The Fall of Night

Chapter Forty-Two: Covenants without Swords, Take Two

Hanover, Germany

She was called Gudrun, a name that meant ‘battle-maiden’ to some ears; an irony that a handful of boyfriends had pointed out when they came face to face with her politics. Gudrun Krumnow was, in no particular order, nineteen years old, blonde, tall and shapely, and deeply devoted to the needy of the world. Like so many others in her position, she believed deeply and truly in the need to ‘Do Something’ to tackle the many issues of the world; she had marched in protests, sung songs in support of the Needy of the Week, and had generally made herself as helpful as she could. Her education had been limited; at nineteen, she had only a few years of university to go, years that she had already committed to the Causes.

She was unprepared for the real world; German industries, already staggering under the weight of European regulations on this and that, had no time to take on more uneducated people that they could never get rid of, or lose. The best of them had the motivation to use the –unofficial — opportunities to train to an acceptable level; few of them truly had the motivation. Years of being told that they were due vast rewards if they were patient had taken their toll on the youth of Germany; no government could challenge the issue of vast unemployment without losing power. In a very real sense, Germany — and the remainder of the EU — was being red-taped and taxed to death.

Gudrun and her family had cowered in their house as the first chaos began in Hanover, terrified of what would happen to them when the looters and insurgents found them hiding; Gudrun might have believed that they were the poor, and the underdogs must always be in the right, but sheer terror was overcoming her political beliefs. The sounds had been terrifying; she had always disliked the police — and had led a boycott of girls who dated police officers — but she had prayed then that the police would save her and her family. When Lord Mayor Paul Steiner — a class enemy, of course, despite him being Green — had used the army to end the disturbances, or at least confine them to a handful of districts within the city, Gudrun had been relieved.

And then she hated herself, feeling like a traitor; she had silently accepted the treatment of the rioters and the looters, treatment that rumour said had been brutal beyond belief. It had led to her first serious argument with her father, ending with her flouncing off to her room and hiding; her father had threatened to lift his hand to her for the first time in her entire life if she even thought about going out and joining the protests against Paul Steiner. Her father, a civil engineer, had known what Gudrun had refused to allow herself to believe; the streets were no longer safe for protesters, or indeed for any young girls. As the Russian armies had advanced closer, he had even considered abandoning the city, but where could they have gone? Gudrun had three sisters, each as pretty as she was, and her mother had held her good looks; how could one man protect them all against the evils of society’s breakdown? They had remained in the city, hiding; keeping their heads down and hoping that they would not be noticed.

For Gudrun, a free spirit, it had been torture. “I am not one of those women whose menfolk keep them covered all day,” she had shouted at her father, desperately trying to ignore the contradiction of her support for minority rights and practices such as the Burka and worse. “I am a grown woman and safe on the streets!”

Her father had given her the worst look she had ever faced. “Yes, you’re a grown woman in body, if not in mind,” he had snapped. “If you go out there, you may be raped and murdered and you are not going out there! Until you leave the house permanently, young lady, you are under my authority. Understand?”

Gudrun had subsided, muttering, as the noise of the advancing Russian Army had started to echo out over the city. Her father had gone out into the streets and brought back what he could in the way of food, quelling Gudrun’s objections to some of the meat — she was a devoted vegetarian — with a sharp remark about beggars not being choosers. The Krumnow had never been poor; their area of town had been remarkably unscathed by the fighting. Gudrun believed that it would never touch her… and the decision of the Mayor to surrender the city had seemed to confirm her belief. The Russians had behaved themselves and accepted the surrender; they couldn’t do anything to the citizens, could they?

Her father had been less convinced. His family remembered the advance of the Russians during the Great Evil War, the war where Germany had set out to exterminate the Jews and other ethnic groups, the same Jews who had crushed Palestine and sent thousands of refugees to Europe. The Russians had looted and raped their way across East Germany; he had had relatives, old now, who had been forced to endure Russian attention. To Gudrun, it was a different world; such things just didn’t happen in her world.

For the first week, events had been surprisingly peaceful; she had watched from behind her curtains as the Russians marched into the city, pale-faced soldiers who seemed tired, but happy. Rumour had it that the policemen had been rounded up, along with the soldiers, and sent out to the detention camps, but nobody knew anything for certain. They were more concerned with stability and survival; the Russians promised stability, although it was very much the velvet glove masking the steel fist. They had insisted that everyone remain constantly tuned in to the emergency frequency and used it to issue orders; their first order had been a curfew on all Germans between sunset and sunrise. Other orders had followed; Gudrun had watched as young Arabic men were forced to work clearing rubble from the streets, before being escorted out of the city to the laminations of their women. Her heart almost burst.

