Kumbhpur Rising

by Mayur Didolkar

  “It means they are in there?” Ragini asked incredulously.

  “Yes Ragini. They are hiding inside my house,” Rajat said and started walking backwards. In a moment everyone fell in line as they followed him.

  They were twenty feet from coming out of the jungle when the undead attacked.

  Of all the assaults this was by far the most ferocious and full on. They did not try to hide themselves, nor were they silent. At first, the group only felt rustling of leaves coming from that direction. Then suddenly there were more than a dozen undead villagers emerging from behind tress, each one had a sword in one hand, and each one was screaming at the top of their voices. Ragini instinctively raised her hands to her ears, dropping her handgun in the process. Fortunately for her, there was time to recover since she and Vinit were bringing up the rear.

  Once again they watched Neeraj in action; once again they were amazed at his presence of mind or cold bloodedness, depending upon your view point. In one swift motion his AK-47 was switched to multi fire mode, rested solidly against his left shoulder, He squeezed off a long loose burst from it, taking a couple of steps back and moving his gun from left to right in 180 degrees. Three attackers were hit by the deadly hail of fire and collapsed, swords still raised. The remaining kept coming on.

  Rakesh pulled Ragini and Happy behind him and raised his rifle. His aim was not good, but he was in luck as he caught two of the attackers squarely in chest. Their chests caved in spraying the surrounding with a pale greenish liquid that was water but somehow not only water. The group was fighting terror and revulsion at the same time.

  “Stop pulling me you idiot. I have a gun,” Happy said and moved away from Rakesh. He raised his handgun to chest height. His head was filled with a strange noise and his vision was blurry. A woman undead attacked him with her sword raised high above her head. As she charged, Happy simply stood his ground and waited. “I am going to die… standing with a stupid gun in hand, she is going to cut me to ribbons… she is…” his fingers closed on the trigger. Pulling it felt like pulling Rakesh’s Scorpio with his teeth. But then everything unfroze, his vision was clear, and the attacker was still charging him. He shot her point blank in the head. The woman cried out and collapsed oozing the same greenish liquid from all pores of her body.

  “Don’t back off, we will burn,” Vinit shouted, as he took shelter behind a tree and raised his assault rifle. Now there were more undead following their fallen comrades. Neeraj, Rakesh and Rajat were all firing at them. They had formed a loose bowl like position with Neeraj and Rajat at the head, and Happy and Vinit loosely at the centre of the bowl. The fire was coming from all the sides. Vinit was equally worried about getting cut down by friendly fire, since this was not exactly the NSG he was fighting along side with. And he knew that he and the undead reacted equally badly to being shot.

  “Charge them” Neeraj shouted. He shot two undead from less than a foot away as he emerged from his shelter. When they fell, one sword nicked his right shoulder. Screaming in pain, Neeraj fell backwards, his rifle discharged a useless round in the ground around him and then there was a hollow click as the clip was empty. Neeraj raised his head to see a boy no more than fifteen coming to him with his sword raised in both hands. He meant to impale Neeraj on that sword. Neeraj did not have the time to fit another clip in his rifle. He chose to roll away and thrust his rifle outwards stopping the boy’s thrust. The sword clang harmlessly a foot away from him, but the boy with the same savage expression pulled it free. He raised it over his head once more. Neeraj had no more room to roll since he was backed against a tree trunk.

  Later on Neeraj would claim he knew he would not die even then, but perhaps that was a lie he told even to himself. He certainly made no effort to stop his attacker. The sword was raised high and just before it came down, the boy’s neck exploded, spraying the greenish liquid that seemed to run in his veins in place of blood. He let out an animallike howl and incredibly still tried to stab Neeraj with the sword. But then there were more shots and every place he was shot he burst more of the same liquid. He collapsed on top of Neeraj. The feel of the dead body against him was like being buried beneath a waterbed. Watery stuff was still sloshing inside him, and Neeraj could feel no bones, no flesh, but then folks there was no blood either, was there?

