Outside Context Problem: Book 02 - Under Foot

by Christopher Nuttall

  The aliens were through playing games and it showed. Thousands of alien warriors had joined the Arabs and the Order Police, pushing in towards the Lake…and trapping the resistance against the impassable water barrier. The alien craft floating over the water silently blocked any hope of escape. The warriors rarely bothered to check ID any longer, let alone their human opponents. Anyone they caught in the area was lucky to be taken prisoner. He’d allowed most of the non-combatants to surrender after the assault had begun – he would have had a riot on his hands if he’d insisted that they stay – and the aliens were starting to shoot all humans on sight. A handful of resistance fighters had even launched suicide bombers against the aliens – they’d taken to ordering surrendering humans to strip naked, just to insure that there were no explosives strapped to their chests.

  Another series of explosions echoed out, suppressing another of the resistance mortars that had been moved from place to place, throwing a handful of shells at the alien positions before it was hastily moved again. He hoped that the team manning the weapon had gotten away in time, but as the aliens advanced, their counter-battery skills improved rapidly. They’d been learning, all right, learning how best to tackle the next city that decided to rise in rebellion. Who cared about the atrocity the Order Police had committed in Virginia? Chicago had given birth to a thousand atrocities on both sides! He saw a series of moving vehicles on the ground and winced. Alien tanks were tougher than anything Americans had built, armoured with plating that could absorb all, but the luckiest of hits, and they hovered just above the ground. The messages they’d received from the wider world had asked them to try to recover part of an alien tank if they had a chance, but the aliens had rapidly learned to ensure that their tanks were escorted by ground-pounding infantry, keeping humans away from the few vulnerable points. Very few humans survived long enough to get into position to launch a missile. Even a Javelin exploded harmlessly against an alien tank’s forward armour. Only the rear was even slightly vulnerable.

  He watched grimly as one of the small turrets on the armoured hedgehog swung around, unleashing a series of brilliant plasma blasts into a nearby building. The explosions shook the building violently and nearly sent it crashing to the ground. He hoped that the resistance fighters who had dared to provoke the armoured vehicle had had the sense to fire their weapons and then run, but he doubted that even a squad of Marines could have escaped in time. The aliens didn’t play fair. Buildings that could have stood up to machine gun fire and missile hits couldn’t stand up to bursts of superheated plasma. He blinked the afterimages away from his eyes and cursed under his breath. Within five days, perhaps less, Chicago would fall.

  A group of alien warriors advanced towards an unsecured building and checked it out with their handheld sensors. Edward privately envied them for that particular piece of technology, for it would have saved thousands of American lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and places where few Americans realised their fighting men had served. The sensors sampled the air for residue that suggested the presence of guns or explosives, and then alerted the user at once. They never seemed to get it wrong, although there had been some odd incidents. The aliens had almost allowed one of the resistance’s bomb makers to slip through their hands. If he hadn’t been carrying a handful of tools with him, he might have escaped entirely.

  The aliens paused and waved the Arabs forward first. They looked like dead men walking – not Walking Dead – and clearly suspected that they were being sent in to detonate any traps before the aliens stepped inside. Some of them glanced at the aliens in ways that suggested they were on the verge of mutiny, but none of them dared to resist or disagree with their alien masters. Edward didn’t blame them. The reports from the few Arabs the resistance had taken prisoner – and then killed – had told him that the Arabs were kept under strict tight discipline. The aliens were quite prepared to kill them if they stepped out of line. The Arabs who operated without alien supervision were on the verge of collapsing into a disorganised mass.

  Edward flinched as the first bomb detonated, shattering the building and bringing the roof down on top of the Arabs. The former housing block had been completely wrecked, transformed into a pile of rubble, leaving the aliens themselves completely untouched. The alien leader – he was starting to recognise senior alien warriors as crosses between Leaders and Warriors – seemed to make a hand gesture to the other warriors and moved on to the next building, a giant shopping mall. Once, it had allowed men and women to spend as much money as they liked, but now…now it was just another possible trap. The sign nearby exploded as one of the aliens moved too close, knocking a pair of aliens to the ground. They both appeared stunned, but unhurt. It was very good body armour.

