Nuclear Midnight

by Cole, Robert

  And he cackled insanely as they stared at him in horror.

  Jeff sat against some fuel drums, his head bowed, his rifle lying on the floor next to him. He was hopelessly trapped. Most of his men were dead and he was running low on ammunition. Things had gone terribly wrong; it was a total disaster. Only a few hours before they had been celebrating at taking the sector and finding a huge arms store. But there had been no larger weapons artillery, tanks and rocket launchers were all missing. When they questioned one of the soldiers they had captured, he told them that most of the heavy stuff had been moved to sector eighteen for maintenance some months before. What they had seized were the small arms, ammunition and a fuel dump, and even these only amounted to half the city's supply. More of all these categories were also located in sector eighteen.

  This failure, the result of inadequate intelligence, had only just been explained to them when all hell had broken loose. Suddenly one wall of the sector had blown apart and the military had swarmed in. His men had put up a tremendous fight and killed many soldiers. But they were facing hopeless odds. In the end they had to retreat amongst a huge supply of diesel fuel stored in the basement of the sector. The military had not pressed them too hard there, but had resorted to negotiations, fearing they would blow the place up if they fired.

  So here they still remained. He checked his watch.

  It was nearly six thirty. The stalemate had been going on for nearly fifty minutes. He was giving the military valuable time to clear the area. For the first time ever he was feeling physically sick with fear.

  ‘Now, listen to me,’ a rather tired voice called for the fifth time. ‘Give yourselves up. This is the end of the line for you. You've fought well, but the battle has gone against you. Already our army is on the surface. Blowing up a fuel dump isn't going to change that. Come out with your weapons, and I personally will guarantee your safety.’

  Jeff looked from at the determined faces of his men. There was only nineteen were left. A few metres away one of them held a small detonator. He only had to touch two wires together and the whole place would go up. He signalled to the man to come over and took the box from him. The others looked on grimly, finally realising Jeff was about to make the decision that would claim all their lives. But not one of them complained or showed any sign of emotion.

  ‘At this minute we are driving back your forces on the surface,’ the voice started up again. ‘You're wasting your time and ours. Come out and give yourselves up.’

  Jeff leaned across to his men. ‘They won't risk firing with the fuel dump at our backs. I'll set the timer on the detonator for five minutes. I propose we charge straight for them. If we break through we just keep on going, we may be able to escape through the same tunnel.’

  They solemnly nodded their approval of his plan. He doubted any of them really believed a word of it. Even if they reached the tunnel, there was enough fuel and ammunition here to blow this whole sector out of the ground. They would go up with everything else.

  When he was sure that everyone was clear on his instructions, Jeff turned his attention back to the military. There were possibly thirty men in the storeroom, huddled behind a number of small concrete walls next to the door. The rest, he assumed, were waiting in the corridors outside. His men checked their rifles and shared out their last supplies of ammunition. Then they looked towards him.

  A moment's grace and then he gave the signal. Instantly they leapt from their positions and went rushing forward. They were met with no spray of fire. Instead the military made a mad scramble for the door, where many were shot as they tried to squeeze through the narrow opening. The community soldiers were at their heels and immediately threw hand grenades into the passageway beyond, racing on straight after the explosions. For maybe a minute Jeff heard the sound of intense fighting in the network of corridors and then everything went quiet.

  Another minute passed before the military came back, creeping over the bodies of their dead. Jeff watched the scene with an almost morbid fascination. He was very calm now, his mind clear and certain. He mused to himself that he was living the very last seconds of his life. The thought held no horror or anguish for him, for at that moment he had never hated anyone or anything more than the military. He re set the charges to explode in twenty seconds, flicked off his safety catch and positioned his rifle on one of the drums. They came to within ten metres of his position still unaware of his presence. Impassively he emptied his last clip into them. The last memory he ever had was of soldiers running for their lives amid the slaughter of their comrades.

  CHAPTER 17

  In a dozen different locations came the grinding back of huge iron doors. And into the night, through the growing gaps, swarmed the heavy armour. Within minutes they had linked into a line, making one unbroken chain several kilometres wide.

  Every second tank in the line had a powerful searchlight, a Cyclops eye that moved ceaselessly. With hardly a pause, the wall of steel rolled forward, sweeping north at speeds of up to fifty kilometres an hour. Their target lay only ten kilometres off another army, less well equipped, advancing toward them more slowly and completely unaware of the hammer blow about to fall.

  When Marcus guessed that the saboteurs had failed, he had wasted no time in ordering all company commanders to mobilise their units and advance on the city. The foot soldiers were to move ahead of the armoured units in a series of arrowhead formations. The object was to scour the land for any hidden tunnels that were not marked on their maps. Nothing was to be left to chance. Every exit they found was to be destroyed, denying the military access to the surface. They would be sealed in and effectively defeated without firing a shot.

  Alex was at the head of one of these arrowhead formations, in charge of a brigade of five thousand men and women and doing his best to restrain the over eager and encourage the more reluctant by means of a limited range walkie talkie. All commanders were equipped with radios, which were only to be used in the case of extreme emergencies, as it was assumed that any broadcast this close to the city would be monitored. So far none of the forward units had broken radio silence.

