They're Loose! A Collection of Journals

The following pieces are from the remaining journals left from the year 2020 and the final piece is from the year 2028. The other journals from the year 2020 and before have been destroyed or damaged beyond legibility and cannot be used to help represent the events which took place before and during the second civil war of the United States.

Bernice, mother of Sara

I knew it would be soon that we would receive a letter this year, 2020. My daughter is soon to be nineteen. I am a secretary for a cruel man, but it is where I was told to work. In some ways I am glad of the switch, because some presidents have been known to mess up the country, our last one was one of those bumbling dolts. In others I ridicule it, since they no longer teach American history or any country’s history, but they teach the history of the founding of the new government system to our children and I believe it was wrong of them to change the school system to fit their needs and not the needs of the children like my daughter. Sara, that is the name of my daughter, gets into trouble sometimes like skipping school and public disturbances in the neighborhood. She spends most of her time outside with her friends and they fight with the other kids in the neighborhood. I want my daughter to be a doctor or a lawyer, but I worry about what the government will want her to do. She is the gem of my life, and she sparkles with such brilliance especially around her friends.
The day that the letter came, my hands were trembling. I opened the letter this is what it entailed: “Dear Bernice, We are to inform you that your daughter, Sara, is to be a man-hunter. Inform your daughter of this and burn this letter. She must report to the former post office on the following Monday of her birthday. Be proud, she will be a great man-hunter and she will be servicing justice to the wicked. Sincerely, Designated Official.” I told her, and then burned the letter. I am afraid that they are watching and listening to whatever anyone does, before the change the president passed a bill that allowed them to do so without a subpoena or a warrant. Some days, like today for example, I wish the world was the way it was before the change. Although to say so out loud would be treason. This is the world we now live in.
Today is the day that my daughter leaves for the old post office. I had long suspected that they still use it, although I never knew what for till now. It is a cruel thing for them to do this to me, to anyone and their children. I will never get to see her again. After she completes her training she will be relocated and given a new identity so that I cannot find her, and she will be so busy that she will not have the time to come back to me. I cannot seem to stop asking myself; ‘How can you let them take your daughter?’ All that comes to my mind in answer is that I have no other choice. Sara does not know that her life will be changed, though I cannot say for good or bad.
I never wanted her to be a man-hunter. I wanted her to be a doctor or a lawyer but it will not be so. I have a feeling that they will come for me, the government. I have heard stories from others who had neighbors disappear in the dead of the night without so much as a peep being heard. The next day there was a sign that indicated the house for sale. I fear for my life, but I fear for my daughter’s life. Not very many people make it out of the man-hunter training grounds. I hope that she lives to see the world return to its former imperfections that made it a place worth living in.
It has been about a week after she left. A white van pulled up in front of my house at exactly eleven pm. I did not scream when they unlocked my front and back doors and entered into my house. I felt like screaming and running for the nearest window and jumping through it to my escape but if I did so it could result in the death of my daughter. I poured lemonade into six glasses. I have no idea why I only poured six but it seemed like a good number to place on the table. I also pulled out some pinwheels that I had made two days ago.
“Kind sirs, would you like some lemonade and pinwheels?” I inquired to them.
They did not answer though they did take the lemonade, the pinwheels, and me. They shoved a black bag over my head so that I could not see and they tied my hands and feet in a hog tie. I was picked up and thrown over one of their shoulders. I was manhandled out of my house and into the van that had been parked there. I heard another vehicle pull up near where I was. One of the men told the others to put up the “For Sale” sign and to clear out all the clothing, food, and pictures and mementoes that belonged to my daughter and me. The last thing I remember is a stinging sensation in my neck and I lost consciousness.
When I came to, I was sat at a metal table in a cement room. There was a man dressed in a Giorgio Armani suit. I knew that because I looked them up for a suit to bury my husband in. I know it took every penny I could scrape up, but I wanted him to look his best and he was a lawyer. I was thinking about that when he asked me a question to which he then repeated. He wanted to know if my neighbors and I were close. I told him that we were not and that my neighbors and I rather disliked each other. I did not want them to get into trouble because they know me; also it wasn’t that big of a lie. He then asked me what I was going to do if I never saw my daughter again. I told them the absolute truth on this one. I told him that I would look for her till I found her or found out what happened to her, or died looking for her. He looked rather pleased with my answer and my stomach dropped to the floor.
“Then there is no other choice than to try and change your mind. Take her to the holding cell, to see if that will change her mind. I am sure that it will not, but we have orders to give them a chance to change their minds. Some of them do end up changing their minds.” He said to me and to the men outside of the interrogation room.
