Prom Queen Goes To War (MeggyMeow x DeRe)

[MeggyMeow]

The Civil War had been raging for seven years. The death toll was in the millions, those millions including Haley Rivers's three older brothers, leaving her as the oldest of four children of her single mother in a backwater town in rural Appalachia. According to the law, families who'd already lost two children did not have to send recruits to the Supreme Armed Forces; but then, the government had been ignoring the law since long before the Civil War began. And so, six weeks after her 18th birthday, Haley received a notice that she was required to report for military service at Fort Iron Rod, the base of the infamous expeditionary unit colloquially known as "The Ravagers", feared across the country for their alleged brutality, human rights abuses, and disregard for the law - 'alleged', because the UN Human Rights Commissioner that had been ordered to investigate them had himself been abducted, tortured and murdered. She initially thought it had to be an administrative error - she'd thought that if she were called up, it would be at worst hospital or office duty behind the lines - but when she contacted the local SAF office to check, they simply threatened her with imprisonment and bulldozing of the family home if she failed to comply.

At least the knowledge that her signing bonus and monthly paychecks would go a long way to supporting her impoverished family, who hadn't had a single day of financial security since the industrial plant in town had closed down, laying off her mother, and since all financial assistance payments had been cancelled by the government to pay for the war effort, cheered her as she made her way across the country to report in. After tearful farewells with friends and family, she'd loaded her three bags of clothes onto the bus and set off on a three hour journey that took her through countryside turned to ash by the war, deserted towns, broken down industrial units, burnt out cars, and the grim spectacle of bodies. Most of this she ignored, though, as she spent the entire journey on her phone, chatting with her best friend from home, Samantha.

Haley was a petite, pretty slip of a girl who'd been a cheerleader in high school, a prom queen, and voted "Biggest Sweetheart" three years in a row. Barely 5'2" and 110 pounds, she didn't look anything like the muscular young men on recruiting billboards spaced out every 50 miles or so on the expressway alongside patriotic slogans, "Join up and defeat the rebel scum!", "Do your duty!", "Obey!". She was slim and slender with a tiny waist, narrow legs tapering to dinky feet, and toothpick-thin arms. Her skin was lightly tanned and her button nose, light freckles, and wide, long-lashed amber eyes gave her an innocent, delicate look. Her long, wavy blonde hair, with a streak of pink dyed into it, reached almost down to her waist in a thick mass; she had tucked it back with a flower-print headband. She was wearing a tight white crop-top, cut off to bare one shoulder and showing her flat, almost concave stomach, a silver piercing glinting in her navel and a small flower tattoo on her hip. Her short skirt was frayed denim, so short that as she slumped in the bus seat it rode up high enough to show a flash of hot pink lace beneath. She wore long neon knee-socks and flat shoes, sparkly with sequins, and had accessorised her appearance carefully: big silver hoop earrings framed her delicately made-up face, pink glitter-gloss sparkled on her pouty lips, and her inch-long nails were painted in alternating rainbow colors.

When the bus finally pulled in at an imposing military barracks, she hopped off. A figure in dusty green SAF uniform was directing recruits towards the camp. "Rivers?" he barked at her.

"You can call me Haley," she smiled. "Could you take my bags for me, sweetie? They're really heavy." Then she resumed talking on her phone to Samantha, and wandered towards the base, stopping to stoop and pluck a small purple-pink flower from a grassy bank, twirling it beneath her nose and then tucking it into her hair. Maybe this tour of duty wouldn't be too bad, Samantha was trying to console her, surely they wouldn't expect too much of her...?