  “Bastards,” Edward muttered. He wished for a sniper rifle, but he’d only brought his pistol and a belt of grenades. “Damn you.”

  He turned and slid down the drainpipe to the ground. He’d have to get back to the base before the aliens secured control of the roads and made escape impossible, except through the tunnels. If they continued…he didn’t want to think about retreat, but if he could save as many resistance fighters as possible, they’d be useful elsewhere. The basic primer on insurgency warfare had been simple enough. Where the enemy is strong, it had said, do not attack. Attack where the enemy is weak and force them to disperse their resources trying to hunt you down. If Chicago had to fall, it didn’t mean that the resistance had to accept defeat.

  No one was in sight as he touched down on the pavement, but he drew his pistol and moved from side to side anyway, watching for signs of a possible threat. The resistance fighters might mistake him for an enemy, the aliens might correctly identify him as an enemy, or one of the gangs of looters might decide to have a go at him. With the police off the streets, the aliens closing in and the resistance being hammered, the looters had returned to the streets. Edward had shot several of them personally and given orders that others were to be shot on sight, but they were like cockroaches. They sprang up like dragon’s teeth.

  The ground shook as yet another explosion blasted out over the city. He turned and saw a massive fireball rising into the air. Someone had placed a bomb in the aliens’ path and detonated it at the right moment. If it had killed enough aliens, perhaps they would step back and give the resistance some extra time. Or maybe the horse would learn to sing.

  Shaking his head, he hurried on towards the base.

  ***

  I don’t want to die, Mathew Boyd thought, clutching a rifle in his hand as he stared towards the west. The small resistance unit had been told to take up position at one end of the shopping mall – among a collection of artificial plants and robot animals – and ambush the aliens when they burst in and searched the place. In happier days, Mathew had brought some of his girlfriends to the mall, where he’d spoilt them by buying lingerie and jewels. Girls were more willing to put out, he’d discovered very quickly, if they were treated well, and an expensive gift and a good meal would go a long way towards turning a girl on. His status as his school’s prime football player – and his prospects towards a college football scholarship – had cemented his position. He’d never considered joining the military. Why should he have? Any fool could use a weapon and the last thing Mama Boyd’s little boy wanted was to have his legs blown off. How could he play football without his legs?

  And then the aliens had landed, and then Chicago had become a war zone, and then he’d discovered that all of his classmates were signing up with the resistance. How could he refuse to join them, they’d asked; he’d been a tough guy at school. He remembered pushing one of the nerds into the drinking fountain for some imagined slight and how much he’d laughed at the time. It didn’t seem so funny now. That nerd had taken his rifle with far more assurance than Mathew had shown and walked off to be a sniper. It might even have been Mathew’s fault that the nerd had been such a good shot. God knew that he had given the poor bastard incentive to learn how to kill.

  “Remember, don
’t shoot until I give the word,” the Sergeant said. He’d been in a genuine military unit and had seen through Mathew at once. His bluff and bluster had been useless when he’d been confronted by a short man who could have broken him in half with ease, who’d told him in no uncertain terms to shut up and listen. He might have learned something. “If anyone fires before I give the command, I’ll cut the bastard’s balls off.”

  Mathew believed him. His father, a high-priced lawyer, had always gotten him out of trouble before. Now…his father was gone, perhaps serving the aliens as a collaborator, perhaps dead and lying in a mass grave somewhere. He would have collaborated if he’d been given half the chance, but there always seemed to be someone nearby, keeping an eye on him. Did they suspect that he was a coward inside – the realisation didn’t come easily, but it had come – or was he merely being paranoid? His hands felt cold and sweaty as he clutched the rifle. A single mistake would damn him forever.

