World War Three – Remember the Alamo? Well, it’s back!
The last two American commanders in the US looked down at the map they had been using to snort drugs off of.
“There is not enough Heroin on Earth to make this look good.”
“True, but I’m not going to fight Mexico alone and if we went together, it’d still be a bloodbath. Florida is much nicer.”
The two American officers had bravely decided to not question their orders and stuck to their assignments on very much the wrong side of the continent.
“How far have they managed to get so far?”
“Well,” one of them put down his drink and opened the morning paper, now written in Spanish, “it seems like the Mexican advance is in two very long and concentrated spears. One is hugging the golden coast like a diseased monkey baby and the other is moving through Texas faster than a burrito does my gut. Making a meal out of both of ‘em too, from the looks of things.”
“Any word of anything up north?”
The other chap didn’t bother looking.
“Everyone is still dead. Took most of the British with them, fair, but damn it if we aren’t screwed. The Canadians are spilling over in multiple places from what I heard. And they say the news is only this bad and not worse because the trains are so busted that they can’t get into the country fast enough.”
“Is that it then? We lose?”
“Looks like it. I can’t see us replacing the northern army anytime soon. Not with half of Texas gone.”
“We need to do something, Jerry.”
“For god’s sake Tom, are you trying to kill us?”
“Well, at this rate, they’ll be over here soon, and then what?”
The two men looked at each other. Then Jerry sighed and put his trousers on.
“Fuck it, I never wanted to live past thirty anyways.”
They set off later that morning, two divisions and one reinforcement being all that stood between the Mexican army and the rest of the United States.
…
Meanwhile, over the border in Canada…
“Dash it all Horatio! Why aren’t those damn trains moving?”
“Because some genius decided to tell everyone about the most secret document in the government files.”
“Good lord, not our secret plan to sterilise Europe!”
“Much worse than that, sir.”
“Our nuclear development prototypes?”
“Much more important.”
“…you don’t mean the Sodor Accords?”
“Yup.”
“Fuck.”
Sure enough, outside every rail depo and station in the land…
“Come on lads, surely you don’t need all these things?”
“Need? Fuck no. But if one union managed it, we’re all having it mate. Unlimited downtime, no responsibilities beyond fuelling and watering the trains, snazzy invincible blue uniforms, autonomous self-driving trains which take all the blame and credit, and no night hours beyond special episodes? Fucking sign us up or no trains ever again!”
“Curse you, Toppham Hatt!”
Speaking of, in the woods…
A horde of crazed and bizarrely blank faced men danced and cavorted around a gigantic bonfire made of burning diesel engines. The increased efficiency and modernisation investigative reporter screamed silent screams of terror from his wooden cage and held close his holy book of standard practices. He had already seen two of his order taken away and vanish into the maddening crowd of fanatics.
Suddenly
, the dancers parted and he could see a shadowy figure standing before the burning flames. Many hands grabbed and tugged him from the cage and he was dragged screaming before the Fat Controller of the Imperial Railways. Large and unhallowed slabs of hand rubbed his face and forced his eyes up into the gaze of the monster.
“Oh yes,” the demon rumbled, “I will mind many useful things for you to do.”
The drums sounded and the crowd roared in approval, as the man was carried, kicking and screaming, towards an alter upon which the all-blue uniform of the satanic cult lay.
…
And now, for something somewhat more normal…
“How goes it, Catastrophe?” said Kaboom, amiably.
“Not bad, all things considered,” he replied, presumably, from behind a mountain of paperwork. “The African campaign is in clean-up mode, as is the Middle East. We’ve apparently struck oil in a few new places, and people are telling me we are now much better at building things.”
“Oh?”
“Indeed. We are also getting even better at grouping various industrial buildings together to maximise efficiency.”
“Not entirely sure what that means, but that’s great, I guess.”
“What’s wrong, you seem understated and deflated. Not like you.”
“I just wish I was in India, killing more people who are trying to fight back. Shooting people with tanks while they run away in terror is just a little bit too tedious for my liking.”
“Mm. Well, let’s have a look at the reports. Ah…not looking too good for our friends over there, is it?”
“They seem to be continuing to die superbly, and Siam is still not dead!”
“I suppose there is that, but at least neither side is seeing such bloodletting as in the Chinese wars. Christ, that was a mess. Here, just a few tens of thousands of people dying on our side. And even the British spread over the whole world have lost only half a million. Probably mostly in Africa. India has been a relatively quiet front, despite all the action happening it seems.”
“Odd, isn’t it?”
“Not compared to Bohemia, which has somehow managed to lose thousands of men despite never actually showing up to fight anywhere. Now that is mismanagement.”
“Terrible. I would kill far more by accident than they seem to have.”
“Yes…anyway, the Emperor will be pleased. Well, sort of. Everything on our end is going swimmingly. Of course, it still seems like we’re going to lose America. The Alamo got obliterated last week, and the Mexicans are showing no signs of slowing down. Thank God something seems to be up with the Canadian supply lines or something. Otherwise, I think the country might have collapsed by now.”