  I was more or less thrown into the holding cell, which had enough room for me to lie down without being too close to the toilet. It was only two minutes later when they came and gave me supper. It was goop of some meat and vegetable kind. I could barely choke it down. I soon felt like throwing up. There was no sink in the room, only the toilet and floor. Then they pulled me out to take a shower. They tied my hands and shoved me into a room. I was still in my clothes. From the ceiling there was a large shower head. When the water began to pour, it was freezing cold. I was shivering and curled up into the fetal position. I do not know how long it had been when they dragged me out of the shower but I was numb all over. I could not even feel the floor underneath of me. It saddened me to where I physically wanted to scream, tear down the door and end the madness of this world. The only problem is that it is physically impossible for me to do all of those, save the screaming.
It has been a week since they took me. I am in pitiful shape. I am constantly thinking of my daughter and wondering where she is. There are mice, or rats, here. I found that out three days after I was thrown in this room. When I fell asleep, I dreamed about when Sara was only four. She asked me about all she could think of. I would smile and answer her and she would smile back. She asked me why I was sad, why I always had sad eyes, and I smiled and asked her why she thought I was sad and had sad eyes. She answered me with, because your eyes are wet. I woke with a start because my eyes actually were wet. I had been crying.
It was a few hours later that they then shoved in a plate of that nasty goo and a saucer of water. It was not much but I dumped it down the toilet so that I would not have to smell it any more than I have to. It made me want to vomit. I think that they put something in to either make you ill or make you complacent. Either way I did not want to eat it.
I can no longer tell how long I have been in here, though it seems to have been for a life time. My existence has been erased from any paper trails and all of the pictures of my family and I, are most likely burned. I write all of this on the toilet paper that is provided and I had a mechanical pencil in my pocket. It is disgusting the life I am forced to live. Whenever they came in to “shower” me I would hide this and hope that they would not search the room for who knows what. It was hard for me to find a place to hide this, but I found a crack in the wall to place this makeshift journal.
         I have given up any hope that may have lingered about a rescue for me. I knew from the start that I would not be saved. I think that I wished my daughter would find out the truth and maybe with the help of her friends save me, but that is rather selfish of me. I can only hope that my daughter finds out the truth before it is too late. I know that my daughter likes to keep a journal and that the government likes conformity. It would be disastrous for her if they found the journal that I know she will be keeping.
“I want out of here, I want out,” I screamed at the top of my near nonexistent lungs.
         I knew that there were only two ways out either to accept that I would no longer see my daughter and live the rest of my life they tell me to or in a body bag. They knew that I was reaching the critical breaking point so they ignored my screaming. It was like a game for them, I think. They were waiting for the precipice of falling either to their side or falling into one of their word traps that they use to try to get me to say or do something to allow them to torture me all the more.
         To say that I wanted them to hurry up and kill me would be lying, I wanted them to leave me alone and let me go back to my home and have my daughter back. They were not going to allow that, I know. I only wish that I could somehow escape but they have this place sealed tighter than an air lock seal, figuratively of course.
I had to hurry and hide the paper and pencil because they were unlocking the door. I just barely had time to make it to the toilet to pretend that I had been trying to vomit. It is something I would never do but since I have been losing weight like crazy and dumping the food down the toilet it was believable. I was hoping it would be a shower but it was not. They took me back to the interrogation room and asked some of the same questions that they had the time before, but they also asked new questions. There were questions like, do you know where your daughter might hide something that she does not wish for you to see and what would you say if we told you your daughter basically had the skin of her back whipped off because she refused to hand over a journal that we are most certain she has? I was angry and I tried not to show it, because it I could last a bit longer I might be able to get out of her, but I was unsuccessful and the looks on their faces told me they knew that they had struck a chord and they were going to push it as far as they could until I either broke or gave them the information that they wanted to know.
They did not get the information out of me, I am happy to write. Though, they did decide that it was time for me to die. I knew this because when they tossed me back into my room they asked me what I would like to eat. I asked them why and they told me that it was for my last meal. I told them homemade lemonade and turkey with provolone pinwheels. That is what I had served to them when they abducted me from my house, so that is what I will eat besides now they will serve me what I had served them. The only difference is that the ones that they serve me will be fresher than the ones I gave them, unless they give me the ones I gave them, they would be moldy by now.
