Outside Context Problem: Book 02 - Under Foot

by Christopher Nuttall

  Kalid recognised it as the opening round and smiled inwardly. “First things first,” he said. “Is this place secure?”

  “If it wasn't, I would have been put in front of the crowds at chop-chop square and beheaded,” his grandfather said, dryly. He was referring to the area used for public executions. The criminals – or people accused of crimes they hadn’t committed – were killed in front of the watching crowds. “Your generation always thinks that us old men were only born yesterday. It’s really quite amusing when you think you invented sex!”

  He snorted. The Religious Police tried their hardest to prevent young Saudis from engaging in illicit sex, but they had only limited success. Young men used cell phones to talk to young women, perhaps even meet up with them for a brief encounter. They sometimes did everything, but actual penetrative sex. A young woman found not to be a virgin on her wedding night would be lucky if she was only beaten and divorced. Young males often crossed the causeway to Bahrain and spent days drinking, dancing and pursuing orgasmic release with the whores there. The spectacle of young males drunk for the first time was not for the faint of heart.

  “I know what I'm doing,” his grandfather assured him. “What are you doing?”

  Kalid paused to gather his thoughts. His grandfather had been involved with a very covert plan to launch a coup against the Saudi Government and the clerics alike, one that would have transformed Saudi into a modern state – or at least one that had a better future than religious war and genocide. They'd been carefully laying their plans when the aliens invaded, destroyed the previous government and the clerics alike, leaving them alone against an army of quislings. He wouldn’t be given to taking chances on even vague promises from London. No one in the region believed Western promises, even if there were boots on the ground backing them up.

  “You had contacts among the army, but those contacts have been destroyed,” he said, finally. Intelligence suggested that any surviving Saudi soldiers would be in camps and therefore out of reach. After the American resistance had punched open several camps, the aliens had tightened security on the remaining camps in North Africa and the Middle East. An attempt by Algerian resistance fighters to liberate their comrades had resulted in a bloody slaughter. “You may have young men and women who are willing to fight, but they need training and equipment. We can supply you with both.”

  “There are possible benefits to be had from cooperating with the aliens,” his grandfather countered. “I could assist them and gain power and influence that way.”

  Kalid recognised the underlying question. “Grandfather…the world has changed,” he said. “If the Iraqis or Iranians or Americans had invaded, you would have something to bargain with. You would have something they needed. They wouldn’t be coming with the intention of staying forever. This is an alien force intent on occupying the entire world for the rest of time. At best, humans would be second-class citizens on our own world. At worst, we’d be exterminated. What do you have to bargain with that stands against that?”

  He learned forward. “You know that Saudi produces nothing the aliens need, even oil,” he added. “As far as they are concerned, the vast empty space of the Arabian Desert is just what they need for a home. They’ve been landing vast numbers of their settlers in North Africa and it won’t be long before they start expanding over here. What does your country have that makes keeping you around worthwhile? What’s to stop them simply burning down your cities and exterminating you like rats?”

  It was the worst-case scenario, but it sounded horrifyingly possible. For all they knew, the aliens regarded genocide as a perfectly viable tactic. Faced with resistance in an area they barely needed, they might decide to simply remove the human population. It boded ill for Washington and most of the other occupied cities, yet they had factories and businesses that the aliens could put to work for them. Saudi had very little industry and none of it was worth much aggravation.

  “The scorpions might tell them to exterminate us all,” his grandfather mused. It took Kalid a moment to realise that he meant the quislings, the guest workers. That, too, was terrifyingly possible. The guest workers hated their former masters. Their new masters treated them far better. “They might get what they wanted.”

  “They might,” Kalid agreed. He pressed his advantage. “You called us and insisted on a meeting here. I don’t think that selling the two of us out would get you very far and I think you know it as well. You want to resist them and we can help. What do you want, Grandfather?”

  His grandfather smiled. “We want our women and children moved out of the country,” he said, finally. Kalid made careful note of the ‘we.’ “Can your superiors do that?”

  Kalid hesitated. The blunt truth was that they couldn’t all be moved to Britain. If it had been logistically possible, they wouldn’t have been welcomed. Jordan was still clinging to some semblance of civilisation, but they wouldn’t want a few hundred Saudi refugees either. There were plenty of smugglers working the coastlines of North Africa who might agree to smuggle them out of the area, but where would they go? Anywhere that might take them would hardly be safe, unless…

  “We might be able to take them somewhere safe, if only for a short period of time,” he said, finally. It would require some careful planning and, at bottom, it would be a significant risk. “How many are we talking about?”

  “Several hundred in all,” his grandfather said. “Can you move that many?”

  “We’ll have to see,” Kalid said. “Now, about your people…”

  ***

  His grandfather had offered them separate suites, but Kalid had insisted that they share a room. Gavin had wondered aloud if it had been his mother’s room when she was a child, causing Kalid to laugh bitterly. His mother’s room would have been in the female side of the house – there were limits to how liberal his grandfather could be with the Religious Police breathing down his neck – and no males would be allowed entry, except perhaps her brothers. She’d had four of them, two had gone into business, one had left the country and vanished somewhere, and the fourth had become a cleric. He’d been killed in a drone strike against a terrorist complex two years ago. It was just possible that Kalid himself had called in the drone strike, but he preferred not to think about that. It hardly mattered to him.