In the second week, the Russians had caught up with her father; a Russian officer and seven armed soldiers appeared, bearing ration packs in one hand and weapons in the other. The offer had been simple; her father was a civil engineer who had worked for the city’s infrastructure, and he was being offered the chance to take up his post again, at Russian wages. The Russian had been brutally clear; they would be rationing food, and her father had the choice between working for them, or not receiving any rations. Only the elderly or the very young would get rations, the Russians said, without working for them; in time, everyone would work or starve.

Gudrun had protested; surely everyone had a right to eat! The Russian soldiers hadn’t understood her nearly-hysterical German, the Russian commander had rolled his eyes and made a comment to the Russian soldiers, who had laughed. Her father had interrupted, his face very pale, and sent her out of the room; Russian laughter had followed her all the way to her bedroom. That night, her father had admitted to them that he had seen no choice, but to accept the Russian offer; it was that, or the family would starve. Gudrun had said nothing.

The day afterwards, she met up with a few of her friends, male and female alike, including her current boyfriend. The Russians had closed the schools and universities for the duration of hostilities, and they had banned large gatherings, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once. The students compared notes, feeling strangely excited as they shared their stories; there couldn’t be more than a thousand Russian soldiers assigned to the garrison, and most of the soldiers were clearly overworked. Some of the male students complained about how the Russians had taken over the brothels, but their female comrades had little sympathy; at least the Russians would be able to pay the whores for their services. European banks were still closed and European money was worthless.

The students compared notes and plans; many of them had graduated with honours in courses on people power and civil disobedience. They knew the theory and even some of the practice; they had studied, not without a little delight, the experience of the British, the French and even the Russians when it came to facing People Power. The Russians, in 1991, had crumbled before the people of Eastern Europe; many of the students knew people who had been alive during the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism in Germany. Without really noticing, they had gone from a group of young students to the beginnings of a resistance moment, devoted to peaceful protest. The handful of students who warned that the Russians would be unlikely to fold were laughed at; everyone knew that they were the ones who had volunteered to do their community service in the army. Gudrun had been smart; she had done hers in a university, soaking up the knowledge and learning.

Three days later, the final straw came.

“Citizens of Hanover, this is an important announcement,” the radio said. The Russians had told everyone that there would be an important announcement enough to make sure that everyone was listening at 9pm, the time that they had set aside for such messages from their occupation authorities. “Please listen carefully and comply with the instructions in this message.

“In order that the inhabitants of Hanover be integrated properly into the new economic system, it is vitally important that all citizens be registered with the provisional government of the city, in order that formerly employed citizens can be aided to return to work, and unemployed citizens will be found work, payable in good Russian currency. Please report to the nearest government centre within a week, bringing with you your passports, European driving licences, employment details and other forms of identification. If you have a Prisoner’s Card, or an Ethnic Entitlements Card, bring those along with you as well. An ID card will be produced for you at the government centre, which must be carried at all times and produced upon demand; failure to either register or produce an ID card after the week will result in arrest and detention. This message will be repeated every hour on the hour.”

Gudrun had hated the thought, every time successive European governments had brought it up; ID cards! The French and Spanish had had them and pressure from Progressive factions had forced them to abandon them; Italy’s milder version had also been washed away under a tidal wave of public mistrust of the government. Sure, there were cards for prisoners, or Ethnic Entitlement Cards for those who had suffered because of their ethnicity, but they were all wrong; she hated the thought of being nothing more than a number on a card. She knew that others would be feeling the same way…

They massed in the suburbs and began a long march to the remains of the New Town Hall, now the centre of the Russian occupation authorities. The Lord Mayor made the occasional broadcast, but everyone knew that the Russians were pulling his strings; everyone suspected that the Russians might have even had him as a willing ally from before the war. It was easy to look for people to blame; was it the government, the skinheads, the Arabs, the…? There was no way to know for certain, although Gudrun’s father had certainly had an opinion; Gudrun considered him, at least in part, a class enemy.

