Outside Context Problem: Book 03 - The Slightest Hope of Victory

by Christopher Nuttall

  He clambered down the shaft, trying to ignore the stench that rose up from the sewers. It felt like miles before his feet finally touched down, allowing him to see a walkway running along a river of shit and other human wastes. Washington’s sewage system, it seemed, still worked, which was something of a relief. Without running water and proper toilets, sanitation would have become much harder and disease would have spread rapidly. It was surprisingly merciful of the aliens to put the system back to work.

  “You should be able to see the markings on the walls,” Joe said, as he joined him down below. “Head eastwards, but be careful. Some of these damn walkways are slippery.”

  Once, as a young soldier, Nicolas had visited the tunnels in the South Korean DMZ. They had been oppressive as hell, leaving him puzzled as to how the North Koreans had intended to force men and vehicles through the tunnels. But then, as his Sergeant had pointed out snidely, it was amazing what someone would do at pistol-point. The sewers in Washington were larger and yet he found it hard to force himself down the tunnels. It was only the thought of Nancy that kept him going.

  As he walked, he saw signs that all was not well in the tunnel network. There were grim-looking cracks in the walls, a handful of minor cave-ins and several small floods caused by falling debris from overhead. He couldn't help wondering if it was really safe to use the tunnels, but they didn't have any real choice. The aliens had Washington surrounded by a ring of steel and challenging it would have meant certain death, at least without bringing along a small army.

  And that would just have given the aliens more targets, he thought, grimly. We can’t risk a stand-up fight, not yet.

  “We’re past the checkpoints now,” Joe said. The other resistance fighters had remained silent all the way, apart from a muttered curse when one of them had slipped and nearly fallen in the sewage. “But keep your weapon handy, just in case. They sometimes search houses for the hell of it.”

  Nicolas gave him a sharp look. “How are you hiding?”

  “We call it a drug den,” Joe said. He grinned, tiredly. “Local Order Policemen don’t do shit about them, let alone anything effective. We have contracts with the Green Zone, which we use to get stuff for our customers.”

  He chuckled. It sounded odd in the tunnels.

  “No one ever sees us hiding behind the criminals,” he added. “As long as we slip them a share of the proceeds, they don’t give a damn about what else we might be doing.”

  Nicolas scowled, inwardly. He wasn't too surprised that parts of the resistance were becoming allied with criminals – it had happened in Iraq and Afghanistan too – but what would happen if the aliens remained in control of Earth for years? The resistance would eventually become criminals, forgetting their origins – or only using them when it helped raise money for the cause. How far did Joe and his allies have to fall?

  And would there be a time when it would suit them to betray the rest of the resistance?

  Better not sleep without my rifle, he told himself, wishing that Bane and the others had been able to join him. And perhaps keep one eye open too.

  They stopped in front of another ladder, reaching up into the darkness. Joe slung his rifle over his shoulder, then started to scramble up the ladder. Nicolas followed him, unable to avoid noticing the signs that the ladder wasn't pinned to the concrete very well. Sooner or later, it would collapse, cutting the resistance lair off from the sewers. Joe stopped overhead and rapped out a pattern on the hatch. A moment later, it opened.

  “Come on up,” Joe ordered. He cleared his throat as he climbed out of the hatch. “Allow me to present my friend from our other friends.”

  Nicolas glanced around. The resistance fighters looked ... tired, beaten down. Several of them looked like gangsters, complete with shoddy ill-fitting suits. It puzzled him until he realised that was the impression they were trying to create. They all held guns, but not all of them seemed to know what to do with them. Whatever they had been, they weren't now.

  “You can get some rest in one of the upper rooms,” Joe said, “and then we can see about getting you to your final destination. Do you want a woman?”

  Nicolas blinked. “A woman?”

  “We have quite a few working for us,” Joe assured him. His face twisted into a lecherous smile. “They’re part of our cover.”

