I'm surprised by the kind disposition demonstraded by Johanna Blohm. Her servants, chemically controlled Slavs, provide snacks and a surprisingly good beer, she offers me the best seat in the room, and even offers me a gorgeous servant "for the night".
I politely decline. While the servant is indeed beautiful, standing next to one of Germania's most ruthless Warlord makes me nervous. The beer helps, a little.
"Let me tell you a story. A story of a little girl, a girl that had everything to succeed: beauty, connections, smarts, wealth, charisma. A story about desperation, rape, death and hellfire. A story of success."
"Of course I was watching the inauguration of the Volkshalle. I wanted to see my parents in the front row and my marching brother. And I think I saw them, or pieces of them at least. I was with my little brother when it all happened. I stared at the screen in utter disbelief. My family was dead, the Führer was dead, and I was alone. Believe it or not, I didn't fear for my future, there were these Arische Instituts, these School/shelters for Aryan orphans which would make good Germans out of us. And yes, I was consumed by grief, but knowing that you'll still have support soothes some of it. At thirteen, that was what I thought."
"Things, naturally, didn't go that way. The Fires began shortly after Hitler's death. I remember this pillar of smoke, as big as a city, thick and black and greasy, coming at me and my baby brother. Coming for me and my baby brother. I ran away from it, in my young mind, I thought that the smoke was the biggest danger out there. The slavs demonstrated my mistake. I was witness to all the brutality the Slavs are capable of when ... "untreated". However, I was lucky enough to have only my brother as company. Two children weren't worth the hassle."
To where did you ran?
"To the countryside, like everyone else. Thirty million starving people can't be wrong, can they?"
"As a matter of fact, they were. Supplies soon ran out. The SS and the Wehrmacht began fighting. There were no civilians for those bastards. Either you were with them or against them. Mostly against them, they thought. I lost track of how many people I saw executed. Eventually I got used to the corpses. Good sources of stuff to take."
"I was one of the lucky ones. I reached my destination. It were the charred remains of my family's country home. I was so glad to arrive to a safe place!"
Wasn't the country house burned? Why were you glad to arrive to a charred remain?
"Because what was beneath that house wasn't destroyed."
A bunker?
"Yes. It was built after the Gibraltar Crisis. It was fully stocked, fully independent from the outside world, you could live years in relative comfort. Or that was the idea, at least. The goddamn septic tank wasn't working."
"I didn't know how to repair it, so we got to go outside to do our business. We always went together, at dusk or dawn. I was young, I didn't take precautions like burying it afterwards. Had someone told me about the Eaters, I would have."
Eaters?
"What you outside Germania call "cannibals". It isn't quite the same, though... a cannibal is someone who ritualistically eats human flesh. Eaters ate anything and everything. During the early days, when the starvating survivors weren't quite what we now call Eaters, most of them treated everything like food. Animals, leaves, pelts, entrails, bark... even dirt, for what some have told me. They also ate this strange chunks of meat that appeared out of nowhere. Well, those chunks of meat were quite palatable compared to the other crap they ate. And there was plenty to go around."
And what does this have to do with your story?
"You have no extrapolation skills, do you? Well... I got caught by a group of them. Three teenagers a little bit older than me. They carried SMGs. I'll spare you the details, suffice it to say that they had other impulses apart from hunger. I was just glad that Ulf, my baby brother, was safely hidden in the bunker."
How will our Heroine get out of this one?
What will become of her?
What took you so long to update DiG, Sorchedlight, you lazy fuck?
Did I take my meds?
The answers to all this questions in the next update of "Disaster in Germania"! Coming Summer 2017!