  He pushed the boy away and pulled himself into a sitting position. He managed to get hold of his rifle and jammed his last clip in it before surveying the scenery to identify his savior. It was easy, among all his comrades only Ragini was still squeezing the trigger on the empty handgun, laughing hysterically. He smiled and stood up to charge. Vinit, Rajat Rakesh, Happy and Ragini all came from behind him, all of them fired. (Ragini was just pulling the trigger on her empty gun again and again) The jungle reverberated with the sound of gunfire. The undead kept on charging, they did not seem terribly intelligent, just very, very angry and willing to die if death applied to what happened to them upon being shot.

  As they were about to emerge from the jungle on the stone pathway leading to Rajat’s house, Happy stumbled and fell, face first. Suddenly, another undead came charging through the trees and raised his sword for a swift stroke that was sure to cut Happy into two. Rakesh intervened perhaps out of sheer love for Happy or out of foolhardiness. It was his action that saved Happy. Rakesh saw the villager too late to shoot, so instead he thrust his rifle forward and pushed the villager back slamming him against the tree. Happy was still on the ground.Neeraj and Vinit turned to take a look, but no one had time to fire. It was all happening too quickly. The villager swung the sword in a short arc, and Rakesh screamed as the metal pierced through his lower abdomen, and clanged against his waist bone. Rakesh howled in pain and fell backwards .The villager leaped over Happy’s body and stabbed him in the stomach again. And then the villager was cut down as all but Rakesh and Happy fired their guns empty. The sword fell on Rakesh once again though not cutting him, and he was once again showered with the green liquid of his attacker.

  “I am hurt,” Rakesh said and having imparted this information of value to his friends, he fainted.

  Vinit and Rajat stood guard, as Ragini tore away her dupatta and tried to gauze the wound, but she knew her friend was grievously wounded. Rakesh’s stomach fat had taken some of the impact, but the blood was enough to make her feel faint. She gathered everybody’s dupattas and tried to keep stem the flow of blood from the wound.

  “Go ahead and do what you have to do,” she screamed “I will stay with him, hurry, if he does not get a doctor soon he will die.”

  Nobody argued. Like Vinit had said everybody was on their own. Neeraj quickly walked back to her and demonstrated how to use the assault rifle in case needed. Ragini hoped she would be able to pull the trigger if the situation came. Killing Neeraj’s attacker had taken all the fight out of her.

  ***

  From his position behind the last tree, Rajat stared at his house and felt a wave of dizziness sweeping over him. This was the place where he and his sister had played hide and seek, where he had come running to his mother, wet and salty from his afternoon dip in the sea. This was home for him.

  And now it was an enemy post to be captured. Rajat knew however it turned out, one thing was certain, no child would ever run screaming with laughter through that house ever again. Or through this village, for that matter. The house which was a symbol of family and solidarity for him was now the symbol of the town itself. Dead and still not ready to give up.

  Neeraj bent and examined the foot tracks. The man had a remarkable single mindedness that Rajat saw only in the top bosses of corporate world. He was not worried about a fallen and seriously wounded comrade he had left behind. Nor did the fury of the undead faze him. He was the master commander, concentrating only on the task at hand. It was a hell of a way to be.

  “Listen everyone, there are a few footprints heading to the house, that means along with these freaks there are some human beings in there, if human beings have indeed done all that has happ
ened, to this village. But that also means that inside the house are one or more members among the enemies, who might not be consumed by the death wish these undead have. So now we need to fire at the house and see what response we get. If they bring Rani as a hostage then we are in luck. If they decide to dig in and fight then we have no option but to storm the place,” Neeraj said. “So, on my count of three, start firing at the house, try to hit the windows and doors as much as you can, but whatever you hit don’t stop firing till your guns are empty.”

  "You ok with this Rajat?” Happy asked.

  “Too late to think about that Happy,” Rajat replied in a broken voice and raised his rifle to his shoulder. He waited for Neeraj’s count.