  As they advanced the country began to break up, becoming hillier and increasing the difficulties of keeping the regiments under his command in touch. Alex called a temporary halt to check his compass bearings and look at the map. Due south lay the tunnel exits his brigade had been assigned to guard. Slightly to the left was the village of Box. Bath was some eight kilometres further away. It was at this moment that one of his aides spotted what looked like summer lightning briefly thrown up on the clouds, accompanied by a rumble of apparent thunder. Alex felt sure he could hear the sound of powerful engines. He flashed his torch at the radio operator at the same time as Cliff came running up.

  ‘It's confirmed, guv,’ he panted. ‘Tanks, and plenty of them.’

  Alex nodded. ‘Shit,’ he said quietly.

  ‘The radio's gone wild,’ Cliff continued. ‘Everyone's on the channel at once. Apparently there's a whole line of them sweeping this way.’

  ‘Where are ours?’

  ‘They've already been given orders to move up, but the reports I've heard suggest they could have as many as four hundred tanks. We don't even have half that number.’

  ‘Can our tanks catch up with us in time?’

  ‘Afraid not, guv. Too far back. They're over ten kilometres behind. These bastards are only a few kilometres away and closing fast. Probably they are hoping to wipe out our main forces before any support arrives.’

  ‘So they have been monitoring us all along,’ said Alex despairingly.

  ‘Seems that way,’ Cliff agreed. ‘Our strategy seems to have been flawed from the start. I never thought much of it.’

  Alex nodded, but didn't answer. The beginning of a plan was forming in his mind. He turned to the eastern horizon. The sky was turning a dark purple, but the sun would not rise above the dust burden for some time. Several hours of twilight still remained. The land was a multitude of featureless b
lack shapes, and to the military, who had no experience of the surface, it could not be more than that.

  ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘I want the whole brigade to dig in and get out of sight. Use all natural cover, anything you like, but not a shot is to be fired until the tanks have driven right over the top of us. There are bound to be soldiers and back up artillery following up behind. We'll concentrate on knocking them out.’

  Cliff nodded and ran off in a hurry.

  ‘I don't want the radio used, the military are too close,’ Alex called after him.

  Alex repeated his instructions on the walkie talkie, then sent off runners to the squadrons on the flanks who might have difficulty in receiving his transmission. He also sent off a number of drivers with the same message, hoping the other commanders would also adopt his plan.

  Alex turned back to the lights and tried to gauge the speed of their advance. The volume of sound had already markedly increased. And now from his vantage point he could see for the first time the sources of the lights. A long unbroken line of blackness appeared for an instant over a hill, then dived immediately out of sight. Behind it were hundreds of smaller headlights, each probably representing a rocket launcher or some mobile artillery unit. He checked his watch. It was nearly six. Marcus had not explained what had happened in the tunnels, but he had said enough for it to be obvious that the enemy's war machine was vastly superior to their own. Certainly they had picked their battleground well. If the survivors lost, their only retreat would be across the open there was nowhere to regroup. Their tanks lacked power and punch and in a few hours their ally, the night, would have deserted them.

  As they waited, the enemy opened up with a concentrated bombardment of the land. Tank shells and artillery pounded the armoured units over the survivors' heads. The advancing tanks selectively strafed any places that looked as if they could conceal hostile forces, for as yet, the military had not made contact with the survivors. Like Alex’s division, all the forward units had gone to ground. Once in position they blended into the surface as naturally as the rocks, becoming virtually invisible to the untrained eye. The military, finding themselves in the eerie twilight of a strange land, rolled over their positions, missing them completely.

  Alex was with Cliff and several other men, covered in soil, behind a series of large boulders. A few minutes after the tanks and support artillery had passed, the first foot soldiers appeared. Alex could see them looking around nervously, their heads darting from side to side, their hands gripped tightly on their rifles. He waited until the first wave was almost upon them before he took up his walkie talkie and gave the final order for the assault.

  From hundreds of covered burrows and hidden crevices the ground erupted in survivors. They fell on the soldiers like the rush of an angry sea, tearing into their ranks with anything to hand, from automatic weapons to primitive knives and clubs. The soldiers fought back desperately, but the surprise was total and they were not prepared for an enemy who fought with the viciousness of a wild beast. Panic spread through the ranks as thousands of survivors sprung, it seemed, from the ground.

  Alex was swept up in the slaughter around him. He focused all his rage on the smooth faced soldiers with shiny weapons and terrified faces. The animal within triumphed, breaking down the barriers of restraint he had tried to build up since the holocaust. Like his men, he recklessly attacked soldier after soldier. Bullets sang around him but he never crouched or paused. Having emptied his revolver, he picked up a rifle from one of the dead soldiers and continued the attack. Soon packs of the enemy were fleeing wildly past him, abandoning their weapons in their haste to escape.

  A dozen soldiers were set upon by half their number of survivors. There was a brief exchange of fire before the survivors ploughed into them with knives. Only two escaped towards Alex. He shot one of them and drew his knife on the second.

