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SKILORD
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Live free or Die
Mar 2002
time: 05:33
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Damien propped his foot up on the hip of the attendant, shoving him out of the door and into the desert, “F***.”
Johan threw his gaze back, “Scheisse.”
Damien grabbed the steering wheel and pulled himself over, shoving the accelerator into the ragged carpet of the dusty car, spinning it around, narrowly avoiding the attendant and pointing himself directly at the chopper.
“He’ll shoot,” Johan advised, pulling himself into the passenger seat.
“No matter which way we run.”
The car shot under the chopper unharmed, the helicopter swung itself around after them, making menacing sounds with its rotors.
“The Honor guard is back at the station, we’ve got to catch ‘em.”
Damien shook his head, “I can’t stop with this b****** following me.”
Johan nodded, “What then?”
“Get to Leipzig, loose him. The boys ‘ll be safe out here for a coupla days.”
“Unless of course he,” Johan leaned his head backwards, “finds ‘em.”
Damien shrugged, “He can’t learn anything from them.”
Johan shook his head at his calloused companion.
-
The dinged car pulled into the covered garage, florescent lights glowed overhead. They had lost the chopper about four miles outside of Leipzig, scattered among the traffic. Not a single shot had been fired from the massive cannon that was mounted on the side of the chopper and it had rather surveyed them quietly. A few suspicious looking bobbies sat at the side of the road and a few roadblocks were narrowly averted thanks to the traffic reports that the radio provided. The trip had been rather uneventful on the whole.
“Welcome to the Kingdom of your fathers mein Kaiser.”
Droplets of water slapped against the cement from some unnoticed corner. Cracked cement was adorned with graffiti, ancient flags of Germany, the once noble German eagle.
“Deutschland Lebt?” Johan read, stepping out of the car.
“Ja, and soon it will sleep no more,” Damien laughed.
“Was that somehow funny?”
“Ja.”
An aged man sat quietly next to a metal door on the far side of the garage, “Kann ich Ihnen helfen?”
Damien approached him, grinning, his face pulling out of the shadows, “Selbstverständlich.”
“Damien?”
“Ja. Is there a meeting tonight?”
“Ja, they are all in there.”
A button was pushed quietly and the door slid open.
-
On the far side of a metal hall there was a smoke filled room, after a brief startling moment the men within recognized Damien and poured him a mug of beer, pulling a seat next to their table and dealt him into whatever card game they were playing, Johan stood at the door, quiet.
“Who’s your accomplice, Damien?” A bearded fellow pulled a smoldering cigar out of his lips and tapped the ashes into an ashtray.
“Ahh, the Kaiser over there? A long lost descendant of Otto von Bismarck.”
The table erupted into laughter, “You must be kidding us Damien,” the bearded fellow responded.
Damien let slip a few last laughs, “Ja, of course.”
He put his cards down, smiling proudly, “If I didn’t know better I’d think myself a cheater.”
Johan walked into the pale light of the room, “Is this the best we have? This is the Volk that has defied Britain for centuries?”
The table laughed again, the bearded man spoke up, “Ja, this is your Volk, Kaiser.”
“We play cards while Britain rapes our nation?”
The men at the table glanced nervously at each other, “Ja.”
Damien shook his head, “Its not a battle that can be won, Johan, it’s a battle to be avoided. In a few generations everything will be forgotten and we can all be peaceful Britons.”
“You will surrender everything then?”
“Ja.”
“Deutschland Leben?”
“We all know better than that,” Damien responded.
Last edited by SKILORD on 02-05-2004 at 20:03
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SKILORD
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Live free or Die
Mar 2002
time: 05:33
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It's short, but I have to go to Detention tommorrow morning and so it'll have to do for now.
---
“This is treacherous!” Johan pulled up one side of the table, slamming it onto its side, “Traitors!”
Guns appeared in every hand, “Traitors? Traitors to what mein Kaiser? Traitors to who?”
“Deutschland.”
“Deutschland is dead, Johan. We’re out of prison, the fairy tale is over. You’re no prince, you have no kingdom,” Damien waved his pistol menacingly.
“Sie sind ein Verräter.”
“To who, my Kaiser? You spent far longer in their service than any of us. We are Germans, we were born in the old ways and raised in them. We have felt Germany since our mothers’ womb. Deutschland is dead, and any who still serve her will follow her.”
Somebody pulled the table aright again, a new pack of cards was pulled out, “Now sit down and we’ll deal you in.”
Johan paused for a moment, “Ante in with thirty pieces of silver,” he spat on the table and walked out of the door.
-
Thick, powerful droplets of rain came sidewise from between the massive skyscrapers of Leipzig.
Johan cursed his feeble windshield wipers as they shuddered across his windshield.
The car began to crawl out of the parking garage, slowly pressing itself against the pouring rains and rushing winds. It was pushed to the side by the winds.
Scheisse Johan shook his head, I’m going to die in this. How f****** stupid.
The car pushed itself out further, against the winds.
“Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit…” he whispered.
The wind screamed no tune, but the song was coming. Here he was, an army of one, battling the German weather.
