What Sienna was worried about was that she had missed her periods the last couple of months. She was forty-five and she had assumed that she was too old to conceive but apparently that was not true. She felt her tummy and rubbed it gently, stroking a new life growing within her.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Carter stirring in the bed next to her. She fished for her undergarments under the blanket and her roving hand was caught by Carter, who dragged her towards him.
‘Hey…behave yourself. I’ve to go early today. Got a class at eight.’
Carter grunted in disapproval
‘Come on…just gimme ten minutes.’
Sienna laughed
‘No way. Your ten minutes will drag on to an hour, if I know your way.’
Carter pleaded
‘No I swear. Just ten minutes and then you can be off to your class.’
Sienna’s protestations fell on deaf ears as Carter slowly and steadily dragged her down, pinning her under him.
***
It had been a tiring day for Sienna. First she had been late for the class, with her students waiting for over an hour for her class. She taught physics and mathematics at a makeshift class in the soup center for the neighboring kids. There was an unduly long line for food and shelter at the center and they had to turn away more than twenty people today. That was very difficult, both physically and mentally.
It was evening when she was returning from the center. She contemplated asking Carter to come and get her but then she thought she could walk down the couple of kilometers. There was no electricity yet and people generally avoided being outdoors after sundown. The safety in the commune was getting better day by day, but a lot still needed to be done.
She felt it as she crossed the first block on to the main avenue. She turned around but there was no one. Sienna continued on but had a sickening feeling that she was being followed. She picked up her pace, ruing her decision now not to have sent for Carter. She heard some footsteps behind her and thought she saw a shadow disappear behind a pillar as she looked back. That was not good. She was almost nearing her turn on the first main avenue. She looked back one last time, turned into the alley and broke into a run. She ran straight on, with as much speed as she could muster, her heart pounding due to the fear and the adrenaline pumping now within her alert nerves.
She had barely reached the second main avenue when she heard the loud sound of tires screeching behind her. Her gaze was fixated on the alley behind and she did not get time to recover. The van pulled up alongside her, its doors opening up and before Sienna could react, two strong arms held her and pulled her inside the van. A wet cloth with a sweet smell was clamped on her mouth and she faded away into unconsciousness.
***
When she came to, she realized that someone was shaking her by her shoulders, splashing water on her face. She saw two faces bearing down on her. They were frantically saying something to her but she did not hear a word. Her head was still heavy and groggy from whatever her attackers had used to drug her into unconsciousness. The men with her were heavily built and their mannerisms smacked of military, probably ex-military. She strained hard to hear and finally made out a few words
‘…we are your friends. We mean you no harm.’
Sienna was still trying to wrap her head around what was happening. She mumbled a question
‘Who are you guys? Why have you taken me hostage?’
They looked at each other and then at Sienna
‘You are in danger. The aliens have come to know about Alex and they are searching for you.’
Sienna was dumbstruck for a moment. Then she stammered
‘What about Alex? Where is he? Is he alive? Is he alright?’
The guys looked at each other, realizing their folly in the way they had broken the news to Sienna. The guy who had spoken earlier, looked back at Sienna and restarted,
‘Well, Alex is alive. He is now the leader of a resistance group, fighting against the aliens, currently in Egypt.’
Sienna was stunned with the news. She tried to form words but her mouth remained open, her lips turned to stone, unable to comply.
The men continued
‘Alex had been captured by the aliens. He escaped from the alien mother-ship and landed in Africa, near the Kenyan-Ugandan border.’
Sienna had lots of questions
‘Why did I not know of this before? Why did he not get in touch with me?’
The men looked at each other and the older one replied
‘Well he tried. When he landed in Africa, he was badly injured. It took more than a month for him to fully regain his consciousness. And from the moment he was conscious, he tried to get in touch with you and to get back here. But the circumstances did not allow either. You must understand, there is a full blown war, more of a culling going on out there. Survival and existence is a daily struggle out there for them. Moreover, communication with the U.S is fraught with risk. We had your address. It took us some time to get our eyes on you. You were settling down in your new life and we decided not to interrupt it; that is until now.’
Sienna detested authority trying to control personal lives of citizens. She controlled her seething rage and asked
‘What has changed now? Why now?’
‘Three alien harvesters were destroyed recently. We did not have much to do with that. They crashed themselves. The aliens got to the wreckage of two of the harvesters and destroyed them. The resistance in China took control of the third one. The Chinese have had the most success against the aliens till now. They have succeeded in creating perimeters that are impenetrable to alien attacks. We are in the process of setting up similar defenses in Africa. It will take us some time to get there. Anyway, coming to the wrecked harvester in China, we found this inscribed in its underbelly’ he handed a piece of paper with a handwritten message in it
‘for Lt. Col. Alex Dunbar from Montferrat.’
Sienna read it again and again. She slowly came to understand what it all meant
‘Alex has an ally on the mother-ship who helped sabotage those harvesters.’