She had sneaked out of the house after her father had left for his seemingly endless task of rebuilding the city’s infrastructure. The Russians had rounded up a few hundred trained workers, but they’d been massively overstretched by the scale of the disaster; the city had tilted on the brink before they had finally managed to save it from drought and starvation. Her father hadn’t known about the march; he would only have forbidden her from going. The throng welcomed her, as they welcomed everyone willing to join them; they advanced towards the New Town Hall, shouting their defiance at the Russians. Gudrun, now part of the pack, shouted too; no identification cards, Russians go home…

The marches thronged the streets, only vaguely aware of the Russian helicopters that passed over them briefly, taking careful notes. Their shadows sent gloom wherever they touched, but Gudrun was unimpressed and the gloom faded when they vanished again, perhaps having attempted to terrify the students into dispersing. They had failed.

“They can’t scare us,” a male voice shouted, and the crowd rapidly took up the chant. “Russians out, Russians out, Russians out…”

They had protested before; they had even played a role in the downfall of one German government. The crowd was almost a living thing; Gudrun could feel it as they focused their energy on the Russian guards at the end of the road, a line of Russians deploying themselves to face the crowd; they were useless, the crowd laughed at them and kept going. The wave of energy suffused them; they were unstoppable, the Russians would run, the Russians would hide from the power of the people united…

The Russians opened fire.

The noise of the heavy machine guns tore through the air, shocking the crowd; those hit by the bullets added their own noise to the racket, blood and gore splashing everywhere as the Russians fired directly into the crowd. For many, it was their first sight of blood; they fainted, or screamed, trying to run as the Russian troops waded forwards, weapons raised. Clubs came lashing down on skulls; anyone who tried to fight was gunned down mercilessly. The crowd, stung by a thousand red hot bullets, disintegrated; students and protesters tried to run, only to be herded back by more Russian soldiers, wielding clubs and shouting orders in German.

Gudrun had been one of the lucky ones; she had been knocked to the ground as soon as the shooting started, unhurt apart from bruised knees and bloody scratches on her legs. She tried to crawl away, only to be caught, secured, and thrown towards a group of her fellow female protesters, all forced to sit on the ground with their hands brutally tied behind their backs. The male protesters were rounded up as well; she caught sight of her boyfriend’s broken face as the Russians escorted the male protesters into trucks driven by German drivers, all handcuffed to the wheel. She met his eyes, one final time; they were torn with horror and despair.

She didn’t want to look at the bodies, or the blood; there were hundreds of bodies waiting for disposal as the Russian soldiers moved through them, inspecting them all, unconcerned about the blood. A handful of mortally wounded protesters were quickly shot in the head, their cries fading away as they were sent into merciful oblivion; a handful of protesters who had been playing dead were found and tossed in with the other trapped protesters. The Russians finally completed their grizzly task and barked orders; Gudrun, despite herself, wasn’t blind to the implications of separating the men from the women. Somehow, she didn’t think that their fate would be pleasant.

For the next hour, their hands were freed and their legs were shackled together, before they were given their orders; clear up the mess. Some of the girls became hysterical at the sight before them and refused; the Russians simply shot them in the head, leaving only a few hundred girls to clear up the dead bodies. Gudrun forced herself to work, picking up the remains of her friends and fellows; she forced herself not to look as the remains were dumped in the back of several garbage trucks and carted out of the city. Gudrun wasn’t religious, but she didn’t like the thought of the remains of her friends being dumped in a mass grave; she didn’t dare protest. The slightest hint of defiance was met with death. Broken, sobbing, Gudrun worked until the Russians finally pulled them out of the hellish scene, loaded them onto trucks, and sent them back out of the city.

She exchanged glances with the other girls. What was going to happen to them? They all wondered; were they going to ever see their homes again? Some of them had small injuries, others had nasty-looking wounds; some of them weren’t even properly dressed any longer. All of them were covered in blood, staining everything; she felt dirty, disgusting… helpless. Unable almost to breathe, because of the smell, Gudrun was forced out of the van by the Russians, still shackled to the others, and forced into a shower. The cold water was a shock, but it was a relief; the girls tried as best as they could to clean themselves before the Russians escorted them into the next room, and stopped.

“No,” Gudrun said, or thought; it hardly mattered now. Their fate had become all too clear; she wondered, suddenly, if the same had happened to the boys, or if they had merely been dumped into a work gang. “No…”

They were facing a horde of Russian soldiers, looking at the girls with expressions that could not be described with mere words. Some of the girls tried to protest, knowing that it would get them killed… but they weren't killed, as the Russians started to undo their trousers and consider the helpless girls. They advanced towards the young girls…

And then the screaming really started.