“ Für das deutsche Vaterland --” he paused, his quiet words revertabrating powerfully.
Wind slapped rain across the side of the car, the car slipped again.
Johan pulled it back onto the road, gritting his teeth, “Danach laßt uns alle streben, Brüderlich mit Herz und Hand.”
He laughed at the last few lines, glancing into the rearview mirror.
The rain slowed, suddenly, a smile slipped across Johan’s face as the car splashed its way onto the road.
“Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit Sind des Glückes Unterpfand,” he was smiling now and the words came a little more loudly.
The car accelerated through the puddles on the road. The rain still pounded the ground, but it wasn’t quite so hard as when he had begun.
“Blüh' im Glanze dieses Glückes, Blühe, deutsches Vaterland.”
He finished with a salute, and a smile.
Johan von Bismarck had a nation to reclaim but first he had to find a sword.
Last edited by SKILORD on 02-05-2004 at 20:04
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SKILORD
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Live free or Die
Mar 2002
time: 05:33
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I'm not sure if the motivations in this chapter are always good enough. It's a try :shrug:
-
“Johan von Bismarck was sighted in Berlin yesterday,” the manila folder slid out of her hands across Edward’s dark desk.
Edward looked up balefully at her, “He wants to bring the fight to us.”
She shrugged, “He’s only one man.”
Edward shook his head, “The man is patient, methodical. He was a’ archaeologist for Christ’s sakes. He’s trouble.”
She snorted, “Only one man,” she repeated.
“He single-handedly caused a jail uprising that broke our highest security prison wide open.”
She shrugged, “England is not a prison.”
He grinned, “Ask a German.”
-
Johan caressed his scruffy beard, it wasn’t much help yet, and it probably wouldn’t be much help ever, but it could always lull him. He appreciated the false soothing, some small comfort in his life.
The bus stank; public transportation in England was a frightening prospect. A million scents scarred his nostrils, the intense smells of the smoke, the sour milks, the urine. God, he grew to hate this nation more and more each day. How loathsome.
The door flipped open and he scurried into the long line of people, blank looks upon their faces as he tried to make his way out.”
A pair of children stood a ways in front of him in the line, pointing fingers at each other and making gun noises, shouting at each other about the assorted invisible heroics they were performing. One held a pair of toy handcuffs out, and held them menacingly, tauntingly.
“I’m gonna have to lock you up, ya dirty Kraut.”
The other boy, whose appearance betrayed no German, frowned and held out his hands, palms down.
Johan filed out of the bus, following the person in front of him, he shared a meaningless smile with the bus driver.
He sent his eyes up, towards the well-clouded sky. Past the apartment he had once called his own. He shoved a hand deep into his trench coat, pulling a cigarette to his mouth and lighting it.
“No place like home,” he grinned, thinking of one of the last films he had seen before his life had changed forever, it had been an American picture about a girl with red slippers who had merely to click them to return to the old familiar delicacies of a Kansas backyard.
“If only things were so simple,” he muttered, drawing an awkward glare from a passing woman, whose scraggly hair and unkempt appearance exposed the gutter she called home.
He tugged down the fire escape’s lowest stairs, climbing them quickly. With any luck his tools were still in the closet. Luck had been stingy lately, perhaps today her tune would change.
The window was locked, bolted to the side of the frame, he grinned familiarly at this. The landlady was strict about such things, as she was about curfew, the strictness of the two had made Johan adept at getting in. He slid away the false panel from the side and flipped the bolt back.
Crawling into the window Johan looked quickly about, he hadn’t seen anyone on the outside but there was no room for error here. Perceiving nothing he went directly to the closet, digging determinedly through the top shelf.
Nothing.
He glanced across the walls, a familiar miners hat adorned one, he shook his head, walked over and propped it up on his head, a small victory he supposed.
A rifle clicked at the door, which swung creakily open.
-
“Calling unit 87, a break in is reported at 732 East. Please investigate.”
Officer Vonholts shook his head and put his doughnut carefully back into the box. That damn woman was always calling in stuff like this, she needed to hire her own security.
He forced his car down the street that would take him to the apartments, wondering whether or not he should bother with the siren, “I’m on it.”
-
“John?” the feeble old woman who stood behind the massive rifle uttered.
“Yes ‘mam, It’s me, don’t worry.”
“This inn’t yer room nahmore,” she reminded him, she hadn’t gotten along with him well when it had been. He always got his rent in on time, but was absolutely never at tenets meetings and never obeyed a rule that was inconvenient.
“Ye stealin stuff?”
“No mam, this is all mine.”
She frowned angrily, “Yer lyin.”
He backed up to the window, “No, mam, I’m not.”
“Why ye here then?”
“I’m getting some stuff back,” he edged his way onto the fire escape; she followed him, standing menacingly in the window.
“Yer stuff? I’d venture not. Yer stealing.”
He had seen her use the rifle before, she was always happy when the occasion presented itself. She was taking careful aim; he realized that she had no intention of him surviving this. He backed up to the edge of the fire escape, looking down the three floors to the pavement.
The rifle’s trigger was pulled back.
He jumped.