  “Oh,” Nicolas said, trying to hide his disgust. Exploiting female refugees was an old story, but that didn't make it acceptable. Maybe it was necessary ... yet it still stunk like limburger cheese. “No, thank you.”

  “You should,” Joe said. “It will make you a great deal less uptight.”

  “I'm sure it would,” Nicolas said, sharply. It wasn't as if Abigail and he were actually dating, was it? And yet he felt a certain obligation to her. “But I can't afford the distraction.”

  “You’ll look like one of their customers anyway,” Joe said. “There are hundreds of visitors each day. No one will see anything odd in you coming to have some fun.”

  He looked at the rucksack Nicolas was holding. “Say, what did you bring with you anyway?”

  “Supplies,” Nicolas said. He wasn't sure how far he could trust the resistance here, not now. They certainly couldn't be trusted with any real secrets. “Just ... supplies.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Virginia, USA

  Day 225

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m not sure,” Judith admitted. She hated to admit any kind of weakness, but this bothered her more than she wanted to admit. “I don’t know.”

  She gazed down at her wrists, puzzled. They were sore – and yet there was no reason for them to be sore. She’d had problems when she’d typed too much, before the world turned upside down, but she hadn't been writing essays for school since the invasion. She hadn't even been carrying her fair share of combat loads and food supplies. As a sniper, she was exempt from transportation duties. They couldn't risk damaging her hands.

  But there was something wrong with her wrists, faint twinges of pain that nagged at her mind.

  Clare gave her a sharp look. Unlike Judith, she was nothing more than a regular resistance fighter, without any military or sharp-shooting training at all. Judith was all-too-aware that Clare resented her, even though snipers were unlikely to be taken alive by the enemy. It wasn't a very mature attitude, but Clare wasn't a very mature person. Having to remain in camp or play minor roles in ambushes did that to a person, particularly someone who had never been very mature in the first place.

  “If you’re having problems, go see the doc,” she said, crossly. “If not ...”

  She picked up a compressed sleeping bag and tossed it to Judith, forcing her to catch it with one hand. “If not, get ready to move out,” she finished. “We’re not staying here for long.”

  Judith nodded. Ever since the aliens had emptied and then burned Mannington, they’d been running increasingly heavy patrols through West Virginia, smoking out and destroying a handful of resistance camps. The Walking Dead drove their collaborators onwards at an inhuman pace, while alien craft lurked high overhead, ready to provide targeted fire support on command. Judith hadn't heard anything, officially, but rumour had it that the resistance leadership was seriously considering pulling out of the state altogether and regrouping elsewhere. It would bother her to leave, yet there might be no choice. The alien counterinsurgency effort was gaining steam.

  Where the enemy is strong, fall back, she thought, remembering one of the manuals that had been passed around the camp. The resistance leadership had wanted them all to be familiar with the principles of insurgency and counter-insurgency. Where the enemy is weak, attack.

  But she had no idea where the aliens were weak.

  “You were moaning last night,” Clare added, nastily. “It must have been a very hot dream, because I thought you were going to bring them down on us.”

  Judith flushed. She didn't remember her dream; all she knew was that it had been a nightmare, a vision of ... something
that refused to surface in the cold morning light. Perhaps it was for the best. Anything that could make her cry out in the night, loud enough to wake a girl who normally slept the sleep of the dead, had to be unpleasant.

  “I don’t recall,” she said, tartly.

  “Good thing the guard didn't hear you,” Clare said. “Who knows what would have happened then?”

  Judith glared at her, feeling her patience snap. “I think that they would have wanted to see you,” she snapped. “You snore too much.”

  Clare scowled. “I can't help that,” she insisted. “It isn't as if this is a comfortable place to rest.”

  Judith glanced around. The resistance camp consisted of a handful of tents and little else. There wasn't even a stove or any other way to cook meals, not since they’d left their last encampment at a small farm. They had to eat rations; she dreaded the day when rations ran out, leaving them dependent on what they could forage from the surrounding countryside.

