From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (87 page)

Day 122. The Promised Land.

Bharti may be a crook, and quite possibly a murderer if talk of missing and shot escapees is true, but he does know how to lead people. I sat huddled with the civvies as he came to the camp and got up on a raised platform. As he began speaking, I couldn’t help but admire how he had all these people with him, in spite of all the horrors they had to endure. Fear was a part of it, no doubt, and as Bharti spoke, rifle-toting troopers surrounded us.

But if you want to truly enslave someone, there is something even more powerful than fear, and that is hope. That hope was what Bharti was doling out, and as I looked around, I could see the majority of people with me were willing to go along with him.

First he apologized for the inconveniences people were going through. The shrewd bastard even apologized for the bad behavior of some troopers and said they would be punished. Having said all that, he said that our current living conditions were unavoidable as we were still in dangerous territory as yesterday’s attack by the Danavs showed. He also thanked people for helping him start human society afresh the way it was always meant to be – people living together in harmony, each doing work they were best suited for. Some leading, some protecting and some serving. The bastard made slavery seem like a duty to the Gods. But then came the zinger – he promised that our ‘inconvenience’ was about to come to an end. The turd made it sound like rape and murder were a minor hassle, but what he had to offer was clearly something so valuable to the people huddled around me that they were willing to go along with him.

He talked of how the time had come to stop hiding in the forests and start resettling the cities. He talked of how we would head to Gangtok soon, where his men had scouted out a location for his headquarters. I suspected he was talking about my former home on the hill. Then he told people that they would have houses of their own. No more sleeping in tents, no more hiding in the woods. We would get back to civilized living. Of course, he made no mention of the rotting corpses and the Moreko who were still lurking in the city.

Bharti’s persuasive and he’s also a man of action. Our move to the promised land starts tomorrow.

Day 124. A Walk in the Park.

Yesterday was spent preparing for the march. I’ve done my share of marches. It’s the unglamorous side of soldiering they never put on the shiny brochures – the fact that you’ll spend most of your time lugging around heavy packs in terrible terrain and weather. We were expected to carry our own tents and possessions, of which I had very little to begin with. The bigger problem was water and food. The camp had a small canal nearby which provided drinking water, and people had learnt to live off the forest, hunting what they could. Now we had to figure out how to get water for the four-hour trek that lay ahead of us. Troopers had scouted ahead and reported a waterfall a couple of hours away and we were asked to carry enough water to last that long, especially in case any of the kids wanted water. That sounded fine, but most of the civvies didn’t have bottles like the troopers, and I saw a few families carrying water in boots. Necessity is called the mother of invention, but from what I’ve seen, it is also the mother of desperate measures.

Day 124. Night
.

Been walking two hours now and we’re stopping. We started in the late morning and should have been in Gangtok by now, but the going’s been tough. There are close to two dozen kids and there’s no way they can keep up.

Half the troopers went ahead, but the others are around, all heavily armed. I don’t think they need to worry – nobody’s going to try and escape in this jungle, not with the Moreko all around us.

Oh yes, they’re there. We haven’t seen them, but I can occasionally see movement in the distance. And yes, I can smell them.

Bharti’s gone ahead in his chopper and a young trooper (obviously not the one I’d smacked with a shit-covered shovel) came up and chatted with me. He was scared, and when he heard I had been a soldier, he probably just wanted reassurance. I don’t think I reassured him much about what lay ahead in Gangtok, but I did learn something. Bharti’s running low on fuel for the chopper and the Chinese are gaining, so he wants a safer base in Gangtok. Also, the troopers are grumbling. They signed up because their commandant believed in Bharti and because they thought that if they stayed alive long enough, government forces would come and get them so they could get back to their families. There are the rotten apples who are beginning to have fun by abusing the power they enjoy, but by and large, they’re not a happy bunch. Their commandant’s dead and they get the feeling no help is coming.

