Free Militia by Justin D. Russell

up. We will map any check points and once we are ready we will make plans to take them out all at once, in the middle of the night. We will send the majority of the night vision goggles we acquired from Fort Jefferson with the scouts as well as maps to plot exact locations.”
    All men were in agreement and headed back to the town to inform the rest of the militia and to hold a town meeting. Later that night, right as the sun was setting behind the mountains the entire town came out to hear what was being planned. There had been a lot of rumors floating around town and this would hopefully put them to rest.
    Mike stood in front of the soldiers he had trained and their families who all stared up at him silently waiting for him to begin. “When we started this journey,” Mike began, “we left our homes with the understanding that we may have to take our cause and our beliefs outside of these mountains at some point. I believe that we have reached that point. The fears that we all had over the last few years ended up being nothing compared to the harsh reality that we have all been hearing about with the latest news reports. We left our suburban town in Pennsylvania afraid that our government would never look out for our best interest and now we are faced with the grim truth that we have been sold out to a foreign nation. The Chinese have owned the majority of our nation’s growing debt for decades now, are an ever growing super power, but are overpopulated and losing natural resources by the day. I cannot imagine that they have taken ownership of this country with our safety and even survival as their main objective. I firmly believe that our people will at best become second class citizens, left only to perform hard labor, and at worse be eradicated as a plague to the current ventures of the Chinese government. We are now faced with a responsibility that comes with having a well trained, armed, and motivated militia as well as being a community who prides itself on the traditions of a free nation. If we were to sit back in these mountains it is possible that we might be spared, at least for a time, from what is happening elsewhere, but to do that would compromise our values and everything which we hold close to our hearts. We will leave some of the trained militia here to defend this town but for the rest of us it is time to fight!”
    As Mike finished speaking, the entire town began to clap and cheer. Everyone here wanted the same thing that Mike did, a chance to take back their free nation and one day be able to leave the harsh winters and return to their homes. Mike only hoped that he would be able to grow the numbers of this small army quickly. For now they would have the element of surprise on what Mike was sure would be a very unsuspecting foreign army, but it would not be long before the hunters would become the hunted.
    The following morning each platoon sent out their scouts for what they knew was going to be many tiring months of reconnaissance. Mike stayed in the rear listening for news from his scouts and making plans for the assault. The area that this town was built in was right between two main highways, interstate 90 to the south and interstate 15 to the east. Both highways were a good sixty miles from Middle and the border of Idaho was at least one hundred miles to the west. The scouts were the most highly trained members of the militia and would make good time getting to the roads but it would take through the spring and summer to get a good picture of what, if anything was along these main routes.
    By using the terrain, the many pairs of binoculars that had been donated from the hunters in their group, and the night vision goggles Mike’s old unit had been kind enough to abandon on Fort Jefferson they would be able to stay out of sight and map large sections of the interstates at a time.
    While Mike listened to news reports that grew worse each day he still understood that the people of this town looked