  He heard a shattering sound from somewhere ahead and braced himself, gritting his teeth together to avoid whimpering out loud. The mall seemed dark and eerie, even with bright sunlight blazing down towards the direction the aliens – they hoped – would come from. Perhaps it would blind them long enough to allow the humans to get in a shot or two before they all died…he almost started to shake at that thought. He peered down the line of shops – all closed and looted now – into the distance. Was he imagining it, or were there dark shapes advancing towards them? He felt a warm trickle in his pants, and then a rush of shame. No one had ever lost control and wet their pants in combat, he was mortally certain. Only him. The Sergeant and the nerd would laugh their heads off at him. The girl he’d been bedding in-between football games would giggle and tell all of her friends. He would be a laughing stock.

  They can see us, he thought, as a new wave of near-panic bubbled up in his mind. He couldn’t believe that they were invisible, even though the Sergeant had promised them that they would get the advantage of surprise, and the thought made him shake again. His entire body was trembling so badly that he was surprised that no one could hear it. He couldn’t hold himself together. The aliens were going to kill him and the Sergeant was going to kill him and the aliens were going to kill him and…

  He pulled the trigger down and held it down as blind panic consumed him, firing a spray of bullets towards the aliens. The aliens seemed completely surprised, but without precise targeting most of his bullets either missed or pinged off their body armour. They dropped to the ground and started to fire back, brilliant flashes of red and green that seemed to light up the entire mall before they raced over his head and smashed into the rear wall.

  “Boyd, you fucking asshole,” the Sergeant hissed. Mathew realised, in horror, that he was right. He’d gotten them all killed, for nothing. “Fire! All of you fire!”

  The noise rapidly became deafening as Mathew tried to change the clip. The resistance had hoped to give the aliens a bloody nose, except the aliens had been engaged too early and had had a chance to react. They crawled forward, their weapons fire burning through the fake plants and animals, starting fires all around the resistance position. Mathew felt the last remnants of his mind snap and he stood up, trying to flee. It was already too late. A burst of green light struck him right in the chest and blew his body apart.

  ***

  Dolly watched from her vantage point as the aliens invested the mall, systematically isolating the handful of resistance fighters and wearing them down, before crushing them like bugs. The mall itself was starting to burn, but the aliens seemed to be relentless, determined to destroy their enemies personally. She’d seen enough alien warriors through her scope to realise that they showed their emotions more openly than other alien castes…and these warriors were angry. It didn’t seem to affect their performance. They came, they saw, they cut their way through the resistance and destroyed them, leaving a handful of survivors to flee to the next strong point.

  She moved her scope from target to target, looking for a senior officer among the aliens. It wasn't easy, but she’d finally realised that the senior warriors tended to have bigger heads than the more mundane warriors, along with a handful of other differences. They didn’t look quite as intimidating as the mainline warriors, but they made up for it in skill and intelligence. They had been bred, she’d been told, to be the perfect commanders. They never panicked, they rarely allowed themselves to be bullied into making mistakes and they were obeyed without question. And they were considered expendable. A source on the far side of the wall had told them that the aliens had been furious about losing one of their leaders to a sniper – she’d taken the shot personally – yet she’d killed warrior-leaders before and the aliens hadn’t seemed concerned. It was just another mystery surrounding the aliens. If she kept looking…

  There, she thought. One of the aliens was very definitely a warrior-leader. He or she – she had never been able to tell the difference between the two sexes at a distance – was calmly issuing orders, bringing up a replacement unit of Arabs and ordering them to secure the area while the warriors moved on to other targets. Or so she thought. Lip-reading had never been her speciality even before aliens had landed and the world turned upside down. She focused her scope on the alien and started to squeeze the trigger gently. The last thing she needed was to be mesmerised for a second time.

