Z2012SITEBCOMMUNISTREVOLT

Masked

Marcus pulls out his flashlight from the hook on his belt. At this time of night, vision was nonexistent, and with the trail not yet weathered, brambles would appear out of seemingly nowhere, scratching his bare legs. I've got to remember to wear pants next time, he thought to himself, cursing his stupidity. After what seemed like miles of stumbling, he came upon the seemingly abandoned gray shed. He opened the steel door with a hard shove and entered the shed. Around him, ten or so men worked around wooden benches, laughing and talking in many different tongues. "Hey, Marcus, you made it!" shouted Tom from the back in his gravelly, American accent. He was one of the older men being kept at the camp, with dirty gray hair and a scarred face. He was holding an iron instrument that looked similar to Marcus' grandmother's old kitchen whisk, and his hands were covered in a mysterious purple substance. "So glad you could come by and join in on all the fun," Tom said with a mischievous wink. "We need to get the word out to some of other areas around this place, but with the security getting tighter and tighter every day I can barely leave my room at all anymore". Tom had recently been admitted to the infirmary, which was basically a one way ticket to execution. He knew just as well as everyone else at the base what that meant, yet the man still pushed on. "So what exactly is going on here?" Marcus said, scratching his beard. "You never gave me the details of this little operation, Tom."

Tom cracked a smile. He slung his arm around Marcus' shoulders. "So you wanna know the roots of the machine shop, eh? Not much to it really. Basically just giving them what they asked for, Marcus. They think they can keep us all hidden and quiet in this hellhole, and that we ain't gonna do anything about it? Well shoot, you sure as hell can't scare me out of nothin'. You see Marcus, me and ole' Jacob Weatherley over there, we've been cookin' up how to overthrow this operation as soon as we first got here. You can't keep us commi's in check forever!". He sat down and wiped the sweat from his brow. "That's Jacob right over there. Why don't you go give him the pleasure of your company for a while? He can tell you exactly what needs to happen." He loped away, yelling at a younger man to his right. Marcus chuckled at the old man. So they were building weapons for a revolt? Seemed to make sense to Marcus. With the USN base just a cover up for a prison camp filled with communists, it amused him that the officials weren't onto this secret meeting place yet. He walked up to Jacob, a young man much like himself with sandy brown hair and a seemingly permanent five o'clock shadow. "Hey, Jacob, I'm Marcus Flint; Tom told me to come find you for specifics on this….project". Jacob laughed loudly. "Oh, so YOU'RE the Marcus that Tom has been rambling on about for weeks! He told me you worked in a blacksmith's shop back in Hungary… he has high hopes for the technicality you can bring to this little arts and crafts seminar", Jacob said with a smack of his gum. "Since you already know your way around weapons pretty well, I can get you working on this new prototype we've been planning out. It's a pretty big project, so we're hoping to use your experience to help put this together fast and get us the hell out of here!" He pulled out a sketchpad, riffling through the pages. "Ah, here she is," he said. He held the sketchpad out to Marcus, almost tentative. Inside was detailed drawings of at least fifteen different weapons, as well as a map of the entire property with arrows of the best escape routes. Jacob grinned. "Close your mouth boy!", he said.

Marcus rolls over in the cold iron cot. His body ached from the long hours spent working in the machine shop and for the past week he had been running on four hours of sleep. He groans, feeling the same feelings that every detainee at the USN camp felt- hatred and hopelessness. "A bunch of sneaky Patriots," he grumbled under his breath as he swung his legs around to the side of the bed and hoisted himself up. Marcus loathed the white-suited Americans for keeping him in this torturous prison camp. After all, communism was the way of the future. How could they not see that? He walks over to the crumbling porcelain sink in the corner of the room. He turned the rusted spicket and splashed the cold water streaming out onto his face. He looks into the mirror, thinking of his daughter. She would be sixteen now, growing up without him. He thought of her crooked smile and the way she opened her mouth slightly when she slept, and the red flannel sweatshirt that she wore everywhere. His anger was building every day now. Did they not think he had a family of his own? They deserve whatever comes to them, he thought maliciously. He stared at himself in the mirror, gazing at his rapidly aging face. What was once smooth, sun-kissed skin was now splattered with discoloration from the searing American summers and his many trips to the infamous infirmary. He wiped the water from his face with a dirty towel and threw it onto the floor. Sometimes, from a distance, he could hear the blood-curdling screams coming from the Annex, a place no soldier had ever been. After six long years at the camp however, they seemed as normal and constant as the mosquito bites. His door swung open and a nurse quickly scurried in. "Arm out", she said with the same pinched face that greeted him every other hour. Begrudgingly, he held his arm out and waited for the prick of the needle. They had to make sure all of their prisoners were, healthy, didn't they?

