Outside Context Problem: Book 02 - Under Foot

by Christopher Nuttall

  He looked over at the group of media groupies waiting for the Mayor and, beyond them, the lines of trainee Order Policemen. They looked rather laughable to Edward, although Marine trainees probably looked equally absurd to fully qualified Marines who had some combat experience under their belts. The Order Policemen might not be dangerous now, but if they had a few weeks of intensive training – and a very strong incentive not to fail – they’d become a hazard the resistance couldn’t ignore. They would combine local knowledge with a vested interest in an alien victory – after all, if the aliens lost, who would save them from vengeful neighbours wanting revenge?

  The media was more of a puzzle. It was easy to believe that they would be happy to swallow and spew out whatever the aliens gave them, yet some of the Chicago reporters had clearly been disappeared. The remainder had probably drawn the correct lesson and chosen to toe the Mayor’s party line. The aliens were our friends, here to help, and if it weren’t for the resistance, we’d be living in Heaven by now. Edward privately doubted that most of the reporters believed the shit they printed – although he’d met a few reporters with only a questionable grasp on reality – but it didn’t matter. The exact circumstances didn’t matter either. They were serving the enemy and helping them to occupy America.

  He watched as the Mayor’s car came to a halt and stepped back, blending in with the crowd of curious onlookers. The policemen glanced over at the civilians without taking much notice, their eyes lowered as if they were ashamed of themselves. The Walking Dead didn’t seem to feel any shame at all. Their cold dead eyes flashed everywhere. Edward had to admit that it was a hell of a deterrent. No one in their right mind wanted to end up like them. He heard a lady screaming a name – “John, John” – at one of the Walking Dead, before her neighbours calmed her down. The Walking Dead man she was shouting at, her husband or her brother, showed no sign of having even heard. He was a monster in human form, not through his own free choice, but through mental rape. Edward felt a sudden surge of hatred and wanted to gun them all down, but his training asserted itself. It wasn't the right time yet.

  The Mayor stepped out of his car and held up his hands. The crowd cheered, as if they really meant it, yet Edward could detect hatred and resentment under the cheering. Perhaps the Mayor could as well, for his eyes narrowed and darkened, before he turned towards the stand. The media rushed forward to take pictures and images that would be broadcast to the world, telling the global population how America had bent over and spread its collective ass-cheeks for the aliens. It was a shame it wasn't going out live, Edward decided. They’d really give the global population a show.

  He glanced around, wondering if he could see any aliens, but there were none. That didn’t mean anything. Rumour had it that the aliens had personal invisibility shields and other such science-fiction technology, although nothing had been proven one way or the other. He looked around for any suspiciously empty places and saw nothing, yet even that didn’t matter. They might be trying to make it look like a human show, but they’d have a rapid reaction force on standby somewhere nearby, and their cursed flying ships ready to intervene. He doubted the Mayor truly trusted the policemen. They probably hated him as much as anyone else.

  The Major stood up in front of the podium. He looked fatter than he’d been the last time Edward had seen him, showing the signs of good living when two-thirds of the city’s population was on the verge of starvation and completely dependent on the aliens for food and water. Showing the people that he wasn't suffering alongside them couldn’t be a wise move, unless it was just a gesture of contempt for the people who’d elected him and put him into power. Perhaps it would have been different if a different Mayor had been elected, or perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered. Those people always rose to the top in a dictatorship.

  “My people,” the Mayor boomed. He didn’t look to be wearing a mike, but that proved nothing. “My people, we have suffered because of insurgents on the streets, hacking away at the new order and condemning us to starvation and death. We have suffered because of the need for security measures to keep us safe from the last remnants of an older order. We have suffered, but no more!”

  Edward glanced from face to face, wondering who would believe the shit the Mayor was saying, knowing that some would believe it. Perhaps it would be out of desperation, or fear, or ignorance and stupidity, but some would believe. Others would know that he was lying, yet would be too scared to speak out, probably wisely. No one knew where the disappeared went to, but no one believed that it would be pleasant. Rumour had it they went into alien bases and were never seen again.

  “Today, we start training the men and women who will return order to our streets,” the Mayor proclaimed. “Today, we start cleaning up our city!”

  Edward’s sense of the dramatic recognised the cue and he drew his Uzi from his coat pocket. The group’s machinist had modified the weapon, enabling it to fire explosive bullets as well as standard rounds. No soldier liked using explosive bullets, but Edward had wanted to send a message – besides, the aliens could cure plenty of injuries. He didn’t want to leave the Mayor crippled, but dead. The crowd recoiled from the weapon, too late. He sighted and fired in one smooth motion. The Mayor’s body exploded into chunks of flesh and blood.

  The sound of shooting alerted others, who drew their own weapons and opened fire on the trainees and the media. Most of the policemen had hit the ground, drawing their own weapons, but doing little else. Edward had decided to gamble. The police might not fight to defend the Mayor or the aliens, but they certainly would fight in their own defence. The Walking Dead were the sole exception and they were all gunned down before they could start shooting into the crowd. To most of them, death had probably come as a relief.

