“But is it appropriate for us to use the temple for such activities?” Rakesh, the only true believer in them, asked.
“We are sinners Rakesh and where would a sinner go if not the temple,” Happy asked.
That seemed to settle it.
“Yes and it is also a tourist attraction Rakesh, so let’s move.” Vinit said.
“This place and tourism are like oil and water Inspector, but I agree, let’s go” Ragini said.
The four men barring Happy somehow managed to lift and carry the heavy box outside and into Rakesh’s Scorpio. Ragini stood guard, feeling foolish with Neeraj’s gun in hand. His only instruction was to fire in the air well above everyone’s head in case the undead appear. Ragini watched the whole operation complete smoothly. Neeraj came to her, and reclaimed his gun.
“Mr. Joshi, I suppose we have something to talk about?” She asked, again giving him the eye brow and the wiggle of the hips.
“Yes my dear, when this is over,” Neeraj said, and put his arm around her slim waist guiding her to the vehicle. Rakesh and Rajat watched them walk together like a couple and winked at each other. Happy watched them too, but he did not even smile.
Rani, the second most decent driver in the crew, was told to drive while Rakesh sat next to her. He had a police issue .303 in his hand, pointing out of the window left open despite the heavy rain. Rajat, Vinit and Neeraj sat in the back with the hatch raised all the way, Rajat with the second .303 in hand, Vinit and Neeraj with their own guns. As Rani put the vehicle in gear, Vinit told her to stop.
“There might be survivors, I need to leave a message,” he said, and climbed out without hearing any arguments. He ran inside the police station and managed to find a complaint register and a pen. Tearing a foolscap page, he wrote in a large scrawl ”IF YOU NEED HELP, PLEASE COME TO THE TEMPLE” and pasted the message on the bulletin board outside the police station.
As he climbed back Rajat asked,” Wouldn’t it also help our nocturnal friends to find us?”
“If they want to, they will Rajat. Nothing to be done about it,” Rakesh replied.
Rani put the Scorpio in gear and they left the safety of the compound, stepping into the heavy rain and the unknown dangers lurking in its womb.
Saket walked back to his car, and climbed inside. He tried to replay the whole shootout in front of eyes to understand in which direction the woman had fled. He was living the whole scene again, reconstructing the tiniest details. It was more difficult than most people think. True, the shootout had happened barely five minutes ago, but it was over in less than thirty seconds.
First important detail – Saket walking to the woman and trying to warn her while noticing the gun in her hand. Was it left or right? Saket closed his eyes and saw the incident again. He had placed his hand on her shoulder, his left hand, so had to be her right shoulder when he first noticed she was packing. That meant she was holding the gun in her left hand. Saket remembered putting her in a neck hold and twisting her hand to the ground, when the villagers charged. The woman fell on her knees, and Saket saw bullets whizzing past his right shoulder. That meants she fired with her left hand, so the woman was a lefty.
Saket knew that most people when they thought they were walking or running at random took the direction of their strong hand. His eyes moved to the small road next to the shad, and decided that the woman had fled in that direction. He started his car, and turned left.
He was driving one handed, with his left. His strong hand, the right hand was resting on the butt of his pistol. He risked switching on his lights to high beam, despite knowing that in this weather, this may serve as a warning to whoever was out there. He scanned either sides of the road, looking for the woman. The small road abruptly turned at right angles and Saket maneuvered his vehicle carefully, knowing if there was an ambush, it was likely to be around a similar blind curve. But nothing happened as his vehicle took the turn and headed towards Rajaji’s residence.
Saket was correct in assuming Shilpa was left handed. He was also right in assuming that while fleeing she would go in the direction of her stronger hand. The shoot out and the man trying to save her, were but a blur in her eyes now. Her mind was consumed with deadly visions of death and copulation. When she reached Rajaji’s bungalow, she was feeling an arousal so violent, that she was afraid her private parts would just burst open.
