The Battle of Deesea(Bobby W. Lock) We can see the dust from the battle vehicles of the opposing village in the distance…they will be here in about half an hour. Our vehicles are nothing but obstacles in the road now because our fuel supply ran out over a year ago. About a hundred yards outside the village are rows of metal spikes sticking out of the ground, so hopefully that will slow their vehicles down. I don’t know if we can handle many more attacks from other villages…this is the third one this week.

My name is Tobias. The year is somewhere around 2110. The economic troubles of the early 21st century led to the downfall of the country formerly known as the United States. There was a civil war, a lot of local wars among cities and states, and the government was completely demolished. All that was left by 2040 was a bunch of small villages struggling to survive, and as the years went by and the resources depleted, villages began to do whatever was necessary to get what they needed…the most common way is to raid other villages and steal food, clothes, building materials, or anything else of value. My village, which is called Deesea because the country’s capital was here, was once a strong and powerful village. Unfortunately when another village managed to steal most of our fuel supply we had to use our vehicles only in emergencies until the fuel was completely gone. We plant crops, but the soil here does not produce much, and there are not many animals left in the area to hunt. Our main food supply now is fish and wild vegetables.

Deesea is just a bunch of huts made of sticks and straw, with one large building made of lumber that was taken in a raid about ten years ago. We use that building for meal times and village meetings. I share a hut with two other men my age who have lost their families like I have. My mother was killed in the raid when our fuel was taken, and my father died in an outbreak of one of the many diseases that we no longer have medicine for. I have an older brother, but he left the village with some other men months ago to try to find supplies and food, but we have not seen them since then. Chances are they either froze or were attacked by another village.

I have been one of my village’s warriors for the past seven years. I am one of the oldest remaining warriors in the village. Our weapons are bows and arrows, spears, sling shots, and a few guns…but bullets are very scarce. I’m an archer, and I hit my target almost every time. This will be about my fiftieth battle…during previous battles I have been hit in the leg with an arrow, cut by flying debris several times, and lost half of one finger to a spear as it flew by me. We are in position about halfway between the metal spikes and the village, hidden behind trees, large rocks, and our otherwise useless vehicles. Anything and anyone that makes it past the spikes is fair game. I have a small campfire beside me to light arrows with in case any vehicles make it past the spikes. Flaming arrows are the best way we have to stop vehicles other than the metal spikes.

The enemy is now two hundred yards from the spikes…all the archers ready their bows, the spear throwers take their throwing stance, and the warriors with sling shots load the rocks in the slings. We have enough bullets for two of our warriors to have guns, and they stay in the village in case any of the enemy makes it that far. Crawford, our village leader, is holding his arm in the air…when he lowers his arm that is the signal to open fire. The archer to my left, Simon, is one of the men I share the hut with. Our other hut mate, Amon, is one of the men with a gun back in the village.

The enemy vehicles, there are six of them, reach the metal spikes. Four of them flip over when their tires rip apart. Crawford lowers his arm, and our flaming arrows start flying toward the remaining two vehicles. Enemy troops on foot start running toward us… they are the main target for our spear throwers. One of my arrows goes through the window of one of the vehicles and sets the interior on fire. The soldiers in the vehicles bail out and are immediately impaled by our arrows or hit by the barrage of rocks from the sling shots. The battle is going well for us… the enemy must not have expected this type of resistance, but they are far from helpless. Their archers have good aim, as well as their spear throwers. Within ten minutes after the start of the battle I see five of our warriors fall, including Simon, who has a spear in his chest.

I continue firing my arrows at anything that moves toward us. Less than thirty minutes after the battle begins our enemy decides to retreat…we have destroyed their vehicles and killed at least a third of their soldiers. A few of our archers follow them for about a hundred yards and take out a few more of them. The rest of us search their vehicles for anything we can find and use. We drain the fuel from the vehicles that were stopped by the spikes so that we can once again use our vehicles, at least for a limited time. The vehicles that we set fire to are still burning, so we leave them be. Some of the vehicles have cloth seats so we rip the cloth out to use for clothing. There is not much else of value, but it has been a successful day… we stopped the enemy from raiding our village.

We gather our fallen warriors to take back to the village for burial. I will miss Simon… we have been fighting side by side since I became a warrior. As we enter our village it begins to rain. There will be a celebration this evening… singing, dancing, a real party. Maybe this marks the beginning of a change for Deesea…a change for the better. I sure hope so, because I am tired of the fighting, tired of never knowing when it might be my turn to fall in battle. All of years of fighting and seeing my friends die has made me feel much older than I am.

By the way…I am fourteen years old.

---