by Dhar, Mainak
‘Sir, it looks like they may have moved on.’
Jabber raised a finger to his lips, motioning for the man to shut up. He then sniffed the air.
‘Rasul, what we cannot see, we will smell.’
Rasul had no idea what his leader meant, and thought that perhaps Jabber was losing his mind as he walked forward, sniffing as he went. Jabber then turned towards him.
‘My friend, did you not see? They have a Biter among them, and this witch herself is half Biter. Have you forgotten how Biters smell? Follow the stench and we will find them soon enough.’
***
‘Go away, go away…’
Cynthia was muttering non-stop and finally Josh had to tell her to shut up. Alice was lying near the mouth of the cave, her eyes glued to the scope of her rifle. Their attackers had now all converged on the area, at least ten of them, fanning out around the hills. Their leader was a giant of a man, and as she saw his heavily bearded and scarred face through her scope, for a moment she thought he was looking right back at her. But that moment passed, and he continued rallying his men, searching through the bushes.
It was now almost eight at night, and the men below often paused to look through the night vision scopes on their rifles, searching for their quarry.
‘There goes my hope of having an advantage in the dark.’
Alice turned to Josh, who was lying next to her. A small flag was attached to the cap he was wearing. It was the flag that the resistance used as its calling card. Alice had seen it on some of her father’s papers. It was the flag of the nation that had once been the United States of America.
‘Beaver, these are not just bandits. They are working for Zeus and they seem to have first-rate kit. You do realize that if they discover us, we are sitting ducks up here? They can just shoot rocket after rocket and fry us.’
Josh considered the situation as he watched the men below.
‘Our best bet is still concealment, either till they move on or till our own reinforcements come and we can fight on more equal terms. But you’re right, if they do discover us, we cannot just sit here and fight.’
‘So what do you think we should do?’
Josh looked through his scope again, seeing the men now closing on towards their hill. Their leader was hollering some orders to them, saying that they should take their RPG launchers out.
‘If they find us, then our only hope is to make the first salvo count. There are four of us—even if we take out four or five of them in our first attack, we even the odds a lot. Then we get down and mix it up.’
That suited Alice just fine. Being down there among the enemy and fighting her way out was much more preferable than being cooped up here in the darkness.
One of the men below the hill knelt and raised his RPG launcher to his shoulder. Alice tensed as he fired and Josh whispered to everyone.
‘He’s not aiming at us. They’re firing at the next hill, trying to see if we’re hiding here and hoping to make us lose our nerve. Just stay still.’
The rocket hit the next hill and exploded and Vince started singing softly as another man fired a rocket at another hill some twenty meters away.
‘And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.’
Josh and Cynthia took up the song.
‘Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.’
As they sang together and prepared for battle, Alice felt that Biters were not the only ones who could be united by a symbol like the book she carried. Humans could also be brought together by simple things like a song and flag, and for all that might have been wrong with the Old World, wasn’t it better to bring people together than to rule them with fear as the Central Committee had tried? Perhaps that was where dictators like them failed—they did not see that humans could be terrorized for a short period of time, but the only way to really rule them was by finding something that they wanted to follow. Perhaps humans and Biters were not so different at all.
A rocket impacted their hill just a few feet below them, showering them with rocks. Bunny Ears roared in anger, and they knew that there was no point in hiding any more. Alice aimed at a man who was raising his RPG launcher and prepared to fire. Josh had picked his own target, as had Cynthia and Vince. As she pulled the trigger, Josh sang one last line before he too fired.
‘O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.’
***
TEN
Jabber dove for cover as one of his men just in front of him fell, his head exploding from a direct hit.
‘Fire back! They’re in that cave!’
Jabber smiled as Malik began to take charge and rally the troops. One of them fired an RPG that exploded just below the cave, but in the illumination provided by the brief explosion, Jabber could see that their quarry had flown the coop. He caught a glimpse of a man jumping off the side of the hill from about ten feet up and fired, but could not be sure he hit anyone.
They had lost three men in the first salvo. That still left eight of them, and all of these men were hardened veterans. Malik took three men and circled around to the left, and he himself went around the right. If their intelligence was to be believed, there were no more than four enemies, and Jabber was confident that he and his men could take them on. The mistake would be to stay bunched up and present an easy target. Two of his men followed him as Jabber lobbed a grenade. He had no idea if anybody was there, but stirring the pot would perhaps make the enemy reveal themselves.
The grenade exploded just meters away from Cynthia and she flattened herself, burying her head in her hands as the shock wave passed overhead. Josh came on the radio.
‘Beaver’s circling around. Don’t shoot me!’
Josh, his SEAL combat training and experience acting on overdrive, had decided to go on the offensive. He had jumped off the side of the hill and raced into the darkness. He was now behind the enemy, a group of four ahead of him. He stayed low and moved slowly, wondering who these enemies were. When they had got a closer look at them through their scopes, they had been surprised to see that all their attackers seemed to be dressed in loose robes and turbans, and all seemed to be heavily bearded. One of the men who had fallen to their first salvo had shouted one phrase aloud before he fell.
Allah-u-Akbar.