  Gavin made a set of symbols with his hands. His grandfather might be friendly, but they were in enemy territory. The room was probably bugged. Kalid read the SAS sign language with the ease of long experience. Can he be trusted?

  I think so, Kalid signed back. His father had warned him to be careful of his grandfather, although he’d thought that they’d never meet. The old man, he’d said, was terrifyingly smart. He doesn’t benefit from turning us over to the aliens.

  Hell of a gamble, Gavin confirmed. What do we do if he does betray us?

  We kill him and we get the hell out of here, back to the sub, Kalid signalled. It wasn't something he wanted to dwell on, but if the universe had been fair, there would have been no need for the SAS or any other armed force. Get ready for dinner. After food, we start preparing for action.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Washington DC, USA (Occupied)

  Day 125

  “Don’t mention this to anyone,” Jasmine said, “but take a look at this.”

  She handed Karen a sheaf of papers, roughly stapled together by someone in a hurry. The top sheet was marked Committees of Correspondence: The Voice of America and included a dramatic picture of an old-style soldier from the War of Independence stabbing an alien warrior with a bayonet. The underlying blurb included a list of names that were clearly assumed, ranging from John Henry to Wilkes. She opened the sheaf and read the first story. It spoke at great length about a policeman who had lost his life trying to prevent the aliens from gunning down helpless civilians.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said. She was in a good position to know that most of the official news statements were nothing more than bullshit, at best. Daisy was a firm belie
ver in giving people only what she wanted them to hear and now that she controlled Public Relations, she had all the power she needed to shape public opinion. “Where did you get this?”

  “It was sent around in the mail this morning,” Jasmine said. Karen could work out the implications for herself. Someone in the Green Zone – apart from her, of course – was working for the resistance. She looked at Jasmine and found her look returned by polite incomprehension, although she was sure that there was more to the maid than a pretty face. Perhaps she was distributing the underground newspaper to remind the collaborators that there was a whole other world out there beyond the walls. “I heard that they were transmitted over the internet and printed out wherever…”

  Karen smiled. The days when only a handful of newspapers could print newsletters were long over. Thousands upon thousands of people had access to printers and photocopiers, so making thousands of copies of a document published over the internet wouldn’t take very long at all. The only dangerous bit would be distributing them around the city, but with a little care they could either avoid being caught or pass the task on to street children, who would be happy to help in exchange for sweets or a little food for their families. The aliens might catch any number of them without growing any closer to the true culprits.

  Daisy’s going to shit a brick, she thought, as she skimmed through the remainder of the paper. Some of the stories looked exaggerated or made-up – just because it was published by the resistance didn’t mean that it was all true – yet others were horrifyingly plausible. One story covered men and women forced off their land in Flyover Country, driven away to make room for the mass expansion of alien colony settlements on American soil. Daisy had been told, in no uncertain terms, to make no reference to alien settlements at all in the daily broadcasts, even if it was an issue of vital importance. She would faint when she saw the underground newspaper. She wouldn’t even be able to put out her own version of the truth to counter it.

  She finished reading the paper and closed it, before handing it back to Jasmine. Keeping it with her was simply too great a risk. Daisy might trust her implicitly, but the aliens wouldn’t trust anyone who wasn’t one of the Walking Dead. They might decide to search her room at any moment, or they might order one of the maids to search for them, or…there were too many possibilities and she knew better than to take risks. Now that she was sending information out of the Green Zone to the President, she had to remain in place for as long as possible.

  It helped that there was no easy way out of Washington. She’d considered the problem and even researched it, but the only official way out of the city was through an alien blockade or on one of their transports, and both were blocked to her. She was sure that there were tunnels and sewers under the city, but she hadn’t known where they were in San Francisco, let alone Washington. Someone who had lived in the city all their life might not know either. It wasn't something the average person bothered to find out. The President’s last email had promised that the resistance would try to find a way out for her if she was discovered, but she didn’t place much faith in that promise. How could they help her at such a distance? The only option she seemed to have was to prepare for suicide at a moment’s notice, yet she wasn't even sure how to do that!

  She looked up at Jasmine and noticed the bruise for the first time. “What happened to your eye?”

  Jasmine winced. “One of the men down the corridor thought that I wasn’t being cooperative enough,” she said, rubbing the darkening skin. Something in her eyes told Karen not to push any further. “He decided that I needed a lesson in manners.”

  “I’m sorry,” Karen said. Ideas ran through her head. She could badmouth the person who’d hurt Jasmine to Daisy, or to the aliens themselves. She could manipulate the information going in and out of the computer system to suggest that that particular collaborator was untrustworthy and deserving of a bullet in the back of the head, or at the very least conversion into one of the Walking Dead. All of the possibilities risked drawing attention to her and that could prove fatal. “I wish…I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah,” Jasmine said. Now Karen knew to look for it, she could see that Jasmine was having trouble moving without pain. “I'll just take longer each morning to do your hair, all right?”

