by Dhar, Mainak
Chen thought back to the hundreds of lives lost in the square earlier in the day and he looked up at the officer.
‘What do I need to do?’
*
While Chen was sitting in his barracks planning his next move, Edward was at the airport, waiting to catch a flight out to Hong Kong. He had an onward journey booked to New York, where he would dispose of his current identity and take a well-deserved two-month vacation.
He could almost smell the fear in the business-class lounge. Most people were rooted to the TV sets, which were broadcasting details of how the contagion had spread around the world in a matter of days. The monsters now had a name.
Biters.
The major urban centers of China were still free of the scourge, but with air travel carrying tens of millions of people around the world every day, it was but a matter of time before the infection spread. Edward could only guess as to the ultimate aim of the plan but even what little he had seen was beginning to scare him.
There was a commotion outside and one of the airline employees at the reception got up to see what was the matter. When she turned to face the passengers, Edwards saw a look of fear that quickly gave way to a forced smile as she bravely tried to do her job and reassure the passengers.
‘Please stay in the lounge, the police will deal with what is happening outside.’
It would never be known how the first Biters entered Beijing. Perhaps a passenger had brought the infection with him; Edward had already read about flights landing full of Biters with the terrified crew having locked themselves in the cockpits. Or perhaps a Biter had come into the city from the countryside. As with all large cities, once the infection took hold, it spread at an astonishing pace.
Edward was at the glass door now. Blood-covered figures in torn clothes rampaged through the terminal. A man behind him screamed at him to lock the door, but when the Biters smashed another lounge’s glass doors and walked in, oblivious to the shards, Edward knew that hiding was not an option. He was not going down without a fight.
As the first Biters approached the business-class lounge, he shouted at the waiters to get knives from the kitchen. He armed himself with two carving knives and met the first Biter as he smashed through the glass into the lounge. Edward slashed him across the throat and kicked down the next Biter before stabbing him through the heart. He heard a gurgling noise behind him and turned to see the first Biter get back up, a gaping hole in his neck where blood spurted out. The Biter bared his teeth and advanced on Edward.
Edward dropped the knife, a terror like he had never known before taking hold of him. How did you fight an enemy you could not kill? He closed his eyes and screamed as the Biter grabbed his hand and bit down hard.
*
Chen had fallen asleep within minutes of getting home at three in the morning. However, it was anything but a sound sleep. He kept dreaming of bloodied corpses and of mobs surging towards him. He heard loud booms and for a minute he thought he was dreaming it. Then his wife shook him awake.
‘Huahei, look out there!’
Chen looked out the window to see the night sky light up in the distance with bright bursts of flame. As another explosion sent up a crimson plume, he knew what he was looking at – an attack from the air. The explosions seemed to be coming from the direction of the airport. However, there was no return fire. There was no way an enemy could attack the Chinese capital without its formidable anti-aircraft defenses firing back. What was happening? He picked up his phone as it rang. It was an unfamiliar voice, but the words Chen heard electrified him.
‘Comrade, the contagion has spread to Beijing. The Biters overran the airport and we had to destroy it from the air. There are more Biters headed to the city. We need you and your unit to deploy now. A truck is on the way to fetch you.’
Chen’s wife had turned on the TV and he saw that the contagion had consumed much of the world and now was at the doorsteps of China’s major cities. China’s lack of freedom worked in its favor now. Unlike major Western cities, the entrances to Chinese cities were closely guarded. With rising tensions, crack Army units had been positioned outside most cities to guard against escalating civil protests, and while nobody had said it out aloud, the real possibility of a military coup. Together with the network of spies in various communities, the Chinese leadership was able to get word of the emerging outbreak before many other nations.
The President was on TV now and Chen felt an emotion he thought he had forgotten – patriotism.
‘My fellow people. Today I speak to you as our nation confronts an enemy we have never fought before. Nation after nation has fallen to this scourge, but we will resist till the very end. As I speak, units of the People’s Liberation Army are racing to intercept these infected hordes before they breach our major cities. To civilians caught outside major cities, we will be broadcasting safe zones where you can enter the cities and seek sanctuary. Our nation has been divided, but now the time has come for us to unite in facing this threat. If we fight shoulder to shoulder as comrades, we may yet survive. But if we do not, one thing is certain. Our nation will cease to exist.’
Chen passed through a city in panic as he rode to join his unit. People were boarding up their homes and even at five in the morning nervous crowds were gathering outside. One of the young men began to clap as the Army trucks sped past to meet the oncoming hordes of Biters. It was soon taken up by many others, and an old man emerged from a group, wearing a crumpled old uniform with rows of medals on his chest. He caught Chen’s eye and shouted out, ‘Go get them, boys! All of China depends on you today.’
Chen spent the rest of the ride thinking about everything he had seen and heard. Minutes later, he was in front of his men.
‘Sir, I hear we cannot kill these Biters with bullets.’
Chen stormed up to the young infantryman and grabbed his helmet with both hands, pulling him close till his face was inches away.
‘If not with bullets, then we will rip their fucking hearts out with our bare hands.’