  The victim saw him coming and tried to fend him off, but Alex weaved around his outstretched arms and guided the blade under his ribcage into the heart. The soldier's eyes bulged, he groaned and then dropped to the ground. Alex jerked the knife out and looked around for another victim to plunge it into, but the battle was already almost over. Pockets of remaining soldiers were being hewn down and killed. An army of survivors fifteen thousand strong was now poised between the armoured column and their base.

  Five kilometres further on the battle raged in the military's favour. Their superior firepower and skill were already forcing back the second rate armour of the survivors. Their tanks were being rounded up like sheep into a shallow valley, the left and right arms of the military swinging around to cut off any retreat.

  Marcus, several kilometres further back in his communication van, was going half-crazy with anxiety and frustration. His observation posts in the field kept screaming at him to tell the tanks to break free of the circle before it closed, but his communications with them had broken down. Already over half the tanks were destroyed and much of the supporting artillery had either been silenced or had run out of ammunition. In one last desperate effort, the remaining tanks massed near the bottom of the valley, and rallied to try to wrench off the tightening noose. They drove quickly along the valley floor, destroying the eight tanks that tried to bar their way, but immediately more of the enemy moved up to take their place. Then the rear of the column came under attack and their retreat was hampered as they tried to defend their flanks. In the vital minutes that were lost, the circle had clamped shut in front of them. The military's artillery at once began firing into their ranks until in the end all that was left was twisted metal.

  Meanwhile more tanks were sweeping forward to take out what remained of the survivors' artillery. The darkness of total defeat closed over these units also, and they fell silent.

  The communication van was perched high on a hill with an overview of the unfolding tragedy. Marcus had abandoned the radio when the last tanks had been destroyed. He now stood motionless, staring down through the thick, tinted glass windows of the van. The enemy, advancing like a crashing wave, was driving all before it. That tide now washed the base of the hill and swept round either side. The end must come soon. A few pieces of artillery stationed near him kept lobbing shells into the masses of surging tanks, pinpricks which would only delay the inevitable.

  Marcus looked around. Of the two Scottish commanders, Dimintri was calm, his face a perfect mask, revealing nothing of the turmoil and shock he must be feeling. The other leader, however, had gone completely to pieces. He was still by the radio screaming orders at the few gun emplacements still operative. His whole body was bathed in sweat and his voice had become nothing more than a hysterical bark. Marcus turned back to the battle. The tank column had pierced to within two hundred metres of their position and was crunching over the burning hulks of artillery and rocket launchers. As they advanced they destroyed all the vehicles that still remained intact, whether defended or not, while the tanks at the rear maintained a constant shelling of the upper slopes. The smoke of desolation hung over the grim scene.

  But Marcus, standing by the window, had long ceased to acknowledge what his senses told him. In his mind he was a small boy again, wandering through the woods, happy, contented, fully absorbed in a scene of beauty. He saw a girl's face, picnic things strewn on the green grass, a quiet river murmuring by…

  Suddenly the back doors of the van were ripped apart and Dimintri was killed. Marcus was thrown against the radio and landed on top of the other commander, who was already unconscious and bleeding profusely from a gash down one side of his face. Marcus staggered out into the open. The ground vibrated with explosions, his lungs and throat were stung from the acrid fumes. The first black hulks of tanks made their appearance through the smoke, their turrets spinning round like tops, spitting out flame at whatever their searchlights fastened upon. The van exploded behind him and suddenly his shoulder was hurting, his right arm useless. When he touched the place with his left hand it became covered in blood. The smoke started to make h
im cough and he dropped to his knees, his sight becoming blotchy and his head beginning to spin. A tank halted on the crest of the hill, fifty metres away. Marcus could see the nozzle of the machine gun sweep towards him, cutting up the ground as it went. Then he was hit and for an instant everything came into perfect clarity. He could feel and hear the bullets smash through him as he was flung backwards onto the van. But seconds later it all faded as he slumped to the earth and quickly died.

  The tanks did not pursue the few escaping survivors or attack the fleeing supply column. Reforming into a line they turned back towards the city, finally responding to the anguished appeals of their infantry.

  Alex wandered amongst his men grim faced. Everywhere he looked he could see nothing but bodies and blood. His own troops, although largely unwounded, looked as if they had been bathing in blood. A bloated mosquito landed on his nose and lifting his hand to brush it away, he conveyed more blood, not his own, to his cheeks. He stared at his hands and then at his clothes that were already beginning to stiffen and darken with dried blood. Suddenly he was overcome with the urge to clean it off. He knelt down and tried to wipe it away on the shirt tails of one of the dead soldiers. The man only had a small, neat hole in the back of his head, but his whole face had been blown away. Alex got to his feet, feeling sick. He managed only a few unsteady steps before he had to sit down again. His stomach felt as though it had filled with acid. He leant forward, lowered his head and immediately started vomiting, continuing long after his stomach had emptied of food.

  ‘I'm not surprised,’ came a familiar voice from behind.

  Alex looked up to find Cliff standing in front of him. The little carpenter smiled briefly at him.

  ‘Can't say I blame you, though,’ he continued solemnly. ‘I wish I could get rid of my emotions as easily as you.’