-
Officer Vonholts whistled to himself as he began to pull his car past the bus stop, into the tiny parking lot for the apartments.
His windshield suddenly shattered, cradling a body in their spider webbed grip.
“S***!” he swerved the car off to the side, slapping the body onto the asphalt.
The man, blood covering his back, wearing a miners helmet shot up suddenly, running back, throwing himself through the streets, bullets followed him. Vonholts flipped the siren on, slammed his car into reverse.
The man was making good time a few yards up the road, the tires on the police car screamed and left rubber behind as they switched direction. The man in the miners helmet cast his eyes backwards, looking at Vonholts. The officer paused for a moment as his eyes were caught. The car shuddered forwards, catching up rapidly, Vonholts dragged it to the side, opening his door, the other man leapt up ion the hood and dashed across. The officers hand shot out, grabbing the runner’s ankle and forcing him to the ground.
Handcuffs slapped around Johan’s wrists before he was shoved into the cage in back of the car.
-
“What’s your name, officer?”
The criminal in the back seemed more conversational than most, gene5rally he got nothing more than profanity.
“Vonholts, why?”
“Von Holtz?” when the other man pronounced it took on the ethnic life that the officer had spent his life playing down, “A German name?”
The officer sneered, “Yeah, what about it? I’m the bobby you stinking limey bastard, and you’re the criminal. Sometimes fate is funny like that.”
There was a brief chuckle in the back seat, “You didn’t ask me for my name, Mein Herr.”
Vonholts growled angrily in the front seat. Mein Herr. My man.
-
The children had been cruel, there were rocks in the air again.
“Mein Herr!”
Like he was a slave, like he was theirs. Nothing of his mattered, it was all meaningless to them, something abhorrent. The rocks hit soft flesh.
“Stinkin Kraut!”
Punches would land just as hard in the future, an awkward adolescent would find himself bloody far too often. A quiet man would find himself, like his nation, conquered, submitted.
“Mein Herr!”
He was still owned; he was still at their mercy and under their cruel auspices. Teachers never interfered, friends would always evaporate.
-
“Please call me Johan von Bismarck,” Johan responded to the quiet, growling man in the front seat.
“Von Bismarck?” a grin cracked across his face, “You expect me to believe that?”
The man in the back shrugged his shoulders, “look, I didn’t steal anything, there’s no reason for me to be here.”
“There’s always breaking and entering.”
The man in the back frowned, “Yes, indeed.”
There was quietness in the car, Johan peered out the side of the car, looking at the site that he had once excavated, the entrance hidden in a hill. Discreet, quiet. There were lights out there, there was excavating today.
“Have you ever heard of the Volkgefängnis?”
The man inside was grinning with everything now, “You come with fairy tales and lies, my friend. But of course I have.”
“I have been there,” Johan held the scarred wrist to the window, the burned numbers of the prison.
The officer sent a glimpse at the numbers and his car swerved off of the road.
“Gott in Himmel!”
Johan smiled in the back seat.
The car sat at the side of a road, in an enbankment. Johan peered out of his window.
“Life has been hard for me since I found out I was German. I can’t imagine how hard it’s been your entire life. I know its hard to trust me but if you just let me go I’ll fix this nation. This is my nation and I’ll bring it back to life or die trying. Please.”
The stark blue eyes of the back seat were begging him for mercy, Von Holtz put the car into park, glaring unmercifully at a flat tire that had developed in the back.
-
“Mein Herr!”
The rocks took to the air with childish accuracy, with childish force. They struck with scarring blows, they drew blood, they stabbed, they bruised, they shattered the spirit of a nation.
-
The back door was open, “I don’t know why I trust you.”
Johan von Bismarck slid out the door, leaving a trail of blood across the back of the seat.
He smiled and shook hands with the officer, “Need help with the tire?”
He grinned and shrugged, “I’ll take care of it, get out of here before I change my mind.”
Johan smiled, not with fervent anticipation but with a sad yet hopeful quality.
“Lassen Sie die Bastarde schleppen Sie hinunter nicht.”
“I’ll try, mein Kaiser, I’ll try.”
The crown was a miners helmet, but with all the appearance of royalty a man turned and disappeared across the street.
Last edited by SKILORD on 02-05-2004 at 20:06
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ChrisiusMaximus
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Staffordshire England
Jul 2002
time: 05:33
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I like it, its great infact. I think you had a great idea with this story and made an excellent start, then you sort of lost your way a little.
But I think you have managed to get this back on the right path here, and now the development and build up is about the right pace.
I like the way Johann's luck to date seems to of gotten worse, much worse and it sort of would if this was for real. Imagine a nation that was once proud completely smashed and downtrodden, its not that hard actually as its happeneed so many times in real history.
I said before that you have the makings of an epic here and I still think so, however dont be single tracked in your approach, there are many Paths of drama!!! Sad, Happy, Glorious etc etc! Tragic even!!
It was simply delightful to see a change there at the end in the characters luck, however significant that turns out to be as you progress.
Good luck with this SKI and never give in as good old Churchill would have said 
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06-02-2004 11:00
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