Chapter 5

Sooner or later the tanks had to stop advancing, blocked by burning barricades of cars and buildings that they themselves had created. Alexa managed to outdistance them and found herself in a milling pack of refugees, confused, deafened and shocked, some injured.

“What’s happening? WHAT’S HAPPENING?” One man screamed.
“It’s the Russians. It’s the bloody Russians, it is. ‘Old on, mate, I’ll go back an’ get me shooter!” Said one crazy old man, while his family members tried to get him to sit back down.
“Just a bloody balls up, that’s what it is.” Alexa muttered, sitting down in the ruin of the café she had recently worked in.

But now more people were coming, escaping war from the other direction - by their wild accounts more soldiers were entering the city, this time from the seafront.

“Its true,” A man told Alexa. “They landed tanks, personnel carriers and hordes of infantry. It must be the Russians. No, I’m sure, it IS the Russians.” He said, before heading out to try and escape the city before the two sides met. He didn’t offer to take Alexa, but she wouldn’t have gone with him, anyway. She didn’t trust him. Actually she didn’t trust anyone right now.

Alexa had managed to scrounge up some food as the evening drew on. It was amazing how quickly most of the city had been reduced to ruins in such a short time, not just from the opposing armies, but also from bands of looters who were appearing and shooting it out with police, ram-raiding buildings and generally taking the opportunity to have a good time. All this ended abruptly. A huge deafening explosion a street or so away sent Alexa tumbling down from where she was sitting. Then there was another, and another. The air was filled with whirling concrete chips and shrapnel, and the artillery barrage continued, pushing north.

When Alexa found it safe to get up again, all the refugees had disappeared - dead or gone to ground. She heard more tanks grinding through the rubble, this time coming from the seafront. Alexa got up to start running - just as she did so she glanced over a ruined half-wall:

Soviet troops were advancing, scouting out ahead of the tanks. They wore long greatcoats with rebreather masks, armoured shoulder pads and carried a variety of rifles, light machineguns and sub machineguns. Alexa wasn’t particularly interested in what they carried or what they were doing, but she assumed they would be prepared to shoot anything that moved. She would have, in their position, but she was no soldier. She crouched by the wall and desperately tried to dig herself in to take some cover, sweating with fear. The men stalked through the rubble, speaking to each other in hushed tones every so often. A few moments later the first tanks arrived - first heavy battle tanks, armed with cannons and machineguns, then lighter troop-carrying vehicles. They used the roads, and Alexa was able to stay hidden.

Next along came rear-echelon vehicles - trucks with huge missiles on their backs, and a truck carrying speakers so big she’d only seen their likes at the concert she’d gone too months ago. The speakers were saying something in perfect English:

“Welcome your liberators! Glorious Mother Russia is here to welcome you into the Soviet Union! Peace loving people of the city, rise up and throw off the chains of your capitalist oppressors!”

Lies! Lies! Alexa was thinking, putting her hands over her ears. This was what Geoff had bought into, and he was most likely dead. On the other hand, the Allied had lied too - they had almost killed her.

“Everyone leaves you in the end. Can’t trust anyone, gotta help yourself.” She said through gritted teeth. After the propaganda truck had passed she saw a chance to escape: More Soviet troops were on the way, but she had a chance to dodge across the road to the other side, maybe out to the open countryside away from the developing street-fighting.

She jumped out of her foxhole, ran to the edge of the ruined café and jumped down. She hit something on the way down. That something grunted and fell over - he’d just been kicked in the head. Alexa looked at the man and screamed with terror - she just blundered into a Soviet soldier! He was definitely no ordinary trooper, though - A short man with skinny arms and legs, he carried a desperate air of danger around him, as if he was ready for something to explode at any moment. His scarred bald head and eyepatch were testament to many close scrapes with death. He was screaming at Alexa too, just as scared as she was...

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