This is the second chapter of my new story redone. please comment and enjoy hopefully.
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.”
“That is odd isn’t it?” I thought to myself, trying to go over in my head what they could possible be doing out there with all that stuff.
“Why don’t we go find out?” I suggested.
“Well we have nothing better to do today anyway. Let’s 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.
“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.”
“But I still want to look!” Kate wined.
“Oh just come on the shoes will be here when you get back.” Matt said getting impatient.
“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. They weren’t large buildings they looked more like small houses, I suppose that’s what they were going to be, but why here? What was out here at this half finished road site? The front lines were to the East not to the north. The soldiers also set up antiaircraft guns and trucks with missiles on them witch I assumed were for the same purpose as the guns.
It was getting dark so we headed home. We were all puzzled as to what kind of unit would be stationed near Deckridge. The next day we had our answer.
When the fast and sleek planes rocketed over the town heading towards the construction site it was quite a shock to the people in the town. Emily and I headed down to the road 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 figured out what they were, fighters. Deckridge had just become a forward base for a Patian fighter group. Along with the fighters came many trucks later that day filled with ground crew, parts, and ,most menacingly, munitions for the planes.
“Fighter pilots? Here in Deckridge?” I whispered to myself. Emily overheard me.
“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 field 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? And who were these fighter pilots in those planes? Those questions and many more ran through my head during that week. That Friday I had my answer.
This was also the day that I met them…