When they brought the food in it was fresh and they left the entire pitcher of lemonade. I knew it was the last thing I would ever have the chance to eat so I ate it. I was half starved and it looked so very delicious. I ate all twelve pinwheels and drank half of what was in the pitcher plus what was already in the glass. I was full. They came to take away the dishes and leftovers. After fifteen minutes I knew that I was already dead in a sense, because I began to feel as if my insides were burning. They had laced the food with poison, but even if they had not I most likely would have died from eating. My stomach seemed so used to having nothing inside of it that I vomited most of what I ate. There was still enough of the poison still in me though. I hope that Sara will someday read this and know that I will always love her, if nothing else a stranger will know about what they did to me and how much I loved my daughter.  My sight grew dark and my body grew cold, I would not see my daughter again.

File written by the Man whom interrogated Bernice
 
This document is not to be duplicated or removed from folder. That is what the top page read. The folder that it indicated was covered in the blood of the man who most likely wrote it. The pages under held a sickening journal. It begins before the job letters were sent out to families all throughout the country. It reads as follows:
Year 2020 is the 8th year of complete Government ruling and the month and day are blacked out with permanent marker.
I knew the day was coming when I would have to send out groups of the guys to pick up the parents of the newest batch of recruits. It gave me a shiver of excitement. I had sent out the letters to the families that I was requested to. The feelings that went through me were exquisite. I was going to have my fun with the parents since their answers are usually all the same. Occasionally we have some parents that do not want to see their kid ever again so they go along with us like it was the most perfectly normal order of events. Those are the parents that I loathe the most. I mean how a parent can just abandon a child like that is for the birds. It kills me when the parents are like that. It makes my job a little less enjoyable. The part of my job that I take the most pleasure out of is the torturing of the parents. It gives me a euphoric high.
The night that I sent out the guys to pick up the parents went like clockwork. When the parents were put into their individual interrogation rooms even the couples were separated and any siblings that the recruits had, well, I had them all put together in a room so they were packed in there like a sardines stuffed into a can. In all of the rooms there were security cameras and bugs so we could watch them and hear what they were talking about. I love it when they talk about trying to break out of the room, but what they do not know is that the door is made so that the only way to open it from the inside is by taking a torch to the door. Even with the torch it would take a considerable amount of time to get the door open since it is eight inch solid steel. I can hardly contain my glee. The giggles want to rise out of me and into the air, but I have enough self control to hold them in. If I let them out it could mean the end of my life working here and my life in general if I take too much pleasure out of my job. I would never risk losing my sole form of entertainment and my life. I personally will never get married so I won’t have to worry about what kind of job my kid will get chosen for and if it will involve me getting taken away in the middle of the night. That sort of life is not for me. I have been with the party since I was twenty-three years old, in other words since it started. They asked me to do this job in the first place and at first it bothered me but I got used to it and began to enjoy it. I went to the individual rooms and began the interrogations, some taking longer than others. The shorter interrogations being the parents that would rather not see their children again and those are the parents that get shot.
The parents that would look for and chase after any information of their children were the majority of the group and they were the ones that I received the most pleasure out of. The way I would dangle freedom in front of their faces like they could actually get out of this place alive if they only forget about the child that we took from them, makes me quiver with anticipation of the answer that they will give me. Wanting them to break only at the same time not wanting them to break just so that I can torture them longer is what goes through my head every time that I think about them. The rate of the parent’s betrayal of the kids slowly gets down to the few very stubborn ones. They are the ones that I crave the most.
         “Bring in Bernice and have Mathew in a interrogation room on standby. I will talk to him after I am finished with Bernice today.  Also I want a report as to where the man-hunter recruits are at with their training so that I can see the timetable that we have with the parents,” is what I told my underlings.
         I wanted to know how much time I would have to toy with the remaining parents which are beginning to dwindle. Five of the parents gave up on their children right off the bat when I first talked to them. They were taken to behind the building and shot then loaded up into a pickup truck to await the other bodies that would be joining them sooner or later.
         Three days later two parents caved in to my demands. I felt smug although usually I have had three or even four more parents fall to their demise so it hurt my ego. The next day a man named Maycine Mournerly decided that he was going to give in and since my pride still hurt from the previous day so I decided to make this man disappear from the face of the earth. The rest of the bodies are to be buried in trenches that the recruits are to dig. This man was high on my anger list. First I ordered that his food be poisoned with a poison that attacks the respiratory system and kills slowly so as I can enjoy this. Next he was emasculated and then had ropes tied around his neck, hands and feet with the opposite ends of the ropes tied to the back ends of jeeps so that they can pull him limb from limb and behead him all at the same time. After that I had him shot in the head and heart and then had his body parts gathered and thrown into a vat of acid. When all of his flesh was stripped from his bones I then had a grenade thrown into the vat to blow all that remains of him into smithereens. This made me feel better and I even cracked a grim smile.
