Las Navidad de Los Desvalidos

"Ja, sure I do, but I'm not taking it out and filming this. I don't want your Gestapo executing me."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that, Stefan. I'm ordering you to film this, and... yes, get your camera out and record this please...." I smiled for the camera as Stefan began recording.

"...And I'd like to thank Colonel Ortega, of the Second Republic's San Juan Militia. Colonel Ortega, at great risk to himself and his family, infiltrated the ratdog rebel and terrorist units, gained their trust and returned to San Juan as part of their organization for this localized uprising. After identifying the rendezvous for the San Juan Ratdog maggots, Colonel Ortega, fully aware that he was sacrificing his family to the revenge of the Ratdogs, made the supreme sacrifice and notified the Second Republic's Security Service of the planned uprising, allowing us to take the measures necessary to restore order."

I smiled for the camera. "The Second Republic thanks Colonel Ortega for his bravery and self-sacrifice in the service of the Republic. God bless, and we will pray for his family."

I gestured, and Stefan stopped recording.

"And now, Colonel Ortega, we should discuss your own service in the National Liberation Army of the Second Republic" I said, and the safety was off, and my finger caressed the trigger of my 1911. "You do know we have only one punishment for traitors, just as your side do, and I'm sure your family will be joining you shortly, after we broadcast that clip."

Colonel Ortega looked at me, dawning realization working its way across his face, and to either side of me, Montoya and Frazer were alert, and I didn't need to ask. Their safeties were never on, not when they were with me.

"Feliz Navidad, Colonel Ortega," I said, as my 1911 barked, and he half-doubled over under that sudden impact out of nowhere, because my eyes had never left his, never so much as flickered as my gun came out and up, and I pulled the trigger, but I wasn't aiming for a quick death. Not for him, because what he'd helped plan and organize here would've killed thousands. Tens of thousands, and he wasn't going easy. Nope, I wanted him to watch this to the end, or as close to the end as he'd make it.

"Feliz Navidad, Colonel Ortega," I said, again, looking down at him as he sank to his knees, kneeling on the concrete, clutching that red flower that blossomed across the front of his tunic. "Guess you understand now what happens when los desvalidos get off the reservation."

He looked up at me, and his eyes held that look of horror and fear that said, yes, he did understand, and he understood he was on the wrong side of the equation that was going down today.

"You're a mad dog," he half-whispered, half-groaned, and I smiled down at him.

"Wrong," I said. "I'm not a mad dog. I'm one of los desvalidos, Colonel Ortega, and this desvalido, this underdog, she enjoys killing your sort," and I smiled down at him.

"Si, Colonel Ortega. This desvalido will survive, but none of your people here will, and neither will you, and, god willing, neither will your family."

I smiled down at him, and I left him there, on his knees, to die alone with his thoughts, Montoya watching him, and I hoped Ortega was thinking of his family. They wouldn't last long, and he knew that. He knew his own sort, and I could see that on his face. I smiled, for him, and he saw that, too, and he knew I knew.

I picked up the microphone, and I looked out over the stadium, at my men, and women, advancing downwards, level by level in one long line, a ring around the stadium that was slowly tightening. Tightening, the way a noose tightens around the neck of a man condemned to hang, and these were the condemned, and a lot of them were only now beginning to realize that they were. That they were the condemned. That there wasn't any escape at all. Not from this.

Not for them.

The steady crackle of our shooting hammering into the mass of bodies in an endless cacophony of noise. That steady crackle of shots, rain on a tin roof. Rolling explosions, the slow deep bark of the 20mm's on the armored vehicles at the exits, the faster staccato growl of the machine guns, and above all, that endless wail of agony that went on and on and on, and over that background, the voice of that ratdog rabble rouser, panicking now, but still going on and on, until the sound of his voice cut, abruptly.

