Kumbhpur Rising

by Mayur Didolkar

“Ladies and gentlemen, here come loony times at Kumbhpur” Rakesh said in a high pitched voice.

  “Actually she is right my friend,” Neeraj said stepping out from his cover.

  Rajat’s torch blinded him as he heard Rakesh and Rajat saying “shit” together.

  “Please turn the beam away from me dude and let me talk,” Neeraj said. He even shoved his gun into the belt to show he meant no harm.

  Rajat, Rakesh and Ragini moved away from the dead body, but not before Ragini took that woman’s pallu and covered her as best as she could.

  “Guys, how do I talk so that you listen? Because believe me, I need you to listen,” Neeraj said. For the first time since their meeting Ragini could see a quality in his talk that was exasperation, rather than menace or mockery. He wanted them to listen.

  So they listened.

  As Courageous Leader listened to the reports, he was fuming like a general let down by his inept troops. The fear of gunshots in the undead villagers with the uncommon skill at gun fighting displayed by the city folks coupled with the sudden bout of mania of the police lady all combined into heavy casualties. Courageous Leader knew he only had to hold everything together for one more day and night and his victory would be complete. Till the time the rain did not ease it was not possible to start spreading his followers among the neighboring villages that would one day help him have the entire state exploding in senseless violence, the way Kumbhpur exploded earlier this morning. But he knew if there were any sane survivors to this bizarre uprising, then his plan would have to be shelved.

  So it was with some anxiety, that he finally gave an audience to his new visitor. The visitor was an out of town hit man, in a manner of speaking. Like his followers he too had risen from his grave to seek vengeance. Unlike his followers, he was a born sadist who had some personal agenda with the city folks, particularly against one of them.

  Adesh Bandodkar stood before the Courageous Leader. He was not a pretty sight. The other undead followers were staying well clear of him. Since Adesh had no flesh, the rain falling on him was simply flowing through his skeleton like spring water through mountain. He only had one eye and he was unable to speak the language of humans. He was the perfect machine for rage and murder. He was listening to his Boss’s instructions.

  “The man who buried you so cruelly and then went on to enjoying his life of murder and greed is not two miles away from here. I have brought you here for you to have your vengeance and for me to have my town.”

  “Arghhhhhh” Adesh raised his face skywards and let out a terrible howl. The inhuman grating sound caused panic among the followers of the Courageous Leader and he saw with distaste that even death did not purge them of their fears. Only Courageous Leader stood still listening to Adesh’s howl as if he discussed some intricate point in their plan.

  “Yes you are quite right. Now go on your way my friend and do what you were raised to do.”

  Rakesh, Rajat, Ragini and Neeraj returned to the police station. The serial killer’s entrance did not generate the kind of excitement his previous appearance had caused. Happy and Rani stared at Vinit and after a moment’s pause he shrugged his shoulder. This is the real horror of the situation; he thought where even a serial killer walking into a police station rates nothing more than a shrug from the lone surviving cop in the town.

  “We need to talk,” Ragini said and then narrated what they discovered in the informal autopsy of the woman Shilpa had shot. Vinit was the only one who looked incredulous to begin with and then he too went on with the flow.

  “It began for us with the unseasoned appearance of foxes in our area, then we had a visit from a man presumably dead for years. Neeraj shot him and then he just vanished, Neeraj claims that he saw hundreds of villagers committing mass suicide. Now they are back carrying shiny swords that belong clearly to the Mogul era and when we cut one of them, her lungs are water logged like they would be if she had drowned,” Rajat said and laughed, “Take that Stephen King” he said.

  “Actually does it occur to you it all started in the morning?” Vinit asked quietly. Everybody turned to him.

