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Ocupation chapter 2
this is the second chapter in my story I would like to know what you think. I want this to be good so any coments are welcome.
The next few days seemed to go by very quickly. The occupation units moved into the town and set themselves up at the hotel in the center of town just across the city square from the town hall. The people of the town treated them ok but not with great hospitality. I suppose the only reason they treated them at all was they had money to spend, and nobody can say no to money or if not that a loaded gun on the hip.
The soldiers populated the restaurant quite frequently it wasn’t for the food though. My family owned one of the few places in town that sold alcohol. Nothing of our doing it just seemed to work out that way. It seemed like no soldier could say no to a cold beer and it also seemed that they liked ours the best.
Though my father brought in a good sum of money from the soldiers he never showed anymore than his smile and a little small talk at the bar. He seemed a little different than the rest of the townsfolk in that he never really openly talked bad about the soldiers. There were those who would talk about how ever since they moved in he’d been rolling in the money so why would he talk bad about them? I didn’t think that was why he acted how he did but I couldn’t quite put down what it was that did cause him to be that way.
About the second week or so after the army arrived a lot of construction equipment came into town and stopped in the square for some time while some men from that convoy went into the hotel that they used as there base of operations. A few people including Matt and I stood as near as we could to try to see what was going on. We could have gotten closer but we decided not to tempt the guards with some reason to turn us into a statistic in tomorrow’s newspaper. About fifteen minutes later they came out and got back into there trucks and headed north out of town.
“Were are they going?” Matt puzzled, “There’s nothing out that way except for a half finished road that goes into a half finished tunnel.”
Matt’s words suddenly took on an interesting meaning for me. I had seen the military airbases in the south of the country when my family and I had gone on vacations and Matt had just described it perfectly. And that’s when it hit me; they were going to use the road and tunnel as an airbase. At first I was excited, “Real jets and pilots here?” but then I remembered, “That means more soldiers, the town won’t be happy.” At this point I should have lost interest and went somewhere else, but I couldn’t contain the curiosity that had just grown inside me. “Let’s go watch.” I said to Matt nearly yelling with enthusiasm.
“Well we have nothing better to do today anyway. Lets go get Kate and Emily.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know I just thought it might look less suspicious if we took them along. You know people don’t expect girls to get into stupid trouble.”
“Oh, that’s not a bad idea.”
We found Emily at home and finally found Kate in the shoe store. What she was going to buy without any money I haven’t the foggiest idea.
“Why do you guys want to go out there anyway?” Katy asked impatiently.
“We just want to see what’s going on.” I answered. Even though I had already made up my mind as to what they were doing.
“It sounds like some fun,” Emily said, “besides Kate you don’t have enough money to buy shoes so you might as well come with.”
“Fine.” Kate sighed, “It sounds like a blast.” She said with as much sarcasm as she could put pack into one sentence. It was almost like a second language to her.
It took us about 10 or fifteen minutes to get to the road it wasn’t far out of town in fact it was supposed to go through town, but construction had been postponed by the war. Deckridge seemed to get very unimportant in a hurry. We watched from the top of the hill into witch the tunnel ran. Most of the work that the men did was on buildings off to the side of the road. I assumed they would be barracks to house the pilots and other personnel or something along other lines. I tried to think back and remember what the tunnel could be for then feeling almost silly I remembered. They would probably store the planes in there to keep them safe from attack from the air. Anti aircraft guns and missiles which I suppose were for the same purpose as the guns were also being set up around the road. It started to get dark so we headed back to town. On the way back we talked about the airbase which was going up just over the hill from were we lived. Even Kate the one most opposed to coming chattered on.
“What kind of planes do you suppose they are going to put there?” Kate asked.
“Well the tunnel is too small to house large bombers so it can’t be that.” Matt said
“Well what ever they are I wish they would put them some where else. We’ve got all the attention we need here. I don’t want to know what would happen if our planes came after a base around here.” Emily said with a quiet intensity.
For the next three days we went to the hill and watched the soldiers work, and for those three days what Emily had said weighed heavily on my mind. What would happen if Deckridge became a military base? Would the army attack it? What would they do with the base? Those questions and many more ran through my head during that week. That Friday I had my answer.
When the fast and sleek planes rocketed over the town heading towards the airfield it was quite a shock to the people in the town. Emily and I headed down to the field on our bikes to see what was going on. Matt and Kate were some were else and we figured they would come anyway. We could no longer sit on the hill because they had placed guns on it but we could watch the planes land from the low ground next to the road. The noise was deafeningly loud and the planes moved very fast even when landing. When they finally rolled to a stop I figured out what they were, fighters. Deckridge had just become a forward base for a Patian fighter group. This was also the day that I met them…
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pacis est nostrum professio
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