Climbing the stairs of the house, she collapsed and banged her head against the stone banisters. This caused a spell of unconsciousness that lasted a few minutes. When she came to again, she noticed her torn trousers hanging at her knees. Her undergarments were dirty and wet, but she ignored the state of her clothes and tried to get back on her feet once more. Her knees gave away and she sat hard on her rump. She finally decided to crawl. Holding the banisters for support in one hand, while pointing the gun away from the house with other, she managed to let herself in Rajaji’s living room.
She saw an old but obviously strong man, sitting with his back to the wall. There was a thin line of blood from his cracked forehead, and his eyes had taken the dead vacant look that Shilpa would have seen in her own eyes, had she looked in a mirror. However upon seeing woman in torn clothes with a gun in her hands, he stirred and tried to get up.
“Please don’t hurt me, are you the one who killed my children?” He asked in a pleading voice.
Shilpa held onto a showcase with her right hand, and managed to haul herself back to her feet. In the dim light she saw two men sitting, facing each other on the sofa chairs. Their bodies were still.
Rajaji now recognized her as the police officer he had met earlier that evening at Rajat’s farmhouse. He could not for the life of him guess what the hell this woman was doing, coming into his house in this state.
Rajaji was about to ask her, when he saw a shadow enter his living room. He the woman aside and tried to pick up his pistol lying on the mantelpiece. A man in thirties entered with a gun in his hands. Rajaji faintly tried to remember the last person he saw without a gun.
“Please move away from her, Sir. She is suffering from some kind of a breakdown and I am here to take her back to safety.”
“Ahhhhh… get lost….” Shilpa said “or come and join us” she was again feeling light headed with the visions dancing in front of her eyes.
“Whoever you are, this woman is safe with me, so fuck off” Rajaji said, some of his former courage returning with a lot of lust.
Saket crossed the room in two graceful strides and easily kneed Rajaji in the groin. He then twisted his hand till the time he dropped his gun to the floor and ran him headfirst into the wall. Rajaji dropped to the ground without a word.
Just as Saket was turning, he saw the barrel of Shilpa’s gun against his forehead. He was a dead man, he knew. There was no way he could bring his own gun around in time. And even if he could, he knew he was not about to stop her without killing her. Time seemed to stand still as Saket saw the barrel of the gun getting bigger and bigger till it was touching his forehead. The feel of the metal was strangely cool and soothing. Dropping to his knees, he waited to be shot. Maybe redemption was not for him, may be he was meant to be killed at the hands of this woman and maybe that was his atonement.
Shilpa bared her teeth, and pulled the trigger. A moment later as the hammer clicked against the empty chamber, Saket realized that he was still alive. The gun was empty. Back on his feet, he grabbed Shilpa’s wrist and twisted it. He found it lot more difficult, since his nerves were badly shot after the near death experience, but he continued twisting Shilpa’s hand till she released the gun. Saket caught it before it hit the ground, and reversed it to hold it by the barrel. He swung it in a short arc and hit Shilpa just an inch above her neck on the back. She dropped like a sack of flour the next moment. Saket did not bother to check her pulse. He knew the exact amount of force and the pinpoint precision required to knock her unconscious for about twenty minutes. He had some work to do before she came to. He brought a pillow from the sofa (where Rajaji’s
dead sons lay), and inserted it under her head. Then he searched the house thoroughly to find a rifle and some spare bullets in one of the storage room. He also pulled cords out of some curtains and came back to the living room. He knew he had to carry her bound and gagged, otherwise he himself would not be alive when she came to. He turned her on her back and tied her wrists together tightly and then he again flipped her on her back, bound her ankles together. Shilpa was in a make shift straitjacket now. As he lifted her on his shoulders, a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. Holding her against the wall, he retched a couple of times and then walked out of the house on rubbery legs with the dead weight of a grown woman on his shoulders. As he walked out of the main gate, he saw a mob walking towards him. All of them had shiny swords held high. Saket dropped Shilpa on the backseat and unslung the rifle he had on his other shoulder. Quickly cocking it, he fired three shots in the crowd, hitting two men and a woman. They dropped and the crowd stopped, hesitating. Saket sat in the driver’s seat and gunned the engine. Then with his foot firmly on the accelerator, he headed straight towards the crowd. He hit them while the car was doing forty and continued accelerating as the undead bounced on his bonnet and were thrown like rag dolls. One man he hit jumped and crashed against the windshield spraying Saket with glass. Incredibly, he still had a hold on his sword. Howling unintelligibly he tried to grab Saket’s neck, while bringing his sword around. But the sword’s size defeated its purpose. It just clanked against the far side of the car and as metal crashed into metal in a horrendous screech, Saket managed to pull his pistol out of his belt and shoot the man between his eyes.