         During all of that several more lost heart in their abilities as parents and gave in. My mood was greatly improved. I may seem like I am a bad guy but I am a good guy in the eyes of the government so I do not care what others think of me.
         I have received word that the teachers at the man-hunter recruit camp are starting the students on digging the trenches, which means I will have to pick up the pace and start sending the parents and siblings out much faster than originally I and the teachers thought we would be going at. These students are learning at a much quicker pace than that of previous recruits, not only that but I hear that they know things that even the teachers do not know. This group is dangerous, I know, their parents mostly stick in there for their kids so even if I wanted to keep them to play for longer I cannot. In a way the kids are killing their parents so it puts my mind at ease in a way so that I am not at full responsible for the deaths of parents and siblings as usual. My fun is coming to an end to quickly this year.
         I am in full swing ‘get the death on’ mode now. I would rather not be but orders are orders and the parents and siblings are all supposed to be dead by the time the recruits have the trenches all dug. I am getting the margin close to what it would be for a normal batch of recruits.
         I now have only three parents left to get rid of, for the most part I have been using the same method of choosing who gets to die and who does not as I first started using. It saddens me that I cannot spend more time with these people learning exactly what makes them tick and what will make them so angry that they forget themselves. I miss that time. It makes me sad that I cannot have that time and that I have to rush my artful way of destroying other’s lives.
         I have a feeling that my days will come to an end. I think it will be an end that will not be nice for me but one that would have me grinning ear to ear and cackles erupting from my throat because of how gory and violent. Though I do not know how long I have left, I will spend my time the way I want to. It beats dying of a malicious disease. How long I have had it, I do not know but I was given about ten months to live by the doctor here at the facility that I have on my payroll so he won’t tell the others of this weakness of mine. At the very least I can torture my victims until they cannot think of anything other than how to save themselves. My dreams will not be crushed by a disease or by any brats who may want to revolt or not.
         I have seen it, the recruits are getting smarter and stronger faster than when this program first started. The parents at first were like the ones we have now; and then the parents started to decline in their caring of their children, but now those parents are refusing like they were at first. I cannot wait to see how the recruits react when they find out their families are dead and they are tools for the government to use, abuse, throw away when done using, and blame for inconveniences that may have occurred during a mission they were on.
         There are journals being collected from the recruits to see what secrets they may or may not have uncovered during their training days. I enjoy reading the journals which contain secrets which were not supposed to be uncovered by their former owners. They put a gleam in my eye.
         Wait, what is that? That sound could only mean one thing: intruder. How many I wonder? My time was up a long time ago and I would rather not be tried under a new, well, old court of law or be tortured for the intruder(s) to get any useful information out of me. Let me see, I have a cyanide pill, a handgun, a 6 ft length of rope, and a plethora of drugs down the hall now what shall I choose to end my “judge, jury, and executioner” days. The handgun will suffice me since I am a man and the other methods I have seem to be a woman’s way out of the world. I guess I will go out with a bang. Some guard runs by screaming, “They are coming this way,” but a bolo trips him up so I know the intruders are close…bye.
         There is no more written in the journal but at least now we know who killed the parents and why. It seems so twisted that an individual existed in the world that would do such horrid acts of cruelty to parents. Guess there truly are monsters hiding in the world we live in and its scary to think who the other monsters might be.

Sara, man-hunter recruit

This day of the year 2020 is my birthday. I've had nineteen of them and the government says I will be a good man-hunter. I know I will be because they said so. A man-hunter is someone in a special division of the military sent on top-secret missions. The statistic of getting chosen to be a man-hunter is one in a billion and there are only thirty slots in that division with five people to a unit which means that there are six units and each unit is special in its own way. I am happy that the government gives us jobs because I have no idea what I would have wanted to be if left to my own devices. My closest friends Morgan and Jake were also chosen for the man-hunters, which is extremely surprising considering the possibility of actually becoming a man-hunter. Think of it; three people chosen from one town with those chances, either some people retired and they needed replacements badly, or they died and they need the replacements or something almost inconceivably possible  is that they are making a seventh unit. I also heard about two other people being chosen for man-hunters as well.
“Mom, I am happy that I finally get to give back to the country. After all they have done for us it is the least I can do.” I stated emphatically.
“I know, just be careful. You know that I do not want you to get hurt.” My mother replied, sounding sad.
“I know, mom.” I retorted to her that day.