All of it is useful knowledge to store away, but right now I have more immediate concerns on my mind. Negi told me that we’re planning to camp for the night, which sounds insane, but in the fading light, the forest’s already almost pitch black and continuing is probably even more insane. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. So now we wait… and pray that the Moreko leave us alone.

Day 125.

Bloodbath.

My hands are still shaking as I try and write, but I’ll persist. Don’t be too alarmed at the red splotches on the margins of this page.

It’s only blood. If you’ve survived the rise of the Moreko to read this, I’m assuming it won’t bother you. You’ve probably seen far worse.

The Moreko came soon after nightfall. The first to fall were the troopers guarding us a kilometer to the East. We didn’t see them fall, but their screaming told us all we needed to know. It’s the kind of sound you never want to hear – it will haunt you forever.

As the troopers were ripped apart, the rest of us tried to get some sort of defenses in order. The problem was that many of the civvies and troopers alike were convinced that the Moreko were supernatural monsters who could not be killed. The trooper leading us was babbling about Danavs when I got up and slapped him hard. Seems stupid to slap a man who’s carrying an assault rifle and when his friends have rifles pointed at you, but I was beyond caring. If I was meant to die in this shithole, so be it, but I was not going to go down without a fight.

Negi was right beside me and pleaded with the troopers to listen to me. He embellished my bio a lot, making my achievements in the Army sound like something that would have done Alexander the Great proud, and certainly bearing no resemblance to the shambles that had been my military career. At any rate, it seemed to work, and I got the civvies together in the middle of a defensive circle, women and children ringed by men. Each man was holding whatever weapon he had – in many cases, nothing more than shovels or hammers, but they looked like they were ready to fight to protect their families. That was a good sign. Any battle is won or lost in the soldier’s eyes well before it begins – you can tell whether he is going to fight or flee. We might not have stood much of a chance, but at least they would fight.

I asked the troopers to plant our lamps around us so we could see the Moreko when they came, and we then took position. I got a rifle from a trooper and as we waited, I was reminded of an old Western I had seen once, with the cowboys circling the wagons as the marauding Indians approached.

Of course, in this case, there was little chance of the cavalry riding in to the rescue.

As the first Moreko showed himself, I shot the ugly fucker through the head. As some of the troopers began spraying rounds, I kept screaming at them to aim, and we kept firing. God, there must have been dozens of the Moreko. They kept coming and we kept tearing them to shreds, but at such close quarters, they were always going to get near enough for us to have to mix it up.

My rifle had a bayonet attached and I speared the first one, an old fogey with one arm missing, through the throat before I pulled out my rifle and shot him in the head. I wasn’t sure what was going on around me, but the screams told me that some of the troopers had been taken. The next Moreko I faced was a young girl wearing a pink Barbie t-shirt. I shot Barbie through the eye and moved on.

I heard a growl and turned to see a trooper, dripping blood from bite marks to the neck. His eyes were yellowed and he lunged to bite me. I blew his head off, though later I remember being shocked at how quickly he had turned on being bitten.

In a chaotic, no-holds-barred fight like this, everyone’s usually screaming their lungs out. In the Army, people would be screaming their regimental war cries, which would soon give away to any abuse they could come up with. I was screaming as well, though I don’t remember what I was saying, as I kicked another Moreko down and caught up in the madness of the moment, stomped his head with my boot. I had moved on to the next one when the one whose good looks had been embellished by my boot marks on his face got up behind me and grabbed my leg. Negi shot him in the neck as I grappled with the one in front of me. I could smell the rot on his breath as the Moreko came towards me, grabbing my rifle with both hands. He was strong and I let him have it. As he fell back, the rifle useless in his hands, I grabbed a handgun lying on the ground and shot him twice.

I heard the shots and screaming stop and looked up to see the remaining troopers standing around, most covered with blood of the Moreko they had killed. The jungle floor was littered with bodies. Most were Moreko, but we had lost eight men and a woman.

Something’s changed after the battle. The troopers aren’t pointing their guns at me any more and without anyone saying anything, I seem to be one in charge. One more thing has changed. Now I have a gun.