  “No, it isn't,” Judith said, absently rubbing her wrists. Maybe she’d just had the nightmare about having her hands cut off again. She’d read a story about a girl in some far-off country who’d lost her hands and it had given her bad dreams for weeks. “But unless you want to spend the rest of your life as an alien slave ...”

  A faint whistle echoed through the air. “Come on,” she added, changing the subject. “It’s time to go.”

  ***

  Abigail stood in the bunker’s loading bay and watched as the small army of personnel tried to ignore Theta. The alien was standing right next to her, almost completely unmoving; one of the people she’d interviewed had claimed that soldiers standing at attention moved more than the alien. Very few of the bunker’s staff could avoid sneaking a peek, or keeping their hands on their weapons whenever they were near the alien. His presence in the bunker was almost surreal.

  But necessary, she reminded herself sternly. The Walking Dead have to be freed.

  She allowed herself a tight smile as she remembered what Nicolas had told her, before he’d set out from the bunker. The remaining Walking Dead in the bunker had been cured, giving humanity options for the first time in far too long. Now, the resistance could attempt to capitalise on its success ... assuming, of course, that the nanites worked without Theta’s supervision. The reprogramming, the alien had assured them, should work in most cases, but there would be no on-the-fly alterations if the process failed. Nicolas hadn't been very clear about where he was going, yet there weren't many places in America where one might hope to covertly deprogram one of the Walking Dead. Abigail silently prayed that he would survive the mission.

  Oldham bustled up to her, accompanied by two soldiers. “We have completed the preparations to send you both south,” he said, shortly. His soldiers eyed Theta with barely-concealed mistrust. The alien didn't show any visible reaction. “You should be safe, as long as they don’t try to open the rear compartment of the truck.”

  Abigail grimaced. She knew more than most about the transport networks struggling to hold what remained of the United States together – and she knew just how many of the truckers were involved in smuggling goods from one part of the country to another. The resistance had made use of the truckers in days gone by, often using them to transport newsletters or weapons from base to base. But now the Order Police monitored them closely. If one alert policeman decided to search the truck, they were sunk.

  “The papers should hold up under scrutiny,” Oldham assured her, when she asked. “We actually used paperwork belonging to one of their Area Commanders, so it shouldn't raise too many eyebrows.”

  “I suppose not,” Abigail agreed, reluctantly. “But I still don’t like being so exposed.”

  The alien-backed collaborator government was, she’d discovered back when she’d been in Washington, largely composed of men and women who wanted to build up private power bases for themselves. Almost all of them were involved in smuggling of one kind or another, shipping everything from drugs to artworks across the country as the whim took them. Abigail had no idea how the resistance had obtained paperwork from one of the Area Commanders, but she had to admit that it should ensure that they were waved through without a search. An Area Commander could have an Order Policeman transferred to Texas or another hardship posting, if annoyed.

  But the Walking Dead wouldn't be impressed, she knew. They might ignore the truck – or they might decide to search it, in strict adherence to the letter of the law. And if that happened ... she knew that the resistance had rigged a series of high-explosive charges, intended to blow the truck and its cargo to atoms. There should be no sign that it had carried an alien rebel. Hopefully, the aliens would conclude that the truck had been en route to a suicide bombing when it had been intercepted.

  “I don't think there’s a choice,” Oldham told her, firmly. “I doubt that this bunker will remain secret for much longer – and we need to strip everything out before they come down on us.”

  “Understood,” Abigail said. “We won’t let you down.”

  She hadn’t been told where they were going, but she assumed another government bunker somewhere to the south, perhaps well away from any alien bases or collaborator garrisons. One thing she’d learned in her time as a reporter was that there was a surprising amount of hardware and facilities tucked away in obscure places, an old habit born of the fear of nuclear war.

  “We’re sending an escort with you,” Oldham added. “Officially, they’ll be new recruits for the Order Police.”

