by J. Thorn
The roar had been the sound of a tank’s engine coming to life.
Half the building to our right exploded as a shell hit it, showering us with pieces of brick and glass. I later found out that I had more than a dozen minor cuts on my arms and face, and the other guys got similar beauty marks, but at least we all lived to tell the tale.
We took cover behind an abandoned car as the tank came out of the street to our left. As I got a better look at it, the first thought in my mind was that technically speaking, it wasn’t a tank. It was a BMP-1 armored personnel carrier. Of course, such technicalities meant fuck all. It had a 73mm cannon – enough to blow us to bits – and we had nothing on us at that time to do more than irritate its occupants.
We scrambled back into the darkness as the BMP opened up with its machine gun, peppering the buildings around us with bullets. One of our guys was either feeling suicidally heroic or just plain stupid and stopped to fire a burst at the BMP. I had to tell him that our best bet was to run and hide and pulled him back with the rest of us. I could see men dismounting from the BMP, which could carry eight men in its back, and I fired at them once before we retreated into the maze of small side streets where the BMP couldn’t follow us.
I have no idea if I hit anyone, but I pissed them off enough to follow us. That was good. Against a BMP, I was little more than target practice. Against these fuckers in the dark, it was a more even playing field.
They came in the way men who are either clueless, on drugs, or stupid do – loudly and making no attempt at stealth. Turned out these guys ticked all three boxes. I took the first one with a knife as he passed me. Nothing fancy, a cut across the neck and he was down. The next idiot had his rifle pointing at the sky and before he could bring it towards me, I shot him with my handgun. Ashok and the guys cut down three more before the others retreated to the safety of the BMP.
I took out my lighter and took a better look at the man I had killed. It was a kid. No more than ten years old. He had syringe marks on his wrists – the bastards had shot these kids up with something before sending them out. I’ve done all kinds of shit in my life, but having a kid’s blood on my hands is not something I know how to deal with. Ashok and the others were also spooked – all the five kills we had were kids.
We ran back to the bungalow. Word spread, dissipating some of the good mood people had managed to generate with the party. The Mahdi does have a tank and he is ruthless and evil enough to send doped-up child soldiers out to do his dirty work.
Also, we’ve now drawn first blood, and I have no doubt he will come for us soon.
Day 175. Tonight?
Got to keep this short. We spent all day relooking our defenses. The bottom line is that if the BMP gets within shooting distance, it will obliterate us. I got guys to put traps all along the pathway and another team scavenged buildings for food or water. We’ve run through most of the nearby buildings, so they had slim pickings, but every bottle of water counts. Even if the Mahdi has an army of five hundred, which I think is an overstatement, a lot of them may be drugged-up kids. I told the folks to be ready for the eventuality that we will have to kill kids. A lot of people flinched, but I think if it comes to it, they will not hesitate.
The Mahdi seems to send them up ahead to soften up the opposition and then sends his men in. Between our traps and firepower concentrated on the path up the hill, we could chew up any infantry attack, but we can’t let that BMP get close enough to bring its main gun to bear. If memory serves me right, its main gun has a range of some five hundred meters, much lesser than a main battle tank, so it would have to get pretty close to the hill, given the elevation it would need to shoot at. We need to stop it before it gets that close. As to how we’re going to do that, I have no fucking clue.
I can hear the faint sounds of an engine’s roar. They might be coming tonight.
Day 176. Bloodied, bruised, but not quite beaten.
This Mahdi isn’t stupid. He may be psychotic and a megalomaniac, but he is most certainly not stupid. Which is why he kept the BMP going, revving its engines through the early night, knowing how that would screw with our heads. However, he didn’t launch a frontal attack. Instead, he sent a small advance force to judge our defenses. Ten kids died in our traps and we shot six more on the path. This morning when we tried going down the hill to clear the bodies and repair our traps, we came under fire from a couple of nearby buildings. Seems the Mahdi’s men used the diversion of the attack to move into the buildings, and these were not drugged-up kids. Three of us were hit – none of them injuries that would have been life-threatening back when the world wasn’t so fucked up, but I fear two of them may not make it till tomorrow.
We had a quick meeting this morning, and we cannot wait here for the Mahdi’s men to come. We need to take the initiative back. Time for the really dirty stuff. Time to go house to house.
Day 176. House hunting.
The idea was simple enough. Move our men up close under cover of artillery fire and then take out the Mahdi’s men in the buildings they had holed up in. Of course, we had no artillery, so we made do with Molotov cocktails and three young men who looked to have the broadest shoulders.
We waited at the halfway point bunker and watched the bottles arc over our heads. Six cocktails were thrown – two landed short, but the others slammed into the walls and windows of the three buildings that seemed to be occupied by the Mahdi’s men. The idea wasn’t to hurt any of them with the cocktails, but create a diversion for us to move down. Of course, the smoke helped. We didn’t have any shooters who could remotely be called snipers, but Negi and six men were at the hilltop, taking single shots whenever they spotted movement in the buildings. Again, a hit would be a stroke of sheer luck, but it kept the Mahdi’s men occupied as six of us moved down.