"Found the sound system, ma'am," Maddock said, from beside me, not too long after that. There were less of them living now, more bodies, and some of them were trying to hide under the dead, but that wouldn't do them any good either, because in the end, only bodies would be leaving this stadium. Maddock was grinning. "Thought you might like to say a few words for the newly departed, ma'am." Her smile grew. "Or the nearly departed."

I glanced at Colonel Ortega, on his knees beside me, groaning quietly, and he knew he was dying, and he knew there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

"It's las navidad de los Desvalidos, Colonel Ortega," I said, and I took the microphone one of my men handed me, and when I blew into it, it worked, and I smiled. "And why not, a Christmas Song."

I smiled, and I sang, because it was Christmas Day now. Early, but still, it was Christmas Day.

My snipers ringed the lower edge of the top stands, alone now, not a living ratdog up there, and below, my men were half way down the tiers of seats, pouring fire into the masses on the field, their bodies soaking up the bullets the way sand soaks up seawater, but eventually seawater washes away the sand, and our bullets were washing away this stain on the face of the earth. This infestation of maggots, and we'd clean the body of the Second Republic of this disease, or we'd die trying.

Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad

Próspero año y felicidad"

Yeah, I always liked karaoke, way back before, 'n I remembered standing in that bar singing this, back that last Christmas before the fighting started, with Brad watching me, that smile on his face, 'n the tears poured down my cheeks as I sang, my voice clear throughout the stadium. As clear as the shots crackling out continuously.

As clear as the grenades bursting like a sudden spray of wildflowers in a field, blooming and then gone. As clear as the continuous staccato chatter of the machineguns at the stadium entrances scything down bodies in an unending harvest that wouldn't cease until the harvest had been reaped in full. As clear as the screams and cries that rose into the sky.

Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad

Próspero año y felicidad

I want to wish you a merry Christmas

I want to wish you a merry Christmas

I want to wish you a merry Christmas

From the bottom of my heart..."

It'd started to rain, and that rain poured down steadily, washing the blood down the stairs in rivulets of red. Colonel Ortega lay limp at my feet now, no longer kneeling, his life draining away with his blood. Montoya and Frazer stood behind me, guarding my back, and my 1911 was in my hand, my M4 on my harness, and I smiled at the German reporter, stoic as ever, and I did wonder if he had a quote from Nietzsche suitable for this. If he didn't, I was sure he'd find one, and I rather thought I'd recommend we release him. Not that that was my decision, but they hadn't second-guessed me yet on anyone I'd passed.

Not yet. He might be one of the lucky ones, and get back to Germany rather than disappear into a ditch, like ninety-nine percent of them did when we caught them, and I did enjoy shooting reporters. They never seemed to believe it could actually happen to them, until it did, and I always tried to give them enough time to understand that yes, it was in fact happening, to them, before it did. It was a lot less than they deserved, but it was the best I could do.

"You see before you the fruits of hubris, Stefan," I said, looking down into the stadium, looking down at the ranks and files and piles of bodies, looking down at the red rivers of blood flowing downwards over the concrete to form a lake covering the green artificial turf, listening to the steady crackle of shots, listening to the machineguns and the vehicle-mounted cannon positioned at the exits, listening to the screams rising to the sky, listening to the voices pleading to a God they'd never believed in.

Too late to believe now, motherfuckers.

"Why?" Stefan choked out, his face pale as he looked down into the slaughterhouse. "Why? Why are you doing this?"

"Why, Stefan," I said again. "Because they couldn't live and let live. They thought they were better than us. They thought they were smarter than us. They thought that because we didn't share their beliefs and their attitudes and their sickness of the soul, they thought that because we opposed murdering babies and all the other sicknesses that they thought were right, that we were their enemy."

"They thought they could tell us what to think, and they thought the rules they themselves made didn't apply to them, and they made this into us and them. They called us deplorables, and if any of us opposed them, they did their best to destroy our lives. They called us racists and fascists and chumps and maggots and cultists, and every other name you can imagine, but we weren't any of those."

