“Run,” he snapped. He’d seen how the aliens reacted to SAM missiles before. “Keep running and don’t look back!”
The kids had learned to outrun cops and outraged shopkeepers; they could give him a run for his money. He watched their retreating backs as they fled towards the secure base – although it wouldn’t be secure for very long with the aliens advancing towards the Lake – and looked up as a dark shadow fell from overhead. A pair of alien craft were already heading into their attack run, firing pulses of brilliant plasma into the surrounding buildings. They’d shot down fighter jets and sunk aircraft carriers, he knew; the buildings presented no problem at all to them. The ground shook and heaved madly as the aliens swept the nearby area and destroyed every building that could possibly have housed a SAM team. He allowed himself a moment of relief before he turned and kept running. They’d missed him!
Another alien craft – one of the large transporters – moved overhead, already releasing its force of alien warriors. They’d secure the crashed ship, judging from previous experience, and hold the area until the advancing wall of steel flooded over it, unless they decided to abandon and destroy their former ship. He didn’t know how they thought, but he and his unit had pulled security at a base that had housed one of the crashed alien ships after the war had broken out, and the aliens had made no attempt to recover their lost vessel. It still worried him. Were the aliens so advanced and so numerous that they could afford to lose so many craft without worrying about the losses? They’d deployed human soldiers to support their efforts, which suggested that the answer was no, but perhaps they’d merely decided that they wanted to get rid of the Arabs. Why not send them to Chicago and deploy them against the resistance?
The sound of shooting and incoming shells grew louder as he ran towards the warehouse. The aliens had taken to bombarding parts of the city, apparently no longer concerned with preserving as much of Chicago as possible, shattering hundreds of buildings and destroying lives. There were children and their parents caught up in the fighting, children who would be lucky to see the next week, let alone the rest of their lives. Even if the aliens didn’t kill them, they were on the verge of starvation, or dying of a disease caused by the dead bodies lying around the city. The aliens had the answer to that, at least; they cremated human bodies, or took them out of the city and buried them in a mass grave.
“We got the bastard, sir,” the kid said, as he entered the safe house. A tiny mark on the door proclaimed that it was safe, even though a handful of Green Berets and Force Recon were booby-trapping as much of the remaining city as possible. “We killed them!”
“We certainly shot down a craft,” Andrew agreed. He looked from face to face, seeing the same shining hope reflected in each of their faces, regardless of their ethnic origin. Black and white had learned to work together in harmony when grey had shown up to take over the world. The thought was bitterly amusing. “You all know where to go now?”
“But we could stay,” one of the kids protested. “Sir, you trained us…”
“And you could serve the country best by surviving to fight another day,” Andrew said, knowing that most of them would be dead within the week. If the resistance couldn’t smuggle them into another city or a hiding place in the countryside, they’d starve unless they were caught and killed by the Order Police. None of them had registered with the aliens. “Now, go. I’ll see you all on the outside.”
He leaned forward. “And for what it’s worth, you made pretty good soldiers,” he added. “Don’t let anyone tell you any different, ever.”
***
The map had been updated only an hour ago, showing alien forces regrouping before they advanced against the final bastions of resistance. The writing was on the wall – no, Edward realised, it had been on the wall for days now – and there was no longer any point in holding out. The Resistance Council had been destroyed and, as far as Edward knew, he was the only one left alive. The Bitch Queen had gone out with a grenade strapped to her chest and had blown herself up when a few Arabs had come too close. The others had died in one engagement or another, fighting to the last. He was the only one left.
Marines didn’t run, he’d been told. Marines stayed and fought. History had dozens of examples of famous last stands made by Marines, yet he was contemplating abandoning Chicago and sneaking out to carry on the fight elsewhere. The few thousand civilians left in the sack would have to face the enemy without his help, while the fighters who were too badly wounded to escape would have to hold the line before the city finally fell. He wanted to stay behind, but the orders had been clear. He was to escape with as many trained fighters as possible, leaving the wounded and a small number of volunteers behind. Perhaps some of them would be able to hole up and escape after the advancing aliens overwhelmed their hiding places…no, he was deluding himself. The alien technology gave them too many advantages. They would probably discover all of the fugitives and capture or kill them, before they could escape.
“It’s time to go,” he ordered, softly. “Get the first team down to the tunnels and get them heading out of the city.”
The aliens hadn’t discovered the extent of the sewer network, as far as they could discover, although it was an odd oversight. The resistance teams had done their best to delete any reference to the system in official files, yet no one had had any illusions about just how many references there were, let alone living memories. A handful of the right people converted into Walking Dead would have been able to tell them everything they could want to know about the network. They might not even need to go so far. The city’s sanitation department was very pro-resistance, yet they needed jobs as much as anyone else. The real danger was that the aliens knew where the network was and had done nothing, just to keep an eye on it from a distance and see who went through it…and where they went afterwards. They’d have to be extremely careful when they came out of the network and filtered out into the countryside. An alien spy in their midst, willing or unwilling, could do far too much damage.