  “In the night a drunken village doctor gets whacked for giving wrong medication to a village girl. No way is her father or anyone related to her going to go to the lengths of stuffing him full of his own medicines. A gunshot or axe in head would be more their style. In the morning, out of nowhere, a meek, put upon, music teacher nails his corrupt headmaster to the table and then joins his equally abused daughter in slashing her in laws and husband to pieces. At the same time, a group of high school kids murder their English teacher in a similar gruesome fashion. What is happening is all the people who were abused for so many years came back to wreck vengeance on all those who abused them,” Vinit paused and borrowed a cigarette from Happy. He needed time to speak next.

  “This was stage one where otherwise ordinary people got in the throes of violent retribution. But this was not enough for whoever was doing this. So, now the dead start rising.”

  “Tut tut, your bosses would not approve of you speaking like this man, there has to be rational explanation for all this,” Rakesh said mockingly.

  “Rakesh, stuff it now,” Ragini said.

  “This is the rational explanation Rakesh. Tell me how come a woman with water full of lungs, can not only walk upright, but also wield a sword. Would you be satisfied if we open all the dead bodies here and find water in all of them? Would it be rational then?” Vinit asked. Rakesh seemed more chastened by Vinit’s quite words than Ragini’s causticness.

  “So, now the village is full of dead people, either they were killed in the colossal massacre Rajaji’s party brought about a decade ago, or they died in the mass suicide. This town is being taken over by zombies or vampires or ghosts or whatever it is you want to call them.”

  “Like Ragini said, forget the theories and concentrate on what is to be done now.What do we know of them?” Rajat asked.

  “That they are dead and extremely bloodthirsty, and somehow we have managed to attract their attention,” Rani said.

  “That’s not all, look on the brighter side, we also know that these freaks are vulnerable to gunshots and they venture out in the night,” Rakesh said.

  “Actually we know a little more than that Rakesh, we know where their headquarter is, in a manner of speaking,” Neeraj said. Everyone stared at him.

  Neeraj narrated his nocturnal visit to what he referred to as “Heart Attack Country,” he explained the chest pains he had and he explained the reverse foot tracks the little girl had made. The air in the room got a little colder.

  “Sorry for bringing this up, but can you tell me how we are going to use all the impressive information you guys seemed to have gathered?” Rani asked.

  “She is right; we know they drop when shot, but we are not exactly in an infantry division barrack here. Tell me how much ammunition do we have?” Happy asked.

  Vinit grimaced and said, “Three rifles, about twenty shots in each of them. My service issue and Rajwade’s gun, both have about two rounds of ten shots each left in them. Plus whatever our friend Mr. Joshi may be carrying,”

  “Go on, surprise us Neeraj, we are waiting for the bazooka and the shoulder fired missile launcher to come out,” Rakesh said.

  Neeraj calmly removed his .38 and placed it on the table.

  “About half a clip, that’s all folks,” he said.

  “Ok, so we have about a hundred odd bullets, and two half-decent shooters among us, how we are going to survive those million freaks? I mean unless a large shipment of firearms drops out of the sky on us, we are not going to last,” Rani said.

  The next moment there was a huge crash as the thatched roof of the police station caved in and a big wooden crate hit the stone floor with a deafening bang. The impact was strong enough to make a couple of tiles break and fly like a projectile nearly decapitating Rakesh and Rajat on their way. Rajat screamed and fell on the floor clutching his elbow where the flying tile had hit him. The
door to the crate opened and crashed against the floor and a shiny black object rolled out of the crate and came to rest after crashing against the window.

  As the shock of the explosion wore off and rain started pouring through the now open roof, everybody stared at the shiny object lying half propped against the wall. It was an automatic weapon of some kind. Its metallic barrel gleamed in the dim light. Everybody’s eyes turned in unison towards the mystery crate. It was full of similar weapons. Only Neeraj and Vinit recognized what exactly they were. They were Russian made AK-47 automatic rifles, capable of firing about 30 rounds a second.

  “Ok call me a liar,” Rani said, and began laughing hysterically.

  The combined shock of killing again and witnessing an obvious psycho in throes of her illness had a paralyzing effect on Saket for no more than half a minute. He again returned to his shelter of the shade and thought.

