all god's orphans
Chapter 59

My name’s Wes. I’m a Conscript Corporal in the US Army. My station was an Army General Operations base setup in that forest back there. We’d been there for a few weeks or so, doing the usual. Looking for supplies. Rescuing civilians. Distributing medicine, y’know? Anyway, everything was going fine and then this general showed up a few days ago. All of a sudden, he’s got these new rules and he’s surrounded by the special forces guys that are completely loyal to him and nothing else. It was weird.

Anyway, it didn’t seem weird at first, you know what I mean? It was just, oh okay. I guess generals need extra protection now or whatever. It made sense. But then they started restricting movement in and out of base. Civilians were suddenly confined to base and not allowed to leave. There was even an execution. They lined these guys up and just shot ’em. Just like that. There were like, fifteen or twenty of them, all civvies and they just killed them. That weirded us out, but again, what did we know? We’re all just conscripts. We’d never laid eyes on a general before. And who knows what’s going on these days. I know you said you’ve been trying to get news on your radio. Maybe I can help you with that. Comms is my thing. But anyway, you can’t even replace out what’s really happening. It’s like nobody knows anything.

So this general, he starts making up all these new rules, like you can’t go out anymore and the women have to be separated and all this. Then his special forces guys start bringing in drugs and alcohol by the truckload and start getting hammered. Some of them got out of hand and started raping some of the women. Even some of the little girls. This one guy, they’re trying to rape his daughter, right? And he’s trying to stop them, so they take him and make him watch and then they just hung him. Right there. Threw a rope over some scaffolding and hung the poor son-of-a-bitch right then and there. So some of us try to fight back, y’know? Raping women and killing people ain’t what we’re supposed to be doing last time I checked, but the general, he don’t care. It’s like he’s lost his mind. It’s just like in “Apocalypse Now”. The guy has gone completely insane. He’s Colonel Kurtz, and his special forces thugs are his natives. I mean, they seem to worship this guy.

Anyway, so we started to fight back and that’s when the special forces guys started shooting at us. We fought back. I’m sure you heard the gunfire, but c’mon. We’re conscripts and they’re not only professional soldiers but special forces on top of that. We didn’t stand a chance. I saw a lot of my friends go down. I don’t know how many may have survived, but when it became obvious that it was every man for himself, I just started running. I didn’t even know where to go. I just figured I’d head north first and then maybe west. I think maybe the general has gone rogue or something. I kept hearing them mention “federal troops”. That doesn’t make any sense, though. Aren’t we all federal troops? I mean, we’re on the same team, I thought. Now I don’t know. They said the federal troops are forming a line out west and part of it runs through Kansas City so I thought I’d head there, but really, I’m just glad to get away from that massacre.

Thank you again for taking me with you. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t ran into you. You guys are real lifesaver. I owe you.