 

[DeRe]

Ten minutes before the fresh-meat bus arrived, Sergeant Samson would begin his routine. He would drag his burly bulk off the reeking cot bed, washing out his mouth with whatever remained of last night's homemade rhubarb schnapps. The foul brew would nearly knock him back into the unconscious, hungover coma he had only just climbed out of. But the shock to the system was enough to have him on his feet. Checking his reflection over, he stared into his own bloodshot, sunken eyes and summoned up an air of authority and intimidation. In a few minutes he was going to have to go from alcoholic wreck to drill instructor. Fixing his battered beret tight over his shaven head, and taking up the leather riding crop he used as a badge of office, he left the tent with a deliberate, slow stride.

He knew it took exactly one hundred and five seconds to make the path between his tent and the reception area. Boots crunched over red dust as he lurched forth, like some kind of uniformed Frankenstein's monster intent on mayhem. All the rest of the camp - from fresh grunts to veteran officers - gave the hulking, ape-like Samson a wide berth. The former feared him like a vengeful god; the latter feared him for his inhuman precision. Everyone knew of his reputation, of the stories of massacres and disgrace and demotion, but none would ever dare mention them in his presence. "The Butcher of Berkeley" was easily the most dreaded man on site.

Samson himself didn't like to dwell on the past, hence the nightly drunken comas. When he sometimes wondered how it all went wrong, he felt it began about ten years ago with the first real famines and water riots. He was a captain in the Rangers then, just turned 30, with a distinguished combat career. All those bitter years spent in hostile mountains and deserts overseas paid off when he and his rangers were first deployed to suppress militants in Montana. Those early missions were a success, and there were a lot of mass graves out there to attest to it. But the tensions escalated, and in 2003 the country sunk into the second civil war in it's history.

The next decade was a bloodsplattered blur for the scarred sergeant. The Mormon Suppression, the Texian War and the slaughter of the California Communes were all badges on his standard. It was that final action, where he ordered and oversaw the liquidation of nearly a thousand people in the Berkeley Commune, that saw his combat career abruptly ended. Despite the newly-founded SAF's efforts to squash the story, foreign media picked it up nonetheless. "America's Tienanmen Square" became global headline news and accelerated the weakened country's decline into a pariah state.

Samson was tried in secret as a scapegoat, stripped of his commission and consigned to a obscure conscript training depot. The whole experience left an already callous man even more embittered. He had been a career soldier, serving the forces since he left his New York slum home at 16. Now that career was in ruins, he was 40 and alcoholic, and he intended to take it out on every one of the conscripts they brought before him to train.

With one minute exactly remaining he watched the battered old bus roll into the yard once again. His numerous scars already dragged his thin-lipped mouth into a frown, but it drew even harder as he watched the bus disgorge its human cargo. More nineteen-year-old trash from the class of 1994, he mused ruefully. Only about half made for good cannon fodder; the rest either found a more degrading use or became fertilizer for the camp's ever-growing garden. Growling low, his hangover headache still pounding, he began marshaling them together into the nearby drill square.

Suddenly Samson's slim eyebrows flew almost right up to his beret. The sight of Haley exiting the bus was something special even to his jaded palate. Normally the white trash were half-starved and sullen, practically dead before the rebels even got them. But this little bimbo was really something, with an barely-dressed nubile body and the pouting face of a blond beauty queen. He watched her floating about as if she were on a sightseeing trip, dazed by her combination of simple innocence and insouciant sluttiness. She reminded him of the numerous Berkeley co-ed girls he and his boys had violated during the massacre - well the pretty ones anyway. Swallowing hard as he studied her petite body, Samson resolved to fuck this government-issued slice of rapemeat as soon as possible. As far as he was concerned, sex was the only use for a female recruit.

His nearly-pleasant reverie was broken by her arrogant but casual command. Already filled with a lustful hate for this hapless new girl, her utter entitlement caused him to lose it entirely. He whacked the phone from her head with the back of his hand, sending it flying off as Haley staggered back. Bellowing like an enraged bull, he screamed in her face "Shut the fuck up, Barbie! Drop your bags there and go join the other losers now! HUT! HUT!" He ran around behind her like a rabid bulldog, hounding her forward at double time into the square and abandoning her bags in the dust.