The Living Will Envy The Dead

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “Hellfire,” I muttered, as the vehicles came closer. The ghostly light made it easier to see just how heavily armoured the Warriors had made them, strapping on enough armour to make them resemble some of the weirder vehicles we’d had in Iraq, after our standard vehicles had proven to be too lightly armoured for the task. Hell, perhaps the person pulling the strings had been in Iraq as well, although I didn’t want to consider that possibility either. Soldiers are generally good people, but some had broken under combat, or snapped and done terrible things. “I doubt that we can take those out with rifle fire.”

  “No,” Mac agreed. The vehicles in question had once been heavy bulldozers, with similar tracks to a tank. Shooting out their wheels wasn't a possibility…and, judging from the armour, it wouldn’t be easy to kill the driver either. At least there weren't any human shields, I told myself, and sighed in relief. The Warriors either rated this entire attack force as expendable – which struck me as a bit unlikely – or they’d run out of human shields, which was also unlikely. It was fairly possible that they just hadn’t decided to bring them all the way from their bases, or maybe they were worried about a rebellion…

  “Maybe they are expendable, after all,” I muttered. Daniel had given us figures that, I suspected, were at least an order of magnitude too high. We’d had enough trouble feeding four thousand men, women and children. The Warriors couldn’t have hosted and fed ten thousand men, let alone a hundred thousand, could they? I didn’t care how much they’d had in the way of stockpiled food; even a full-sized LOG would have had problems feeding that many for more than a month. I doubted that they really had more than ten thousand Warriors – after all, they had to feed the women and children as well – and if they were having problems, was it possible that they’d sent the men here to die? It struck me that they would probably see nothing wrong with a high friendly body count, after all. The men would have been killed in the service of God.

  I said as much to Mac. “You’d think that they would be more efficient about it,” he said, as the lumbering vehicles came closer. I could see, now, that they had dozens of warriors sheltering behind them, using them as cover from the increasingly accurate fire from the ramparts. The Warriors providing covering fire kept trying to knock our men out with sweeps of gunfire, but they just didn’t have enough firepower to force us to keep our heads down all the time. It helped that we’d had time, now, to prepare the defences. It would take a series of lucky shots to knock out all of the first line. “They’re just killing some of those men for nothing, apart from costing us a bullet each.”

  I nodded, peering through the goggles briefly at the dying men. Their bodies were cooling rapidly now that their hearts had creased to push blood around their internal organs. It would take them a while to cool off to local temperature, but there was no doubt that they were dead. I smiled, despite myself; I’d once heard about a British Apache pilot in Afghanistan who had captured top secret footage of a Afghan communal shit, of all things. He hadn’t known what he was seeing, at first, and had thought that they were up to something diabolical. In a sense, he’d been right…

  It’s rather odd where my mind will go if I let it.

  But the vehicles were still getting closer. “Section One, try and take them out,” I ordered, already suspecting that it would be futile. Sparks flashed in the semi-darkness – the green flare was burning out – but the vehicles came on, maybe even unaware that they were being shot at. I doubted that – if you’re inside a vehicle that is being targeted, you will know about it – but they showed no hesitation. Have I mentioned that I hate religious fanatics? “Section Three, hose them down?”

  Section Three was one of the machine gun nests. I watched grimly as it opened fire, sending a stream of glowing red tracer into the lead vehicle, which was now making its final approach towards the walls. I cursed, angrily. If it were another truck bomb, I’d let it get far too close. The machine gun bullets hadn’t slowed it down either, or its two comrades, both of whom were spreading out to push against the wall. The only wounded were some of the Warriors who were trying to hide behind the trucks.

  I swore and keyed my radio. “Section Seven, take them out,” I ordered. I hadn’t wanted to waste our remaining antitank weapons. We hadn’t had many of them in the first place and they were utterly irreplaceable. We could reload cartages and even produce more ammunition for pistols, rifles and machine guns, but not the antitank systems, not yet. “Remove them, now!”

  The lead vehicle crunched into the wall and started to push. If the wall had just been made out of piled earth, as the papers I’d given our dear spy had suggested, that would have been disastrous. As it was, it ran into the concrete blocks and lead piping we’d strewn through the wall to secure it and jammed. I chuckled to myself, despite the growing danger; it was nice to know that the attempt to mislead the Warriors hadn’t failed completely. The Warriors adapted fast – for them. Their advance parties lunged forward, trying to get over the wall and into Ingalls, but the sharpshooters were too quick for them. Only one of them managed to get over the wall and he fell down into a minefield. Poor bastard. Judging from the explosion, his remains are currently flying around the Earth, or perhaps passing the Moon.

  “Section Seven, engaging,” I heard, as the first missile was launched. The Warrior-modified bulldozers had been armoured against machine gun fire, but they hadn’t had any armour that was capable of standing up to an antitank rocket fired at close range. The delay caused by the need to get them in place had been costly, but not costly enough. I’d just had to hold the antitank weapons in reserve. “Missile away!”