  He pulled a flare out of his other pocket and fired it into the air. It was easy to sympathise with the commander on the other side – one moment, everything had been normal; the next, everything had descended into chaos – yet there was no way of knowing how long it would be before he could adapt, react and overcome. Even a platoon of Marines would be stunned and lose vital seconds discriminating between genuine targets and panicking civilians. How long would it be before the alien reaction force arrived and sealed off the area? He drew his a second magazine from his belt, fired off the remaining explosive bullets towards a group of trainees cowering on the ground, and switched back to normal bullets with a private sigh of relief. Explosive bullets could be more dangerous to the shooter than the target at times. The remaining resistance fighters were already falling back amidst the civilians, or concealing their weapons as they moved away from the scene. A handful were still shooting at a pair of trainees who, with more training than Edward had anticipated, were shooting back at them from cover. One of the resistance fighters threw a grenade at them and killed them both before they could escape, or encourage the others to join the fight. If there were any survivors among the trainees, or the media, they were lying low and probably cursing their very distinctive uniforms.

  “Keep moving,” he snapped, at one of the younger gang members. The boy – he couldn’t be more than seventeen years old – was still shooting towards the media. There hadn’t been time to cure the gang members of all their bad habits; he was spraying and praying, not firing short precise bursts. “Come on!”

  An alien craft materialised overhead, already expelling hundreds of Orcs down towards the scene below. A couple of resistance fighters opened fire on them, trying to kill them before they hit the ground, but only a pair of aliens died. The remainder hit the ground and came up shooting, firing at resistance fighters, policemen and civilians indiscriminately. Edward saw a policeman empty his gun into one of the aliens before the alien’s friends killed him with a single shot. The remaining policemen were firing desperately at the aliens, who were hunting them and the civilians down. Edward wanted to stay and fight, to help them hold off the aliens, but it was hopeless. The aliens, deprived of their main collaborator, seemed intent on throwing awa
y everything he’d built. It showed a chilling lack of concern for human life. Other alien craft were arriving, unloading additional warriors…

  Edward took one final look and started running, concealing the Uzi under his coat. If the aliens hadn’t seen him clearly, they might not know who he was, or who the other resistance fighters were. They’d all gone through the sanitation process before leaving their base, making sure that they weren't carrying any ID and remaining off the alien system, but they’d have to move the base anyway. If one of the fighters had been wounded, rather than killed, he’d talk. The aliens would convert him into one of the Walking Dead and task him with tracking down his former allies. It was, he felt, cheating. The aliens didn’t play fair.

  Behind him, the sound of weapons fire, both human and alien, was dying down. He hoped that that meant that they hadn’t killed everyone, including unarmed civilians, but there was no way to know and he feared the worst. The story would make good propaganda for the resistance, whatever had happened, and warn the aliens that they couldn’t count on unconverted policemen. Or perhaps they’d just start turning them all into the Walking Dead…no, that couldn’t happen. If they could convert people on such a scale, they’d have done it by now and won the war.

  Afterwards, back at the base, he reviewed the losses. The Mayor was dead, along with at least ten Walking Dead and an unknown number of reporters. Seventeen resistance fighters had been killed, out of thirty. He rubbed his head as he checked the final reports. It almost felt as if it were worth it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chicago/Washington DC, USA (Occupied)

  Day 116

  “Look what the terrorists did to our city!”

  Abigail looked down on a scene of total devastation. It wasn't as vast and impersonal as part of Washington, where the massive alien command ship had crashed, but somehow that made it worse. Dead bodies were scattered everywhere, human and alien, some of them mutilated or torn apart. She heard one of her fellow reporters being sick in the background as the wind shifted and blew the cloying stench of dead bodies towards them. She knew what dead humans smelled like, if they were given any chance to decay at all, but it was mixed in with an alien scent. She caught sight of green blood dripping from a dead alien – somehow, it hadn’t clotted as human blood would have done – and looked away as she felt her gorge rising in her throat. The entire area had been devastated.

  The aliens had rounded her and a dozen other reporters up barely an hour ago, transporting them on one of their transport craft – it had looked rather like a flying saucer, to Abigail’s private amusement – to Chicago. The flight had taken only nine minutes and the ground had gone past so fast she’d wondered at the lack of any acceleration. Two of the reporters had fainted when they realised just what had happened and had been unceremoniously left in the transport to face the heat later. The others had been marched through Chicago to view the scene of the attack first hand. It wasn't a pleasant sight.

  She had never been to Chicago before, nor did she have any particular feelings for it, but the devastation was almost as bad as what had happened in Washington. It was clear that Chicago had an active insurgency – or perhaps ongoing gang warfare, or both – underway, costing the aliens and their collaborators dearly. She’d seen a pair of Quislings, men wearing alien uniforms, staring down at the damage with shocked expressions. They had to know that the resistance had targeted them. All Quislings were targets, according to the underground newssheets being distributed around the internet and the world. None of them could relax for a moment.