Josh had served in Afghanistan and had battled Jihadists and Taliban, but had never dreamed that one day he would be battling them again in a desperate life-or-death struggle in the night, in the middle of the United States.
He aimed at one of the men through his scope and fired, seeing a burst of dark blood in the otherwise ghostly green picture of the night vision optics as the man went down. His comrades turned to meet this unexpected threat and Josh fired another burst before rolling away.
Alice was crouching in the undergrowth. At such close quarters, she had long learnt that it was better to discard her rifle. With a pistol in one hand and her knife in the other, she watched as a turbaned man walked past her. Josh’s unexpected assault from the rear had thrown them into some confusion, and now in the brutal battle unfolding in the darkness, it was no longer clear who was the hunter and who was the hunted. Alice leaped out towards the man, putting two bullets in him. As he staggered to the ground, she stabbed him once in the neck for good measure. As she regained her footing, she found herself facing another man. The fool had an RPG launcher in his hand and fumbled for his rifle. Alice ran towards him, shooting him in the stomach. As he doubled over, she fired once more as she ran past him. The man had been clumsy, but the line that separated those who died in battle and those who lived to tell the tale often was slender.
Vince had sprained his leg in a fall from the hill and was crouched in a corner of the next hill, exchanging fire with an attacker. Vince looked through his scope and saw a dark form materialize behind the man. A form with rabbit-shaped ears. As the man rose again to fire, Bunny Ears hoisted him off his feet and bit deeply into his neck. The man screamed, a loud, keening noise that drowned out even the incessant
gunfire that was being traded all around them. Vince tried to get up, but sat down with a groan at the pain that shot through his leg. He thought he saw Alice moving in the moonlight, but he could not be sure. However, a second later he saw a large figure moving towards her. He called out.
‘Alice, watch out!’
Alice turned on hearing Vince’s shout and saw a huge man just behind her. She caught a glimpse of a large blade glinting in the moonlight and rolled to her left as the man fired. She brought her gun up and fired twice, but the man moved with surprising agility that belied his size and dove towards the ground, coming up in a crouch. They were now barely a few feet away, and the man growled, ‘Witch, your head is mine.’
Alice gritted her teeth. The man was making her angry, and anger was good. Anger focused her, and made her take all the rage she felt at this man and channel it into action.
The man also had a handgun out and fired, but with the dense undergrowth and the darkness, his shots went wide. Alice rolled towards him and brought her knife up, but the man moved back and her blow went wide. He kicked at her and connected with a glancing blow that sent Alice rocking back, and sent her handgun to the ground. He was very strong, but there were advantages to not feeling any pain.
As the man brought his gun up to fire again, Alice threw her knife, burying it to the hilt in the man’s thigh. He roared in pain and his shot went wide, grazing Alice’s shoulder. She leaped up and caught the man’s right hand in a lock and snapped it back, and his gun fell to the ground. She pirouetted out of the way as Jabber’s left hand came around for a knife strike. She would stand a much better chance if she used her speed to her advantage instead of getting into a wrestling match with this monster. In the darkness, there was no time for her to try and locate her gun, so now it was just the two of them, fighting with knives and bare hands. Gunshots cracked nearby, and while a part of her mind told her that the bigger battle was still raging, all her attention was focused on the man in front of her.
Jabber lunged forward and Alice moved away, evading his blow easily. As she moved out of the way of a second strike, she thought that her opponent might well be strong and seemed to have a lot of experience at close in fighting, but his arrogance or perhaps vanity would do him in. With his rings and chains reflecting the moonlight, he was telegraphing his every move.
When Jabber closed in again, Alice let him come in, and his eyes widened in surprise as she let him stab her. The large knife penetrated the vest she was wearing under her clothes and cut deep into her stomach. As Jabber tried to pry the knife loose, Alice reached down and pulled her own knife free of his thigh.
Jabber looked into the eyes of the witch he had been hunting, and for the first time in many, many years, he felt fear. He had thought that killing a freak Biter would be easy, but had not bargained for what Alice had turned out to be. As he pulled furiously on his knife and it came loose, Alice brought her own knife up and across his throat.
Jabber grabbed at his throat and staggered back, falling down to his knees. Alice kicked him to the ground and picked up his handgun that was lying next to him. She fired a single shot.
‘Goodbye, Jabberwock.’
***
Sam King was sitting in the tent that had been set up as his command post some five kilometers from the action. He would normally not have come into an operational area, but the Baron had called him the day before, reminding him that failure was not an option. If he had any doubts about what he should do, the news that the Jabberwock had been killed in action dispelled them. Intelligence had reported that Alice and some members of the resistance were trying to get to the Snarks based on what they could decipher of radio intercepts. But there was no way to tell how and when they would arrive. Sam looked at the latest email from the Executive Committee on his tablet. Revolts had broken out at two more FEMA camps, and the resistance had mounted a series of co-ordinated attacks on Zeus forces. Sam had no doubt that these were meant to tie up forces and distract them from hunting Alice.
