From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (94 page)

Day 160. A new beginning.

The first order of business today was to figure out how to house all of us. When situations don’t involve killing Moreko or blowing things up, I’ve learnt to defer to Negi, who, despite his young age, is way smarter than me in matters of peace. He quickly came up with a proposal and we voted on it, with unanimous approval for his idea. So the deal is that the families take one of the bedrooms each – that accounts for almost half of us. Each bedroom is a tight squeeze under normal circumstances for a family, but looking at their faces, I can tell they’re grateful to have a bed for their kids to sleep on.

Someone asked if we need to organize a security force, and I stepped in, saying that every single one of us is part of our security force. I had arranged it beforehand with Ashok, and all of his men had lost their old ITBP uniforms – now we are all dressed alike. There would be no more badges of rank or uniform to set people apart. Each of us would have our worth decided by what we did.

That still left the matter of where to keep the rest of us. Negi had another brilliant idea of moving a lot of the furniture and appliances (who needs a wine cooler and a treadmill now?) to the outhouses in the back, freeing up a lot of space inside the bungalow. The dining room is of course our cafeteria, and the living room is now our town hall, where we will meet for any group decisions or discussions. Negi, I and four more men will sleep in the study and ten more will sleep in the living room. At any time, we will have six adults on guard duty, watching the approach and patrolling the premises. As soon as I finish this entry, I need to make the guard roster, and I can hear chopping outside, as Negi and the others break up one of the outhouses and build a new guard shack overlooking the pathway to the bungalow. Having something to do is good – it keeps people too busy to squabble over small things or to worry about the long term. I suspect that we will have plenty to worry about soon enough.

Day 161. Shit happens, and it hurts.

Today is one of those days when I want to get piss drunk and lock myself in a room. Of course, there’s no alcohol left and of course, I don’t have a room I can lock myself in.

One of the problems of living the way we do is that your shame is a public spectacle. Negi keeps coming to me and telling me that I’m being too hard on myself and that nobody holds me responsible for what happened in the morning, but goddammit, I am responsible. I’m the one who influenced people to stay here and then I didn’t think things through. I’m in no mood to write any more. Let me take a walk outside and try and clear my head.

How do you make amends for the loss of a life? I tried once earlier when two of my men had been killed by the Chinese, and we all know how well that went. However, I cannot just sit here and do nothing about the fact that a young man lost his life earlier today due to my negligence.

It was a young trooper called Rajiv, and while I had got the guard roster done, I hadn’t laid down any rules about venturing downhill. I had assumed that everybody would get the fact that the Moreko were still down there and it was unsafe to venture down without enough firepower and numbers. What I had not bargained for was that someone needed to make tough calls, and I should not have left it to a twenty-one-year-old kid.

It started in the morning when I heard one of the moms start fretting about not finding her five-year-old son. I assumed the kid was playing somewhere and closed the study door so I could concentrate on working out our food and water stocks. We had enough fuel and ammunition but I anticipated that we would need more water within three days and we’d need to plan another sortie to the city below. That was my first mistake – assuming it was a minor issue.

By the time I heard a ruckus outside and rushed out, rifle in hand, I was way too late.

The kid had gone down the path to the city, chasing after a small kitten that had come up to our property. We should have spotted him, but as luck would have had it, the guards were changing over when he went down.

Rajiv saw the kid when he was already down the path and Negi told me later that he came looking for me, but seeing the study door closed, he figured he’d go and get the kid himself. That was my second mistake – I cannot afford to be inaccessible.

The kid was more than halfway down the hill and Rajiv had almost caught up with him when a Moreko ambushed them from behind a large shrub. The Moreko must have been climbing for some time, so clearly our guards failed to spot it. Given that the foothill was dotted with small houses and our guards had been in the middle of a change of duty, a single Moreko could have got up a fair distance, unnoticed.

Rajiv had left his rifle behind, but he put himself between the Moreko and the kid and opened fire with his pistol. He hit the Moreko twice, but at such close range, the Moreko got to him and bit him on the neck.

Rajiv went down with the Moreko on top of him, clawing and biting. I was racing down the hill and when the Moreko raised his bloodied face, I shot him in the head. The kid was safe, if terrified, but it was too late for Rajiv.

Despite what Negi says, I am responsible. I cannot add much value to these people’s lives, but one thing I did think I could add was security. To have failed on that is unforgivable. Well, I won’t just sit here and brood over it. It’s time to show my old Moreko friends that I am still king of this fucking hill.

