Escalation 84: A Post-Nuclear Story of Humans and Ponies

by dafid25

Side story: they just fade away

Author's Note:

I'm sorry for not updating for a long time. I've been a bit too busy recently, but here is a small story to keep you entertained.

The old man in the shack sat on his chair before his desk and picked up his pen. He took a piece of paper and started writing something on it.

As the man wrote, he glanced at the coat he hung on the wall, twice the Hero of the Soviet Union, twice the cross of saint George, seven times the order of Lenin, and much more hanging on it. He couldn't help but remember the old days before even Khruschev or Malenkov. The days spent in the muddy trenches when he was still with the 3rd Russian Imperial Guard, the days of the Russian Civil War, his time spent in both Frunze and Vystrel Officer's School, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second world war.

The man then thought of his long-time friend, the marshal, who had a foreign accent. He has long since passed, but the man still remembers the days he spent together with his friend and the days spent tidying up the finishing touches of said friend's memoirs. Stalingrad, the Dneiper, Vistula, and the Oder river. He and the marshal have been there to witness it all.

All those locations and people he remembered are reduced to rubble and utterly abandoned by everyone.

The man drank some water from his glass, then continued writing. He knows that he hasn't got much time left. The radiation hasn't done his age any favors, and if he wanted to do something, it better be now.

The nukes, why did it have to fall?

He still remembers the day he was forcefully dragged out of retirement and into a bunker, salvaging the third world war that had started to go wrong. The day he and his family were assigned bunkers was when the nukes fell.

He couldn't bear to see the army he once was a part of fall to pieces like this and decided to help with the reorganization. It was nowhere near how he remembered it, but it was a decent fighting force.

At least the war has finally ended with the signatures on the Sweet Apple Agreement, and as the world finally reaches some semblance of peace, the remainders of the old world, like himself, can finally rest easy.

After a long while, the old man has written up to three pages, and at the end of the third page, was signed:

General of the Soviet Army, Pavel Ivanovich Batov
November 10th, 1984.

He then took the last of his two sleeping pills and went to bed in his shack with a slight grin.

.
.
.

After god knows how long, Batov woke up in an open field wearing his uniform, with wheat fields stretched as long as the eye could see. He started walking to see if he could find a road to look for signs.

His medals pinned on his tunic glimmered with gold under the sunlight, making it hard to look at.

General Batov walked and walked until he saw a group of people standing in the distance, waiting for him. He started running and barely broke a sweat. At the same time, he began to feel lighter and lighter, as if his body had returned to young age. Within a minute, he reached the group waiting for him.

Standing in the middle was his old superior, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, who was the first to speak. "Your time is up now, old friend. Sorry, but it's time to move on."

Batov fought back his urge to let tears fall as his old friend said, "anything you want to say to your men before we go?"

The general looked back to see the figures of the soldiers of the 65th army behind him starting to appear.

He hesitated briefly, then took off both Hero of the USSR medals.

"One last thing before I go, marshal?"

"Sure."

With permission from his friend, he walked towards the soldiers standing in formation. He then pinned his Hero of the USSR on two of the soldiers.

"Spasibo vam vsem."

As Batov finished his final speech, he followed his friend and the other officers away, perhaps to hell or somewhere else, but it didn't matter.

His duty to the motherland has finally ended.

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.
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November 11th, 1984, 0740 hours
Marshal Sergey Fyodorovich Akhromeyev
Soviet Armed Forces
Office of the headquarters of the Soviet Armed Forces, Novaya Moskva

Akhromeyev read the early morning report on his desk and muttered to himself.

"General Pavel Ivanovich Batov has passed away in his sleep..." The current marshal of the Soviet Union leaned back against his seat.

He felt a sadness surging from his heart. Sure, he knew who Batov was. He worked with him before and after the nukes, still nowhere near as close friends as Batov and Rokossovsky. He tried to find answers within himself but ended up with nothing.

Akhromeyev then read the will of the general, found on the desk next to Batov's deathbed.

As he read it, one of the wills stated that Batov wished for Rokossovsky's memoirs to be republished to keep the memories alive. Akhromeyev looked at the book delivered with the file and realized something.

He was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, just like many others, and he was not getting any younger by the day. Who will keep the memory of such an event alive if the people who have experienced it have all inevitably passed on in the future? Who will remember all the people who died to stop the German fascists if the people who have been there passed on?

Akhromeyev took a moment to clear his mind and started to write on a blank piece of paper.

"Today, General Pavel Ivanovich Batov, a long-time commander of the Soviet Army and a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, has passed away peacefully in his sleep. We mourn his loss. A funeral with military honors will be held later at an unspecified date..."

At the end of the page, he signed:

Marshal of the Soviet Union, Sergey Fyodorovich Akhromeyev
November 11th, 1984.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

Nobody surrendered, but nobody kept fighting the war either.

What is that suppose to mean?

[SirCarrot]

11445416
It means they all gave up on fighting, but no country actually capitulated or collapsed.

[Galop_Infernalia]

Short, but decently poetic.