He loosened his grip on the shaking soldier and addressed all his men now arrayed before him.
‘I know many of you have been troubled, and after what happened yesterday, I cannot blame you. There will be a reckoning one day for those innocent lives lost, but now we are all that stands between those monsters and the millions of people in the city. Fight like this is our last day on Earth because it may well be.’
*
The first Biters came within the hour. There were six of them, all dressed in bloody remnants of Army uniforms. Some of his men hesitated to fire at those wearing the uniform so Chen fired on full auto. One of the Biters dropped as several rounds tore into him. Chen lowered his rifle and then recoiled as the fallen Biter got up, blood covering his torso, and joined the others in walking towards the troops. Some men took a step back and Chen knew he had just a few seconds before his men gave into full-scale panic. His men were well trained, but they had never fought an enemy who could not be shot dead.
He had already heard how other units had panicked and tried to run. That never worked. The moment one of them was bitten, the contagion spread, and within minutes, a disciplined platoon of crack troops was turned into bloodthirsty and mindless Biters.
Chen ordered one of his men to fire an RPG and within seconds the rocket snaked out towards the approaching Biters. It exploded in their midst, scattering all but three of them.
‘Did we get them?’
Chen did not answer the man who had asked the question but brought up his rifle scope to his eyes to take a closer look. The Biters who had been torn apart by the rocket were not dead yet. One of them had his leg taken apart by the rocket but his torso was still trying to crawl towards them, his mouth open with blood and drool streaming out of it. Another had lost much of one side of his body, but both halves were flopping around. As horrified as he was, Chen had just learned an important lesson. Even if the Biters could not be killed, they could be stopped.
&nb
sp; ‘Take their legs apart! Aim low and fire on full auto!’
A volley of rifle fire on full automatic targeted the three approaching Biters and all three of them went down, their legs shredded. What remained of them continued to move and wriggle around on the ground, but they were no longer an imminent threat.
‘RPG!’
At Chen’s command, another rocket streaked out and obliterated what had remained of the Biters. For all Chen knew, their body parts were still moving, but they were not getting any closer and for now, that was victory enough. A cheer went up as his men realized that the enemy they were fighting could be defeated after all. He turned to smile at the men and shouted loudly enough so that they could all hear him.
‘Every bastard thinks he’s tough till we put a few rounds into him. If they come again, just remember to shoot low and anyone who hits them in the balls gets a drink from me.’
A few chuckled but then his radioman’s face turned ashen.
‘Sir, scouts are reporting more of them.’
‘Deploy into fire teams of six men. One RPG and five riflemen. Shoot only for the legs and then mop them up with rockets.’
As his men began to deploy, he saw the hesitation on his radioman’s face.
‘What is it?’
‘Sir, aerial recon is reporting that there are hundreds of thousands of Biters headed this way. We just got news that Guangzhou has been overrun, and all radio contact has been lost with the city.’
*
‘Sir, we are out of bullets for the sniper rifles.’
That was the last thing Chen needed to hear. All day they had picked off Biters at long range with their snipers. He had ten specialized snipers with him, and they had fired and fired again till their fingers bled and their guns overheated to dangerous levels. But Chen had known it would never be enough. The People’s Liberation Air Force had been flying all day as well, but China was a vast nation and the PLAAF was already dangerously overextended.
War had broken out in the Middle East, and with all seemingly lost, Iran had launched nuclear missiles at Israel. Chen had heard that the Middle East was now a radioactive wasteland. India and Pakistan were trading blows as well, and then had come the news that some fool in Taiwan had ordered missiles fired at the mainland. The Chinese had retaliated with a fury, unleashing a barrage of missiles and air strikes. What the Biters could not accomplish in terms of wiping out civilization, it seemed humans would finish on their own. But for now, Chen had more immediate concerns. He had heard back from the Air Force that short of using tactical nuclear weapons, there was no way they could hold the Biters back.
The one silver lining was that news had spread along the line on how to stop the Biters. It was simple really.
Aim for the head. Only the head. That was the only thing would bring a Biter down for good.
So Chen’s snipers had been busy for over an hour, shooting down hundreds of Biters from more than two kilometers away. The problem was that they were now out of bullets and there were still thousands of Biters shuffling towards Chen’s position. Chen ordered his riflemen to take position, but he did not have high hopes. They could not guarantee head shots at long range, and if the Biters could get close enough, he knew they would be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. Chen thought back to his days in the Military Academy and smiled at the irony of it all. The Chinese Red Army had made itself infamous for its near suicidal ‘human wave’ tactics which had come as such a nasty surprise to the Americans in Korea. Now the same Red Army faced the prospect of being overwhelmed by sheer numbers, but this time the oncoming wave was hardly human.
Some of the men pointed to the sky as two jet fighters swooped in low, releasing bombs over the approaching sea of Biters. As the bombs exploded, a wave of fire expanded from the point of impact. Even from a kilometer away, Chen could feel the extreme heat they unleashed.