Day 126. Choices, choices.

We resumed walking and now we’ve taken a break on the outskirts of Gangtok. The place smells foul and several of my companions, troopers and civvies alike, blanched when they realized what was left of the city. We can’t see any Moreko but that certainly does not mean they are not in there somewhere. One of the troopers told me that he got orders on the radio to head for the hill where the bungalow was. I spotted Bharti’s chopper a few minutes ago. Once we enter the city, I cannot turn back. He’ll have all his troopers there and the chopper watching from above. If I enter the city, I become a prisoner once more. Yes, I have a gun, but when I talked things over with Negi after the battle in the jungle, it’s clear most of the civvies won’t take part in any escape attempt. I can’t say I blame them – with their families at stake, I’m not sure I would have attempted any heroics had I been in their place.

But that leaves me with a choice. Do I go into the city and further captivity or do I take my chances and make a break for it?

Day 128. The thing about choices.

We pretend to have control over the choices we make in life.

The harsh reality is that most are foisted on us, and we end up dealing with the aftermath with the illusion of choice being at best a post-facto rationalization. I certainly never chose to end my military career in disgrace, I never chose to lose my bloody leg, and I never chose to have my wife dump me.

Yet all of those happened, and I have spent the last few years messing my life up even further, if that was possible. Similarly, I thought I had a choice as we stood on the outskirts of Gangtok. As things turned out, I had none.

As they say, be careful what you wish for because you may just get it. I had wished for freedom, and I’m not sure I am at all equipped to deal with it now that I have it presented to me.

Yesterday morning I woke up, expecting to be led into the city. Overnight, I had weighed my chances and come to the conclusion that an escape attempt would be spectacular, heroic, but ultimately end in my bloody death. So I had resolved to go along, and bide my time. Little did I know what was in store for me.

I woke up not to any cheery good mornings but the booms of mortar rounds exploding nearby. It seemed Bharti was not the only one to come up with the bright idea of setting up base in Gangtok. His rivals had followed us, and were now firing the first salvos in what they thought was their attempt to dislodge Bharti. Little did they know that the fat toad was sitting in the bungalow while we took the brunt of their attack. In the heavily wooded area, their mortar rounds were never accurate enough to cause much real damage, but they gave me an opportunity to escape. The civvies screamed and cried and the troopers scrambled for cover. I pulled Negi aside and told him that we would never have a better chance at getting away. If Bharti’s troopers ever found us, we could always claim we had gotten separated in the chaos.

Negi spread the word, and many of the civvies came along. So here I am, with Negi and twenty other civvies, all looking at me to tell them what to do. God help them.

Day 129. I am Spartacus, or perhaps not.

I remember this US TV show (and if you happen to read this, know that I was motivated as much by the storyline as the promise of gratuitous sex and violence) called Spartacus. As you know, it was a story about a slave leading fellow slaves to freedom through a bloody rebellion against their Roman masters. Well, more than enough blood has been shed, and I am the nominal leader of a bunch of former slaves. The problem, you see, is that I have no frigging clue about what to do next. Every time the civvies look at me with hope in their eyes, I want to scream at them that I have no idea what to do.

Yet, they hang on, and I carry on the charade of being their leader. We are now more than two kilometers from the site where we were attacked and I can still hear the occasional mortar and machine-gun fire. Bharti and his rivals are duking it out, fighting over the remains of a city that holds little treasure beyond the decayed remains of its former inhabitants. But at least that means they don’t have time to chase us.

The contrast with Spartacus could not be starker. He commanded a group of battle hardened gladiators. I have with me six men, eight women and six children. Our inventory of possible weapons comprises two rifles, one pistol, three knives and four milk bottles. Last, but by no means least, Spartacus got laid in every second episode.

I lie alone in the forest, waiting to be exposed for the failure I am. Negi and the others seem to think I have some miraculous way of seeing them through to safety. I’m afraid they are going to be terribly disappointed.