We have to report on Monday of next week and we're all about the same age which is cool. Everyone loves the order that the government gives us, so that we don't have to worry about the small things. In the past things were chaotic and no one knew what to do about anything in the year of 2012. In 2012 I was eleven years old and new order began. The United States was the last to convert to order, but it did and everyone was glad of it, although it meant that we could no longer vote for the president or any other political position from then on but from what I heard from the old folks is that the last presidents were flushing the country down the toilet with their programs to make the country a better place with tons of jobs.
The first day at the man-hunter headquarters they told us that we got our own barracks when we were ready. Though, right now we have to share an entire building with about one hundred and sixty others. The thing was we have to prove ourselves to become a man-hunter, so a lot of the people we are sharing barracks with will be eliminated from the program. I do not know what becomes of them after they are taken out of the program, but I do know that when you are out of the program you are never seen again. The not being seen again is not really that hard because they could just relocate you with a new identity and have facial reconstruction done to you so no one knows it's you. I don't think that they just let you walk away, because they teach you some pretty hefty stuff. I mean we had already started survival lessons, first survival, then to the combat part of the training. It was no big secret that we will no doubt have to kill people, but my friends and I try to look at it differently. We tried to see it as helping out society, like garbage men only we take care of the people that are murderers, serial killers and all the other types of killers. We try not to think about what that will make us, to try and justify what we will be doing. The days dragged on as we complete our survival unit. Already twenty people had quit and seven had been taken out. They had us dig trenches; not small ones for only one or two people like a fox hole but large ones that could hold twenty people and all the equipment that they would ever need on a mission plus a few extras.
It has been quite a few weeks since I had the nerve to write about the goings on, since another person was also keeping a journal, their journal taken away and burned on their chest. They told the rest of us that if we hand over any journals or diaries we will have no punishment, I am no fool I saw the look in their eyes, they would punish those who had journals and they did. I keep mine hidden, for the sole reason that those who were punished were not given anything for the pain and some died from their injuries. This is not what I thought training would be like and I think I don't want it if we cannot even send letters home to our families. I miss them and the others miss their families as well. I train hard to get the thoughts out of my head that could get me killed and I read the books that they give us to read, although I would enjoy a good fictional book like you could read before the switch. We learn what they want us to and then when we are to practice with each other, which they never watch, we teach each other what we learned before this, what we learned on the streets of our neighborhoods. Things may have been alright for the adults but there were gangs that the government could not control and we had to deal with them and get away before they decided to draw a knife or gun. We were fast, strong, agile, witty, and intelligent; no wonder they picked us for the man-hunters.
They were checking for journals again, so I hid this under the floor boards, while they were checking the rafters. That is strange because the last time that is where I hid my journal. Oh well, at least I stay a step ahead of them. Ohhhh, before I forget, the trenches they had us dig are starting to be filled in. I went to check one of the filled in trenches, not because I was told to though, I got sick over what I saw and knew I had to show my friends that I trusted. In those filled in trenches were the bodies of every person who quit, washed out, died, and even the families of everyone in the program. I saw my mother, she was close to the top and that is all we looked at was the top layer. We were all sick, although we had to go back to training in the morning, because we snuck out while we were supposed to be in bed. There is no rest for the wicked, but who can say who are the actual wicked ones here, for I have no idea who those are, us or the ones running the program. I don't know for certain about the others, but I am having these wriggling, squirming doubts in my mind about the rightness of being here.
I could not sleep soundly because of nightmares, so I decided to check it out and a few of the others went with me, and what I saw was so horrifying it made my nightmares seem like fluff in comparison. Hell, there was no comparison; it was my nightmare only on steroids. They shot a young boy who did not happen to be dead but stunned when he tried to get out of the trench. The look on his face, blood trickling from the wounds and welling from his mouth as he died, and then the breaking of his neck to make sure he was dead is emblazoned in my mind. Bodies piled on top of each other in no particular fashion merely thrown in one after the other so limbs become entwined and falling at awkward angles, and on some it looks like there is dried vomit on the corners of their mouths while others have holes in their foreheads. It sickens me just thinking about it to write in my journal so that others will know of this inhumane, contempt of human life. I saw my mother, she was desperately clutching onto a roll of paper. I had to see for myself if it truly was my mother or just someone who looked like her and find out what was so important that the paper had to be buried with her. The others looked out for me to make sure the instructors had finally turned in for the time being before the next rotation of instructors came onto the watch and start filling over the bodies. When the time came I took my chance and, oh God, it was my mom and I had little time to get back so I snatched the paper from her hand and closed her eyes. We got back just in time before they checked in on us to make sure everyone was asleep. After they left we read what my mother left behind and it made my blood boil at what they did to her. I don’t know about all of the others but I will not stand for their way of going about just deleting people from existence like that and then having us dig the graves of our parents and siblings if we had any. I hid her makeshift journal, the roll of paper, in my journal and hid it with one of my friends.
