by James Rouch
As it reached a corridor, and officers making for a shelter, it flushed through their lungs as they breathed hard with the exertion of running. All were sent in to a frothing fit. The same fate overtook everyone in the immediate area of the police head-quarters as the gas released by the rest of the salvo merged to form a near invisible cloud There was no breeze and it gently swept about the streets, stirred only by the passage of vehicles.
A cars and truck collided, their drivers collapsing at the wheel without the time to pull over. Their eyes bulged and their hands grabbed convulsively at their throats, just like the few early morning shoppers who succumbed near instantly as they formed a queue waiting for the food shop to open. The nerve gas did not discriminate. Babies in pushchairs, dogs on leads, even birds pecking for minute crumbs between the table legs of a pavement restaurant, all died within seconds.
The suffering was brief in that central area, mercifully so where the heaviest concentrations formed. As the cloud moved outwards through the town centre it became attenuated, losing its rapidly lethal concentration.
The panic that quickly spread added swiftly to the fast mounting death toll as people chose to run rather than head for the gas proof shelters. Even the handful who did have their respirators with them died as they fumbled with stiff straps and catches.
More in their confusion ran into the cloud, others were mown down by a bus that mounted the pavement and crushed pedestrians against walls and street furniture.
An elderly couple had no chance; unable to move fast enough they were abandoned by the young woman who for a moment took pity and tried to help. Children walking with their mothers on the way to school were closer to the ground and parents found they wee dragging a corpse before their own body was added to the toll.
Revell had seen the monitor flicker at the instant the klaxon sounded. Faster than any human reaction could have been the NBC system sealed hatches and vents and switched the air-conditioning to recirculating. By chance the hatches had been already shut as they motored in to the town centre. It was the Majors standing order that they should enter any new built-up area already secure against grenade attack through open roof hatches. It was a standard tactic of infiltrating Russian units to ambush from flat rooftops any reconnaissance vehicles nosing forward. Sure that the contamination was not penetrating their vehicle Revell joined the rest of the crew in taking the extra precaution of donning a respirator. In the APC’s restricted interior there was no chance to suit-up but they would before going outside, no matter how difficult the task.
Had they arrived a few minutes later, once sure that no enemy lurked in ambush among the seemingly harmless inhabitants, they would have pulled over, all hatches open and dispersed to try and restock with food. Any who had been caught outside at the moment of the gas attack would have been left there, who ever they were. The hatches would have slammed in their faces.
As the APC drifted to a halt and sat lower on the ground with its ride skirt deflated there was a thunderous concussion against the exterior of the hull. Like a wild drumbeat. Muted as it was by the thickness of the welded aluminium hull there was still no mistaking the frantic hammering of civilians desperate to find sanctuary from the nerve gas. Fists, handbags, and anything that could be wrenched from fences were employed in the wild assault. It created a furious cacophony that blended with the shouts and screams of those wielding the improvised weapons. The thundering reached a crescendo accompanied by screeching voices that produced sounds that went off the human scale.
Surrounded by stick flourishing civilians Revell could see most of the street from his elevated position in the command cupola. He flinched, reacting automatically as a large stone struck the vision block he was looking through, gouging a large chip from the armoured glass.
At the far end of the road, centred on a large building with two police cars outside, were a number of collapsed civilians. Closer, some who were down were still moving, their bodies giving ugly spastic jerks and their faces distorted by fear and suffering as they fought for air. The futile attempts to gain access to the hovercraft reached a frantic level as closer still a man screeched and began to claw the ground when his legs gave way. Another looked at him and reeled, toppling over, white foam frothing from his mouth and nose. A last assault of the Iron Cow was led by a woman battering at the rear door until the heel of the shoe she was using broke off, then with the broken piece she made a pathetic attempt to lever the panel open.
As insanely fast as the attack on the vehicle had been launched, it ceased. A last middle-aged woman clutched her face, trying to stuff the ends of a silk scarf in to her mouth and across her nose. Eyes bulging she corkscrewed to the ground and commenced a jerking spasm as she knelt in a puddle.
“What ever it is, it has spread a long way considering there is not a breath of wind.” Revell made an all round scan. “The Commies don’t seem to be following it up though, so what has that achieved?”
From the turret Libby had a good view of the area, in fact better than the officer as he could see all the encircling bodies, some of them collapsed against the hull or slumped over the folded ride-skirt, sightless eyes looking down at hands that had bled from clawing the metal. Many still held whatever implement they had improvised to try and gain access to the vehicle.
“The cloud must still be spreading.” Libby watched. Although now so dilute that it no longer appeared as a faint droplet laden haze the effect could still be seen. People had rushed to the incident, to look for relatives perhaps or with unbelievable naiveté or stupidity to just gawp at what had happened. Coughing, fighting for air, was the first indication they had that the gas had not dispersed as yet. It was still here and in its less powerful form there was a delay in the on-set of the symptoms. The effect was to prolong its cruel effect. Those who were now ingesting the microscopic dilute amounts were fully as doomed as those who had walked in to that first massive dose. The only difference was a scale of the suffering. All died, but for some it was a horribly prolonged process.