My instructions to the five guys with me were clear. Shoot from a distance and if it looked like they were going to have to mix it up close, scream for backup. Real life hand-to-hand combat is messy, and even if you ended up surviving, you’d likely be maimed. If the Mahdi’s men were indeed ex-cons or soldiers, they would know much more about fighting dirty than Ashok and the guys with me. So we proceeded in two-man teams, sweeping through the buildings.
How I wished I had grenades. How I wished we had body armor. How I wished we had weapons other than the big assault rifles which were hardly ideal for such close-in work.
I had my rifle slung across my back and had a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other. The first building was easy enough. There were two guys inside and Ashok and another man provided a diversion by running past the building. When the men peeked out a window to fire, the rest of us unloaded on them. When I went inside the building to check, both men were dead. And they were not kids – that would make killing them tougher, but dealing with it much easier.
I went into the next building as Ravi, one of Ashok’s men, covered my back. I felt something whistle past my ear, and a boom a split second later. My handgun was up, firing blind as I vaguely registered Ravi screaming, and I rolled behind an overturned table. There were two men, both carrying rifles. I emptied my clip into one of them and then moved behind a sofa as the other one shredded the table with his rifle. As I reloaded, I heard a clicking sound and I rushed out, firing as I ran towards him. He knew what he was doing and took cover, but that meant I got to him before he could reload. He had a knife of his own, and as with most such affairs, it ended with one of us dead and the other lucky to be alive. I was cut in three or four places- nothing too bad, but it was the hardest fighting I’d done in ages and I slumped against the wall for a few minutes with my eyes closed. Ashok came in, and must have thought I was dead or seriously wounded and began screaming for the others, when I opened my eyes and told him to shut up. Given the world we live in, and my penchant for getting into trouble, I doubt I’ll get such a peaceful death when the time comes.
I radioed Negi to send a dozen of our best fighters down. We’ve got them in buildings on small side-streets
where the BMP may not be able to come, but from which they can spot enemy movement and provide covering fire.
We won a small, though costly victory today. We lost two men and we bloodied the Mahdi’s nose, but I suspect he’s just probing our defenses. When he comes in force, it will be with more men and with the BMP, and we need to get some ideas on dealing with that fast.
Day 177. The Mahdi.
Am sitting here on the roof of a four-storey building. It’s cold, and despite two layers of clothes and a sweater, I think I’ll have to move back to the bungalow at night.
We’re counting on the fact that the Mahdi will launch his big assault only when there’s enough light for him to use the BMP’s gun effectively. I’d bet on him coming in at daybreak. He’s certainly massing his forces. I saw close to fifty kids line up less than a kilometer away. The Mahdi’s goons were injecting them. It’s sickening to watch how he’s got these kids hooked on drugs and dying for him. More than two dozen of his men entered the city and I can hear shots now and then.
We have a dozen of our guys holed up, and orders are to avoid contact if possible. Of course, if they stumble onto us, we have to fire. The Mahdi’s guys aren’t soldiers, at least the ones we’ve met, but they’re convicts – the men we killed in our first skirmish all had jail tattoos and they know how to fight dirty, better than our guys. I don’t how many of us will be alive before nightfall, but we have to be out here to keep an eye on what the Mahdi’s planning.
I actually saw him an hour earlier. Looked like he had come out to inspect the troops. He was standing in the hatch of the BMP, and when I saw him through my binoculars more than a kilometer out, I wished I had a sniper rifle, but all I could do was watch.
He was a big man, no giant, but certainly very big. He had long hair that fell down his shoulders and he was wearing wraparound sunglasses. The way his men almost bowed when he passed them made it clear that he had absolute power over his army. If he didn’t, people would be asking why they were taking losses over a stupid hill in the middle of nowhere, and certainly, if he were fully sane, he would move on. There are many more communities out there, where people wouldn’t be as organized or as well armed as us. Perhaps in bloodying his nose, we’ve hurt his ego, and he has to crush us to show his people that he’s still in charge.
Or perhaps this is what it all boils down to. I never believed in destiny or fate, but perhaps this is the point of my largely inconsequential life – to stop this mad fucker before he can prey on more innocent people.
Day 178. The fog of war.
Clearly the Mahdi is not doing what I thought he would. War would be so much easier if your opponent conveniently followed your wishes.
I had assumed that he’d send the kids in to distract us and then send in his experienced fighters and the BMP. The BMP would have to almost be at the foot of the hill to get to the bungalow, so my plan had been to disperse fighters in adjoining buildings, armed with Molotovs. We might not have been able to penetrate the BMP’s armor, but I was willing to bet that once we set it on fire, the men inside would panic and we could close in and finish the job. The BMP had open hatches for the infantrymen in the back to fire through and I had thought that if I could get close enough, I’d pop a Molotov inside. That would cook the men, the fuel and the ammunition inside.