The instructors are persistent to find my journal, because they came right out and said so to my face, though they can't find it and are still searching for it. Then they gave me forty lashes to my back, they said it was because I was starting to slack off. Everyone knows that I do not slack off, ever. I wanted to scream my lungs out, but I knew to do so would bring even more lashes so I settled for crying, they only gave me ten more for that versus the forty more for screaming. I was glad my resolve held, but they gave me no medical attention and the others were forbidden to help me tend to my wounds and they left little to no skin on my back. I managed to crawl to the barracks and my true friends helped me with my wounded back so that I would get better; we knew what would happen to me if I did not make it through the injuries. I was glad when the scabs started to form and hated it when the instructors patted me on the back for making a swift recovery, at least that is what they said. The look in their eyes said differently and I knew that it would only get worse for both me and the others.
“Jake, I do not like the way every single person hides their true face and conforms to this….this dictatorship that does wicked things to the people they wish to erase. I wish that all things could be like they were before the change.” I confided.
“I know. I do wish that as well, but what can we do. We are only kids and now we have no families to go back to.” Jake blatantly stated.
“We could escape, train ourselves up, and change things ourselves. It would be a long and tedious task but we could do it. Besides we are not just kids; we are the kids that will help to shape the future. We are the kids chosen by the government to become the elite military force which puts an end to any uprising, but instead of ending an uprising we are starting one and they will not be able to end it with us since it will spread to others in the States and in other countries as well.” I had spoken quickly and feverishly, but I knew that we could somehow manage to do it.
After I got completely healed we decided we had to put a stop to this, we had to leave and come back when we were stronger and better and bring these people down. It was my job to get the wire cutters which was not that hard considering that is one of the things that they teach us and they don't lock the equipment because they think we are all in bed. We spent a few days planning, but we had to get everything we needed to get on one night otherwise they would have locked the equipment up on us.
After we had all the equipment we made our escape, twelve of us total. We left our barracks with nothing personal other than if we had a journal, to leave those would mean certain punishment for those that stayed behind. Our way to the fence seemed like an eternity, for we did not wish to be caught or to alert the guards that we were making a permanent leave of absence. The wire cutters we borrowed without permission were used to cut the fence at the bottom and not very high up either so as to not make too much noise. I think all of us ended up with scratches from the darn thing, heh, better that then the alternative. We dared not try to climb the fence for at the top it was laced with barbed wire and would have been really noticeable to the guards that make the rounds of the complex. All twelve of us made it out without a hitch. When we left we were not sure as to where we would be heading, but Marcie said that she had seen some mountains to the south. This is where we made our way to, is the mountains, south of the training facility after leaving false trails that lead to the north, east and west. We even made our tracks obvious to the south for as long as in the other directions so as to not point out the way we were going. It was hard going, but the time we spent at the facility had us in shape for the long haul. After we made it to the mountains we searched for a natural shelter and found a cave to stay in after making sure no other creature lived in it besides us. It is easier to hide in a shelter that is not manmade, since it would have taken even longer to set up camp and we were exhausted. Jake made a fire so we could cook food to eat from what we had managed to take with us and keep some warmth. Those mountains were cold and the air seemed frigidly so.
Once we are used to the conditions in the mountains, we resume training and teaching. The subjects that we taught each other were not from a text book, they were from the streets of which we lived. We learned a lot even before we were entered into the training program. We took some of the books that we had to read back at the encampment so that we had something to do in our free time other than crack jokes about all the animals and ideas that popped into our heads, tell stories about our pasts, sleep in shifts, and eat the animals that we hunted and cleaned. Most of the time we spent though was quiet, because we all were thinking of our families that were murdered just for being our family and trying not to dwell on the nightmares we have about the mass graves and the journal my mom left. I read that thing over and over till the words were etched into my mind; she served pinwheels and lemonade so as to hide the fact that she was scared out of her mind. God damn it, I miss my mom so much.
At first we wanted revenge, but the cold, thin mountain air saw to it that our heads cooled off in a hurry. We then called it a cold rage and we were meditating about what we should do and how we should do it. We decided that a path with the least amount of bloodshed was the best course of action and we would bide our time until we were ready to take down this falsetto government. We would not dismay our parents by becoming like the people who murdered them.