  The remaining two vehicles went up in a blaze of light, roasting the drivers and the men hiding behind them. I heard cheering coming from along the wall – I couldn’t blame the defenders in the slightest, even though part of me felt that it was unprofessional – as the remaining Warrior infantry fell back into the darkness. The flare burned out completely and, this time, the Warriors didn’t bother to launch another one into the air. Darkness fell across the land.

  “We held them,” Mac said, tightly, “but at what cost?”

  “Report,” I ordered. “Sound off by sections.”

  The results came in and I swore. We’d fired off too much ammunition in the battle, even though little of it had been wasted, and we’d lost seven men. It was a tiny loss, compared to the hundreds of Warriors who had been killed in the fighting, but it was still a serious matter. They had thousands of men to burn – and probably intended to get a few thousand of them killed – and we couldn’t afford to lose a single person. They were all desperately needed to help us stay alive over the coming months and years. The Warriors, like all religious fanatics, just didn’t care.

  You see, that’s the point that many on the Left seem to miss. The nations that take part in the Great Game are generally careful and conservative about how they play the game. They can’t smash the board if they’re losing, or launch a nuclear attack; they know that retaliation will be swift and dreadful. Terrorists and religious fanatics, however, don’t care if they smash the board and believe me, it’s not as easy as it sounds to wreck dreadful vengeance upon a terrorist group. We can tolerate a rogue nation far easier than we can tolerate a terrorist group, no matter how nutty or trendy their cause is…because they don’t have any attachment to the world we all share. They don’t care if people suffer, as long as they get what they want? You want to know something funny? Guess – if you can – who gets the worst treatment from Al Qaida. That’s right – their fellow Muslims. It’s amazing – and horrifying – what you can do if you think that God is on your side and everything you do is justified in His name.

  And the Warriors wouldn’t care if they doomed us all, themselves included, as long as they took us down at the same time.

  The battle dimmed down to sporadic sniping from both sides, keeping us awake despite the hour and exhausting us. I was morally certain that some of the Warrior formations – if they actually had format
ions – were taking the chance to catch some rest, but we could barely take that risk ourselves. If we’d had a group of men caught napping, we might not be able to get them back into the defence line before the Warriors launched another attack. But if they didn’t rest…

  “Shit,” I said, grimly. “Mac, pull half of the men out of the line and send them to get some rest, but tell them to keep their weapons with them. If they attack, we’ll wake them up and put them back into the line, but for now we’ll make sure they get some sleep.”

  Mac nodded once and set off to carry out my orders. He would have argued if he had disagreed – I knew that he would have done that, regardless of proper protocol, such as it was – and the absence of argument meant that he agreed, but like me, he knew the risks. There’s an argument that runs that the best time to launch an attack is near dawn, when the defender is tired and disorientated – although I always wondered if that meant that the attacker would also be tired and disorientated – and I wanted the soldiers refreshed before dawn broke. The remainder weren't being abandoned either. They would have a chance to get something to drink – coffee, mainly, from our handful of remaining supplies – eat and go to the toilet, if they needed to go. I doubted that the Warriors took such good care of their people, although they might well produce sex slaves for the men to relieve themselves before they returned to the fight.

  “You need to get some sleep as well,” Mac said firmly, when he returned. “Lie down on that blanket there and get some sleep, or you won’t be any good in the morning.”

  “I thought that there was some…you know, authority with this position of mine,” I said, tiredly. Mac needed to sleep as well, of course, but both of us were too keyed up to sleep easily. “You shouldn’t be giving me orders.”

  “Authority? What nonsense,” Mac teased. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  I laughed, yawned, and found a semi-comfortable position to sleep in on the blanket, trusting Dutch to wake us up if there was any trouble. I had long ago mastered the art of falling asleep quickly when given an opportunity to sleep, but I was no longer as young as I had been and the night was far from peaceful. The Warriors did everything from shooting random shots in our general direction to launching fireworks randomly into the air, sending new and strange noises echoing out over the land. It was an attempt to keep us awake, I knew, and it was working. It was so hard to just relax and fall asleep, these days…and I knew, now, just how some of the Generals had felt during the Iraq War. They probably had developed ulcers as well.

  It felt like nothing, as if no time had passed at all, but Dutch was shaking me awake as dawn started to break. The noise hadn’t faded at all, but it was all noise, no action beyond a sharply unpleasant sniper’s duel that had been going on for the last few hours. Patty and Stacy later told me that they’d won the duel against their evil counterparts, but they’d been pushed to the limit by a very good opponent. It was a shame that not all of the Warriors were just cannon fodder.

  “Wake up,” Dutch said, grimly. “Their reinforcements have arrived.”

  I shook myself, swallowed a mouthful of scalding hot coffee and pushed my binoculars to my eyes. I felt as if I’d drunk myself senseless the night before, but the sight before us made me sober up in a hurry. The Warriors had brought the full might of their army to play.

  “It’s the same at the other two posts,” Dutch said, grimly. “They tried to send small parties into the defences overland, but we picked them all off and killed them. This time, I think they’re going to go for the direct approach.”

