by J. Thorn
Day 130. Silent night, unholy night.
For the first time in weeks, I’ve taken off my prosthetic leg. As I rub the stump where it had been attached, I can feel a dull, throbbing pain. I think I’m done with running for today at least. I saw some of the civvies look at me almost in shock when they realized that their fearless leader only had one leg. Soon enough they’ll start realizing all my other deficiencies, but today I got lucky.
After lunch we headed off in search of water. I had seen multiple animal tracks leading East, and I had a hunch that there must be water there for them to keep going there. We struck gold when after an hour of hiking, we found a pond. We all drank our fill and washed up. Negi pointed to a low hill near the pond and after I checked it out, it seemed like a perfect hiding place. There were several decent-sized caves on the side of the hill, and all of us fit neatly into a couple of them. We managed to get some more berries and brought up some water from the pond.
Now we’re as comfortable as we can hope to be under the circumstances. The kids are all huddled up under the few blankets their parents were carrying. We can’t risk a fire, so we’re trying our best to stay warm by putting on as many layers of clothes as we can find. A man in the group lent me a spare sweater, which I’m grateful for, otherwise I would have been freezing my ass off. I planned to spend the night thinking of our plan for the next day, but the Moreko had other ideas.
A couple of hours after we had come up to the caves, I spotted movement in the bushes, followed by that pretty distinctive stench that I had come to know so well. There were a dozen or more Moreko, stumbling along in the darkness, and I think I saw one of the stupid buggers slip and fall in the water. I doubt any of us will want to drink from the pond tomorrow.
They’re still down there, screeching away. The kids are terrified, but I doubt the Moreko know we’re up here. As I see them in the moonlight, I wonder what happened to them to make them the way they are. Earlier, without any provocation, one of them pushed another and then they were at it – ripping and biting each other till one of them was killed. The others just continued roaming around as if nothing happened.
The doc in the group, a talkative man called Sen, tells me that it all began with some experiments gone wrong in the US. I can believe it – we seem to be good at screwing ourselves up.
Kids are amazing. Despite the bloody Moreko keeping up their midnight concert, they are all fast asleep. I’m tired as well, but I can’t get any sleep – not with the Moreko just below us.
Day 131. Siege redux.
It’s a familiar feeling for me – to be under siege by the Moreko. I don’t think they even know we’re up here, but for whatever reason, they refuse to budge. One more of them was torn apart by his comrades in a brawl, but that still leaves ten of them, and if we wait for them to kill themselves, I suspect we’ll die of thirst before that happens. Our water is now almost finished, and the kids are looking pretty weak. Negi and Sen came up to me a few minutes ago, and Sen said that we must make a move tonight, otherwise at least a couple of the younger kids won’t be able to carry on without food or water. I knew all that already, and I was wondering why they were telling me when it struck me.
They’re looking at me to come up with a plan.
I hope they realize just how screwed they are.
Day 132. Death of a Doctor.
We buried Sen this afternoon. I’ve lost men in combat, but this really struck home. I was crying – something I had thought myself no longer capable of. As a soldier, you sign up knowing that you could lose your life, but Sen was no soldier. He was a slightly overweight, short man of forty with a wife and a kid he had left back in Delhi when he had come to Gangtok for a medical conference. He could have followed the herd, seeking safety in numbers, hoping someone else took charge. Hoping I took charge. But he didn’t, and in doing what he did, he proved himself to be a far better man than I.
Last evening, I sat up watching the Moreko, nine of them remaining after one more fell in a brawl. Our food was long gone and the last drops of water remained. Sen had come up to me once again, asking me if I had a plan. I told him I was working on it, but in truth there was nothing I could see that might work. Of the six men in our group, only Negi seemed to know how to shoot a bit, and we only had three firearms between us. We could try and pick off the Moreko from up here with the rifles, but with just two rifles we would likely get at most two or three of them before the others scattered into the forest. Then we would be back to square one – under siege.
From what I had seen at the bungalow, I didn’t think the Moreko could climb the hill up to where we were, but sitting here indefinitely was not an option. The thought did cross my mind that perhaps we could rush the Moreko. We had fourteen adults and three firearms. I didn’t count the knives since I wouldn’t recommend any sane person get within knife-fighting range of a Moreko, but if the others could distract the Moreko by going down, three of us with guns might have a chance of getting them. I dismissed the idea as soon as I got it. Who would I ask to go down to a near certain death? The people with me were tour guides, doctors and businessmen. None of them knew how to fight, and none of them looked like they were ready for a suicide mission. Hell, I wasn’t sure I was up to it.
That was when Sen brushed past me, telling me and Negi to be ready with the rifles. The poor, brave soul must have had the same idea I did, but he acted on it. He rushed down the hill, shouting, brandishing the pistol he carried. The Moreko roared and came at him as he ran towards them and then doubled back towards the hill, firing several times. I’m sure this was the first time he had ever fired a gun, but even then he managed to hit one of the Moreko in the chest. The others were in a frenzy and were converging on him when I asked Negi to open fire.
