Nuclear Midnight (32 page)

‘Can't say I blame you, though,’ he continued solemnly. ‘I wish I could get rid of my emotions as easily as you.’

Alex attempted to rise, but became nauseous again and had to sit down.

‘Leave it awhile,’ Cliff said gently, putting a hand around his shoulder. ‘No one's going anywhere for the moment.’

‘What happened to you?’ Alex asked, when the vomiting fit finally passed.

‘I got by,’ his friend said. ‘I ended up by shooting a lot of those poor bastards while they retreated. But I didn't go after anybody with a knife. Haven't got the heart for that type of thing, no matter how mad I get.’

‘You saw that?’

Cliff nodded. ‘I was trying to keep an eye on you.’

Alex sighed and rose shakily to his feet. He managed it this time and felt his strength returning. But his heart had gone right out of the fight. All he wanted now was to crawl into a hole somewhere safe and let the battle wash over him.

Together they walked up a hill some short distance off. Far away they could see the military frantically trying to reform their ranks.

‘It’s all rather crazy, don't you think?’ Alex said. ‘I mean, we wouldn't have asked for much.’

Cliff agreed. ‘I think if the military had known this was coming they'd have negotiated. I'm sure they had no idea we were capable of such a united response.’

‘So it was all a big mistake,’ Alex laughed sourly.

‘Yes,’ Cliff nodded. ‘Would you have gone to war, without putting out some feelers first?’

The question was not lightly put and Alex realised that Cliff was probably right. Even the military would not be so callous as to sacrifice this many men. Indeed, they had probably made a very stupid error. They had begun to believe in their own propaganda and discounted the survivors as a serious threat. In fact, both sides had been disastrously ill prepared.

‘It’s gone too far to stop it now,’ Alex said bitterly.

Cliff nodded and there was a long silence between them as they watched the continuing battle at a distance, the military furiously combating the onslaught of the survivors.

‘Have you heard any casualty counts?’ Cliff asked.

Alex shook his head.

‘Bad news, I'm afraid. About a quarter of our brigade has been either killed or injured.’

‘A quarter!’

‘It may well be more.’

‘What about the other brigades?’

‘The same. Although it does appear that we inflicted three or four times that number of casualties on the enemy.’

‘But to what end?’ Alex groaned; their eyes met and Cliff shook his head.

‘Alex Carhill?’

A stocky, dark coloured man was trotting up towards them. ‘We've just received instructions from the remnants of our artillery units over the radio. About two hundred enemy tanks are still operative and are heading this way in an attempt to break through to the rest of their ground forces. You have immediate orders to advance towards the city and engage the enemy before their tanks arrive.’

His message delivered, the man started back down the slope to the radio operator.

Alex and Cliff exchanged glances. The implications of that cryptic message did not need spelling out. The fact that the tanks were returning pointed to their overwhelming victory.

‘They must feel that if we break through the enemy's lines before their tanks arrive, we stand a better chance,’ he mused softly.

‘Chance of what?’ Cliff asked. ‘What are they asking of us? To invade the city?’

‘It could be the only place left to run,’ Alex said thoughtfully.

‘True enough,’ the little carpenter replied. ‘There's nothing left out here for us.’

The blood of the dead was already losing its brightness as it dried. But the blood red sun was preparing to come up from the underworld and all along the east the first streaks of colour invaded the night.

‘So it will all come down to one last battle,’ Alex said, and it annoyed him to hear his voice wavering slightly.

It was a slow process trying to marshal the survivors after the battle. There were new sophisticated weapons to master, taken from the bodies of the military, and the wounded to attend. The dream like calm was frustrating Alex, who started issuing orders to speed things up. Then, he in turn, was instructed by his commander to reorganise the remains of his brigade into three smaller regiments and bring them close together so as to be able to maintain contact with them by hand signals or runners. Other brigades appeared from all directions and were slotted in either ahead or behind Alex’s brigade. This drew the survivors into five fighting units, each numbering several thousand men and women. Together these units formed part of a much larger, loosely knit arrowhead formation.

But Alex’s expressions of impatience were soon overshadowed by the sudden reappearance of the tank column still some distance away. The survivors at once began to rush about in near frantic disarray. Groups of survivors arrived without commanders, and no one knew what to do with them. Instructions were lost or misinterpreted. In the end something resembling an arrowhead was formed. Alex's brigade took up position on the left flank of the arrowhead. Alex had drawn all his men close together and given a regiment to Cliff and the other to Roy, who seemed to have come through the last ordeal stronger and fitter than ever.

They were ready to move off when an explosion, apparently a big one, was heard some kilometres away, near the underground city. It was not, however, on the surface. It had a deep throaty sound, as though it came from far underground. Some of the men started to cheer as the word was passed around that sector seventeen had finally been destroyed. This news seemed to restore the failing morale and the foot soldiers now strode on eagerly.

The first obstacle they faced was a strong enemy position, strung out along a series of ridges over a kilometre across their path. The slopes of these hills were criss-crossed with mounted machine guns and hastily laid mines. Every boulder, bush or cover of any kind was bristling with soldiers. In places where cover was not available shallow trenches had been dug and filled to capacity with men.

The survivors reached the valley in front of these defences and paused only long enough to regroup. Then they swarmed, hurling themselves forward, backed up with mortars and rocket propelled grenades. The speed of the advance seemed to weaken the spirit of the military. Many of their strong holds were overrun before they could fire more than a few hundred rounds. Others they abandoned voluntarily, rather than face the vengeance of survivors. Within ten minutes the first hill had fallen and the rest were steadily crumbling as the sides of the arrowhead drove deeper into their ranks.