  Obviously some kind of breakdown of order had happened while he was asleep. There was no other explanation to this. But Saket did not spare any thought to it. His mind was filled with the visions of two women.

  One woman was a girl, a village belle, dressed in a single pleat saree and a cheap threadbare blouse. Saket had met her on a lonely hill once upon a time; it was raining then too just like it was raining now. She had sought shelter with him, he remembered her words “it’s raining sahib, and I have nowhere to hide, can I come and sit inside your car, sahib? My clothes are getting wet and soon I will have no modestly left,” Saket had allowed her inside his car which had broken down on that lonely hill top. But Saket had not given shelter to her; he had taken advantage of the woman’s helplessness and then like a coward thrown her over the hill side to hide his dark deed.

  Can’t have a medal winning soldiers being convicted of rape and murder (the rarest of the rare crime to quote the Supreme Court). The body was hidden, but the deed was not. Two months of an unknown witness taunting him with this knowledge of Saket’s dark side and he had broken down, confessing first to his psychiatrist, and then to the police. The next two weeks were of frantic search for the victim’s dead body and failing that, at least her whereabouts. When neither the search, nor the brutal interrogation, revealed the truth, the bewildered cops began hunting for the clues Saket claimed to have received. Some of them were never traced, some were traced back to Saket and then the all hell broke loose. They told him he had hallucinated the whole thing and there was no such girl, no crime. During the next two years in various mental asylums Saket sometimes thought that later generations would perhaps convince themselves that the war which had brought him to this stage had never happened either, that he had hallucinated the whole thing too. But Saket knew he had committed a crime that demanded atonement.

  The second woman was again helpless in her own way, her obvious gun fighting skills not withstanding. Saket knew the lady with her torn clothes and a police issue pistol needed help. In fact she had come to him for help. Perhaps the two women were not separate and the village girl from the hillside had returned telling him that if atonement was what he was after, it was available at a price.

  Saket knew that this time he was not going to fail.

  Chapter 16

  Deux Ex Machina Part 1

  The terrorist knew this was a non starter of a mission from the beginning. When he and a pilot wearing military type uniform took off from the tribal area of Afghanistan, they were simply given the co-ordinates on a map telling where to drop off the heavy cedar wooden crate. The terrorist had an idea what the crate would contain.

  The weather was constantly bad and only worsened when their helicopter turned in to the coastal western India. The terrorist and the pilot heard the reports about the steadily deteriorating weather on coastal west India and worried about it.

  Their brief was simple. A ship bearing the insignia of “Mission Sea” was to rendezvous them thirty nautical miles north of Kumbhpur, a town otherwise of no significance. Their commander had gone misty eyed about the persecution their kind was undergoing in India and how only an armed conflict could resolve that. The terrorist was weaned on this kind of talk.

  But out here in the darkness, the reality was different. They were flying over enemy territory guarded by trigger happy coast guards, flying in this fucking blizzard. They were increasingly sure that the ship would not come at all, not in this weather.

  This was confirmed over the radio, when they were flying squarely over the Indian Territory, not just the sea territory, but actually on top of a pisspot town that seemed to be asleep in the falling rain. Sorry boys, the ship could not make it, so please haul ass and get back with your expensive cargo.

  Just as the pilot made the turn on their way back to homeland, the chopper began to wobble. The terrorist felt sick to his stomach as it dropped to five thousand feet before steadying itself again.

  “Something wrong?” he asked the pilot.

  “You kidding me, everything is wrong man! The commander was crazy to send us out in this weather, we are liable to get hit by lightening any minute now” the pilot said. The terrorist noticed a thin film of sweat on his pilot’s face. Before he could reassure him with one of his pet talks about the jehad, the chopper wobbled violently. He was thrown against his harness, and almost threw up.

  “What the hell you are doing, steady her” he screamed.

  “I can’t, we are facing strong winds and the rain. We are losing altitude I can’t bring her back,” The pilot’s voice quivered like a woman’s.