‘Was it a nuke?’ one of the nervous men whispered. No, it was not a nuclear weapon, but a napalm bomb dropped right in the middle of the approaching Biters.
For a few seconds, all that was visible was a wall of fire and Chen heard cheers. Those disappeared when the Biters emerged from behind the flames. Some of the Biters were on fire, yet they shuffled on, stepping over the burnt bodies of their comrades. Any normal army would have collapsed under the firepower unleashed against them and the devastating losses they had suffered, but the Biters were unlike any army Chen had imagined.
Chen sighted his rifle and took aim, sending a bullet through a Biter’s head. A couple of men whistled appreciatively at his aim.
Chen tried to put up a brave front and turned to look at his men.
‘Just take off their heads. Not much to it.’
A few of his men took aim and fired and a couple of Biters went down from direct hits to the head. It was but a small victory, but Chen knew the war was far from over, and he was no longer sure he would live to see it through to its conclusion.
*
‘Blow the bridge.’
Chen watched as the explosive charges were triggered and the bridge went down, taking with it several dozen Biters. It was now almost dark and they had retreated well into the residential areas of Beijing. Any further and the Biters would be among the millions of civilians now cowering inside the city.
There was no counting how many Biters had been destroyed in the fighting that day but they kept coming. Many Army units had been overrun, further adding to the ranks of the Biters, and finally Chen had received orders to retreat, destroying all bridges and mining all approach roads along the way. A row of tanks in the distance were heading out to meet the Biters, but he doubted they would achieve much. He had already heard tales of tanks that had destroyed hundreds of Biters, then run out of ammunition and gotten bogged down. Heavy armor was of little use against a seemingly never-ending sea of Biters. Once the tanks ran out of ammunition or got bogged down, the Biters would just bypass them and carry on.
The Biters did not seem to feel tiredness, fear or pain. They kept coming, and several more cities had fallen. Beijing, Shanghai and a handful of other cities were still intact, but he had already heard that with Beijing under greater threat, the government had been flown out to Shanghai. His men were dead tired, and terrified. Many of them just wanted to get home to their families, and Chen thought of his own wife. Yet he knew that he could not allow them to leave their posts. One or two units further to the East had scattered and Chen had heard about several desperate last stands by small units. A dozen men could not hope to last long against the Biters.
Chen had managed to keep his men operating as a cohesive unit, and other than four men who had died when one of their RPGs misfired, he had suffered no other deaths. Most of his men were however dehydrated, and many of them had swollen and bloodied fingers from the constant firing. More than a dozen were wounded due to misfirings and weapons that had overheated, and in more than one case, exploded. Chen had tended to some of the wounded himself, and his uniform was soaked in blood.
For all that, Chen looked at his boys with pride. They had not broken and run as had so many units. For all their misgivings about the regime and their role in Tiananmen Square, they had done their duty to the people of China. They had fought the battle of their lives, not for a flag, not for politicians, but for the millions of ordinary people who counted on them. So, despite every muscle in his body screaming in protest, Chen walked among his men, whispering words of encouragement to each one.
When he was done, he sat down heavily and looked across the river. The horizon was dark with Biters. It was a matter of hours before they reached Beijing and he was not sure they would be able to hold them.
Chen drank some water and thought of how much the world had changed in just one day. Much of the world was lying devastated. The Middle East was largely gone, wiped out in a day of tit-for-tat nuclear exchanges. India and Pakistan had traded their own nuclear blows and their major cities had been hit. Biters had swept through much of the world, and it was unclear i
f there was any organized government left. In all the chaos, the Great Firewall was down, but as Chen looked at the laptop screen in front of him, he realized news from around the world had not been updated for over six hours.
The latest updates chilled him. The US Government had decided to use tactical nuclear weapons, air burst weapons, on cities that had been totally overrun by Biters. Other nuclear powers – Britain, France, Russia and India – had followed suit. It was a desperate last measure to deny the Biters control over human cities. Chen wondered how many hundreds of millions had died in one day around the world.
One of his men started sobbing and Chen looked up sharply, planning to give the man a lecture. Instead, Chen just stared at the sight he saw, and tears began to stream down his cheeks. Just over the horizon, four giant mushroom clouds billowed over the earth.
*
‘There is someone here to see you.’
Chen sat upright, sweat pouring off his face, and his wife placed a gentle hand on his chest, trying to calm him. There were a dozen people sharing their apartment, and many of them looked on as Chen got up to see who was at the door.
With the people that had streamed into the city, Beijing was now home to more than thirty million people, and residents had opened their homes to the newcomers. Three days had passed since Chen and his men had held the line long enough for tactical nuclear weapons to be used to finally secure Beijing. There was no telling whether more Biters would come. China had been home to well over a billion people and only a hundred million were reckoned to be safe. But for now, they had bought themselves some time. Enough time to airdrop thousands of mines around the cities and to ring Beijing and Shanghai with armored forces to hold any further attacks.
It was now a foregone conclusion that any further massed attack by Biters would be met with nuclear strikes. There was no news from the outside world. The Internet was now down, as were phone lines.