It wasn't until two a.m. that Marcus made it to the machine shop. "The guards were lingering", he muttered as he went straight to the back of the room. He had designed a well-oiled riot, he thought quietly to himself. He had tweaked the design of the kitchen-whisk weapons, appointing them with razor sharp blades and heating them to scalding temperatures. They had giant flags of all of their communist home countries draping the walls and ceilings, and the men were almost ready to put their plans of revolt into action. You could feel the sparks of dangerous excitement in the air as the men of the camp geared up for two years' worth of stored anger to the Americans. There were loud thuds on the door. Assuming it was more builders coming in late, everyone went on with their work. "NO ONE MOVE. YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY ARMED GUARDS WHO WILL USE DEADLY FORCE IF NECESSARY." Everyone froze in terror. They had found them. Suddenly, guards burst through the doors of the shop, shooting bombs of sleeping gas into the crowd of men. Marcus ran for his life, but it only put him in the direct line of a whiff of gas. He passed out.

He awoke to a blinding white light in his face, confused and drugged. As he slowly regained consciousness he saw the white suited men standing around him, brandishing needles and other sharp looking objects. Terror and anger suddenly overcame his body. Prepared to wreak havoc on the American torturers, he made a move to stand up from his bed; only to find his entire body was strapped down to the bed. Squirming like a fish out of water he let out a guttural scream. The men stood there, seeming to enjoy watching Marcus struggle. The door to his room opened. In strode the Admiral, the infamous head of the base and the figure of a thousand men's hatred. He smiled cruelly. Marcus had only seen the Admiral twice in person, yet the evil glint seemed to remain in his eye at all times. The Admiral strode over to the bed where Marcus lay. "How are you, today Marcus?". Marcus spat at his feet. The security guards at the edge of the room hurried to punish Marcus, but the Admiral stopped them. "Clear the room", he demanded. Mumbling under their breath, the guards vacated. He turned to Marcus. "Are we gonna play nice now, Marcus? Because I don't really think you or any of the other men can afford not to at this point…" he turned towards the window on the left wall of the room. "So, you all planned yourselves a little rebellion? How cute. Guess you didn't realize we have known about your undercover operation for months now. You really think a hundred men could sneak out of their rooms and no one notice? Between you and me, Marcus, I thought you communists were known for your ingenuity!" Marcus strained in his bonds. "Regardless of your blatant stupidity, I just came to inform you that we are prompting a full investigation and that we will find the men responsible for the start of your little club. In the meantime, all of those captured will be severely punished. Have a great day." And without further ado, the Admiral strode out of the room signaling for the white suited men to come back in. Before they injected Marcus with the liquid that made his insides catch fire, he prayed to a God that he didn't believe in for the only thing that really mattered to him anymore; his daughter.

It seemed like weeks of this; waking up, being fed a meal created to only sustain life, not to fill you up; you also got two quick gulps of water before they wheeled you into a completely black room. You were then questioned for hours on end about the revolt, in between teeth shattering jolts of electricity. You could often hear the screams of other men from surrounding rooms being tortured. At times Marcus wished they would just go ahead and kill him. He was sitting in his room on Sunday, a day that usually consisted of less torture than any other when a doctor walked into his room, his face covered with a protective mask. He coughed, making a gravelly noise that sounded like music to Marcus' ears. The doctor pulled the mask down, revealing a quietly smiling Tom.