"They thought they were our intellectual and moral betters, and they thought we were an embarrassing relic of the past, a past that they didn't want to continue existing, and they called us irrelevant. They called us relics, and they ignored what we thought, and what we wanted. They took our jobs, they destroyed our jobs, our little businesses, our homes, and our families, everything that made us a nation, and then they laughed at us, and told us to learn to code. They killed our babies, they destroyed our brains, they turned the schools into indoctrination camps, and they tried to take our religion and our country from us."

He took a step back, and I knew why. I'd seen myself in the mirror, once or twice, and I'd given myself nightmares.

"And when we voted for a President that fought for us, a President who cared for us, for all of us, they disenfranchised us, and they stole the election, and then when we beat them again, when we voted his daughter in with enough of us that they couldn't steal it, try as they might, they assassinated her, Stefan, and they assassinated her vice-president, and then they went ahead and tried to put their puppets back in."

I smiled, but it wasn't a smile. It was a snarl of anger. Old cold bitter anger. "They never considered us as people, Stefan. They never saw us as real people, with real concerns and lives, and they didn't see any value in our lives, or our family's lives, in our cities or our jobs, and they couldn't tolerate our beliefs co-existing with theirs. They saw us as a roadblock to the progress they envisioned, and they said outright that we needed to be replaced, that we needed to die, and that we needed to die quickly, and in their hubris, they didn't think we'd resist."

I smiled as the grenades created their rippling flowers of red below us, new blooms replacing the old, time after time, explosions of color, movement and sound, petals of death, flowering briefly and then gone, only to be replaced by a new bloom. Again and again.

"They were wrong, Stefan. We're stronger than they ever imagined, there's more of us than they ever dreamed of, and we won't stop until we've not just beaten them, we're going to eliminate them. Every single one of those motherfuckers is going to die, along with anyone and everyone that helps them or supports them or thinks like them. It's us, or them, Stefan. They decided that, they wanted that, and that's how it will be."

I smiled as that steady crackle of shots and explosions continued through that wall of screams and howls and pleas. "They're discovering too late that we won't go gently into that night that they wished upon us, and they're finding out now just what that means, and that we can be more ruthless than they ever thought they were. And we're better at it, Stefan. We're the descendants of the same men that marched with Washington. That marched with Lee and Sherman and Grant. The men that fought and died at the Alamo. The same men that stormed the beaches on D-Day, and fought at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima and Chosin, and a thousand other battles."

I smiled, and now that smile was for Stefan. "The descendants of the same men that dropped the only nuclear bombs that have ever been used in war, Stefan. The same men that fire-bombed Dresden and Hamburg and Tokyo and Osaka and a hundred other cities into the closest thing you can imagine to hell on earth. Think about that, and about what you're seeing here, today, and tell your readers to be afraid, Stefan. Be very very afraid, because the National Liberation Army of the Second Republic would cross a frozen river, to kill our enemies, in their sleep, with our bare hands, on Christmas."

I smiled. "We're doing it, here, today, and we won't stop now, not until we're finished."

I waited, but Stefan said nothing, so I lifted the microphone, and I sang while I watched death scythe down his unwilling victims before my eyes, but then, that's what they'd intended for us, and I smiled while I sang.

Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad

Próspero año y felicidad

I want to wish you a merry Christmas

I want to wish you a merry Christmas

I want to wish you a merry Christmas

I hope you "enjoyed," if that's the right word to use for this dystopian little futuristic alternative-history science-fiction story, and I do hope you had a somewhat intense and thought provoking read because really, like all my "Unity Mitford" stories, that was what I meant it to be. I apologize in advance for any mistakes with the military stuff -- I've never been in the military and any mistakes are entirely on me. It's not the usual Literotica hot and happy humping, is it, but I hope you enjoyed it, for all that. And seeing as it's for the 2020 Winter Holidays Competition, go on, give it a star or two... whatever you think it's worth... "Unity"