Months had gone by and we had trained like madmen. We felt that we were ready to go fight them and were confident that we would defeat them. We even found a woman named Kane, who was a failed candidate from the program; the instructors thought they had killed her apparently not. She gained our respect and trust.
“Everyone, listen up. We are going back, but instead of us learning there we will teach the teachers that we are a force to be reckoned with and we will live to make the future for our children a bright one.” I projected over them, they listened, and they cheered even Kane. We later voted her one of our leaders because we knew we would have to split our forces after we take over the complex that was our training grounds.
The day we arrived at the facility we were surprised to see that fighting had already broken out, we rushed down ready to fight. When we breached the fence that they fixed after we left, we found that the other trainees were fighting a losing battle. We lent a helping hand, knowing that we were made much stronger in the mountains than we would have in the program. We had the advantage over the instructors. We did not kill them, though they did kill some of the trainees. We held them prisoners, being as nice to them as we can because we are better people than they are.
Now that we have the instructors suppressed, we will move on to another area and we will liberate the country piece by piece. We call ourselves Rebels for a Just Cause; they call us traitors for an illusion, but we know the truth of what goes on behind the closed doors of the current government doors and we will make sure every citizen knows of the betrayal of individuals in prominent government positions. We will never surrender to them, what was it that guy in the Revolution said? I believe he said, "Give me liberty, or give me death." That is exactly what they will have to do because we will never back down or give in.

Mae, man-hunter recruit

In hindsight, I saw all the tell-tale signs of betrayal. At the time, I was naïve and more gullible than I am now, it was quite awhile ago the year 2020. We all were naïve and gullible, it almost seems laughable how we were back then. I have had to act as a mediator to some of the others, since we all have to stick together to survive. We all lost most everything that we cared about. I had a baby sister and a four year old brother, and they had nothing to do with me being a man-hunter. Some of the others had younger siblings on the way, and they made sure that even the unborn were dead. All we want is to have freedom and our liberty. We do not need any material comfort items; they would only distract us and make us weak. Food, clothing, shelter, and basic hygiene products are all that we need.
They trained us to fight and survive, no wonder they can’t seem to get rid of us, they forgot to teach us to die when they wanted us to. We consider our group of former man-hunter trainees to be our family now, though we know that we cannot replace the ones we lost. We have decided on a permanent base in the mountains, we know every inch like the backs of our hands. We also have safe areas, like the Underground Railroad had. We are hunted like animals by the man-hunters. To think that we would have become like them, if we had not found out the truth, it makes me shudder. We try not to kill them, only to detain them, but that does not always work out. We have to be able to kill them without hesitation, for they would do the same to us in a heartbeat if we let our guards down. It is hard to live with it sometimes, but we work in shifts so as to allow us to rest our bodies and our minds.
It strikes me sort of funny that they would chose people that they thought would have had worked for them, only to have those very same people fight against them. The other day I saw a girl fall to her knees and cry for her mother to wake her from this nightmare. There is no waking from this nightmare; this is our reality, our lives. We spend every waking moment furthering our goal, freedom. We have learned that to get that, we need is to get rid of the corrupt, greedy government officials that run things, and we have compiled a list of the key officials that need to be taken out, which is all of them basically. Our bodies are strong, our hearts are heavy, and our minds calculate the estimated losses of our people, innocent people, and the not so innocent people that we call our enemy. We have lost some, but they have lost more, and not all because of death. We have told the people that we have captured our side of the story, the truth, and some of them decided to fight on our side. Though, they do have to gain our trust before we hand over weapons, codes, and information to them. We have grown in experience from previous encounters with some of the people that we captured.
Next week, we are going to start infiltrating their military bases and sabotage all of their weapons and communications, then to lock them in so that they cannot be called upon at a later date. We have planned out everything that could or could not go wrong and have plans for every single one. Our next target is the government buildings to remove the corrupt ones from power and reinstate democracy. I know that it will take much longer than the fall of democracy, but I have patience as do most of the others.
Our leader is Kane, one of the people who broke out of the training program four years ago. She as with all of us changed our names to avoid bringing up bad memories, and to help us hide in plain sight. Jessie, another original rebel, is very adept in making fake ids that are real to the naked eye, the only way to tell it is a fake is if a cop scanned it. I joined the cause because I stumbled across the instructors beating a trainee to death one night, and then watched as they threw him into one of the trenches that they had us dig. I saw my little brother, he happened to still be alive, and managed to get to the top of the pile of bodies. Needless to say they fell upon him like the grim reaper, and they twisted his neck after shooting his body full of holes. I was shocked and enraged; I could hardly breathe as I went to tell the others of this news and was horrified about what had happed to Sarah’s mom, so I stayed behind to throw the instructors off from the ones that escaped. I engendered the fight between the rest of the trainees and the instructors. I am also the top strategic planner in our group of teens, which now has a few adults as well.