“Yes, boss,” David Dunagin said. His past was rather shady – he’d hinted that he’d done mercenary work and he clearly had military experience, dispelling Edward’s fear that he was nothing better than a poser – but there was no doubting his competence. “Come along, you lot.”
The building was, from the outside, unmarked, but it really served as part of the sewer hub responsible for cleaning the waste before it was transported out of the city, or something like that. Edward had never been really clear on the details – the important thing was that, with a little care, the resistance could use it as a base of operations. He’d refrained from using it for more than the most urgent tasks – an alien missile right on top of the plant would have wrecked everything – but now hundreds of the remaining fighters were filtering their way down into the system and walking out of the city. It wasn't going to be a pleasant walk – fifteen miles of walking through semi-darkness amidst the waste from the entire city – but it would get them out of the alien bag. They’d be able to fight again, or so he’d promised them. They’d have a chance to hurt the aliens in the future and avenge all their lost friends.
A sense of hopelessness raged up within him and, for a moment, he sagged. Was life always going to be like this now, with the aliens hunting them ruthlessly while the resistance struggled to hit back as best as it could? Was America going to be hammered relentlessly until the majority of the population joined with the Order Police and the aliens to destroy the resistance? How long could the resistance survive without the active help of thousands of civilians? There were places where the resistance could endure indefinitely and places where they’d be lucky to even mount one attack before they were caught and exterminated. What if the aliens actually realised that they could appeal to human nature and make human lives better?
He shook his head angrily. The battle might be lost, but the war was far from over. America had suffered defeats – some minor, some serious – before, yet the nation as a whole h
ad never lost a war. Vietnam and Korea had been painful, but hardly fatal – Iraq had been declared a defeat years before it became apparent that it had actually been a win. The aliens and their collaborator government might try to paint what had happened as a defeat for the resistance, but the truth was that an insurgency was very hard to obliterate completely. As long as they were alive, they were ahead.
He stood up and slipped out of the building, carefully ignoring the next group of men entering and heading down to the tunnels. No one knew how closely the aliens were monitoring their location – the only proof he had that they weren't was that they hadn’t tried to bomb the plant and cut off their line of retreat – but it never hurt to take precautions. The next building hosted thirty-seven men who had been wounded, but could still use a gun. They’d all volunteered to serve as a rearguard, yet leaving them behind galled him. They all deserved better.
“Don’t worry about it, Eddie,” Tommy Brooks said, when he confessed his guilt to the former Marine Captain. “We all knew the risks and accepted them when we chose to keep fighting. You just make damn sure that the Orcs pay for this, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” Edward said. He hated being called Eddie, but he’d take it from a wounded man. The Captain’s leg was bandaged and set using crude techniques. He’d never be able to dance or run again, not that it mattered. “Have you got everything set up…?”
“Yes,” Brooks said. He tapped the detonator by his side. “We’re ready. Now get your ass out of here and make sure that they write another stanza in the hymn for us. I want to be remembered as more than just another Captain.”
“Yes, sir,” Edward said. “I…”
“Get out of here,” Brooks repeated. “Semper Fi!”
Edward turned and left. Outside, the noise of the guns was getting closer. He struggled with the temptation to remain and fight, but Brooks had been right. There was no point in throwing his life away in a futile gesture. The aliens, unknowingly, would be making their way through the final line of defences now. He looked into the distance and saw another skyscraper collapse in a pile of dust, trapping or killing anyone foolish enough to remain inside. Grimly, he turned and ran towards the plant, racing into the building and nodding to the two soldiers who had been assigned to wait for him and serve as his escort.
“Set the final charges and then let’s get out of here,” he ordered. They wouldn’t want to be around when the charges exploded. The darkness of the tunnels would be very welcome just now. “Let’s go.”
***
Brooks had terrible difficulty in moving, but with a little effort, he could peer down from his hiding place towards the street. The sound of explosions and other surprises were dying away as the aliens disarmed the final traps, perhaps wondering if their human opponents had actually started to break. The orders had been clear; the traps were to be placed carefully, yet in a position where they could be seen. It had to look like a panic, like an enemy in retreat, not like a trap. He could hear the hum of alien vehicles long before they finally came into view, defiling Chicago by their mere presence.
Shots rang out and some of the aliens tumbled to the ground. Others jumped behind cover and concentrated on returning fire, clearing the walking wounded out of their way. There seemed to be thousands of aliens and their Arab allies – Allah Allies, he though, derisively – on the streets, closing in on the resistance headquarters. They didn’t know – couldn’t know – what was waiting for them. They would never have come in so completely.