  The Mayor of Chicago wouldn’t be able to benefit from the lesson, for he was very clearly dead. Whoever had fired on him had hated him – no one could have inflicted that kind of damage without some degree of feeling being involved – and they’d blown his body apart beyond recovery, even by alien medical science. Abigail had had to write a handful of puff pieces about how the alien doctors had helped blind children to see again and wheelchair-bound adults to walk again, yet she was sure that their technology couldn’t put the Mayor back together, even if they considered it worth the effort. Shooting him down in the midst of a ceremony was a rather unambiguous demand for a recall election, unnecessary now.

  But the resistance hadn’t stopped with the Mayor. Judging from the devastation, there had been at least twenty fighters in the crowd and they’d gunned down trainee Order Policemen and Walking Dead with abandon, before fading away as alien reinforcements arrived. She doubted that the Order Police would get many recruits from Chicago now – the news was all over the city – which meant that the aliens would have real problems controlling the human population, unless they brought in additional warriors or starved the population to death. They had most of the city in a total lockdown and no one could escape, unless they used underground tunnels. Had the aliens deduced their existence and moved to shut them down, or did they simply not care? Every time she thought that she had figured out the aliens, they did something to remind her that they were alien.

  She looked over towards the bodies of some of the policemen – the Chicago Policemen, not the dead trainees – and blinked in surprise. She was no expert in wounds, but the policeman didn’t look as if bullets had killed him. She’d learned, years ago, that bullets actually inflicted much less damage than the movies suggested and it was quite possible for even seemingly fatal wounds to be survivable. There were no bullet holes marring the policeman’s chest, but a dark cauterised wound that had clearly burned through his body. She’d seen such wounds before. Alien weapons fired bursts of superheated plasma at their targets and they inflicted such damage. The aliens had killed the policeman…

  Abigail found herself composing a story in her head, one that would never go out on any of the official news broadcasts. The policeman might have been working for the resistance, or he might have been working for the aliens – and they’d gunned him down anyway. It suggested that they didn’t really care about human collaborators, even the ones who worked for them willingly, regarding them as expandable assets. There was no way to know the truth, but as the story practically wrote itself in her head, she realised that it didn’t matter. It would be a legend to inspire resistance. Accuracy was not important. The policeman – she didn’t even know his name – would be branded as an unwilling collaborator, trying to keep his people safe, only to be killed by his new masters for failure. It would serve as a warning to all others who were trying to walk the same tightrope; the aliens might turn on them at any moment. The story wouldn’t be published officially, but there were ways and means. She had had a hand in inventing most of them.

  Overcome by an impulse she didn’t recognise, she bent down and closed the dead policeman’s eyes, overcoming her revulsion at the thought of touching a dead body. Glancing around to ensure that none of the aliens, or her fellow reporters, had seen the odd gesture, she straightened up and followed the minders as they showed the reporters the bodies of innocent civilians caught up in the attack. The minder was one of the Walking Dead and it showed. He didn’t seem to have noticed that most of the women and children in the pile had clearly been killed by alien weapons, not human guns. Even the ones who had been killed by gunshots looked to have been scarred by alien weapons, suggesting that some of the Order Police had fired on them, rather than the resistance. Her dead policeman became even more of a hero. Had he fired on the aliens to prevent a massacre? The truth didn’t matter. By the end of the week, everyone would believe that he had done his duty and died heroically.

  “The terrorists were tracked down by warriors and finally exterminated in a pitched battle,” the minder continued. Abigail didn’t know him personally, but she could recognise the type from a mile away. He might or might not know what he was talking about. He would know that it was his duty to spin the facts in favour of his superiors and that he had to keep the press away from any odd, inconvenient or embarrassing fact. His new loyalty to the aliens would give him enough clout to have any reporter who publicly dissented from
the party line locked up or executed, if not converted into one of the Walking Dead. “Their supporters fled and will be tracked down and executed within the week.”

  Abigail would have preferred to go home to bed, but the minder insisted on showing them the scene of several battles, all crawling with aliens. Some of the aliens weren't Warriors, or Leaders, but new types, alien castes she hadn’t seen before. A handful looked like crosses between Warriors and Leaders, others looked as if they were soft and cuddly. They seemed to swarm everywhere, working quickly to clear the area of everything, human and alien alike. She found herself staring at them and had to be encouraged along by another reporter. The small aliens worked with a speed and will that seemed utterly inhuman, even to her. There had been thousands of reports of little grey aliens kidnapping people from their homes. If the worker aliens had been seen in bad light, they could have passed for the Greys. Everyone knew, now, that the aliens had been performing research on human captives at the South Pole. No one knew why.

  The smaller alien caste seemed to come in hundreds of different shapes and forms. They were all roughly humanoid, but their heads, eyes and even hands were different, with some clearly being built for heavy lifting and others for very delicate work. A handful had cyborg implants inserted into their bodies, or had even replaced their hands or limbs with metal tools, without regard for human sensibilities. Abigail hated to think about the public outcry if humans had started to replace their arms and legs with ugly mechanical counterparts, but perhaps the aliens didn’t care. They also seemed to have no sexual dimorphism. Around a third of the workers, she was sure, were female. She wasn't sure how she knew – perhaps it was female intuition – but there were differences. They just weren't as obvious as breasts and thighs.