“There is no follow up. Absolutely nothing.” Boris was monitoring the hostile fire locators and saw that the screen revealed no further traces, no more incoming shells.
“They must have done it stampede the civilian population.” He shuddered, finding it hard to believe that many of those who had devised the tactic, had executed it, were his own countrymen. “They are animals.”
“They’re your people.” There was a last noise outside and Dooley realised the sound came from beneath the floor. One of the dying Germans had crawled under the hovercraft. The scraping continued for a short while, then stopped.
“I am Russian, but I was never a Communist.”
The bickering between the two men was frequently non-stop and Revell found it wearing. “Give it a rest you two.” From a vision port he saw that all movement in the street had ceased, save for wisps of steam from a radiator in the crumpled front of a rust streaked old Mercedes saloon whose driver hung from the open drivers door.
There were about fifteen or twenty bodies in sight. Many others would be in the buildings, on the floors of cars or maybe so close to their transport that he couldn’t see them.
The behaviour of many had been pitifully ignorant, to the point of suicidal. When newspapers and magazines, TV and radio were constantly filled with articles on the dangers of the Zone, still people were caught unprepared and died because of it. Like the man who had crawled beneath the ride skirt. It would have given him no more protection than an umbrella.
“We can’t do anything for them. Let’s move out.”
Burke had anticipated the officer’s call and was already increasing the revs of the turbines. A deft touch of the controls and he had the craft rising on its cushion of downdraft. Another touch and he tapped sufficient of the power to give them forward propulsion, a percentage of the engines output channelling through the downdraft ducts.
The ride skirt firmed its contours, the thick material crackling and snapping as it filled ou
t. Bodies slid off of it to the ground. Litter and scarves, spectacles and shopping bags flew outwards as the output increased and the craft rocked slightly as it nudged aside a VW delivery van that had come to rest across their bow.
Now Boris was kept busy at the monitoring and communications board. Several small screens gave him comprehensive information about what was happening in the area. His first act, as they began to bore deeper into territory where they might any moment see or be seen by enemy ground or air units, was to check the IFF was working. Many times before the Identification Friend or Foe device had saved them, it was likely it would have to do it again, and soon.
Anything that moved in the Zone, and much that didn’t, was a potential target. Air activity in this sector was on nothing like the scale it was in the central or northern sectors but there was still enough of it to pose a constant threat, whether from enemy fire or friendly.
To the fighter bombers and ground attack aircraft were added the unmanned drones, some of them armed, that roamed the sky searching the ground for activity. With real time transmission of information back to their controller’s, precision guided or area munitions could be delivered swiftly to almost any spot in the Zone. It was only the sheer number of targets that kept them safe. As a lone vehicle, they did not present an attractive target, unless of course that was exactly what some Russian controller was looking for right now.
“There is something rather weird going on around here major.” Boris watched his screen, re-entered data and looked at it hard.
“What precisely.” It was very rare for their Russian to volunteer information. When asked, Revell knew he could be counted on to give precise and accurate answers but it wasn’t like him to bring anything to his attention unless it was important. That was a useful quality in their communications man as he was constantly flooded with information and had constantly to make judgements as to what was relevant, really important to them.
“I have been plotting the fall of shell, to see if there was any more chemical rounds going down in our path.”
“And?”
“The Communist batteries are dropping salvoes in a crescent across the suburbs to the east of the city. If it didn’t go such much against the way I know they think and work, I’d say they are trying to stampede all the remaining civilians eastwards, into Warsaw Pact territory.”
Samson had stayed quiet during their witnessing of the chemical attack. He felt bad that he had been powerless to help the population stricken by the worst of all weapons of war and to him it made no sense that the Commies would volunteer to take on fleeing refugees, even encourage them to move their way. “That’s weird, they are usually doing everything they can to get rid of them, lumber us with the administrative and supply problems they bring.”
It was unlikely, Revell knew that, unheard of even, but he trusted the accuracy of the work Boris did. A look a the screen, which he couldn’t help himself doing even though he knew the data would be as stated, confirmed what he had been told. The plot of the impact areas was a crescent across the most populated parts of the city, coming down just where they would be guaranteed to block civilians trying to get out of the Zone, heading west.
“Could be an aberration by a crazy local commander. Let me know if you spot anything else those swine are up to this time. In any event give me an update every fifteen minutes.”
Ripper had heard the exchange and now taxed Clarence. “You’re the brainy one. Why would the Commies be turning around the refugee columns? They ain’t never got enough food to feed their own troops, hell they were eating their own dead at Hamburg. A load of starving civvies would just be a nuisance to them, so what they up to.”
“Stocking their larder?” Dooley joined in.
“They’ve used refugees before.” Corporal Thorne had been in Hamburg, and Munich, he knew the extremes of which the communists were capable. “They’ve used them as hostages, to prevent us hitting some juicy targets of theirs.”