We have taken a military base forty miles from our mountain base. Instead of making the weapons useless for them, we took everything we could carry. Since we also took their vehicles and tanks, we could carry more than we could have hoped to have carried on each person. When we got back to base we hid the tanks and the vehicles practically in plain sight by covering them in camouflage. After that the military targets were getting easier to take. This could mean one of two things; one, it’s a trap, or two, the military is secretly on our side and this is just an easy way to minimize casualties and not be considered traitors. They are crafty, if it is the later of the two. Surprisingly, we took every single military base in the United States in only three years, at first we thought that it would take five years. The reason we thought so is because we planned on them fighting back more and on more casualties on both sides. The political targets will be much harder, because they continuously move around the country.
It has been five years since the military fell, and I am sad to say that the leader has eluded us each and every time that we have sent someone after him. Though, it is now my turn to hunt him down and try to eliminate him. He has hunted us like animals that needed to be eradicated, but now we hunt him as a hunter would hunt for his trophy buck. Not that we would have him stuffed and hung on the wall, which would be something that I think he would do. I let out the breath that I did not even know I was holding, and looked through the night vision goggles at the mansion. I had already gotten past the security and the guards. He is here. I saw him walk by a window on the second floor. I entered the building through a basement window in the back and made my way to the service shaft. Once there I climbed the rope that was there, though I had brought rope just in case the rope had rotted away. I had studied the blueprints to this place diligently and knew that I could take it to the second floor and get out in a closet. I am lucky; he was in the bathroom of the master bedroom. I reached the walk-in closet, closed the door, and kept the knob turned, before he got out of the bathroom. He finally went to bed; I waited two hours before moving even an inch. I was rewarded with the sound of snoring. He was asleep, now was my chance to end our twelve year struggle. My mind churned about the morality of doing this and found that it would save more lives if he were dead than to let him live while he continued to murder the people, who decide to take a stand, protest, civilly, and think for themselves. I had to act and act fast, so I did. What he received was better than what he doled out. He received a quick death, and since he had already killed off his family thinking they would try to assassinate him; he had no one to morn his passing.
We speculate that in the next four years that we will have the economy back to normal and we will have new people governing this country for the better of the country, not the better of their pockets. Also, we have heard rumors that in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Russia, and all the other countries under the influence of the government that rules everything, including what people will do for a living. The intelligence that we are getting proves the rumors to be true. If they ask for our help we will offer it willingly. They only needed the nudge of one country overthrowing that style of government to get them motivated. When I stop and think about everything that has happened I know it turned out for the better. Though, I still have nightmares about what I did that night. I am getting counseling, as are the rest of the rebels, we all went through more than any person our age.
I finally decided to get married, and to Jessie, we are both thirty-one years old now. My, the years have dragged by since we were nineteen. I hope that our children, our children’s children, and so on down the line do not have to go through what we did, nor have to go through another war. I think that when I am dead and gone; I will finally have peace from the nightmares that used to be our reality and from the flashbacks that continue to haunt my every unguarded moment, when I start to let my mind wander and just think about anything.
Jessie and I will be married on the sixth of August. We plan to invite all of our family, the rebels of old. It will be big, but it will be worth it. We have made a brighter future for our children and we can only hope that it only gets brighter. I know that I would be rolling in my grave if they had to go through the struggles that we did, and I am sure the others would be doing so as well.
There was some insecurity about the future. I was the one with the insecurities and it was embarrassing to voice them to Jessie. I thought I was going to bawl my eyes out when he asked me what was wrong. I almost did, too. I had to answer him, so I decided to answer his question with a question of my own and I really did want to know if he was a hundred percent certain about what he wanted in the future.
“Jessie, are you sure we want to have kids? What if they turn out, well, to be like us?” I asked him with a quake in my voice.
“Yes, I am sure. I hope they turn out like us; otherwise we will have to see who the donor was. I know Mae, honey, and I am sure they will not have to do any of the things we had to do,” he said with such assurance and confidence that I knew it would be all right.
Now Jessie’s and my only goals are to have four children, two of each, to grow old with each other, and to be buried side by side in the mountains where we first got to know each other. I think those are simple enough goals. I am certain that we will reach them, no matter how long it takes, we will reach our dreams and our blackened, heavy hearts will be content.