  The rifle fired once and she saw the alien collapse. She pulled herself to her feet as a hail of brilliant plasma flashes raced over her head and dived for the emergency chute. She realised – too late – that she had committed the cardinal sin of sniper-hood; she’d loitered too close to the enemy ground forces. If she didn’t move very quickly, they’d block all of her escape routes before she could escape. If she was lucky…

  She came out of the escape chute and raced for the exit, drawing her pistol as she moved. It was just possible that she could sell her life dearly if she was caught. The door burst open just before she reached it and three Arab men burst in, coming right at her. She levelled her pistol at the leader, only to have it knocked from her hand and lost somewhere in the darkness before she could pull the trigger. The leader knocked her to the ground, slapped the side of her head hard enough to stun her, and started to pull down her pants. She tried to kick out, only to be slapped again and have her hands wrenched behind her back and secured with a plastic tie. His hands roamed over her body, grasping her breasts hard enough to make her scream as he positioned himself for entry. The other men gathered around, shouting encouragement and awaiting their turn. She closed her eyes, trying to block it all out. It wasn't happening, it wasn't happening to her…

  The rapes lasted for bare minutes, but she was still shaking hours later.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chicago, USA (Occupied)

  Day 164

  “Here he comes again,” Sergeant Andrew Ramage muttered, as the alien craft banked over Chicago and headed back towards the city. The oddly-shaped craft had been keeping his kids – the small group of teenagers he’d tried to turn into fighters – up for the past few nights. It was a simple trick and one that none of the resistance fighters had anticipated. Had the aliens thought of it, or had it been one of the Walking Dead?

  “Yes, sir,” the kid said. Andrew had given up trying to get them to stop calling him ‘sir.’ He was a positive role model for kids who had often grown up in single-parent families – their fathers having left them, or died, or never even known that they had a kid – and so he was ‘sir.’ It broke his heart to see how badly the children had been abandoned. They needed a strong father figure, someone who could keep them out of the gangs or jail. By the time they became adults, most of them would have a criminal record longer than his arm. They had never had a chance. “We’re ready.”

  “Keep your weapons on safety until I give the command,” Andrew said. The alien craft was drawing closer, mocking them, howling over the city even as it seemed to drift effortlessly through the air. His older brother, who had become an aviation engin
eer, would have loved to get a look inside the alien craft and see what made it tick. No one, as far as he knew, had even begun to figure out how the alien tech went together. “We’ll want to get out of here as soon as I fire the missile.”

  Andrew had once served in an Air Defence Artillery unit and he’d been recalled for the war, before the unit had disbanded and scattered to join the resistance. He’d seen enough of the alien craft to know how they flew and how they could best be surprised and destroyed. They were fast and nimble, yet they had limits. If he was lucky, he'd have a chance to bring one of them down before it was too late and Chicago became a death trap. He glanced over the city and winced at the billowing clouds of smoke rising up from a hundred locations. It was already a death trap. Someone had detonated a massive bomb in the Green Zone and wrecked the collaborator infrastructure, what was left of it. He liked to think that one of the Order Police had had an epiphany and realised that he was on the wrong side, but there was no way to know for sure. For all he knew, someone had dug a tunnel under the secure zone, packed it full of gunpowder, and lit the fuse from a safe distance.

  “Yes, sir,” the kid said. “We’ll be ready.”

  Andrew frowned inwardly – he couldn’t remember having been so young and trusting himself – before he hefted the Stinger missile and activated the sensor mounted on the launcher. The batteries never lasted very long – an enterprising engineer had managed to adapt an alien battery to power human equipment, but there weren't enough to waste on a SAM – but they would be long enough. The trick was timing the launch. Too early and the craft would veer away; too late and the craft would power up its engines and go hypersonic, leaving the missile behind. It would probably lock onto one of the fires and come down hard in the midst of devastation.

  The tone sounded and he pulled the trigger. The roar of the launcher echoed in his ears as the missile lanced up towards its target, leaving a trail of fire and smoke behind. He watched – he couldn’t have taken his eyes off it – as the missile struck the surprised alien craft and sent it flipping over and down into a nearby building. The building crumpled like paper as the craft crashed, shattering into a pile of bricks, glass and debris. He threw himself to the ground in fear that the craft would explode, before picking himself up and running for the ladders. They had to get out of the area before the aliens responded to the new threat.