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Occupied Riverdale	By : nodrogg Category: Comics > Archie & Co. Views: 9580 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Archie & Co, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
Chapter Four.

The long summer evening had faded away and full night had fallen by the time Betty reached Pop's Chocklit Shoppe.

For all that she knew the way so well, it had been a difficult and frightening journey. A blacked-out city by night is darker than open countryside, where there is at least starlight. Betty had a dynamo headlight on her bicycle, but it didn't light very much of the road, and it made her feel incredibly conspicuous. Nevertheless, she would have spent half the night groping her way along without it, so she whirred down the center of the street as fast as she dared, her little cone of light a moving, flickering beacon. She was not alone on the streets - teenage gangs and solitary desperadoes roamed the neighborhoods, dodging the Eurasian patrols just as she was. She saw firelight flickering inside supposedly empty buildings as she passed; once a man's hoarse voice called out to her. She put her faith in God and her bicycle and pedaled faster, feeling the breeze flagging her ponytail, thankful that the distance was relatively short.

Riverdale was not altogether dark, of course. Even at this distance she could hear the generators yammering up on Prospect Hill, where Hetman-General Shen Rostovich Yan, the Hand of Ugenberg Khan, occupied what once had been the Mayor's house. His Honor the Mayor, were he resurrected from his unmarked grave, would not easily recognize the place now, nor would he likely want it back - Shen Yan's fierce Cossacks were indifferent to plumbing and eccentric in their decoration tastes. The barbed wire entrenchments and the treads of Eurasian panzers had left very little of the once-gracious lawn, as well, and the surrounding houses had been put to the torch to clear a field of fire for the machine gun nests. Through gaps in the buildings near her she could see caged light bulbs strung on poles around the perimeter wire blazing like a necklace of suns. The effect was eerily similar to stadium lights, seen over housetops from a distance.

The Chocklit Shoppe no longer kept evening hours; the storefront stood dark and silent when she reached it. It, too, looked strangely familiar, and it was several long moments before she understood why: Its display windows were intact. Unlike the boarded-up, derelict businesses on either side, the Chocklit Shoppe was still in business... though it catered to a very different clientele, now.

Betty dismounted, and in total blind darkness she cautiously wheeled her bicycle down what she knew to be an alleyway beside the building.

"C'mon, you guys. Reggie, be careful with that!"

"Yes, sir, Capitan, sir."

It was a crisp autumn afternoon, and Archie, Jughead, Reggie, Betty, and Veronica were behind the Chocklit Shoppe. Archie had Reggie's cased guitar, while Jughead and Reggie paced behind, carrying Jughead's drums. Betty was holding Archie's guitar case; she usually did. It allowed her, smiling shyly, to give it to him whenever he asked - a symbolism which was not lost on Reggie, who thought it was hilarious, nor on Veronica, who didn't think it was funny at all...

"Once we get in, we'll have to set up fast -- the party starts at six o'clock!" At the back door, Archie ignored the doorknob, went to a small window beside the door and yanked. The casement swung up, and he reached a long arm in, fumbling around. Moments later he flashed a brief, triumphant grin, and pulled. A sliding rattle on the inside of the door was followed by a hollow knock of wood, and the door sagged open.

"Someday that Rube Goldberg cross-bar contraption's not going to work," Reggie muttered, not caring who heard him. "Then let's see you grin, wise guy."

Betty was beginning to regret not having so much as a penlight, but the Coopers, like most people, had used up their household batteries long ago. Feeling her way with fingers on rough brick, she rounded the corner and stopped, trying to visualize. It's amazing, she thought, how you can look at something so often but not really see... After a weirdly timeless interval, her questing fingers found the doorframe. After that it took less than a minute to trace across, up, over...

The casement squealed like an animal in pain; shockingly loud in the utter darkness, but Betty gritted her teeth and yanked it the rest of the way up. She reached in -- I've never done this before, she realized suddenly, it's always been Archie -- feeling the roughness of plaster, and nothing else. She waved her hand back and forth, up... She felt something lightly brush the back of her hand, and a moment later she was holding a length of clothesline. She pulled...

A sliding rattle on the inside of the door was followed by a muffled knock of wood.