I rushed down the hill, no longer willing to sit up there in safety while Sen sacrificed himself. I fired from the hip as I ran, hitting one Moreko, and another went down to Negi’s fire. That still left six Moreko and Sen was now out of bullets. Brave as he was, he had begun screaming in terror. I knelt and brought down another Moreko with a burst to the legs. As he went down, I finished him with a shot to the head.
The Moreko hesitated for a second. They almost had Sen, but they also realized that Negi and I presented a threat. God knows how their diseased, rotten brains work but they pounced on Sen. I kept firing and hit three more and Negi got one, but there was no way we were going to save Sen. I still remember his screams and as I ran up to him, I saw the last Moreko kneeling over him, blood dripping from his mouth. I smashed the diseased fucker’s head open with the butt of my rifle. This being a brand-new assault rifle versus the ancient Enfield with which I had tried the same stunt back at the bungalow, my rifle stayed intact; the Moreko’s head didn’t.
After burying Sen, we found a new hideout, another seemingly secure hill with a pond near it. People drank out of necessity, but nobody has eaten and nobody is talking much. Everyone seems to be thinking of Sen’s sacrifice, as am I.
As I look at them sitting together, huddled in their torn blankets, I feel something I have never felt before – a sense of responsibility for something more than my sorry ass. All my life I’ve bothered about nothing more than my own needs, my own survival, and my ego. A fat lot of good that did my career and my marriage, but Sen’s taught me something. I have no idea what will happen to me, and honestly nobody will care, but these people with me have families, have people to live for. If I do nothing else, I’ll try and see them to safety. I owe Sen that much.
Day 133. Lessons in democracy.
Out of ideas, and nearly out of ammunition, for the first time since we were thrown together, this morning we discussed what we should do next. Negi started off by asking me what I thought we should be doing. I had enough of having leadership thrust on me and asked him why he thought I’d have any brighter ideas than the rest of them. He looked a bit hurt and replied that after all, I had been an officer in the Army. I was the only one who knew anything about surviving in an envir
onment like this and the only one who could fight if need be. That, in his book, made me the leader.
Talk about irony. People study, work hard at their jobs, gain impressive degrees and qualifications and then at the end of it, it turns out that grunts shall inherit the Earth. Anyways, I was out of bright ideas and so I suggested that we vote on it. One option was to seek out Bharti’s troopers and rejoin his community. The other was to strike out on our own.
To my shock, all but one of the adults voted for the second option. I couldn’t understand why they would want to wander about in the forest with no clear destination and no real hope of safety or rescue. Negi summed it up for me well. He told me that all of them might not have been rich, might not have been privileged before the infection spread, but at least they had all been free. The few months in Bharti’s camp had taught them there were things more important than having a meal to eat and being able to sleep safely at night. Most of the people with me had suffered abuse at the hands of the troopers or knew others who had, and none of them wanted to become slaves again.
As I watched them, I realized that they were making me their leader, but I was not the one leading them. Indeed, their courage was leading me, forcing me to become a better man.
While the kids slept, I had a little chat with the adults. I told them I didn’t know where safety lay, but I did know that we could not hope to last long with this pitiful arsenal. Our only hope of surviving was to arm ourselves. A couple of them said that they had no idea how to shoot, and I told them that was not the hard part. Against Moreko, you don’t need to be an elite commando – you just need to be able to point the damn gun and pull the trigger. That much I could teach. The much harder part is going to be finding weapons.
Call me crazy, but tomorrow I’m going to seek out trouble.
Day 134. God is on the side of the big battalions (or is he, really?)
It’s dark and I’m scribbling by the light of the single lamp at the back of the cave. I went out twice and checked that its glow was not visible from the outside, but Negi told me I was being paranoid. He’s probably right, but after all the trouble we stirred up today, I’d be surprised if Bharti’s troopers weren’t coming after us. And of course, one can never predict when a group of bloody Moreko decide to camp out near our cave again. At least now we’ll be well prepared. But wait, let me back up and start from the beginning.
I set my plan into motion early in the morning. Back at the Academy, my instructors had drilled into me the importance of numerical superiority and of concentration of forces – something that was reflected in the quote by Napoleon that I used to headline this entry. In light of that, our plan didn’t have a ghost of a chance of success. We had a total of twelve bullets among us, and I loaded them all in a magazine for my rifle. With twelve bullets and a bunch of untrained civilians, I intended to ambush heavily armed soldiers. Actually it didn’t matter whether our targets ended up being Bharti’s troopers or their enemies. It was their weapons we were interested in.
All morning we had heard the chopper up in the sky, and occasional gunshots, indicating that the battle for Gangtok was still on. I had set out for a brief recce in the morning and saw that the forest nearby was teeming with soldiers. I had glimpsed at least twenty Chinese soldiers carrying assault rifles, heading towards town, and I had seen a group of six of Bharti’s troopers setting up an ambush. Twenty was way too many for us to take on, but the troopers were too attractive a target to pass up.