  Aleem was now on the verge of abandoning this madcap mission. For all the instructions he gave to the villagers, when it came to attack they were animals, no they were like dinosaurs, trying to replace cunning and stealth with sheer murderous fury. It had worked well while taking the village over, but somehow the group that was coming for them had not panicked. They had picked those villagers like clay pigeons in a shooting gallery. And with only about half dozen of the undead and their Courageous Leader remaining, Aleem realized that now they did not even have the superiority of numbers any more.He sat on the living room floor crouched low with only his machine gun muzzle pointing outwards. He calculated that he was about five paces from the door, so if he pretended like he was just taking a position and fled, he just might make it. Let the mad group outside and the lunatics inside sort things out among themselves. He had not hired himself for this shit.

  As he began crawling towards the door, the Courageous Leader suddenly leapt forward and grabbed him, pulling him in an upright position. The old man was terribly strong. He had him standing up even before Aleem realized that he was directly in front of the window now.

  “What are you doing you old fuck.” were the last words of his life as a hail of machine gun fire broke out from the woods and the bullets slammed into his body but somehow not even a single one hit the Courageous Leader. Aleem danced like a puppet against a very short string as the fire continued for more than a minute. He was dead in the first two seconds.

  I hope you understand the seriousness of this thing,” the Courageous Leader whispered, and heaved Aleem’s dead body out of the now open window and then ducked beneath the stairways. His faithful followers were all crouching similarly. All were not lucky. As the gunfire continued hitting the wood and stone house, windows shattered and the main door was thrown inside, torn off its hinges. The Courageous Leader saw two of his faithful followers get shot and burst like balloons. Now he only had three people left. And the men outside were charging.

  ***

  Rani was kept in the room upstairs where Saket had tried to kill himself earlier. Her captors had left her bound and gagged on the floor which still had traces of Saket’s vomit. She slowly came to and the first thing she noticed was how noisy the village had suddenly become. Her surroundings were a cacophony of noises as if a dozen extremely badly trained orchestras were conducting themselves all at once. There was sound of glass shattering, wood chipping and splintering and above all there was the loud sound she had only heard in movies before. It was the sound of gunfire which was coming from below her. Since she knew the aversion her captors had to firearms, Rani realized with a surge of hope that her screwball husband and his equally screwball friends had finally reached to rescue her.She was going to be free. She tried to free herself in her excitement and managed only to tighten the ropes binding her hands behind her back and then the door opened and the old man emerged. He seemed impervious to the gunfire raging all around him. And he seemed as neat and put together as Rani first saw him. He bent down and produced a knife, Rani’s eyes widened. He calmly turned her around and slit the rope open. Rani sat up and rubbed her palms together trying to get the circulation back again in them.

  “Yes your friends have come and as you can hear they are firing up a storm. What if a stray bullet were to come and hit you? What would they do if they storm bravely inside this house, only to find you riddled with their own weapons of mass murder? That would be a fitting response to what they consider as evil don’t you think?” he asked her while working on her leg restraints.

  “They saw me and my followers as creatures of anarchy and chaos and they were probably right. But did you notice that in their counter revolutionary zeal they have managed more destructions than I have? They set fire to the jungle and now they themselves have become gun toting maniacs, mowing down anything in their path. I threw the body of a man they killed outside, a man in the sense of your world, not like one of my poor followers, and you know what? They did not stop firing even for a second. It could have been your body for all they knew. Their taste of violence has overcome their caution and….. oh good sense. I turned a handful of the oppressed into sword wielding murder machines with my little magic and got this for free. Oh it is beautiful! Those villagers were oppressed and my magic gave them a sense of hope. But you city folks, you were not oppressed. A little challenge to your secure lifestyle and your friends revealed the inner animal to themselves and to this town. When the history of this town gets written, my name will be just a footnote, like the assassin who set off World War 1 with the murder of Duke Ferdinand; you people will be the headlines. Your friends think of themselves as saviors, but Rani, tell me, who destroyed a forest that stood and supported thousands of animals for the last thousand years? Who converted this town into a war zone? Who gave this town its first taste of a pitched battle? It was not me; it was not that terrorist I hired more for my amusement than for any real purpose. It was your friends. Friends who back home drive cars bought on borrowed money and who think of themselves as global citizens just because they have watched the CNN. But deep down you people are the psychos and you will share the house with a psychopath who blindly destroyed an entire village, for the rest of your life,” The man they called Courageous Leader concluded and stood up.

