The Laughing Plague - A "Crossed" TL

lordroel I hope you escaped this TL before the Crossed overran The Netherlands.

You may to have flee into Central Europe which is still free of the Crossed, for now.

Sorry guys, no update this week, was kinda busy with late revising for exams, paperworks and physical preparation for Air Force.
But don't worry, will be back next week /

You will be join the French Air Force soon?

Late afternoon of May 21:

With the explosion of three atomic warheads on Dutch, Belgian and German soil, a gigantic silence descends on the northern front line. The besieged defenders of Oss and Venray note with a certain joy tinged with bitterness and despair that the crossed come less and less to fall in their lines of fire.
Attracted like flies to the urban center of Eindhoven, the infected were largely eliminated. It will take a few more days to wait for the threat to be definitively eliminated for the Netherlands and Germany.

the Miracle of Nimegen (but also of Duisburg and Dusseldorf, the two German cities being directly threatened) is a victory but at an appalling human cost, the number of victims is already estimated at over 5 million, the majority of whom are civilians, Belgium is virtually wiped off the map, as well as the south of the Netherlands.

However, total victory is not over yet, and we are still fighting to save the few shreds of Belgian land that have not been bloodied to the south: the line of defense from Givet to Bastogne, made up of a motley mix of British and French soldiers, airmen from the US Air Force (without their planes) and Belgian and Luxembourg commandos seem to hold heroically, as does the fortress of Charleroi, even if this one seems to have tired most of the Crossed, preferring victims who are easier to martyr.

Even further south, nuclear fire is about to unleash on France...

During the night of May 21 to 22, 2020.
Europe


There are memorable dates, others are more complex in the sense that they mark both memory but also a fundamental historical turning point for a nation, a people, sometimes even a continent and sometimes humanity.
It is obvious to many contemporaries (including myself) and historians that the night of May 21 to 22, 2020 marked a historic turning point for Europe and the human species.

In Eastern Europe, the neutralization of NATO bases in the Baltic countries marks the beginning of Moscow's clear desire to expand (again) on the European continent but where Operation First Flash is a relative success for the Russian special forces (a dozen NATO aircraft burned or captured as well as dozens of Canadian, Danish and Spanish pilots and mechanics taken prisoner), Operation "Snowball" started very badly: on the one hand the drops of paratroopers on the Baltic countries are done haphazardly (some even being accidentally "dropped" above the Gulf of Riga) canceling any effectiveness, on the other if the conventional invasion remains sufficiently effective (the 20th Guards Combined Army succeeding in taking the Estonian city of Tartu), the losses are very heavy and the progression inside increasingly difficult: elements of the 11th Army Corps from Goussev are blocked in the cities of Marijampole and Tauragé for lack of modern maps (the Russian occupation of these cities will be brutal and will involve many war crimes, which have gone unnoticed because of the atrocities committed by the Crossed).
The most serious event in this part of the world, will occur later in the evening when a Su-27 of the Russian naval aviation will accidentally fire on a Finnair flight, killing all its passengers (the event would have very serious repercussions in Finland, pushing the country to expel Russian diplomats and put itself on a war footing).

Further south, the Russian command had initially opted for an immediate capture of Kiev by an air-land offensive led from Belarus, this "Kiev in three days" plan was abandoned due to the lack of reinforcements, distrust of the Belarus, for the benefit of an operation involving a strong push from Crimea towards Zaporiija and Donets in order to cut off Ukraine from its maritime access: if the Russian army meets insolent successes in the Kherson region, it is there again quickly slowed down by a Ukrainian army, certainly deprived of its Western support but sufficiently well equipped and well motivated to contest every acre of its territory.
Both sides will soon be counting on a second long war of attrition where the first to throw the towel will be the loser.


Yet the most serious things will take place in the west of the European continent where the ashes of Eindhoven and Aachen (Aachen in French) are still hot.
If the advance of the crossed was fortunately narrowly stopped in the Netherlands (saving the country from pure and simple annihilation), it is simply slowed down in Germany:
In one of the most tragic (and most commented on) events of May 2020 is the tragedy of Euskirchenn, where some wanted to see the influence of a "crossed" alpha, it is more likely that the negligence of the German high command combined with the nervous fatigue of many people within the local authorities (the mayor of Bonn will attempt to commit suicide following this event): the evacuation of the last nationals of Bonn is ordered while a column of crossed from Eupen 'hidden' in the nature reserve of the Eifel National Park decides to pursue a group of Belgian refugees towards the east, thus encountering a de facto column of 4000 refugees (the vast majority of children and the elderly, none will survive).

It will take the presence (fortuitous but fortunate) of a Danish F-16 patrol to report and eliminate this hot spot But it is further south, in France, that the destiny of Europe will be played out (once again, some would say)...

Not in this timeline, Moscow though it's major offensive on Baltic states and Ukraine would be enough to gain political "momentum" to force eastern europe to rally Russia in his "defensive" stronghold against crossed.

Except that western europeans countries, despite major losses, aren't willing to let crossed take them and eastern Europe (Poland...coughs, coughs) are probably considerring that they can take both russians and crossed before they can reach Warsaw.

Hungary could be a potential "stay behind" state in favour of Russia and it's a possibility that Poles and Czechs decide to solve the "Orban" issue with some violence.