But the attackers were relentless. They were trying to climb the roof and slash the metal roof with their swords. Saket let go of the wheel and holding his and Shilpa’s gun in each hand emptied the clip in the direction of the roof. The metal was shredded as high power ammunition ripped through it. More screams and more bodies hitting the ground behind him. Saket, now in full combat mode, reloaded his pistol with his last clip and picked up the rifle again. He fired it one handed from his window once and then turned it around to shoot from the far side window. He hit nobody but suddenly his pursuers lost interest. The survivors of the undead squad suddenly gathered again and Saket slowed down to see what they were doing.
It was the basic animal instinct at work. They had seen and hunted a prey, but when they found the prey was difficult to take down, they started looking for easier kills. And now they were filing inside Rajaji’s bungalow through the main gate.
As Saket took the sharp left handed turn, he thought he could hear screams coming from Rajaji’s house. The undead had found their prey. Saket winced and turned on the main road. He debated for a moment, and decided to head back towards the farmhouse he was staying in. He now remembered the exit route.
He passed the Sathe Farmhouse and then he passed the local police station. He stopped and took a quick appraisal of the building. But tonight, like everything else, it too seemed to be deserted. Then Saket heard some howling noises behind him and started again.
He was at the exit point of the town, near the bridge after ten minutes of driving. He almost drove right on to it, before noticing that the bridge tilted dangerously inwards. It had caved in and water was flowing over it. Saket knew that the bridge in its current situation could not hold the weight of his vehicle. He had to do the remaining journey on foot.
In the backseat Shilpa stirred and moaned. Saket sighed and prepared to walk.
Chapter 17
Rani drove the vehicle at a near crawl, and they traveled through the deserted town in pouring rain. The streets were not only deserted, they seemed … well abandoned was the word that went through Vinit’s mind. As they left behind the beer street and came at the intersection of the municipal high school where schoolchildren had murdered their teacher only sixteen hours ago, they saw a fuel tanker standing near the town’s only petrol pump. Rani did not dare to slow down and as they went past it for a moment her eyes wandered to the cabin of the vehicle that seemed as abandoned as the rest of the town. She thought she saw a dead body sprawled across the steering wheel, but her mind beyond its ability to take shocks simply told that it was an illusion. Thankfully none of her companions remarked on the fuel tanker.
About a mile from the temple, they encountered their last problem of the night.
They turned a corner, and suddenly Rani stepped on brakes while a thin scream escaped her. Everyone turned to see and gasped.
Standing almost directly in the path of temple, was a figure that qualified for the single most horrible thing they encountered that night. It was a human form, rather once upon a time it was a human form. Now it was down to bare bones. It held a sword which seemed to be the fashion statement of this town at the moment. The Scorpio’s high beam showed a skull with a single horribly fractured eye ball. The hand holding the sword was bare bones. Rain water was flowing from his skull in to the ribcage and down the hip bones.
“Oh my god, oh my god,” Rani screamed and threw herself against Rakesh who too was staring at the horrible figure standing before them. In the backseat, Ragini squeezed herself against Neeraj.Vinit and Rajat fought down the bile rising through their throats.
“I know him,” Neeraj said in an utterly calm voice, and moved Ragini away from him.
“What?” Rajat asked, his eyes almost threatening to pop out of their sockets with bewilderment.
“I have ummm… killed him, we used to be professional competitors and I didn’t like him,” Neeraj said, he was opening the crate at his foot, removing one of the automatic guns.
“What are you doing?” Ragini asked him.
“I am getting out, he is looking for me, so if I get down he will let you all pass through without any problems,” Neeraj said.
“But what about you?” Vinit asked.
“I can look after myself, I have fought and killed him before, I can do it again,” but there was a trace of uneasiness in his voice.