  “You are probably right. But you have lost and my friends have won. They were outnumbered in a foreign territory, but their friendship and their love for me overcame all the odds and now they are at your doorstep, you fuck,” Rani said.

  “You city folks!!” Courageous Leader threw his head back and laughed a short bark like laughter “you thought I would leave the fate of this town to a gun battle between my people and your friends? Maybe I should not waste my breath explaining. This little village is a time bomb and you and your brave friends are sitting on it. That was the first thing I did before moving on to your town Rani.” Then before he performed his next magic trick the Courageous Leader delivered one last piece of wisom “You know the difference between good and evil Rani? Evil is more patient, and harder to get rid of. You will think of me in your last moment my dear”

  Rani’s vision blurred, as suddenly a great gust of wind tore the window open and there was a rush of light, but it was not a welcome light at the end of a long cruel night. It had a harsh, surreal quality like the one thrown by a lit pyre. The Courageous Leader stood with his hands stretched in front of him and stood in the path of that light. His white hair flew back like he was riding a horse upwind. His eyes were closed. Rani strained to hear what he was murmuring and what seemed like a mantra. As his chanting grew louder that was the sound that filled her head and her senses. The light grew fiercer and slowly Rani turned her eyes away from it, afraid she might go blind. Then suddenly there was utter silence. Rani opened her eyes and blinked. The window was open but the Courageous Leader was gone. And the gunfire had stopped.

  Kumbhpur was silent once more.

  The gunfire seemed to go on for an eternity to Rajat, as he saw his house disintegrate before his watery eyes. Windows shattered and doors thrown off their hinges, walls chipped off, spraying chunks of stone in all directions. He kept firing though, not stopping, not wanting to stop even when a dead body was thrown out of the living room window and hit the verandah with a sickening splat. An
d then as Neeraj raised his hands they all stopped firing.

  “Rajat, Vinit walk back to the jeep and bring it around, we need to escape speedily or Rakesh dies. Happy and I will go in and bring Rani out,” with this he slung his rifle on his shoulder and started walking. Happy followed him. After a momentary hesitation, Rajat wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeve and started off in the direction of the town with Vinit in tow.

  As he walked by his now destroyed house the first rays of sunlight shone on Kumbhpur through the dark clouds.

  Happy entered the house first, careful to step around the body of the man that had come out of the window a moment ago. The house was utterly silent. Rajat’s living room was converted into a butcher’s block with sticky remains of the villagers splattered all around. They had all been hit by bullets while crouching under the stairways and the upturned dining table. As Happy and Neeraj walked up the stairs, they tried not to look at what they were stepping into.

  Happy seemed to know where Rani was. He did not hesitate; he did not call her name. He simply turned and went upstairs. Neeraj halted him halfway.

  “What if it’s an ambush? What if whoever is behind this is lurking upstairs?” he questioned.

  “We will cross the bridge when we come there, but if you ask me the only person left in this house now is my wife. The place seems empty.”

  Neeraj somehow knew Happy was telling the truth, and rather than feeling elated he felt a strange sense of being let down. Through all his outer calm, through all his maneuvering, he was secretly harboring a desire for a grand climax to this strange episode.Realizing that the enemy had fled after reaching its fortress, had a sobering effect on his battle heightened senses. He finally accepted that there were things in the world that he did not and would never understand.

  He however still kept his gun trained and covered Happy as he walked into the bedroom upstairs and he still kept it trained as Happy’s wife squealed with joy and leapt in his arms almost knocking him off his feet. Neeraj Joshi, killer of six before he lost count, kept his gun ready all the way till Happy carried Rani out of the house and into the Scorpio waiting for them outside.