To the Dregs [Part I]

TO THE DREGS

It was a sunny but dreary day, as the sky was filled with smoke and the ambience of gunfire and explosions, both near and far. Rebels were keeping low, weaving from cover to cover as they advanced through the ruins of 4th street. A booming, monotone voice was heard blaring from every loudspeaker on the block.

"DISSIDENTS MUST SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY." 

But Marsha didn't know what the point of that would have been. If you threw your hands up, they'd usually reward your cooperation with a bullet. Maybe interrogate you first, but you were always shot in the end. Rebels were classified as treasonists, not prisoners of war, and were treated accordingly whenever captured.

There was an explosion nearby, shaking the ground and showering the young woman with dust. She coughed and pulled her shirt up over her nose as she regained her footing. She broke out of her cover and briefly took to the street, quickly taking refuge from the chatter of machine guns behind a blackened auto wreck. Another dusty insurgent crawled amok the rubble piled up in the street, and eventually rolled down next to Marsha. The man's name was Derrick, a rebel of roughly equal rank to Marsha, but with some perceived sense of authority that transcended his rank. He reached down and pulled back the charging handle of his rifle, before letting it snap back forward. "We all good?" he asked, slapping her on the shoulder before releasing a series of hacking coughs into the sleeve of his coat. The dust really got to him.

"Yeah-- Good for now," Marsha replied, hiding her scowl. She noticed a fighter step out from behind a ruined wall, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher at the ready. Though, fate did not grace him with the few seconds he needed to actually fire it off. A machine gunner must have spotted him, for he was immediately riddled with bullets and blown backwards into a bloody heap, his launcher falling uselessly to the side.

"DISSIDENTS MUST SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY."

"Goddamn it..." Marsha winced. That voice sounded all the more ferocious. Marsha began to notice a few rebels falling back from their positions at the front. They were losing ground, and most of all, morale.  "Fucking cowards," Derrick muttered. Derrick always tried to convey a sense of stern coolness, but Marsha could clearly see him shaking, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. A few fleeing rebels managed to escape behind the heaps of rubble that were entangling the street, but several of them were shot down before they could do so. Only those brave enough to stay willfully behind or too terrified to flee remained.

Things were going according to plan only a few minutes ago; they thought they were clear to advance. They didn't anticipate the military surging out to meet them. Though, perhaps they should have seen it coming. You had to always assume that the army was going to be aggressive.

There was a terrible mechanical rumble approaching, and Marsha felt her teeth chatter. A spurt of machine gun fire peppered the area next to her and Derrick, and both of them yelped as they huddled in closer together. Through the dust and smoke, a massive tank began ambling through the ruins of the street. Its turret rotated ever so slightly, before the deafening roar of its cannon was heard, engulfing a building some distance behind them in a fiery explosion. 

"Shshhhit!" Marsha uttered, her heart hammering so fast she thought it would burst inside her chest. It was already encroaching on the remnants of the rebels' cover, its hateful treads crunching over the corpses of men and abandoned vehicles alike. Derrick wasn't calm anymore-- he couldn't even pretend to be calm at this point. He quickly became a hypocrite in regards to his earlier "fucking cowards" remark. "Gawd... we need to get fuck out of here!" His voice was now panicked, but at least it was genuine. "Stay down, stay down!" urged Marsha, knowing he'd be splattered against the rubble if he decided to break away now. The tank was too close, and it was rigged with machine guns all the way up its ass.

They had to wait for their moment. Further ahead of them, Marsha saw a few less-fortunate rebels that were caught in the tank's path. One of the soldiers made a last-ditch effort to cover his fleeing comrades with an anti-tank rifle. A hopeless effort, for such an outdated piece of equipment couldn't even dent that iron monster. Perhaps it worked on the tanks of the past, but they might as well be called "anti-jeep guns" nowadays.

Alas, the heroic rebel and his friends were blown to gory smithereens. As this was happening, Marsha and Derrick stood up bolted to their right. Luckily, the otherwise-occupied tank didn't fire a single shot at them. They dove behind a makeshift palisade of rusty dumpsters in a nearby alley, beginning to crawl on all fours. 

Marsha didn't truly expect to survive the end of this, but that didn't make her any less keen on trying. If she died resisting the Resurgents, then so be it.