An alien appeared at the foot of the stairwell, dark eyes flashing from corner to corner. Unlike untrained humans, the aliens took care to look up as they checked out the buildings, and the alien saw him. For a moment, their eyes locked, before Brooks broke the connection. There was nothing human in the warrior’s gaze, no hint of emotion or even interest. It saw no weapon in Brooks’ hand and made a gesture with his rifle, ordering him to put up his hands and come down to be taken prisoner. It hadn’t realised how badly Brooks was wounded – walking down to the alien was literally impossible.
“Fuck you,” Brooks told the alien, and let go of the detonator. “You utter…”
The charges detonated. The resistance hadn’t been able to smuggle all of their explosives out of the city before it was too late, and they’d packed all of the remaining material into the area. The resulting explosion shook the city and vaporised both of them, and thousands of others. The access to the sewers was firmly blocked, permanently.
***
Miles away, jogging down the tunnels, Edward felt the ground shake and knew what had happened. The charges had detonated.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he muttered. Dust was shaking down from high above and he coughed. “I won’t forget it.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chicago, USA (Occupied)
Day 165
“The enemy resistance has been completely wiped out,” the new minder informed the reporters, as they gathered in what had once been Chicago. The city had been devastated. Many famous landmarks had simply ceased to exist. Hundreds of alien warriors, Arab soldiers and Order Policemen crawled over the city, while prisoners – wearing bright green jumpsuits – pulled bodies out of the rubble, transferring them into trucks. They’d be taken out of the city to a mass grave, she’d been told, unless the aliens actually did intend to eat them. Who knew? “They have been exterminated.”
Along with most of the city, Abigail thought. She had never thought much of Chicago, but no city deserved such a fate. There were places where hardly a building was left standing. Did you have to destroy the city in order to save it?
The minder walked them from place to place, extolling the virtues of those who had served the aliens, pointing out the scene of a bold assault here and a last stand there. He rhapsodised over the fate of policemen whose only sin had been trying to prevent a bloodbath, cut down in their prime by the insurgents who wanted to kill as many reasonable – collaborating – humans as possible. The official broadcasts would turn as many of those men as they could into symbols of human suffering, but the underground newspapers would either hold them up as men placed in an impossible position, or traitors. It wasn't something she intended to write about, at least not until she returned to Washington. She hadn’t dared write anything for the underground newspapers since Percy had been arrested and taken away. It might have suggested to the aliens that they’d picked up the wrong man.
“Here, the terrorists detonated their final bomb,” he said, finally. There was nothing left of that part of Chicago, but a massive hole in the ground and a pile of rubble. The blast had shaken the remainder of the city and she’d felt the shock even from her camp. The surrounding area was littered with the remains of alien tanks and vehicles, picked up and crushed by the blast; no one had accurate figures for how many aliens and collaborators had been killed in the final moments of the battle. “They killed themselves to prevent us from liberating the city and rescuing the hostages.”
Abigail kept her face blank as he ranted on. The official version of events was that the terrorists – the resistance – had kept the civilian population of the city as hostages, threatening to kill them if the aliens took the city. She knew better – most of the civilians had either joined the resistance or fled the city – yet it was the version of events that she had to support, at least in public. She’d added a note about how the civilians had actually acted to the document she’d sent from Percy’s computer, but she had no way of knowing how much impact it had had. There was no way to get a copy of Committees of Correspondence in Chicago, not any longer. It would have to wait until she got home.
She looked down at the map of Chicago that had been issued as part of their briefing notes, but it was impossible to relate the surrounding landscape to the map. There was just so much devastation that she could barely pick out her location, and even then she suspected she’d gotten it badly wrong. The Lake was off to the north – she thought wistfully about unoccupied Canada and freedom – yet where
was she? She looked over at a broken skyscraper and shivered. The building looked as if it could collapse at any moment. Modern buildings were far stronger than most gave them credit for – she’d heard of people who refused to live in skyscrapers because they got vertigo – yet they weren't designed for all-out war. The aliens might have fired on it, or the resistance might have mined it, but in the end it didn’t matter. It would have to be knocked down for the safety of everyone remaining in the city.
The thought bothered her badly. No one had said anything about rebuilding Chicago, yet it was something that would have to be faced, and soon. Would the aliens commit resources to rebuilding a city that had defied them, or would they leave the rest of it as it was, calling it an object lesson? The cost of rebuilding would have been astronomical even without the underground war and the collaborator government. Now…she couldn’t imagine any of the collaborators choosing to try to rebuild Chicago. The surviving residents would be lucky if they were re-housed somewhere else.
She looked over at the minder and shook her head. It wasn't a question she could ask. The reporters had once known that they could ask any question they liked without suffering the consequences, but now…now they’d been broken. Freedom of the Press had once been one of America's foremost principles, even though it had been abused more often than not, but now it was just an illusion. The reporters didn’t bother to ask even planted questions. They’d go back to their rooms and file stories that reflected the official line, regardless of their own personal thoughts. And after that, she knew, they’d go down to the bar and drink heavily to forget what they had become.
Outside Context Problem: Book 02 - Under Foot Page 32