--------------------

It felt darker indoors, and technically it was, but practically there was no difference. Betty shuffled forward, hands blindly outstretched. She was striving to recall the layout of the back room; for all the hours she'd spent perched at the counter with Archie, only a few times had she ever been back in the stainless-steel mysteries behind it... "Ow."

She'd stubbed her toe on something immovable. She felt around the angled object, her frustration rising. How did Jeffrey Hunter manage? "Pax vobiscum," she whispered; poor Jeffrey and his white-tipped cane would never be seen again, even if Riverdale and all the State of Hudson were liberated tomorrow --

Without warning, an eye-stabbing blast of brilliant light struck her. Betty cried out, pinned in the glare; dazzled, flash-blinded, too startled to yet be frightened, her only thought was, they got me -

But the light shut off again, leaving Betty again in darkness, hands still half-raised to ward off the light, blinking at vivid purple after-images. From across the room she heard a rustle of motion, then a heavy clank... clank-clank of metal striking metal - a signal.

She stood where she was and waited. Whoever made the signal said nothing, made no other sound. Footsteps - then a dim flicker of light that bobbed and brightened toward her -- a candle-lantern. It lifted high for a moment, shining down on her with a rich buttery-yellow gleam; by that light she saw who was holding it. Warm brown eyes in a strong, smiling face, under rusty brown hair cropped hastily short...

"Well, hi," Archie Andrews said simply. "I've been worried about you," he went on. "... Oof."

Betty had made no answer - she did not trust herself to speak. She simply stepped forward and hugged him. She was trembling, her throat thickened with sobs barely held back.

"It's okay, cara mio," she heard him murmur. He held her, there in the darkness. "You're safe now." He stroked her hair, and that gentle, caring touch undid her completely. Betty cried, her face buried against Archie's chest.

It was not merely in reaction to the raw terrors of the last hour that she wept. There in Archie's arms, in that dark place she cried for Veronica, for Cheryl Blossom, for herself - for the Riverdale that was lost: The unbelievably clean, bright, happy world of yesterday, that sunlit world where children yelled and ran on immaculate lawns, where sprinklers pulsed silver in the sunlight and shining cars buzzed past. Where refrigerators full of food hummed contentedly in air-conditioned houses... and where good-natured pranks from school friends were the worst that ever befell anyone she knew. Where neat, pretty little Betty Cooper attended Riverdale High School and dreamed of being a romance novelist and talked on the telephone for hours with her best friend Veronica, who preened and flirted innocently in her pampered world... Where she was clean and fed and happy and safe...

But Riverdale High was dead, and its world dead with it, even if the armies of Eurasia were pushed back into the sea tomorrow. No one would be the same, ever again.

"We can never go back," she sobbed. "Never go back..."

If Archie understood her, he made no answer. He simply held her close and waited through the paroxysms of weeping. Finally she drew breath with such a huge, outrageous snivel that she burst out laughing, and it was over.

"C'mon," Archie said, and handed her what her fingers recognized as a paper napkin. Not until after she had blown her nose did she realize how long it had been since she had held a napkin from Pop's in her hand...

Archie was leading her back the way she came when she stopped, remembering a rustle in the dark.

"Arch - someone else is here. I heard him, right after you turned on that light."

"I didn't turn on the light," Archie replied matter-of-factly.

"Well, then..." Betty began, confusedly, and Archie lifted his candle again.

Betty gasped. In that dim light another figure stood against the wall, staring at her. Gaunt, silent, he stood motionless, dark eyes in a pale, tight-set face, narrow nose crooked where it had broken long before. In his arms, a bulky Maxim assault rifle from the Great War, its barrel still not lowered. In his eyes, no recognition.

"... Jughead?" Betty whispered, taking a step towards him. He made no answer. Above him, the emergency floodlights were still trained on the exits, including the door by which she had entered; it was they which had so dazzled her. Archie lowered the light.

"Forsythe doesn't say much these days," he said. "He's not 'Jughead' any more -- he may never be again. Come on."

He led her past that grim, motionless silhouette, towards a spread of dim light that shone up from the floor.

The light proved to be from a hatchway, propped open from below; a ladder led down into brighter light below.