As he thought of this girl who had proven to be such a nuisance, he felt something that he would not openly admit to anyone. Fear. So far, for Sam King, the operation to control the Homeland had been like any other corporate job before The Rising. He would put in place resources, monitor production and meet targets. Yes, there were people’s lives involved, but perhaps, in a vain attempt to assuage his own conscience, he kept telling himself that he was only doing a job. Now it was much more than that. Hearing the explosions from missiles fired by attack helicopters and drones in the distance and knowing that Alice and her friends were headed here, Sam knew that he was now in the thick of the action.
‘Sir, we’ve flown ten sorties this morning but with the forests down there, we cannot do this from the air alone.’
Sam looked up at the young aide who was pulling together all the reports from the assault zone. The Zeus commander in charge of the assault, a former Marine General called Brian Finn, walked into the tent.
‘I’ll have to send my men in if you really want to get to that bunker.’
The unspoken question was whether Sam was willing to condemn hundreds of young men to a horrible death in the forests below to get to the missiles. The answer was obvious, and he was a bit irritated that the General would lose his nerve so easily. Brian commanded the armed forces here, but Sam had overall control, and he resented that the General was trying to pass on the blood that would be shed to his hands.
‘General, you know our objectives, and you know how critical this is for Homeland Security. Now do your duty.’
Brian kept a straight face, but Sam noticed he did not salute as he walked out of the tent. Thirty minutes later, four transport helicopters came into view, heading towards the forest. He wanted to see the action unfold and also to ensure that he could report back that he had been there in the midst of the action. Brian ushered him into a waiting helicopter and they took off.
Sam had his eyes glued to his binoculars as he scanned the forests below.
There.
He caught a glimpse of a group of moving figures in a clearing.
Biters.
Seeing Biters after so many years brought back very uncomfortable memories for Sam. The weeks following The Rising had been traumatic, and he had lost a lot of family and friends, and been more terrified than he ever had been when he came face to face with the Biters for the first time. He did not want himself and his family to be thrown to the Biters. If he failed in this mission, there would be no mercy for him or his family.
‘Sam, they’re going in.’
He was snapped back to reality by Brian’s words. Black-clad Zeus troopers rappelled down from the transport choppers while door-gunners on the helicopters fired away with their Gatling guns to clear the landing zones of Biters. Within seconds of the first trooper hitting the ground, the radio was filled with sounds of gunfire.
‘See, Brian. You were worrying too much about sending the boys in. They’ll fight their way into the bunker in no time.’
Brian, who had done two tours of duty in Afghanistan before The Rising, looked away with scarcely disguised contempt. Sam ignored him, now more confident that he would succeed in this mission. The Executive Committee would no doubt renew his contract as President for at least a year. The Zeus team leader in the forests below radioed in.
‘Sir, we’ve killed about a dozen Biters in the first contact and the others seem to have escaped. We’re less than two klicks from the bunker location and are now proceeding.’
As the Zeus officer continued with his operational update, Sam smiled and took out his tablet to tap an update to the Baron.
That was when the voice on the radio began to scream.
***
‘Watch out! The tree…’
Vince smiled to himself as Alice shouted for what must have been the tenth time in as many minutes. It was ironic that someone who had seen more violence and bloodshed than any kid should ever see should be so spooked by a flight in a light airc
raft.
Of course, this was not just a joyride. They had reached the airfield after meeting up with resistance forces who took them aboard motorcycles for a hair-raising one-hour journey. Zeus had been looking for them and spotters had reported drones in the air. The only saving grace was that with attacks by resistance forces on several locations, Zeus had been forced to spread its air assets thin. Still, Konrath had judged it too risky to have all of them travel in a Jeep or van that would be easily visible from the air. So they had raced through forests on their bikes till they reached the airfield. As their luck would have had it, the helicopter’s engine had malfunctioned and they had had to try their luck on an old light aircraft that Vince had improvised for use as a reconnaissance aircraft, complete with a camera attached.
Zeus had only a handful of fighter aircraft, and they were busy on other fronts. However, if even a single Apache attack helicopter stumbled onto them, they would be a sitting duck. As a result, Vince had been flying at barely twenty feet altitude, literally skimming the tops of the trees. They had not encountered any Zeus forces, but as they got closer to the target zone that Bellman’s map had indicated, they would be flying into the thick of the fighting.
‘Alice, I don’t think we should risk getting much closer.’
Josh, who had been quiet after the battle where he had lost some of his closest friends and comrades, spoke up.
‘Flyboy, any bright ideas on where we could set down?’
Vince grinned.
‘We’ll have to make do with what we have. I plan to set down on that highway there. I reckon it’s about ten klicks to the action and we’ll have to get there on foot.’
‘There!’
Alice turned to see what Cynthia was pointing at and she saw three dark dots in the sky ahead.
‘Transport helicopters. Looks like Zeus is bringing in reinforcements.’
With that observation, Vince took the aircraft even lower and he was now actually flying at a height lower than many of the nearby trees. The helicopters ahead were well above them, and Zeus was likely so preoccupied with the battle raging in the forests below that it was not looking for a threat from the skies. However, Vince was being extra cautious and given the ambush they had just survived, Alice thought with good reason.