  Abigail snorted. “Just make sure they know to be sloppy when they don their uniforms,” she ordered. “They can't look too good.”

  Oldham smiled, but it didn't quite touch his eyes. “We have the coffin for you,” he said, addressing Theta. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” the alien said. If the concept of entering a coffin while still breathing bothered the alien, he didn't show it. But then, almost nothing was known of how the aliens treated their dead. Their bodies had been recovered from the battlefield and then ...? No one knew. “I am ready.”

  Abigail bowed her head. She’d thought that she was courageous, once upon a time. She had worked inside the collaborator propaganda department, trying to get real news out to the people, and then she’d jumped from near-orbit with Nicolas, carrying the news that humanity was no longer alone in the struggle. But Theta had left his fellows and walked right into a world where he was completely alone, with none of his kind near him. That showed true courage.

  “Good,” Oldham said. He rubbed his hands together. “Then let’s be about it, shall we?”

  ***

  Carrying the tents, their weapons and other vital equipment, the small party of resistance fighters made their way down a hidden path out of the forest. Judith felt her mind wandering as she walked, trying to ignore the twinges of pain from her wrists. Clare might have urged her to go see the doctor, but she didn't want to risk it, not when he might take her off active duty. There were too many men, she told herself, who already bitched and moaned that the women had it easy. They didn't think that women could be part of the resistance.

  Silly bastards, she thought, coldly. I could shoot them dead at range and they’d never know I was there.

  Her body was aching when they finally came down out of the forest and walked towards a truckers rest stop in the middle of nowhere. Like so many others, it had been largely abandoned in the days following the invasion – and then looted, when refugees from the nearby cities and towns had needed food and drink for their families. Later, the resistance had turned it into a covert rendezvous point; truckers heading up and down the country could call in, have a bite to eat and pass messages to the resistance at the same time.

  “In here,” the CO called, as they reached a large building. Inside, there were a set of showers, a handful of towels – and a number of Order Police uniforms. “Get showered quickly, if you please. We don’t have much time.”

  The water was lukewarm, but just having a shower after weeks campin
g out in the forest seemed like a foretaste of heaven. Layers of filth she hadn't known she had fell off her body, splashing on the tiles and running down the drain. She could have happily spent hours in the shower, just allowing the water to wash her clean, but she had to leave after five minutes and dry herself. It still felt wonderful.

  “These uniforms are too tight,” Clare complained, as she pulled her jacket over her head. “And the underwear is ...”

  “I think it’s meant to be that way,” Judith said, although she found herself in agreement with Clare for the first time in weeks. The Order Police didn't have a female combat arm; the only women working for them were clerks and whores. Judging by the uniforms, they were meant to be both. “Just put up with it for now.”

  “Easier said than done,” Clare muttered, posing in front of the mirror. “Just look at me.”

  Judith looked ... and felt a twinge of sympathy. The uniform was tight around Clare’s breasts and thighs, revealing the shape of her body without actually showing anything. But all someone would have to do was undo a few buttons and it would be easy to see her cleavage. Hell, she had a feeling that it was designed to do just that ... whoever had designed it, she had to admit, was an evil genius. The uniform was damn near perfect for the role the Order Police had in mind for their women.

  “Keep one hand on your pistol,” she ordered. It was rare for Order Policewomen to be armed – she couldn't think why – but they were travelling through Bandit Country. “And keep telling yourself that it could be worse.”

  Clare shifted, uncomfortably. “Oh, yeah?” She asked. “How?”

  They stepped out of the changing room into the lobby ... and started giggling. The men didn't look much better; the black uniforms, alarmingly similar to those designed by Nazi Germany, looked to have been sized for men with muscles on their muscles. Even the ones with uniforms that almost fitted perfectly looked absurd. There was a sloppiness about the whole platoon that would have made the CO shout at them, if they’d been real Order Policemen.