and scruffy and blunt beneath the expression of guilt he now wore.

My eyes darted to the rifle and the extra shells now littering the dining table within arms reach before returning back to him to smile up into his face to try to invoke some response. David blinked down at me and said nothing. He had barely spoken a word all afternoon. He had buried the body on a part of the property where no one would find it, he had said, but even then his voice had been mechanic and emotionless, as if he were reciting lines but didn’t care for the outcome either way. I didn’t blame him and I still don’t, Ken or whomever that young man had been, had wandered too close into our inner sanctum, and in a time of desperation where we were struggling to keep ourselves afloat and where neighbour was turning against neighbour out there, we knew any intrusion into our slice of Australia had to be dealt with swiftly and harshly to save anyone else sneaking in through the cracks. We had to be hyper vigilant not just to survive but to endure, and we were just as we had always been – a rugged family of survivors.

“We’re at war, baby,” I cooed, sweeping his brow, his hollow cheek, his shaved head with the palm of my hand. “People die. You did what you did to protect us. No one could fault you for that. You’re a good man. You’re a good provider. You always look out for us, you always will. You did what you had to do. Just remember the kids and I love you, we always will, no matter what happens, okay?”

That night marked the first of many where David would stay awake and on guard, sitting on a kitchen chair as the kids and myself slept on a mattress on the living room floor nearby, watching over us, watching us sleep. He would pace on occasion but mostly he just sat thinking, listening, staring off into space, or at me, or at the kids, until the slightest sound would distract him and he would be off with gun in hand to investigate.

Christmas came and went without celebration that year as too did New Years. There was nothing much to celebrate anyway, the Japanese had been decimating our country for almost three quarters of a year and no one, not even our supposed allies outside of Australia, had so much as lifted a finger to stop it. On the radio the government continued to wrangle, passing the proverbial buck, inciting talks, setting guidelines and strategies in place that continually went unheeded. Hundreds of thousands of people were dead on both sides, the country’s iconic landmarks in almost every state were gone, and we were left in the middle of it, proverbially stranded like aliens alone struggling to make sense of a new life on a strange new planet.

In early 2010, desperately short on basic supplies, and with no food left to feed our dwindling stock, David was forced to cull what he could and relinquish what was left to the elements. Our once modest livelihood had been reduced from a hundred head to less than ten in a matter of hours. The kids had grown restless and without contact with the outside world now in any fashion, aside from the radio that we could barely generate enough power to operate, I too felt my resolve weakening. It was David who suggested it was time we move on. I didn’t want to leave our home, our possessions, the life and the ideal that we had forged here – we had nowhere to go anyway I said, but David persisted. We argued as we had never argued before. It was clearly the strain of living in such close quarters without respite, without relief from the monotony and with such soul crushing boredom that incited it, and yet we were helpless to stop it. In the end, whether out of desperation to find something better, to find the slightest trace of human life out there just to reaffirm our humanity or merely to get away from it all for a while, or worse, David came to a decision one day that would haunt us all for the rest of our lives.

“I’m going,” he said, wrenching the zipper of his duffel bag, stuffed with clothes and a few meagre possessions, to a close.

“What do you mean you’re going?” I begged, already inside of me seeming to know and reject this act of typical male bravado with all the emotion it was due. “No, you can’t just leave us here like this! What are you talking about? What are you thinking? We need you, I need you! You can’t do this! Please, stay!”

“If I stay we’ll all die here, is that what you want?” he barked back at me and pushed me away.

In ten years of marriage he hadn’t so much as raised his voice in anger than he had lifted a hand against me. This act shook me; it scared me fundamentally, so much so that when he approached to embrace me in apology I flinched away from him. With his face falling in defeat David sighed, slung his bag over his shoulder, and began to walk away out of the bedroom. He stopped beside me and looked ready to speak but all that came forth was his heavy breaths and a physical sense of regret bearing down on his shoulders.

“I’m doing this for us,” he uttered without looking at me. “I’m doing this because I have to.”

