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

by Christopher Nuttall

  He put Nancy on her bunk and hugged her, tightly. She looked on the verge of tears; her stomach had to be feeling the pain too. Gritting his teeth, Greg tucked her into bed and lay down on his own bunk, trying to mentally convince himself that he wasn't really hungry. It didn't work.

  In the rear of the building, he could hear a couple making love. Part of him envied them for finding a chance to enjoy themselves before they died, part of him wondered where they got the energy. Right now, he felt too tired and hungry to climb out of bed, let alone have sex with someone. It seemed too much to ask.

  Slowly, he fell into a fitful sleep.

  ***

  The aliens hadn't been very imaginative, Edward Tanaka realised, as he surveyed the camp from a safe distance. It was nothing more than fences surrounding a set of barracks, guarded by a handful of watchtowers and a couple of dozen guards. Like other POW camps he’d seen in the US, there didn't seem to be anything intended to control the prisoners after they were firmly trapped inside the camp. Unlike the Americans who had operated POW camps in Iraq, the aliens didn't seem to be concerned about radicalising their inmates. But then, anyone who had to spend time in a concentration camp would be radicalised anyway by the time they left.

  If they ever do, he thought, as he plotted out the assault. Unarmed and unarmoured, the prisoners wouldn't be able to get past the first fence without being cut to ribbons – and the Order Policemen would have no trouble gunning them down. It was, he had to admit, a highly economical design. The prisoners vastly outnumbered the guards, yet there was no way they could leverage their advantage in numbers into something they could use to escape. And most of the prisoners were civilians, anyway. If any of them were former military, they’d escaped alien notice.

  He glanced at his watch as he crawled back towards where the assault force was waiting, hidden in a deserted building. There were twenty minutes left before the operation began, by which time they had to be in position to mount their attack. If the rest of the plan worked out, the aliens would not be in a position to respond quickly, but it wouldn't be the first time something had gone wrong and caused a chain reaction of failure that led to the ultimate collapse of the mission. Their orders were simple enough; take out the camp’s guards, free the prisoners and then join up with other resistance bands near Washington. After their last mission, it wasn't anything spectacular.

  “Get ready,” he hissed, as he crawled back into the lair. “We have to move out in two minutes.”

  He scowled as the team picked up their weapons and ran through a final check. There had been no MANPADs left for their part of the operation, nor had they been allowed to take any antitank rockets that could have smashed the guard towers before the Order Police even knew that they were under attack. Instead, they had been armed with RPGs someone had put together in their garage, a grim warning of what the future held. Stockpiles of advanced weapons were running dry.

  And if we are attacked from the air, we will have no choice, but to run, he reminded himself.

  “The weapons are ready,” Sergeant Benton assured him. “What about the plan?”

  Edward snorted, produced a sheet of paper and drew out a rough sketch of the camp. “This is the plan,” he said, bluntly. “I want RPG teams to take out the towers as soon as the signal is sent, then concentrate on bringing down the fence. Everyone else is to engage the guards and take them all out before they can scream for help. Get their barracks sealed off; trap the bastards inside if you can.”

  He glanced from face to face, willing them to understand. “These are civilians who have been through hell,” he warned. It was far too like the girls from the breeding camp for comfort. “Get them moving, whatever it takes, but don’t waste time trying to talk them into moving. Use force if necessary. Try to make sure that they run away from Washington, either south or west.”

  “And where,” Benton wondered out loud, “will they go from there?”

  Edward winced. Winter was coming on; the temperature along the east coast was already falling sharply. Some people were already muttering about a nuclear winter after the nuclear detonations around the world, although Edward knew that was exaggerated. There simply hadn't been enough weapons detonated to cause permanent changes to the planet’s biosphere. But it hardly mattered; the real problem was that millions of people, including the former inhabitants of the camp, would likely freeze as the temperature dropped still further. Feeding and warming them all would be a nightmare even with the country not under alien occupation.

  “We’ll cope with it somehow,” he said, grimly. God alone knew how. Millions of people were already displaced and struggling to survive; thousands more joining them wouldn't help the situation. “But until then ...”

  He glanced at his watch. “Time to move out,” he ordered. “Let's go.”

  ***

  Greg jerked awake as he heard the sound of a slap and a woman crying out in pain. He opened his eyes and looked around, finally catching sight of Mr. Tobias and his wife arguing in the far corner. The entire town had known that Tobias and his wife were on the verge of a nasty divorce – there were few secrets in a place like Mannington – but they hadn't separated permanently before the aliens arrived. Since then, they had somehow shared the same house without speaking to one another. Now, whatever had kept the peace between them had worn thin.

  “You don’t fuck around with this, not now,” Tobias said, loudly enough to wake everyone else. “This isn't the fucking time.”

  His wife gave as good as she got. “And you think that there’s ever a fucking time?”

  Greg hesitated, unsure of what to do. All around him, he saw others staring at the couple, equally unsure what – if anything – they should do. No one wanted to intervene; Tobias was a strong man, even though he was as hungry as the rest of them. And no one knew just what the fight was actually about. Greg hoped that Nancy wasn't listening, although he suspected that was unlikely. Like everyone else, Nancy would have been sleeping very lightly, if she’d slept at all.