“You reckon?” Simmons had heard so many stories during training, from instructors, and since he had entered combat in the Zone just six weeks before. They had mounted and mounted until the sheer number of them and their ghastly detail had seemed to become so bizarre it was impossible to believe them all.
“It’s a fact. Up north they built a mock-up of a section of a camp right next to the real thing, to conceal an under-ground tank repair shop.” Clarence watched the young Americans unbelieving expression.
“Heck, I learn something new about that load of cruds every day. Nasty lot of sons of bitches, ain’t they.”
Boris huddled closer over his board, and said nothing.
Carson had been taking what looked like temperature readings on the bomb and now he moved to sit next to the major and spoke quietly to him. “I’d like us to pull in somewhere so we can have a look at it.”
He said no more, made no drama of the request but Revell had seen enough of him in action to be impressed by his quiet efficiency when it came down to serious work. If he wanted to take a look at the bomb then there was a reason.
“OK.” The major switched to speak to their driver. “Find us some where quiet for a short stop. But first a bath or shower would be a good idea. That crap they dropped was likely non-persistant but why take chances.”
Burke managed to find them two in succession. A farmyard produced a broad but shallow pond and their passing through it at various speeds produced cascades of water to wash down the hull. Soon after leaving that the next water they found was a stream where a fallen tree had partially blocked the course to restrict it and form a flood meadow . Twice he sat the iron Cow down in the still water and then spun it, uncomfortably for the crew and passengers as the skirt was re-inflated.
“That should do, now we’ll hope for rain to finish the sluicing.”
Ten minutes later the major got his wish and a short sharp shower ensured that every nook and cranny of the Iron cow was thoroughly washed clear of the poisonous residue.
* * *
They motored across country slowly, and in fits and starts. Frequently running parallel to a distant secondary road they cut through a succession of hedges and fields and negotiated farmyards. Forced by heavy woodland to change course they crossed the road, finding themselves a hundred metres behind a Russian armoured personnel carrier whose crew failed to notice them. Tempting though it was as a close range target, with its fuel cell filled rear doors; they let it pull ahead out of sight.
By chance the unwelcome detour brought them to what looked like a gated development of large detached houses. A remotely controlled double wrought iron barrier went down before them.
“The Ruskies haven’t been in here yet, they’d never close the gate behind them.” Driving in to a dead end street, Burke slowed, looking for a house with an adequate double garage.
Several of the properties showed the signs of a hurried departure. Front lawns and driveways had odd pieces of luggage where owners had packed more than their vehicles could accommodate. Prominent among the urban litter were large children’s toys, trikes, pedal cars and dolls houses. A set of golf clubs were propped against one front door and there were quiet a few adult cycles lying about.
It was one of those that a lone Russian infantryman was riding. He was wobbling along, balancing a plastic storage box on the handlebars, an assault rifle balanced on top. From improvised straps over his shoulders hung a selection of colourful shopping bags. All bulged and clinked as they swung together. His knees stuck out as he tried to propel the load down the middle of the road. He ignored his brakes, took his feet from the pedals and slothered along the ground to a stop when suddenly confronted with the APC.
His face was a mix of befuddled alarm and confusion. Clearly he didn’t know what the Hover APC was. He’d never seen one before and with no insignia showing he could not identify it.
Undecided, the infantrymen took a long time to make up his mind as to what course of action to pursue. Eventually he decided to ere on the s
ide of caution and bolt. Hob-nailed boots scrabbling on the ground either side of its frame he began to tug the laden bike around.
The rear ramp lowered and Revell heard some one go out. Glaring brightness from a sun low down on the western horizon temporarily blinded him and he couldn’t see who it was. He could only call out. “Let him go, he’s so drunk he doesn’t even know where he is.”
Having completed the ungainly turn the Russian got his feet on the pedals and with the front wheel swinging from side to side began to ride away. A single shot rang out and he stopped pedalling. For an instant he was balanced, stationary. Then he fell sideways and the bags hitting the ground split and cracked and spilt their contents. A single vodka bottle spun in a circle before rolling towards the side of the road.
Andrea walked forward and kicked the prone body. It made no movement. Surrounded by a small lake of liquor, the man was dead.
* * *
Andrea said nothing to explain what she had done, or why, but the act injected crude fear into their prisoner. The men of the squad didn’t say anything, though several looked as though they wanted to and were having to make an effort to stop from shouting at her.
Sensing, if not understanding their attitude she kept away while the hovercraft was backed into a capacious three-car garage and the bomb hauled out. She would have done in any event. The presence of the bomb made her skin crawl and she did not want to display any weakness while the men were around.
Looking towards the dead body she saw that the slight camber of the road had drawn a sluggish mixed run of blood and spirits down to the curb where it had formed a partially congealed puddle.
Over at the garage several of the squad had overcome their fear of the nuclear weapon and were watching Carson. Assisted by Lieutenant Andy he had delved inside the largest of the inspection covers and removed an object that he put gently on a tray covered with a pure white napkin. Obviously some one had been exploring the nearest houses.