  “Do something you fuck, don’t just sit there.”

  “Sir the chopper is dragging left with the weight of our cargo; I can’t steady her, not in this weather,”

  The terrorist made his decision then and pulled his radio set. He punched the frequency of the boat that was to pick up the cargo.

  “This is your courier,” he said in a careful voice, not allowing his fear to show,” we are making the drop as planned on the coast of Kumbhpur, please confirm upon delivery.”

  “This is Prophet,” the voice on other side was thick with anger.” We are in no condition to collect your parcel; there is some kind of weird ritual happening here as if the weather was not bad enough.”

  The terrorist felt confused. What kind of nut would have any ritual in this weather?

  “What ritual, you do not make sense,”

  “Sir, we do not have time,” The pilot was now screaming; “We need to dump the cargo and now.”

  That decided it for the terrorist. He was a soldier and he knew when another soldier said there was no way out.

  “If I open the hatch for the drop, can you hold her steady for a minute?”

  “A minute? Hell no, may be for thirty seconds,” The pilot replied.

  The terrorist pushed the heavy box that without a doubt contained at least a few millions worth of firearms and brought it to the hatch. He then slid the bolts back and risking everything he threw it open.

  In his short life, he would never see anything like this. Cold and rain swept like a tidal wave and he felt the chopper whirring crazily away from the beach that was visible just a minute ago. Suddenly they were flying over houses, roads, clearly over a town. But by then the decision was made. The terrorist pushed the box with all his strength and let it drop through the hatch.

  He somehow managed to slide the bolts on the hatch back home, but it didn’t help any when the chopper met more bad weather on its way back home and crashed in the sea, killing both its occupants instantly.

  The box brought instant gun power to the last survivors of Kumbhpur, but it also brought a drenching downpour of rain for the so far dry tourists. The box while had ripped the thatched roof of the police station like paper during its descent, and now a steady stream of rain was pouring through it. Neeraj, Vinit and Rakesh moved the heavy box into the other room and placed it with some difficulty on the table that was Vinit’s work table a lifetime ago.

  “Five automatic rifles, about twenty clips, three German made handguns with five clips each �
�. God just what did this man intend?” Neeraj said, referring to the mysterious dropper of the weaponry.

  “Terrorism Mr. Joshi, we have been on an alert regarding this shipment, usually coastal towns of India are their preferred locations for arms drop,” Vinit said picking up a rifle, and holding it to his shoulder. This was better than any weapon he was issued in his life.

  Happy, Ragini and Rani walked in, and took in the view of the three men inspecting the arms. Rani who had overcome her hysteria after some effort asked,” Does any one here know how to use these? I mean, they seem like sophisticated weapons,”

  “I have done a special anti-terrorism course, so I can handle the automatic rifle, how about you guys?” Vinit asked Rajat and Rakesh.

  “I suppose it won’t be much different than the .303 we fired, so yes we can manage,” Rakesh said hesitantly. Of course, everyone turned to Neeraj.

  “Mr. Joshi?” Ragini asked. She cocked an eye brow, and placed a fist on her hips, moving sluttishily. Neeraj smiled and said, “You will be surprised ,but the answer is no, a basic handgun is all I can fire,” he said and added, “as far as you guys are concerned, firing an automatic rifle is hell of a lot different than a .303. If you are not careful, the recoil can blow you away. Inspector?”

  “He is right. But nothing that a little practice won’t correct, that goes for everyone including you Mr. Shah and the ladies.”

  “Does it occur to you that while we are practicing with this unexpected gift the freaks might attack us, we may not get the time to practice,” Rajat said.

  “The temple,” Happy made his first contribution to the conversation since Neeraj had walked in with his friends.

  “What?” Rakesh asked.

  “If these zombies are raised right, they will not approach the temple area and if I remember there is a large empty space behind the main temple, where all you guys can play cowboys,” He said, indicating that he himself was above such stupidity.