  “Shut up, the pair of you,” someone snapped, finally. “We’re trying to sleep.”

  “And we are having a discussion,” Tobias thundered, waving one meaty fist towards the speaker. He grabbed his wife by the hair and started to drag her towards the door, pulling her hard enough to make her cry out in pain. “You shut the fuck up ...”

  “That will do,” someone else said, jumping down from their bunk. “Put your wife down ...”

  Tobias punched him, right in the mouth. He fell backwards, just as someone else jumped forward and threw himself at Tobias. The entire barracks seemed to dissolve into chaos, everyone punching and kicking at everyone else; Greg cringed back as several middle-aged men ran past his bunk, then swung his legs over the side and stood upright. Nancy was staring with fearful eyes as the fight spread towards them.

  “Come on,” Greg hissed, picking Nancy up and running towards the door. They’d never been told that they couldn't go outside after darkness fell, although few people had actually dared. But right now it seemed safer than anything else. “We have to run ...”

  He was just outside the door when the first guard tower exploded into a fireball.

  ***

  Edward grinned nastily as the guard towers exploded one by one, silently blessing the man who had designed and produced the RPGs. He'd done an excellent job, although the guard towers had not been as heavily armoured as a tank or an alien strongpoint. The remainder of the assault force opened fire seconds later, picking off the remaining guards before they could escape. They honestly hadn't expected such a savage assault out of nowhere.

  And this isn't the only one, Edward thought. The remaining guards had started to fall back to their barracks, only to come under attack there. It would have been simple for them to run, but it seemed that they trusted their barracks more than their legs. Idiots.

  “Take down the fence,” he ordered, sharply. Moments later, the first RPGs landed amidst the strands of metal, blowing the
m into shrapnel. The fence might have been designed to cut the hands of anyone who touched it – Edward had heard stories of people losing fingers by touching it without enough care – but it wasn't designed to stand up to explosives. “And launch the flare.”

  There was a flash of light in the sky, followed by an eerie green glow that cast the entire scene into perspective. Several people were already fleeing the prisoner barracks, while the remainder of the guards were fleeing ... but some were already in the camp. Edward blinked in surprise; they had to be guards, he realised grimly; they were armed. The aliens weren’t likely to arm prisoners, were they?

  “Must have been having some fun with the other prisoners,” Benton muttered. “I think their CO will be pissed.”

  Edward scowled. “Take them out,” he ordered. If the guards became mixed up with the prisoners, the whole operation would become a whole lot harder. “Hurry!”

  ***

  Greg stopped and stared as explosions ripped through the camp. He knew that it was dangerous, he knew that both Nancy and himself were in terrible danger, but he couldn't help being frozen to the spot, utterly unable to move. His mental horizons had sunk to the camp’s fence and he hadn't even realised, not until the camp had been attacked. He kept tight hold of Nancy and just stared. Behind him, the sound of the fight faded away into nothingness.

  A moment later, someone slammed into him from behind, knocking him to the hard concrete ground. Greg grunted in pain as he hit the ground, then forgot it entirely as Nancy cried out. His attacker, a man wearing the uniform of the Order Police, had grabbed her and was pulling her close to him, using her as a human shield. Greg stared in horror; after all they’d survived, was this how she was going to be taken from him?

  Somehow, he found the strength to lunge forward and slammed into the Order Policeman. The man staggered and let go of Nancy, then turned and hit Greg in the chest. He doubled over, hacking up the remains of his last meal, then fell over and slammed into the ground. The Order Policeman came forward – Nancy had vanished, part of Greg’s mind noted in relief – and placed a foot on his throat. Greg opened his mouth, unsure of what to say or do, but it was already too late. There was a terrible crushing sensation ...

  ... And then nothing.

  ***

  Edward practically ran into the little girl as he led the charge into the camp. Her father had saved her life, sacrificing his own to save her. He shot the guard who’d killed him through the head, then scooped up the girl and flung her over his shoulder. She yelled and hollered in protest, but he ignored her. There was no time to waste.

  “Get out of the camp,” he shouted at the civilians. The sound of shooting was dying away as the remaining guards were hunted down and exterminated, but the aliens might already have a rapid reaction force on the way. Or perhaps the rest of the plan was working perfectly. There was no way to know until they got to the RV point. “Hurry!”

  Some of the civilians looked to have been fighting, he realised, as they ran past him. None of them stopped to ask where they should go, thankfully. Instead, they just ran out of the camp and scattered in the darkened streets. Most of them would be rounded up later, he knew, if the aliens won the fight. Others might choose to sell their lives dearly instead of returning to the camp.

  He looked inside the barracks and shuddered. It reminded him of some of the pictures he’d seen in church, where they’d been taught about the Holocaust. One heavily-conservative pastor had claimed that the Jews had been so broken that the fight had gone out of them completely; he’d even claimed that the SS guards had been unarmed and the prisoners had never realised it. Instead, they’d been marched into the gas chambers willingly and slaughtered. Six million had died instead of resisting ...

  “That’s everyone,” Benton said, once they’d checked the other barracks. “I think we got them all out.”