The man nodded his head
‘Alex is famous now. He is slowly becoming the face of human resistance. The aliens have gotten wind of that by now. They are searching for Alex there and searching for you here. And we have been given the task of extracting you and delivering you out of here.’
‘How are you planning to get me out of here?’
The men looked at each other and then the younger one said ‘Can’t reveal much about it but let’s say it involves a sub journey.’
That was enough for Sienna. She could do without the technical details. She had one more question to ask
‘What about Carter?’
The old man looked straight into her eyes and replied
‘The aliens reached your house half an hour ago. He is being interrogated by the aliens now. He is beyond your help now. Believe me, the lesser he knows, the better it is for him.’
Sienna nodded.
Chapter 27
A New Life
Resistance Hideout,
Outskirts of Cairo, Egypt
14th March 2020
Alex Dunbar got tired of pacing the floor outside of a closed room in the resistance center near Cairo and sat on a chair. He was alone in this room. Sienna was in the adjoining room, attended to by a couple of nurses. They formed almost half of the medical staff of the center. They had a couple of doctors and three nurses who looked after the medical needs of about two hundred and fifty residents of the center and a large floating population. The floating population included a large number of injured fighters who were transported here from the battlefronts. The doctors were always busy and after seeing the rush here, Alex realized he would have to find more for the center.
It had been a year now since Alex had landed in Africa, morbidly injured, after his short stint on the mother-ship. His meeting with Aslam and other Al-Fateh warriors had led to him now heading a siz
able resistance group that operated from Egypt. They had managed to create a protective perimeter around their center. This perimeter surrounded an area of about five square kilometers and gave shelter to about a thousand people at any time. The perimeter was manned by soldiers with ‘Hellraisers’ and with ground stations mounted with bigger immobile versions of the same gun. They kept constant watch and had successfully thwarted many alien raids on the center. The aliens probably did not mind a small pocket of resistance. That gave them a free hand across the rest of the lands where they plundered and killed with impunity. Moreover, it was possible that the aliens did not yet have an answer for the Hellraisers and were just biding their time, developing an effective countermeasure to it.
The estimated losses till date had been about eighty million in Africa alone. Worldwide figures were anyone’s guess. It was very difficult to arrive at accurate figures but these were the best estimates Alex had and he did suspect that these figures were a tad too conservative. The losses in terms of plant cover and animal life had been tremendous. Large swathes of land were now barren, devoid of its tree and plant cover. The animal life on the continent had been decimated as well.
Sienna had been brought from USA on the 23rd of August last year. There was a threat to her life, after William’s sabotage of the harvesters. That incident had made Alex famous across the globe, on both sides of the conflict. Resistance soldiers in U.S had been alerted and they had grabbed her in the nick of time, moments before aliens had swooped down on her house.
It had been an emotional meeting between both. Sienna had told Alex about his daughters and they had cried the whole night. She had also told him about Carter and about the child that was growing within her. She had asked if she should abort her and Alex had refused, to her obvious relief and gratitude. He very much wanted Si’s child. He got down on his knees and proposed to her,
‘Please let me be the dad to your unborn child and give me the privilege to raise her as our own’
She cried freely before saying yes.
‘That is the best proposal ever, by anyone, anywhere. Thanks Alex.’
Alex enquired after Carter and came to know that Carter had been taken away that night by U.S government forces working with the aliens. He had not been heard of thereafter.
Alex had barely survived the next few months of war, fighting fiercely and working hard to protect those within the perimeter. There had been a lot of attacks on the perimeter and his ‘Hellraiser’ defense had held on. Meanwhile, Sienna’s pregnancy had run its course and this moment found Alex waiting outside the room in the makeshift hospital, waiting for the birth of his third child. The last six months had been difficult for them, awaiting new life and yet living under the shadow of death, celebrating their reunion while bearing witness to destruction around them, savoring joy and intimacy in moments stolen from the pervasive grief and sorrow that surrounded them.
Alex supervised the resistance from his center although he made some night runs to get supplies and to have an odd meeting or so with the submarine captains. Resistance groups from across the world sent representatives to meet with him, to get firsthand information which he had gathered during his stay aboard the mother-ship. He did not understand how it was going to benefit them but nevertheless, he very patiently hosted them and answered all their questions. He gathered news from these meetings and came to know of war efforts around the world. The Russians had some success, fortifying small areas with ‘Hellraisers’, just like Alex had done in Egypt. The Chinese and Indians had joined hands and had devised a protective shield of very high frequency focused sonar that was debilitating to the alien ships. The Japanese had developed a mammoth Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) generator, which when fired, brought all electronics in the vicinity to a standstill. They had of late, managed to bring down quite a number of alien crafts with what they had developed. None of them stayed intact though. Upon touching the ground, they self-detonated, leaving nothing for its enemies but for some useless scrap.