Day 162.

Redemption.

When I began walking down the hill carrying a can of fuel and my weapons, people must have thought I had lost it. When I torched the first house, they must have been convinced of it.

The idea was simple enough. I wanted to clear out the area near the foot of the hill so that we’d have clearer line of sight and no more Moreko could come up unnoticed. Of course, that was what I’d tell Negi and anyone else who asked. What I didn’t tell them was the less rational part of my agenda – to attract the Moreko so I could punish them.

They came all right. After the fourth shop had been set ablaze and there was so much smoke around that I had tied a scarf around my nose and mouth because of the smoke and fumes, I heard the first growls.

I put down the fuel can and unslung my rifle as the first Moreko appeared, an old man with a bloody face but an inexplicably clean blue shirt. It had more than a few red spots and holes in it when I finished him with a burst. The second one was a woman, her torso torn apart in several places, her pink saree dragged behind her along the ground. I stopped her with a round to the stomach and then walked up to her, kicking her down and shooting her in the head. In hindsight, walking up to finish Moreko at close range is not far removed from insanity, but I was so pissed off I didn’t care.

If I wanted to attract attention, I had certainly succeeded.

A dozen Moreko had soon emerged from among the buildings and were shuffling towards me. I had a special treat for them – two Molotov cocktails I had made with tequila bottles. I lit both with the lighter I was carrying and flung them in quick succession. The first one landed a bit short but splattered the two lead Moreko with burning fuel. I didn’t think the Moreko felt pain, but they sure shrieked and ran amok through the nearby shops, adding to the inferno I had caused.

The second bottle landed smack on top of a big Moreko wearing shorts and little else. As he burned, he ran among his fellow Moreko, setting two more on fire. I then knelt and shot three more Moreko before I judged they were getting too close for comfort. I walked back up the hill, but as the rage and adrenaline left my system, I didn’t feel any relief. There was nothing but emptiness. Do I still have the capacity to feel anything other than rage?

As I was walking up, the four remaining Moreko were coming behind me, and Ashok and four more men jogged past me and shot them before they got much closer. When I reached the bungalow, it looked as if everyone had gathered to welcome me. Nobody said anything, though Negi just laid a sympathetic hand on my shoulder and asked me to get some rest. What bothered me was that a few of the folks looked away, as if afraid of me, when I passed them.

I looked at myself in the mirror a few minutes ago. I’ve lost some weight over the past few months, but that I have no regrets about.

What was strange was the way my face looked. The one thing my ex-wife liked about me was my eyes. She’d say that for a soldier, I had very soft, dreamy eyes.

The eyes that looked back at me in the mirror today had nothing soft about them. They were the hard eyes of a stranger, and they frightened me.

Day 163. Making amends.

Much of the day went on overhauling our defenses. Everyone was in a somber mood since we had buried Rajiv yesterday, and the urgent need for better defenses didn’t need to be reinforced.

The first step was to repair the gate leading to the bungalow. It had been knocked off its hinges well before the chaos began, and nobody had bothered to repair it, since my former boss came and went in his chopper, spending no more than a week a year here, relying on his caretakers to maintain the place. The gate would ensure that at the very least, we wouldn’t have kids venturing off again.

The other change I wanted was to take up a more aggressive defensive posture – sorry for lapsing into Army lingo, but in plain English, to not just sit around and wait to find out if we were under threat. We spent much of the afternoon putting up a small post, ringed by sandbags and crates about halfway down the hill. During the day, I plan to have a two-man team there at all time, connected to the bungalow via one of the walkie-talkie sets Teng left behind. At night, I’d love to have a guard there, but it’s bitterly cold so we’ll probably make do with the guards near the gate, who will have space to light a fire. At any rate, the post halfway down the hill also creates a natural choke point. As I’ve mentioned, the path is pretty narrow, and at the middle, probably at best three people can walk abreast at one time. Our post further narrows that, and makes it impossible for a large group of Moreko to get up together. As I’d done before when I was here alone, we will light torches along the path at night to ensure we don’t get surprised.

Everyone joined in the work and we were done by evening.

Nobody said anything about my little bout of madness yesterday, but the aftermath is clear, and I can’t say I’m displeased with it. Several buildings near the foothill have been reduced to ashes, and now we should get much more of a warning if a solitary Moreko wants to come visiting.