"Um... I'll go first," Archie said. "You're expected, but it's still better. And besides, well... ladders and skirts don't really go together."

Amused, Betty watched Archie's silhouette descending against the light from below. When he was well on his way she turned about and set foot down to follow.

The ladder was old, unpainted, its rungs rough under her hands. "Arch -- what is this place?" she called down. "I never knew Pop's had a basement." Below her, Archie laughed. She loved to hear him laugh.

"Officially, it doesn't," he answered. "This all dates from the Screaming Sixties. My Dad told me about it," he went on, stepping away from the ladder. "Ol' Pop came back to the States after the War and became a contrabandista. Wait 'till you see."

"Are you serious?" Betty reached the bottom, turned - and found Archie standing right there, holding the candle-lantern safely away. He looked at her, intent, direct.

"Betty... I'm glad you're okay." In the close dimness his quiet voice seemed deeper. She was suddenly, intensely aware of him, his nearness, his strength... Every coherent thought seemed struck from her mind. She opened her mouth, with no idea of what she would say - and Archie found a better use for her lips. She kissed him back, passionately, and for a minute or more they remained thus pleasantly occupied. When his fingers discovered the absence of a bra, she didn't mind in the least...

Until the memory flashed into her mind of Cheryl Blossom yanked off-balance as a Russian Mongol officer ripped her top open and pulled her stumbling into his arms, and his hands finding her bare bottom under that scandalous, pathetic denim tatter around her hips - and Betty broke off and jerked back in Archie's arms with a gasp.

He released her, startled, and she saw the anger in his eyes.

"Archie - cara mia, it's not you, I'm so sorry -" she whispered. "Please - I saw, today, I watched while - and just tonight, I -" She was babbling.

"It's just as well." His indifferent tone stabbed her. "There're people waiting on us. Come on."

Wait, she wanted to protest as he turned away, you don't understand - But he was already gone, stepping through a rough-hewn opening in the wall. Anguished, Betty followed.

--------------------

She stepped carefully through the opening, and found herself in a concrete-walled corridor lit by a steady glow at its far end. The opening was obviously a later, unplanned addition, sledge-hammered through the wall. The other direction disappeared into darkness.

"What is this place?" Betty reached the waiting Archie, and took his hand.

"It's a dry-wire access tunnel," Archie answered, his voice echoing strangely. "Built by Hudson Telegraph back in the 1920s. When telephones came in, some places they filled in, some they just laid the lines right beside the old wires. This one... just got forgotten about, I guess. Pop Tate used it to store... things." He chuckled. They were walking towards the light, which came from around the corner.

"Arch - wasn't Jughead sent to a camp?"

When the world ended fourteen months ago, when telephones died and cars stopped and newspapers ceased to appear, just as in the Dark Ages word of mouth became the only news - and rumor filled what little of that there was. Betty lost contact with many friends in the months that followed. Even before the Mongols arrived, friends in Midvale or DeCarloville or even on the other side of town might as well have been in Paraguay for all she ever heard from them. Afterwards, of course, it was even worse.

"Yes, he was." Archie spoke offhandedly, but his hand clenched hers. "I don't know all the details - apparently his dad was out of town when the Mongols hit us, and he never made it back home. Jug actually got shipped out to Eurasia -"

Betty gasped.

"- but his mom got classed as 'skilled labor' - seamstress, I think. She's still here." Archie stopped short of the corner, turned to her.

"Jug was sent to Hell, Betty. The Mongols have built it for real. I wouldn't want to tell you the details, even if I knew them. He was branded. Most slaves are, over there. And - there were no women in the camp."

Betty, hand at her mouth, said nothing, staring.

"It took his mom most of a year, but she got him out of there. 'Oldest surviving male of the family,' and all that. The Eurasians are sticklers for legalities; they shipped him all the way back here." Archie looked away, towards the light around the corner.

"I'm not just telling horror stories," he went on. "I want you to remember what happened to Jughead, because now the Mongols are here, and it's like the War never ended - if we don't fight them, if we don't beat them - " He stopped.

"Come on," he said again. "There's someone I want you to meet."

To Be Continued
- 3
- 4
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Occupied Riverdale