Outside Context Problem: Book 03 - The Slightest Hope of Victory

by Christopher Nuttall

  Unlike the other girls he'd known, Karen was surprisingly quick in the shower – but then, they’d had sex in the midst of the enemy camp. If anyone realised that Karen had used his shower, they might start to ask questions ... he shuddered again as he realised just how close he’d come to exposing both of them. The aliens wouldn’t hesitate to take a close look at what remained of the implants in his brain if they heard about what they’d just done ...

  He looked up at her as she stepped back into the room. Her face was pale and wan, as if she’d cried a little in the shower, but there were no other signs of what they’d done. Crying wasn't uncommon in the Green Zone, the coldly practical part of his mind pointed out. Some of the human collaborators made their assistants cry on a regular basis. Even the Walking Dead did it, although not for the same reasons. They sometimes pushed their assistants further than they could go.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, as she sat down facing him. He couldn't help noticing that she pressed her legs tightly together. “I ...”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Karen said, again. At least her voice sounded closer to normal. “What do you want me to do now?”

  “I need you to pass on a message to the resistance,” Dave said. Planning an attack on the Green Zone had been difficult; even with several Order Police units withdrawn, the zone was still heavily defended. But there was a simple way around the defences, if done properly. “And then I need you to be ready to assist me when the time comes to move.”

  Karen nodded, slowly. “What message do you want me to pass on?”

  Dave wanted to smile, but his lips refused to even twitch. “Merely that they’re going to be arrested,” he said. “And that they have to cooperate.”

  And then he explained the rest of the plan.

  ***

  Karen gritted her teeth as she walked up to the checkpoint blocking the way out of the Green Zone. Somehow, it was no longer so easy to tolerate the leers of the guards, or the way they searched her to make sure that she wasn't carrying anything out of the secure zone. By the time they passed her through, she felt like a nervous wreck –worse, perhaps, because she couldn't express it. A hint of nervousness might attract the wrong sort of attention.

  She barely paid attention as she found a car and ordered the driver to take her downtown, towards the rendezvous point. Evidently, quite a few of the collaborators went to the clubs and drug dens there, enjoying themselves while the rest of the city’s population suffered. No one would notice, she hoped, if she went herself. Or so Howery had assured her. These days, it was harder for anyone without good connections to find a safe place to relax in Washington.

  Her skin felt odd as she shifted on the seat, feeling the ghostly impression of Howery’s hands touching her. It had been a deliberate decision to wear something sexy – and to have sex with him, if he had shown interest – and yet she couldn't help wondering if she had allowed herself to become a whore. Sleeping with Jasmine – or any of her past boyfriends – felt purer, more innocent, than what she’d done with Howery. Even the fumbling of her first time, when her boyfriend had been no more experienced than herself, had felt better. Was she a whore?

  But he needed to let it go, part of her mind insisted. What would have happened if he’d tried to have sex with someone else?

  She shook her head, cursing herself. It was a distraction right now, one she couldn't afford – and nor could Howery. The message from the resistance had been clear. Everything they’d done, everything they’d worked for, was about to be put to the test. The battle for humanity’s future was about to begin. And she was wasting time wondering if she was a whore or merely someone willing to make a sacrifice for humanity’s future!

  The car stopped outside an unmarked apartment block. Karen ordered the driver to remain where he was, then climbed out of the car and walked up to the door. It opened as she approached, revealing a grim-faced man wearing dark overalls. She stepped inside and braced herself as she was quickly and efficiently frisked. The resistance was taking no chances with its security.

  “Welcome,” the man said, finally. “He’s waiting for you.”

  He led her down the corridor and into a small back bedroom. Any doubts Karen might have had about what the building was used for were dispelled by the sounds she heard coming from behind the doors she passed on the way. Men were grunting in passion, while women were crying out ... or were they faking it? Karen had felt little when the General had had sex with her, but she’d had no time to consider pretending to come herself. The General hadn't seemed to care.

  The man she’d met before was lying on the bed, looking calm and relaxed. “Good to see you again,” he said, as the door was closed tightly. “This place is secure, by the way.”

  Karen hoped that he was right. General Howery had learned a great deal about how the aliens conducted surveillance, although their technology for monitoring their own people actually seemed to be inferior to technology developed by the CIA or KGB. It was an odd point, given how advanced their technology was in other areas, but the General had speculated that their society was more tolerant of intrusive monitoring than most human societies. Karen thought the whole concept was rather creepy. It hadn't been that long since one of her friends had accidentally left her webcam on while getting undressed and discovered, to her horror, that the footage had been distributed around the school.

  She shifted uncomfortably as she sat down. It had been months since she’d had anyone inside her and Howery had left her feeling a little sore, even though she knew he hadn't meant her real harm. Her contact didn't seem to notice. Instead, he just sat upright, leaned forward and started asking questions. As always, Karen found herself reciting what Howery had told her to pass on, culminating with the details of the Order Police being moved to the UK.

  “That’s been confirmed,” her contact said, when she had finished. “There was a report that several thousand of the bastards were joining the march on Dundee.”