When he kissed my face I closed my eyes and leant against him but couldn’t or wouldn’t respond to him. Tears were suffocating me. Hearing him bid farewell to the kids I started to sob but managed to hold it in check as I stood watching from the doorway, a child on each side of me, watching my husband and the love of my life walking off into the darkness with a brave smile and a wave, not knowing if I would ever see or hear from him again.

---

It feels like years have passed in David’s absence.

Each day alone in the heat and the sweltering conditions of our once happy family home the kids and I fight on as best we can, keeping a weather eye on the horizon for the sight of anyone or anything moving in the lens of the rifle’s scope. The war has ended at last, at least that’s what I had heard, but I don’t know whether to believe it for sure. Though the dreaded conscription-officers never made it this far, now I am a soldier out here whether I was drafted into service or not; I fight not only out of necessity but love, I have to keep up the fight or my family will starve, we will suffer and perish, and no one will ever know we existed, just like the countless soldiers, both trained and civilian that litter our bloodied shores. Like my husband, like David. Not a day goes by that I didn’t think of him or what could have happened to him. I hope he is somewhere safe and pray for his speedy return, but each new day has brought the same results as the last and my hopes like my strength is slowly fading. My kids are the only things that has kept me sane throughout, them and writing this letter to a faceless audience. I don’t even know who will read it only that I have to pen it while it is still fresh in my mind, I need this distraction for my own peace of mind, I don’t even remember the last time I saw another person just to say hello aside from my children - It’s funny how you miss the little things when they’re taken away, and I miss so much. I regret even more than that. I’m tired of sitting here thinking, waiting. We have to do something, and I don’t know how much longer we can hold out as we are.

On the radio last week, maybe it was last month, I don’t know anymore, I heard news of a new government, some man named Bird who has taken control of power. I can’t listen to the radio much these days, I struggle to get reception because the generator is so low and we have nothing left in reserve with which to run it – I had already siphoned what I could from the gas tank of the car and the tractor and anything else that runs on fuel in the shed just to keep this lifeblood of communication flowing – and now I can’t even afford to continue with that. We are out of candles and can no longer continue to reshape the wax that had pooled. We don’t have much more water and I think Jack, my baby, is sick. His temperature fluctuates and his limbs are wasting, for a small stocky boy he is suffering developmentally. We haven’t eaten properly in days and the kids are badly undernourished, they are suffering. We all are. I didn’t get all of the radio message, but I don’t care about the fine print, there is always corruption within those in power, I’m far from scared of allegations, I am far more afraid of losing anything else dear to me, besides I can’t afford to wait anymore. The kids and I are leaving. We’re headed back into civilization even if it has gone to wrack and ruin; it is our last and final option if we are to make it out of here together as a family. There is simply nothing left for us out here in the bush anymore but empty hopes and unfulfilled promises. Maybe Prime Minister Bird has the solution. I pray that he does, he is our final solution.

Before the transmission finally cut out there was talk over the static about a place just north of here. I don’t know where exactly but if there is a new town that is sheltering survivors like the kids and I then maybe David is waiting there too. I hope so. I, like the kids, miss him terribly. Tomorrow we will take what we can carry and head north to see what eventuates. It will take days, maybe a week to get there if I can’t find a usable vehicle, but it will be a new chance for us, the chance of a new life together, and hopefully the resumption of an old one, but only time will tell – and right now time is conspiring against us.

Tell all groups like yourselves. You must come to see us,” the voice on the radio had said.

I know it sounds cryptic but right now desperation is pushing me onward. I have to try. I can’t afford to stay here and wait a day longer – if I stay here I know we will probably all die.

I pray whoever you are; you are well and have come through this as unscathed as possible. If you’re suffered, like so many of us, and are in need of solace I’ve left the coordinates as best I could remember them on the next page should you wish to find us. Regardless the path you choose to take I wish you the best of luck now and in the years to come. The war is over but the battle as they say goes on. Now we who are left have to pick up the pieces and carry on; Australia still stands. In war as in nature, it’s only the fittest that survives.

Stay strong, take care,

C. Jones


28th March, 2011


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That's it. Just felt like sharing :)

 
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