People are now having dinner together in the dining room, while I’m sitting alone in the study. With so many people around, meals are always noisy affairs, and I can now hear someone singing. As I look down at the city, I wonder whether our sounds are carrying to the Moreko and what they make of it. Do they mourn, or even register their losses like we do? What makes them want to attack us when we could just leave each other alone? If my journal were to be written from their perspective, what would they make of this man who lives up on a hill and slaughters them?

After the border incident that effectively ended my career, I had to see a shrink who was supposed to evaluate me. I wonder what she would have made of the fact that I’m sitting alone in a nearly dark room thinking about the undead instead of joining people in the next room?

Day 164. Taking it easy.

For a change, we had a slow day. No Moreko to shoot, no emergencies, no lost kids, no bloodshed. In short, the kind of day we had all forgotten. So I organized some of the guys to go down into town and salvage some more supplies. We came back loaded with bottled water and some canned food, but it’s obvious that we will need a longer-term solution. Someone was talking about planting crops in the big field we have out back, and I don’t have the foggiest idea about agriculture but he seems to know what he’s talking about. He wanted me to take him down to look for seeds, which we did in the afternoon, and he was quite happy with what he managed to collect. Another woman was talking about making tanks to collect rainwater for us to drink. It’s amazing what people can think up when they’re not worried about being eaten alive by the undead for a change.

My ex-boss did have a few fruit trees in the back, which are barren now. However, come summer, they should also provide some food. Of course, that’s assuming we last till then, but let me not share such happy thoughts with the others and spoil their mood.

Day 166. Back to school

The last three days have been the most peaceful that we have known in many months, and that’s given us a chance to get on with as normal a life as we can hope to have. I have started weapons training every evening. We conserve ammunition and so don’t fire any rounds, but we run through basics of cleaning, loading and rudimentary combat tactics. A couple of the women wanted to learn how to defend themselves, and I’ve started giving lessons on unarmed combat in the morning.

On the less violent side, where I unfortunately have far less to offer, Negi has started a school for the kids. We have no books for them and no blackboard, but Negi, smart cookie that he is, has decided to focus on not just basic arithmetic and language, but also history. He says that the next generation must not grow up thinking that our world was always the way they see it now. They need to learn of how things were before the rise of the Moreko. Everyone’s chipping in, and I can see them enjoying it, because it also serves to remind the adults of how life was.

For a change, I joined them today, and as I began talking to the kids about the great wars of the past and why they were waged, a six-year-old asked a question that stumped me. She asked why people fought over land and money when we now know that none of that is worth anything. Good question.

Day 167. Crime and punishment.

Tell me this, did I ever offer to stand in an election to become our leader? Did I make any bloody campaign promises? Did I make up a manifesto and offer people a better future? Did I ask for any privileges or special status in return?

Short answer – no frigging way.

So why in God’s name are they putting the burden of this decision on me? I raved and ranted to Negi, and he told me that unless we had rules, we would tear each other apart without needing any help from the Moreko.

As for why me, he says that people will listen to me because most of them are afraid of me. Talk about back-handed compliments.

Here’s what happened. One of the troopers with Ashok, a guy called Sumit, had been eyeing one of the teenage girls in the group. We only have three single young women with us – the others are all over forty and married, so I never thought much of the fact that the younger guys would occasionally try and flirt with them. Clearly Sumit had more on his mind than some harmless flirting. The bastard took her out back and tried to rape her.

When she tried to fight him off, he hit her, and my blood boiled when I saw one of her eyes shut closed and swollen. Her screams attracted attention and now Sumit is locked up in an outhouse.

The rest of the group is in the living room, and many of them are asking for his blood. I can see a couple of Sumit’s old ITBP pals cringe and this could really blow up out of control. The girl is sitting alone in a corner, not saying much. I feel for her – she’s a college student who’s alone here without her family, and part of me wants to just go over and blow Sumit’s brains out, but if each of us starts acting as judge, jury and executioner, where does that lead?

Back after a ten-minute break. I told the folks that we’d reach a decision in the morning and they should all get some sleep. I also shouted at the guys who should have been on guard duty outside to go and do their job, otherwise while they debated and talked here, the Moreko would be coming up to join us for dinner. That got them outside in a hurry. I doubt I’ll get much sleep tonight, as I think of what to do.