  “The General thinks that you would have problems getting through the Green Zone’s defences,” Karen said. “But he has an idea.”

  Her contact scowled. There were two rings of steel in Washington; one surrounding the city itself, preventing the population from spreading out into the countryside, and one surrounding the Green Zone, preventing the resistance from attacking the collaborators openly. Both of them would be hard to crack, particularly before the aliens could respond ... and that risked drawing their direct attention.

  “He thinks you should start the attack inside the Green Zone,” Karen explained. “He plans to have your team arrested, then shipped inside – seemingly as a plan to burnish your resistance credentials. Once inside, your weapons will be given to you and you will launch your attack, wiping out the core of the collaborator government.”

  Her contact frowned. “Chancy,” he said, finally. “What happens if something goes wrong?”

  “There's only a handful of us inside the Green Zone,” Karen reminded him. As far as she knew, there was herself, Jasmine and General Howery. She wouldn't be surprised if there were others, particularly among the maids and other assistants, but no one had told her if they were part of the resistance. What she didn't know she couldn’t be made to tell. “We won’t be able to get the guards away from the defences before it’s too late.”

  Her contact hesitated. “We’ll have to think about it,” he said, finally. “How long do we have?”

  “The plan is to have you picked up within five hours,” Karen said. “You’ll be in there for a day before the balloon goes up.”

  There was a long pause. “Give us some time to decide,” the contact said, finally. He hesitated, then asked a different question. “Did you find the names I asked you to look for?”

  Karen nodded. “They’re both listed as being in Camp #4,” she said. She had no idea why her contact was interested in a middle-aged man and a young girl from Mannington, but she’d looked up the records as he'd asked. “The man is listed as a potential collabora
tor.”

  “He would be,” the contact muttered. “Are they both in good health?”

  “There’s nothing in the files,” Karen said, although she knew that the regime in the concentration camps was not designed to keep people healthy. “If they had died, I imagine that the bureaucrats would have updated and closed the files.”

  “Always knew bureaucrats were evil,” her contact said. “Can I leave you here for a few minutes?”

  Karen suspected that it wasn't a request. “I can wait,” she said, “but we need an answer soon.”

  Her contact stood up and walked out of the room, leaving her alone. Sighing, Karen shifted position and settled down to wait. God alone knew how long this would take, how long it would be before they decided if they should accept Howery’s plan – or move ahead with a conventional assault on the Green Zone. How many fighters were there in Washington anyway? She had no way to know.

  It was nearly half an hour before her contact returned. “We will be arrested,” he said, “or at least some of us will be. Where are we going to be picked up?”

  Karen grinned. “Pick an address,” she said. Howery had been reluctant to specify anything, although she wasn't sure why. Perhaps he'd feared that the resistance fighters would wonder if he was still under alien control. “They can pick you up anywhere.”

  “I know,” her contact said. “That’s the problem.”

  ***

  “Hell of a gamble,” Brad McIntyre muttered, as the resistance fighters gathered in the deserted house. “You sure this is a good idea, boss?”

  Nicolas scowled. The hell of it was that Howery, who had been a pretty good officer before the aliens had stuck implants in his head, was right. A direct assault on the Green Zone, even with the additional weapons they’d smuggled in or confiscated from Joe’s stockpiles, would be chancy as hell. If the rest of the plan worked and the aliens were distracted, they might still have a chance to break through, but they’d take heavy losses in the process. The alien counterattack might throw them back out again.

  But it was equally risky to be taken into custody, even if it was Howery who was supervising the process, Rendering himself helpless was never a very attractive tactic; offhand, he couldn't remember the tactic succeeding outside of Taliban raids on posts manned by the less trustworthy elements of the ANA or ANP. But then, they’d had inside help too.

  “You're all volunteers,” he said. The rest of the resistance fighters in Washington had dispersed to locations he didn't know, just to ensure that he couldn’t betray them to the aliens. “If you want to back out ...”

  There was a loud noise from outside as a pair of trucks screeched to a halt, dispersing Order Policemen onto the streets. Nicolas smiled inwardly as the policemen raced towards the door, thinking ruefully of all the traps they could have set for such an unthinking enemy. A claymore mine attached to the door would claim at least four lives, he told himself, and would have slowed them down long enough for the soldiers to escape. The Order Police hadn't even bothered to surround the building.

  “Oh, we’re busted,” Rufus Dudley muttered. “Oh fie, oh horrors, oh whatever shall we do ...”

  “Quit hamming it up, you bastard,” Nicolas said, dryly. “We don’t want to overdo it.”

  The door burst open and the Order Policemen stormed into the building, waving guns around wildly. Nicolas felt a twinge of regret at surrendering to such incompetent foes as he raised his hands, watching with grim amusement as the policemen crept closer. They seemed to believe that they were facing superhumans rather than average resistance fighters, judging by the way they inched forward. Everything seemed to hang on a knife edge before the junior policemen were pushed forward and started shackling the resistance fighters.