“No way. We all are together in this,” Ragini said, and then stared at Vinit and Rajat pleadingly, realizing that probably they were about to let Neeraj get out.
Their conversation was interrupted by a terrible howl that Adesh let loose a few feet from them. Rani and Ragini almost wet themselves at that inhuman voice. Rakesh cocked his rifle and fired a shot at the figure. The bullet hit him in the ribcage, and bounced off harmlessly.
“I hit him and nothing happened,” Rakesh said now in as much panic as the women.
“Good job not all freaks are his prototype, guys keep driving, I am getting down,” Neeraj said, and started to haul himself out. A hand on his shoulder restrained him. It was Happy.
“Ragini is right, we are in this together, Rani dear can you drive?” he asked. His eyes held Neeraj’s steadily while his thin, almost bony hand gripped Neeraj’s strong shoulder.
“Nooooo…” Rani whimpered.
Happy’s words shook Vinit and Rajat out of their vapor lock. Rajat climbed awkwardly in the front and moved Rani against Rakesh. They were squeezed but now he was in the driver’s seat.
“What do you suggest, he is walking towards us,” Rajat asked Happy.
“How did you kill him Mr. Joshi?” Happy asked.
“Buried him alive in a village just like this,” Neeraj said.
“Arghhhhhhhhhhhh” Adesh raised his swords and charged the jeep with a howl so horrific, that it brought goose bumps on even Neeraj’s hands. The women were screaming in a low monotone and there was a faint odor of urine in the jeep. He came and hit the vehicle rather than other way round and the windshield simply collapsed with the impact of his bony body hitting it. Rajat swiveled, and rammed the Scorpio into a tree denting its hood and killing both the headlights. He tried to put it in reverse, but the SUV was stuck in mud, the rear wheels spun and sprayed a fine mist of mud in the air.
Through the open hatch, Vinit, Neeraj and Happy saw Adesh charge again, this time there would be no protection to either of them with th
e open hatch. Vinit fired an ineffectual round through his gun. Some bullets missed Adesh; some hit him without any damage apart from slowing him a bit. Neeraj reversed the automatic rifle so that he was holding its barrel, and jumped out of the SUV to meet Adesh head on. Adesh let loose another howl and charged.
Rajat in his desperation, pressed the accelerator peddle all the way down, and a giant stream of loose earth and mud flew through the rear tires, drenching Neeraj, Vinit and Happy with it. Adesh, now within striking distance of Neeraj, got hit by a fistful and suddenly stopped,
“Arrrrrghgghhhhhhh” he screamed, and this time Neeraj realized that this was a scream of terror or pain. In a millisecond, Adesh buried neck deep in his grave flashed before his eyes, and he realized why.
Nor was he the only one to do so.
“He is scared of mud, you buried him, so he is scared of mud,” Happy screamed and told Rajat, “Go on pushing Rajat, let’s drench this fucker hoo-ha,” Rajat pressed the gas peddle further and some more mud and water hit Adesh. He screamed, and retreated.
“Don’t start something you can’t finish Adesh, come here,” Neeraj bent to scoop two fistfuls of mud in either hands, and threw them with as much force and accuracy as he could. One missed, but the other one hit him smack on the forehead. There was another scream and Adesh lost his footing. As he collapsed in the mud, his skeleton twisted and he screamed in pain. Rani, Ragini, Vinit and Happy were out of the jeep now, scooping mud in their hands and throwing at him. Adesh was trying to crawl away from them.
“We will bury you yet my boy, come here” Ragini said and advanced towards Adesh. Neeraj pulled her back and continued throwing mud. Now they could see some cracks appearing in the skeleton, as the bones were crumbling like they would in an advanced state of decomposition. Adesh was losing the battle once more. He tried to get up, but his shin bone simply burst into fine powder and he collapsed. His wrist and shoulder bones were crumbling too. He crawled, leaving a trail of decomposing and broken bones as it came in contact with more and more mud. Only his special iron shoes had protected him while walking through all the mud. He and the Courageous Leader had not taken the possibility of him falling down in it.
Kumbhpur Rising Page 23