  “Get the remainder of the defenders on the walls,” I ordered, tightly. The ground was covered with Warriors for as far as the eye could see. Perhaps, part of my tired mind wondered, Daniel hadn’t been that far wrong after all. “And contact Richard. Tell him we’re going to need him.”

  The Warriors howled their challenge and moved to the attack.

  Chapter Forty

  I have no problem with religion. Except when people follow them religiously.

  -Jonah Fox

  This time, I realised numbly, they were playing it smarter. A dozen vehicles, ranging from a pair of massive trucks to more bulldozers, advanced towards us, while a withering hail of fire forced us to keep our heads down. I swore, watching as sparks bounced off the sides of the armoured trucks, and ordered the antitank weapons to take out the bulldozers. Our last antitank rounds lanced out and destroyed the bulldozers, along with the men crouching behind them, but the remainder of the vehicles kept advancing. Two of the trucks were riddled with machine gun fire – I allowed myself to imagine a slave carefully choosing substandard armour, just on the off-chance that the Warriors would attack someone who was armed to the teeth – and sputtered to a half, but it wasn't enough to stop the remaining vehicles. One by one, they reached the first defence line…and detonated. The resulting explosion blew a hole right through the wall. A second later, three more vehicles detonated, enlarging the breech.

  They really don’t care, I realised, in numb astonishment. At least a hundred Warriors had been killed by their own fucking fire and they didn’t seem to care for an instant. The death toll among the previous assaults would have been enough to discourage any rational commander from repeating it, but it seemed that the Warriors were not rational at all. Using their makeshift tanks, they advanced closer and closer, while the effects of the breech forced us to defend the wall. They might have only covered a tractor or two with armour and mounted machine guns on the top, but they were terrifyingly impressive, not least because we had just fired off the remainder of our antitank weapons.

  “Clever,” Mac said, examining the lead ‘tank.’ “We should have thought of that. I think they’ve actually taken a tractor engine out of the tractor and placed it in another vehicle entirely, just to give them the right structure for a tank.”

  I had to agree. Every third person in the countryside has some mechanical knowledge, ranging from kids who don’t want to have to pay expensive repairmen to work on their cars, to experienced former tankers and maintenance officers who want to run a quiet gas station, while building their dream vehicles. The Warriors wouldn’t have had any difficulty finding people with the right set of skills to build tanks from the First World War…and hell, they might well dominate the remainder of the United States. There had to be some more modern tanks left somewhere, but God alone knew where. I had thought about sending an expedition to the USMC base at Quantico, but judging from the apparent Russian targeting pattern, the Marine Corps base had been singled out for special attention. It would be something to do later, when the war had been won and our survival was assured.

  “If we get out of this alive, we’ll build some of our own,” I agreed. The concept was so simple that it should have occurred to one of us, particularly the ones who had spent most of their lives studying warfare. On the other hand, First World War tanks hadn’t had the firepower of their later siblings, nor the survivability. They might reach the minefield intact – which was looking increasingly likely – but there was no guarantee that they would survive the first mine. First World War tanks were historically weak on underbelly armour…and it was just possible that the Warriors had made the same mistake. “They’re not going to get past the mines.”

  I hoped I was right as the first wave of Warrior vehicles crept up closer to the breech in the first wall and came face to face with the second wave of defences, while trying desperately to suppress our covering fire. Their armoured vehicles might be relatively safe from our rifles and machine guns, but their soldiers didn’t even have police-issue body armour, which suggested just how important they were to their superiors. They kept advancing regardless, ignoring the increasing number of their comrades who were shot down like dogs, as the tanks advanced into the minefield. There was a pause, chillingly pregnant with possibilities…and then the lead tank went up with a tremendous explosion. The shockwaves detonated other mines, sending red-hot shrapnel through the air and scything down dozens of Warriors
, but the remainder held their positions.

  “Section Six, you’re up,” I said. The Warriors were trying to funnel hundreds of their soldiers through the breech now, heedless of the danger from mines…or wire, or IEDs, or other unpleasant surprises, trying to push their way through by brute force. The better-trained ones were hanging back, carrying Mortars into engagement range, and preparing to bombard the trenches and our inner defences. “Hit them as hard as you can.”

  “Engaging,” the reply crackled back. We’d positioned the Mortars carefully and computed all of the possible angles of attack. I hadn’t predicted the exact location of the breech, but I hadn’t needed to predict it to have the mortars prepared before the attack began. The operators opened fire at once and started to pound the Warriors as they flooded through the breech…and started to die in the minefield. “Shells away, sir!”

  I watched, as dispassionately as I could, as the Warrior attack started to disintegrate. They might have been prepared for mines and rifle fire – hell, they’d brought along a very good counter to the latter, while the former could only work once – but they hadn’t expected the mortars so soon, with such accurate fire. The shells landed amongst their lead forces and blew them into bloody chunks of flesh. The survivors hesitated, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, and then stumbled forward blindly. They ran right into the barbed wire and were rapidly caught, pinned down and unable to disentangle themselves. Their screams were nightmarish and, even though I knew it was what the Warriors wanted me to do, I gave the order.