Of course, all that was what I had imagined would happen. Instead, the Mahdi seems to be planning a war of attrition. He’s correctly guessed that we can’t have more than fifty adults who can fight, and he knows that the men down in the city are our best fighters. So he’s sending his kids and men out to draw us into battle and slowly whittle down our ranks. He has many more men than we do, and it’s not a bad strategy. All day we’ve been fighting running battles in the city. We know the area better, and I’ve got the advantage of Negi acting as scout up on the hill with his binoculars and radio, so we get some sort of advance warning of enemy movements. Still, it’s bloody work. We’ve lost four men today. We killed a dozen kids – but that is perhaps in line with what the Mahdi would consider an acceptable loss – and five of his men. We cannot sustain too many more days of this.
The other side effect of the Mahdi’s men coming into close combat with us is that they’re not trying to burn out the Moreko any more. The lack of fire and the sounds of guns and smell of human death seem to be bringing some of my old friends back.
The Moreko are creeping back into the neighborhood. This thing is turning into a real cluster-fuck.
Day 178. Punch drunk.
I’ve been skipping from house to house over the last day, catching up on sleep with short naps when I can and then sniping at the Mahdi’s men before moving on. There are a dozen of us down here now, and the Mahdi is bleeding us dry. He’s got more of his men in the area, and I saw him in the BMP again an hour or so ago, directing the battle. I have no idea what this guy’s background is, but it’s a fair bet that he has some sort of military training. The BMP’s main gun may not be of much use in such congested areas, but he’s using it to bring in his men, stop well out of throwing range – one of our guys gave away our plan by lobbing a Molotov, which landed embarrassingly short of the BMP – drop his men while our bullets ping harmlessly off the armor and then riddle us with machine-gun fire from the BMP. We lost two men before I had to scream at the guys to stop shooting at the BMP. We’re better off taking on the Mahdi’s men in house-to-house fighting.
The bottom line is that he’s playing with us now. If we keep losing men at this rate, in three or four days, we won’t have enough of our best fighters left to make much of a stand. Then it’s game over.
There’s been a lull in the fighting for a few minutes. Part of that I put down to the Moreko appearing on the scene in large numbers once the sun set. One of the Mahdi’s men screamed as the Moreko got him, and now both sides are trying to stay alive and take out the Moreko. My undead pals are now screaming and growling, trying to take back what was their neighborhood. With everyone trying to kill everyone else, this is so fucked up it would make for a comedy if anyone bothered to make movies any more.
Guess what? I found a bottle of rum in the attic of this house I’m holed up in. After so many days, it feels like a reunion with an old friend, and certainly as I sit here and sip straight from the bottle, my friend is helping to warm me, to calm me and make me think clearly. I may sound like I’ve lost my mind, and after all the shit I’ve been through I do realize that is a distinct possibility, but I just heard the rum bottle whisper an idea into my ear. It sounds crazy, and I have no idea how to do it, but it’s probably the only way this thing can end without all of us being massacred.
I have to kill the Mahdi.
Day 179. Back to that mortality thing.
It’s barely four in the morning but I need to get this entry written before I head out to put my plan into action. I got back up to the bungalow last night and got much of what I need. Negi tells me I’m crazy and/or suicidal, and while I can’t dispute the crazy part, I have no particular desire to die.
I flipped through the pages of this diary and saw that in the early days, I had written about how stubbornly humans seem to cling on to life even when objectively speaking, death is a better option. That was when I was sitting alone in the bungalow, wondering whether I was the only man left alive in this madhouse.
More than two months have passed since that day, and if nothing else, my perspective on life and death has changed. I guess when one is bothered with only one’s own life, one does tend to be more selfish and hang on to it. However, the moment one starts having others to live for, that changes – and ironically enough, it feels easier to let go. I saw that in how Sen sacrificed himself for complete strangers, how mothers put themselves in harm’s way to protect their kids, and how men have been dying all around me to protect those they barely knew a few months ago.
When I was a soldier, I fought to obey orders, for the man next to me, and for a vague notion of patriotism. Now I fight for something that is less binding, b
ut perhaps much more compelling. I fight for the simple fact that the people up there on that bungalow, people who began as strangers but are now closer than family, deserve a chance at life. A life where they are not easy prey for false godmen, power-hungry generals or indeed psychotic dictators like the Mahdi.
I’ve messed up my life enough times, and now it’s time to do something that really matters. I don’t know if I will succeed in my plan, so I am leaving this journal here. If any of our people find it, pass it on to Negi. I don’t think anyone will be publishing books for some time, but what began as a journal has become perhaps the most important book I’ll ever write. Someone once said that a writer wants to write because he wants to leave a legacy. I have no such grand ambitions – I just want people to remember that I was more than a drunken, failed soldier.
Of course, if we lose and you’re the Mahdi or one of his men reading this, then know that I’m sitting in Hell, drinking rum and telling you to go fuck yourself.
A man called Maloy
This is Negi continuing where the Captain left off.
It’s been a month since the last day of our battle with the Mahdi and as we were reclaiming buildings for our people to live in, one of the men came across this journal. For the last three days, I’ve been reading it aloud to everyone, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the group. We had all thought the Captain left us, but now we know that he has indeed left a part of himself with us through this journal.