  Edward nodded. The girl had quieted down, but he wasn't about to force her to fend for herself, not with her father dead. Besides, the aliens hadn't shown up in force. Maybe the rest of the plan was working out as well as they'd dared hope.

  “Good,” he said. He moved the girl to a more comfortable position, then joined the others as they started to flee the remains of the camp. Once they were back at the RV point, they could check in and see where they should go next. “Let's move.”

  “I think you have a new daughter there,” Benton said. “You want to do something for her father?”

  Edward hesitated, then shook his head. “No time,” he said, glumly. He would have liked to have buried the man, but there was no time to hang around the camp or drag his body somewhere where a grave could be dug quickly. “We have to run.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Washington DC, USA

  Day 253/254

  Karen could hear her own heartbeat pounding so loudly that she was surprised that she hadn't woken the entire building as she crept along the corridor to Daisy’s centre of operations. It was supposed to be deserted – Daisy only allowed a few people to enter and only normally during the day – but everything was changing. If the resistance had started its attacks, Daisy was going to be alerted at any second now. And that would give her time to come into her office and start issuing orders.

  The door was locked, she discovered as she tested the handle, but the skeleton key General Howery had given her worked perfectly, allowing her to slip into the office and click on the lights. Inside, there was a large set of computers mounted on a desk and several filing cabinets, the very core of Daisy’s operations. The luxurious office Daisy normally used was spectacular, but this was where she did her work and coordinated her empire. She couldn't be allowed to destroy her records or issue orders to her collaborators.

  “They don’t encourage people to actually think for themselves,” General Howery had told her, when he’d given her the key and her specific instructions. “If the collaborators don’t receive any specific orders, they will sit on their hands rather than actually acting.”

  Karen silently prayed that he was right as she sat down in front of the computer and pushed a USB stick into the slot. The machine hummed to life at once, trying to read the program stored on the stick; it should, according to her contact, paralyse the collaborator computer network, making it impossible for them to coordinate their actions. Karen suspected that the aliens could probably override the network – no one had yet succeeded in figuring out a way of infecting their system with a virus – but it would take hours before Daisy and her fellow collaborators asked for help. They wouldn't want to tell the aliens that they had allowed a spy access to their computer records, which included a list of every collaborator in America.

  The door crashed open. Karen jumped as two guards stormed in, weapons raised. She had to have tripped a silent alarm, she realised in horror, as the guards saw her. Daisy might have trusted her, insofar as she trusted anyone, but absolutely no one was allowed access to her innermost office without her presence. She must have suspected that someone was spying on her, even if she had considered Karen above suspicion. That was about to change.

  “Hands in the air,” the lead guard barked. “Stand up, now!”

  Karen obeyed, shaking. The guard caught her, pushed her against the wall and frisked her, removing a second USB stick, the skeleton key and the pistol Howery had given her. It wasn't unusual for senior collaborators to carry weapons, but the skeleton key was far too revealing. At least it was too late for them to prevent the network from being locked, she told herself as he dragged her hands and yanked them behind her back; the resistance would have its chance to break into the Green Zone and secure the data it needed to exterminate the collaborators. Once way or another, the collaborator government was about to be crippled.

  She winced as she felt metal cuffs clicking around her wrists. “Call Director Fairchild,” the guard ordered his companion. “Tell her that we busted the spy.”

  He held Karen against the wall until Daisy arrived, blinking sleep from her eyes. Karen had kno
wn that her superior had retired to bed; she’d hoped that Daisy would sleep through everything until the resistance stormed the Green Zone. But instead ... she saw a surprising look of disappointment in Daisy’s eyes and shuddered, inwardly. Was Daisy really so far gone that she saw resistance activities as a personal betrayal?

  “We caught her at your computer, Director,” one of the guards said. He caught hold of Karen’s arm and pulled her forward. “I think we sealed the security breach.”

  Daisy studied Karen, coldly. “How could you?”

  Karen shook her head. She wanted to spit defiance, but she didn't dare be tortured or implanted; she simply knew too much. The thought made her smile; it wasn't as if she had any real control over the situation, now that she'd been caught. They might decide to torture her purely for being there, even if there had been a legitimate reason for her presence. It wouldn't be the first time the Order Police had tormented someone purely for the hell of it.

  Daisy slapped her, right across the mouth. Karen tasted blood, feeling her gorge rise as Daisy’s rings cut into her face. The guard’s grip on her arm tightened; she met his eyes, briefly, and shuddered at what she saw there. He wouldn't hesitate to do far worse than torture her, if only to indulge himself. Like so many others who served the collaborator government, and through them the aliens, he was too badly tainted to have anywhere else to go.

  “Take her to the dungeons,” Daisy ordered, once she had calmed herself. “And ...”

  “Let her go,” a cold voice ordered. Karen looked up to see General Howery standing in the doorway. “Release her hands.”

  “General,” Daisy said, in surprise. “What is going on ...?”

  “My aide was testing your security,” Howery said, in the toneless voice of the Walking Dead. “It was deemed vitally important by our masters that security be tested in all quarters. Your security system appears to have worked.”