  Karen nodded angrily. She still found the idea of servants who did everything for her creepy. It wasn't likely, but she had a mental vision of herself dissolving into a fat ugly blob while servants took care of her every need and want. Some of the collaborators in the building were already running to fat, but she was determined not to become like them. If she did have to run for her life, she’d need to be healthy and fit.

  “You’re welcome to do everything you think I need,” she said, reluctantly. She took one last look at the underground newspaper before Jasmine hid it somewhere in her bag of equipment. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” Jasmine countered. “Take care of yourself.”

  It wasn't until Jasmine was out of the door and she was alone that Karen started to shake. The final page of the underground newspaper had included a list of collaborators. It wasn't a complete list – it wasn't the list she’d sent to the President – but it included several very familiar names. They included Dave Howery, Daisy Fairchild…and Karen herself. The writer had drawn no distinction between the normal willing collaborators, the Walking Dead, and people who were slipping information to the resistance. He had concluded by urging every American to take a shot at a collaborator whenever they had the chance. She might be shot by someone who didn’t know that she was on the same side!

  Perhaps they think they’re doing me a favour, she thought. She hadn’t signed her real name to the documents she’d sent the President, but it wouldn’t require much intelligence to deduce the identity of Deep Throat. The President might have kept it to himself or only shared the details with his most trusted allies, yet with the Walking Dead conversion process, could anyone be trusted to keep a secret? Dave Howery had started life as a patriotic soldier, willing to lay down his life for America. Now he served her enemies, bringing all his considerable experience and competence to the task of crushing resistance in his own country. She wished, not for the first or last time, that he had listened to her. An ally in such a high place would have been useful.

  She picked herself up off the bed and checked out her appearance in the mirror. She looked stunning, in her own opinion, thanks to Jasmine and expensive cosmetics she’d never been able to afford before. She’d wanted to wear her normal working clothes, but Daisy had insisted that she wore only expensive business suits and enough perfume to suffocate a mouse. Karen had wondered if Daisy was trying to subtly annoy the aliens, yet if the aliens noticed, they didn’t seem to care. She was sure that about half the aliens she’d seen were female, but if they wore perfume or revealing clothes to attract mates, she’d seen no sign of it. For all she knew, the aliens only mated at a certain time of the year and otherwise had no interest in sex at all.

  The hotel had more permanent residents these days, even though several hundred had been farmed out to other buildings in Washington, or transported to administrative centres in several other cities. Mayor Hundred of New York – who’d welcomed the aliens to the city back when they’d come to address the United Nations – had vanished into the underground, along with most of his administration, and the aliens had had to set up a collaborative authority from scratch. It wasn't easy. A resistance fighter with a weird sense of humour had rigged up the mayoral chair in New York to blow when someone sat on it, vaporising the unlucky collaborator who’d sat down on it first. Others fired on collaborator policemen and Order Police, or left IEDs scattered around the area, just to discourage the aliens from acting rapidly. Daisy’s broadcasts had offered a vast amount of food and supplies to the person who handed Mayor Hundred over to the aliens, but so far no one had come forward and tipped them off. Anyone would think that they didn’t like the aliens.

  She stepped into the War Room and nodde
d to Daisy, standing on the other side of a large map of a city. She didn’t recognise it at all until she saw CHICAGO written at the bottom of the map. Someone had been drawing on it with a marker pen, outlining the Green Zone and marking the location of resistance attacks, IED strikes and other incidents. It didn’t take her long to realise that the active resistance in Chicago was more active than she’d been led to believe, even by the underground newspaper.

  “The situation has become intolerable,” Daisy said, angrily. She was glaring down at the map, as if an act of will could force it into showing a better picture. “We lost nineteen of our allies in the last four days!”

  General Howery looked up at her. “What exactly did you expect?” He asked, coldly. One of the curses of being one of the Walking Dead, Karen had deduced, was that anything that might have prevented you giving good advice – self-preservation or regulations – was ignored. General Howery couldn’t help himself. He had to be loyal to the aliens in more than just name. “We killed over a hundred civilians and several policemen.”

  “The insurgents killed the civilians,” Daisy countered sharply. “We cannot be blamed for their decision to stage an attack in the heart of a crowd.”

  “And how else did you expect them to act?” General Howery said. “The Mayor of Chicago was a priority target for them, a much-disliked figure at the best of times, only holding his office because he was a master at manipulating local politics. He would probably not have survived the next election even if the People hadn’t arrived to reshape the world. They had a window of opportunity and jumped right through it.”

  His voice hardened. “And then the Order Police opened fire on civilians and the real policemen moved to stop them,” he added. “You must know that the police – most of the police – weren't following orders because they loved the thought of working for the People. They were following orders because they believed that it was the only way to prevent a disaster. The Warriors are not suited to patrolling civilian streets and keeping down criminal gangs. They’re a blunt instrument to be used to hammer anything that comes out into the open. We needed the policemen to cooperate willingly. The policemen who were killed by the warriors…they ensured that most of the police will no longer cooperate.”