All these success stories meant little in the bigger picture. The aliens were content leaving these small pockets intact and having their fill, consuming the rest of the world. That included people outside these protective enclaves, and animals and plants of every conceivable type. If the plunder continued thus, all that will be left will be just large tracts of barren lifeless wastelands and the United States of America. Alex further realized that their meager divided resources could never take down a full blown concerted alien attack, whenever that happened.
Alex also realized that such an attack would happen, sooner rather than later. The aliens and their Cosmos-conquering ego, though content to probably leave small resistance pockets alone, would eventually turn their attention to these pockets and try their might to subjugate and destroy them.
His thoughts were interrupted by the birth cries of the newly born. He got up instinctively, pacing up to the door and waiting for the call. A nurse peeked into the corridor, beckoning him inside the room. Alex saw the baby bundled in a towel in Sienna’s arms. He approached them and slowly looked onto the baby’s face. She had Sienna’s eyes, wrinkles on her forehead and a pout on her lips. That brought a smile on Alex’s face.
‘She looks just like you, pout included’ Alex beamed as Sienna smiled and feebly nodded, and Alex held her hand and squeezed it gently.
The baby was christened Susan after Alex and Si’s younger daughter.
Chapter 28
Counterattack
Resistance Hideout,
Outskirts of Cairo, Egypt
29th March 2020
The attacks started all of a sudden, late in the evening on the 29thof March, barely two weeks after the birth of Alex and Sienna’s third daughter. The attacks had been unprecedented in scale. Earlier that week, in their biggest triumph, Alex’s forces had taken down three of the alien harvesters, downing them with some persistent and heavy laser bombardment. They had been lucky to be in the right place at the right time and had blasted the alien crafts right out of the sky. Alex’s forces had taken some losses too but, nevertheless it was their biggest victory till date.
There had been celebrations in their camp but Alex had also sounded a general alert expecting a backlash. Backlash had come barely a week later and the scale of it had been tremendous. At least two hundred alien crafts had descended on Alex’s camp exacting retribution.
‘That looks scary’ Aslam had commented to Alex as they monitored the approaching aliens on the radar, a haze of radar blips that covered the northern sky in its entirety.
Alex shored up all his men and guns to the defense. The outer ring of his perimeter consisted of mobile units with ‘Hellraisers’ and the inner ring had bunkers with fixed and bigger Hellraiser’ units. Alex increased the number of outer units and pushed the inner ones tighter around the underground quarters. The attack lasted a good six hours. Alex could confirm twenty-one alien crafts brought down. There might have been a couple more but he could not get confirmation on those. The numbers, though impressive on their own, did not even dent the scale of the alien attack. The camp actually did well to hold on for six hours.
But the inevitable happened. Alex had trained his men well in the guerilla tactics of hit and run and did not expect them to hold up well in direct combat like this. He rallied his men and fought hard, bringing down a few alien pods. But when the scale of the attack mounted to an average of three pods attacking each ‘Hellraiser’ on the ground, Alex realized it was time cut his losses.
The camp’s final line of defense was breached two hours after midnight. Alex, Sienna, Aslam and other fighters and civilians left alive on the base barely made it out of the camp, sneaking out through a tunnel that opened on the river. The fighters and other civilians headed inwards from there, hoping to get inland and away from the fighting. Alex gave them instructions to regroup on the shore later in the week, once the dust had settled down. Alex decided to head down the river to try to get to the sea and wait for a submarine.
They kept close to the river, going south, getting as far away from Cairo as they could. Alex turned back to see flames rise up into the sky, where once the center of his camp stood. Aslam stood by his side, sharing that vision of doom and destruction as they silently recounted their losses. Then Aslam kept his hand on Alex’s shoulder, tugging on him. They had to move on.
A seemingly unending war looked back at Alex from the other side and it had taught him to accept defeat. Come what may, you had to move on to survive. Fear and flight took precedence over all other emotions.
They had made a good seven to eight kilometers by dawn. They kept walking till the fires coming out of Cairo’s skyline looked like a distant campfire. But by morning, the sky had taken on the black of the smoke that billowed far away.
They walked till they reached the suburban ruins of the Shubra el Khiema Power plant. Alex and Sienna took refuge in a small cove while Aslam went searching for some food. Alex too left for a while to look for wood for a fire. Sienna couldn’t walk anymore and they had decided to take rest for the day and the night in the ruins.
Alex returned by late afternoon but there was no sign of Aslam. Alex waited till four and then went in search of him. He searched in multiple directions but all he came across were abandoned ruins of the city. There was not a soul in sight and no Aslam. He returned by evening not knowing the fate of his friend and comrade. He had found some bread and meat from an abandoned house and Sienna and Alex tucked into the same. Alex had a fever and he knew his belly wound had got infected.
Alex wondered about Aslam wryly thinking if he would ever see him again.
Chapter 29
Lonely
Suburban Ruins near Cairo
Exodus (The Domus Series Book 2) Page 15