  Idiots, Nicolas thought. The policemen relaxed the moment the last of the fighters was shacked, although they could still have given a good account of themselves. In their place, Nicolas would probably have knocked the resistance fighters out or bundled them so tightly that they couldn't move at all. Instead, they were pushed out of the building, moving carefully forwards as the shackles restricted their movements. Nicolas saw a handful of people staring from windows, but most bystanders seemed to have made themselves scarce. It was very hard to blame them.

  He gritted his teeth as they were searched, then pushed into the trucks. The policemen were still relaxing, laughing and joking as they searched the house and confiscated a handful of weapons Nicolas had left there to find. Judging by their conversation, it was clear that Howery had hinted that the resistance cell had been betrayed by a criminal gang. They didn't seem to take them quite seriously.

  Maybe they think that we’re just another criminal gang, he thought, dryly. The Iraqis and Afghanis had been fond of manipulating the Western forces into inadvertently taking sides in local disputes. Whoever managed to brand their enemies as terrorist-supporting shitheads first gained one hell of an advantage, particularly as the Western troops didn't know what the fuck was actually going on. I’m sure Joe betrayed a few others who wouldn't fall in line when he turned into a criminal.

  The truck roared to life and started to head towards the Green Zone, taking them into the heart of the enemy defences. Nicolas closed his eyes, trying to snatch what rest he could before they reached their new home. This could work brilliantly, he told himself, or it could be a complete disaster. And there was no way to know which one it would be until it was too late.

  But at least he’d had news of Nancy. She was alive! And Greg was with her!

  He clung to that thought as the truck passed through the Green Zone’s outermost checkpoints, the guards taking the opportunity to search them again before they were admitted into the secure zone. Inside, it looked almost like Washington was meant to be; there were dozens of people thronging through the streets, looking healthy and happy and prosperous. But there was something in the air that bothered him, an atmosphere of fear that was somehow worse than the atmosphere in the rest of the city. The collaborators knew that they could lose their protected status at any moment.

  And your lives too, he thought, savagely. You’re going to lose those too.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Washington DC, USA

  Day 253

  “I’m hungry,” Nancy said, as night started to fall over the camp. “Dad, I'm hungry!”

  Greg winced. The food supplies to the camp had been cut over the last three days, as if the aliens were intent on slowly starving them to death. Maybe the whole thing was an experiment to see what happened when a number of humans were shoved into a camp and then deprived of food and drink. He'd given Nancy half of his rations, but there hadn't been enough for a young girl, let alone a grown man. His stomach was protesting angrily too.

  Nancy wasn't the only child who was complaining either. Almost every child in the camp was complaining, no matter what their parents said or did. Several parents had actually started snatching food from other people to feed their children, resulting in fistfights and angry shouting matches. It wouldn't be long, Greg realised, before no one had the energy for such battles. Hunger was wearing them all down.

  He looked over towards the guard towers and shivered. The guards had been watching the fights without bothering to intervene; for some reason, the only time the guards ever entered the camp was when they were serving food to the prisoners. Greg wondered if they were amusing themselves by watching, or if they had some other motives to keep an eye on the prisoners. It wasn't as if anyone could hope to escape. A handful of men had formed an escape committee two days after they arrived in the camp, but it hadn't managed to do anything more than establish that there was no way to climb the fence or dig through the solid concrete and pass under it. Elaborate schemes to produce a hot air balloon had floundered on lack of materials or expertise. They were thoroughly trapped.

  Maybe they have worse motives to watch us, he thought, bitterly. Most of the teenage girls had been separated from their parents before they reached the camp – no one kne
w why – but some of the other girls were growing up. Greg didn't want to think about the possibilities, yet compared to some of the rumours about the Order Police paedophilia was almost normal. He looked down at Nancy and shuddered. He’d break her neck before he allowed one of those bastards to so much as look at her ...

  ... But the brave thought was meaningless, he knew. He was powerless. They were all powerless. The guards could do whatever they liked, as could the stronger prisoners, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. They were all helpless prisoners.

  He led Nancy back towards the barracks as another fight broke out over the last few crusts of bread. The population of Mannington might have been friendly, a genuine community where they knew and trusted one another, but that was slowly wearing away under the endless pressure from the guards. It wouldn't be long before people started fighting in earnest over food and drink, or worse. How long would it be until the social contract wore away entirely, even though they shared a common enemy?

  But they can't lash out at the guards and they can lash out at their former friends, he thought, bitterly. It's human nature to lash out at the weak.

  The thought made him shudder. Some of Nicolas’s tales of service in foreign parts had definitely not been suited for Nancy’s ears. The population of Iraq had been weak, oppressed by Saddam and then by religious fanatics who had believed that faith in God was a substitute for training, preparation and experience. Instead of turning on their tormentors, they’d oppressed their womenfolk and children, as if they were to blame for their suffering. It required some measure of bravery, Nicolas had said, to attack American troops with a rifle and a handful of bullets. But it was the act of a coward to beat up a helpless women, the act of someone too scared to lift a hand in his own defence.

  And how long would it be, Greg wondered, until the camp dissolved into chaos?