Our plan unfolded with three of the civilians walking into the path of the troopers. The troopers recognized them from the camp and shouted at them to stop. Our men told the troopers that the rest of the civvies had got lost in the fighting and were in a nearby cave. I was some twenty meters away, hiding behind a tree, and I heard one of the troopers radio in, asking for instructions. Clearly he was told to fetch the lost civvies, and the troopers followed our men. My initial plan had been to ambush them, but with twelve bullets, it would have been a small miracle for me to kill more than a handful of them before they got me, so I had decided that when ammunition was not sufficient, we would make up for it with some good old theatrics. It was a risky move, and I was praying we didn’t mess it up too badly.
When the troopers passed me, the kids came out of the bushes, shouting greetings. They may have been brutes, but the troopers were human, and they involuntarily lowered their rifles. That was when I screamed at them to drop their guns, as did Danish and another elderly man called Pratik, who had been an English professor at the college in Gangtok. Negi had the second rifle and Pratik had the pistol. Both of those were empty and I was praying that the troopers would not call our bluff.
As I ventured into the open, covering the troopers with my rifle, one of them started raising his rifle towards the kids. Bastard should have known better. I dropped him with a shot to the neck. As he fell, there was a brief moment when it looked like the other troopers would fight. A couple of them began to raise their guns, but Negi screamed that we had them surrounded and they had one chance to live, otherwise we would kill every one of them. Remind me never to play poker with Negi.
The troopers threw their rifles to the ground and raised their hands. We quickly gathered all their weapons and supplies and then one of the women gasped on seeing the troopers. Turned out at least three of them were known to have raped women in the camp. That sealed their fate. We stripped them, figuring that the uniforms might come in handy, and I had half a mind to shoot them then and there. That was when we heard the Moreko nearby. The troopers were crying and begging us to take them with us. We left them in the clearing and as we walked into the forest, I could hear them start screaming as the Moreko tore into them.
I figured they had it coming to them, but in the evening, I asked Negi if he thought I had done the right thing. He shrugged, as he seems to do a lot, and told me that everyone in our group supported my decision. I saw the glint in Negi’s eyes as he held his new assault rifle and also saw how the other men were carrying their weapons. I know only too well what it is to be seduced by the power of holding a gun, and how killing can become a habit. I just hope that Negi and the others don’t go down that path, driven by their hatred for the troopers and Bharti. You know what they say about us sometimes becoming what we hate the most.
Day 135. The school of hard knocks.
Now that we felt a bit more secure with our new-found arsenal, I led a couple of the men out this morning to try and recce the area around our cave. As winter sets in, we wouldn’t be able to stay in this cave. We’ll need somewhere more secure and permanent. The problem was that all around us there was little but forests and hills. However, Negi had an idea that I liked a lot – we could easily shack up in abandoned houses or shops on the outskirts of Gangtok. From what we had seen and heard, Bharti and his Chinese enemies were still duking it out, but they seemed to be focused on occupying the centre of the city, especially the hill where I had been just days ago. Bharti had perhaps a hundred troopers at best with him, and there was no way he could secure the whole city. My guess was that he wanted to make the hill his citadel and secure the nearby areas. That still left a lot of space for us to hide in till we got any better ideas about where to go.
I left Negi back with the rest of the group and picked two of the younger guys to come with me. One is Chetan and the other is Ram. Both were young office workers from Mumbai out on a Himalayan trek with friends when the Moreko arrived and ruined everyone’s day. I had given them a quick lesson on how to use their rifles, but honestly, I just hoped we didn’t run into any trouble.
While I liked Negi’s idea, I didn’t actually want to go into the city itself. I knew there were a number of tea shops and guest houses on the roads leading into the city and I thought we could lie low there more easily than being in a city that was fast turning into a battleground.
We had been walking for an hour when I saw a clearing leading to the highway. Just about five hundred meters from us was a guest house. I asked Chetan and
Ram to hold back as I approached the two-storey building. Its paint was peeling off in many places and a cracked sign proclaimed it to be the Taj Mahal Inn. The grand name notwithstanding, it was a piece of junk that I would not have even contemplated staying in for a single night under normal circumstances. Of course, when you call a cold cave in the middle of a forest home, circumstances are anything but normal.
To my delight, I saw a car parked outside the motel and it still had its keys in the ignition. I signaled to Chetan and Ram to come up and we went inside. Chetan had apparently seen too many movies about commandos because he went in first, moving his rifle left to right in imitation of some celluloid hero. And then he screamed in terror as the first Moreko came out from behind the reception counter.
The fucker was emaciated and bloodied, with his left hand little more than a bloody stump. Chetan froze. I can’t blame him because I was shit-scared the first time I saw combat, but the problem was that he was right in my path. So I pushed him out of the way and shot the Moreko through the eye. Chetan looked at me, ashen-faced and I shouted at him to watch out as another Moreko shuffled into view. Ram had come in and opened up on full auto. It was messy, more than half his rounds went astray but enough did the job to take the Moreko down.