Alex’s troops, however, encountered stiff resistance. The hill to their right had already fallen, but to their left the battle see sawed as the military clung stubbornly to their positions. To break the deadlock, Alex decided to try to slip past the main concentration of the enemy by leading his men through a narrow cleft between the two hills.

At first, dense scrub and a wood of stunted oak and beech trees concealed their passage, but the woodland petered out some two hundred metres further up the valley and they came under heavy gunfire as soon as they moved. Alex abandoned the idea of a costly frontal attack and sent out scouting parties to find a safe route up the hill. They returned with news of finding a dried creek bed that led up to the upper slopes. The creek offered the protection of thick scrub and trees along the whole of its course. Alex, with two hundred men detached from his main force, decided to attempt it.

The going was not easy, but after a while it levelled out and wound its way through smooth boulders. Ahead was a grassy meadow, which ended in another small wood. Behind the wood the land rose in a series of broken cliffs. Alex ordered his men to spread out through the boulders and sent a scouting party across the meadow. When they approached the wood, however, they were immediately fired upon. They fell back at once, but only two made it back alive.

Alex, crouching among the rocks, was using a powerful searchlight to try to see into the wood. The cliffs behind and the thick undergrowth, however, effectively concealed the numbers and the disposition of the enemy. There was still over half an hour of twilight left before he would be able to see clearly. He would be forced to lead his men into the blackness without knowing how many military were waiting for them. Cursing his luck, he quickly brought up all his mortars and on his orders they blanketed the wood with mortar fire, but there was no response, no returning mortar or rifle fire, not even any detectable movement. After waiting for a few minutes he decided that the enemy must have already deserted the wood. He signalled his men to start advancing across the meadow, while his mortars maintained covering fire from the boulders.

The line was spread out about halfway across the meadow when the whole wood suddenly erupted in gunfire. Alex started yelling at once for them to retreat, but events were already beyond his control. Half-a-dozen machine gun nests clattered out together, criss-crossing the meadow with bullets and cutting down wave upon wave of survivors as they tried to scramble over the last few metres to the wood. Mortars also began to rain down on the survivors' positions amongst the boulders, and the place became a death-trap as ricocheting shrapnel tore his men to shreds. Within minutes over a third of Alex's company were cut to pieces before his eyes.

When Cliff found Alex, he hadn't moved from his position overlooking the meadow. Already a large force of military had started to emerge from the wood.

‘Come on!’ Cliff screamed above the explosions. ‘We can't do anything for them now!’

When Alex still didn't react, he tugged at his arm.

‘You can't stay here!’ he bawled in his ear.

Grabbing his friend firmly by the collar, Cliff pulled him off the boulder onto the ground. All around lay the dead and the dying, some still groaning as their wounds drained away their lives. With Alex by his side, Cliff quickly descended the dried up watercourse, sometimes having to clamber over many bodies, so recently their comrades.

They had reached a narrow passageway between two boulders when Cliff suddenly stopped and sank to his knees. He was kneeling beside the torso of a large man. The eyes stared dully into space; the mouth was slightly open as if the man had been in the middle of saying something when the mortar landed. With sudden, terrible apprehension Alex realised he was looking at Roy. The shock brought him to his senses. He pulled Cliff to his feet and they ran on.

Behind them the skirmish was drawing to a close. The military advance was continuing, careful and systematic; they reached the boulders and killed all the wounded survivors, nothing was left alive in their path.

In the valley below the main battle raged. The military's tanks and supporting artillery had now arrived and formed into a rigid wall of armour, pounding the hills already taken by the survivors and re taking them one by one. With armoured personnel carriers in support they began carving large inroads into the rear of the arrowhead. The battle still hung in the balance.

Alex and Cliff were still in the dried up creek bed, accompanied by the remainder of Alex's forces. Their positions having been overrun, the continuous bombardment had stopped, allowing them now to hear the shouts of the military as they moved through the boulders behind. Cliff and Alex came to a rock ledge where a small trickle of water tumbled into a large, shallow pool. Both men tried to jump over the pool, but only Alex managed to reach the rock platform beyond. Cliff landed awkwardly in shallow water and fell to his knees. Alex hauled him up and together they ran to join their men who had taken up positions along the riverbank. In the brief time before the military arrived, Alex ordered his men to dig in along the bank.

When they appeared the soldiers were carelessly yelling and shouting at each other as the crept forward. Alex and Cliff exchanged a brief smile as they saw how recklessly they advanced, as though they already expected the survivors to be somewhere ahead running for their lives. It was much lighter now and to the survivors, whose keen senses were well attuned to the twilight, each soldier stood out like a beacon. As before, Alex waited until the soldiers were almost on top of them before he gave the signal to attack. The survivors shot and hacked their way through the advancing soldiers with a type of cold efficiency that quickly turned the arrogant advance into a terrified retreat.

The back of the arrowhead was now completely destroyed. The valley floor, flat and featureless, offered no protection for the survivors as the tanks advanced like a vast armoured wall, spitting fire. With little ammunition and only their rifles left, rank after rank broke and fell. The soldiers seemed to relish this opportunity to take their revenge and quickly killed all who stood against them.

At the front of the arrowhead however it was a markedly different story as the survivors continued to surge on, overrunning and slaughtering the hapless foot soldiers in their path. As these soldiers abandoned their positions, or were killed, the survivors quickly collected their weapons and ammunition and turned them on the advancing tanks.  Mortars, anti-tank rockets and armour piercing bullets were suddenly unleashed at the advancing column. With the destruction of the forward tanks, the tank column slowed as the advancing tanks had to plough their way through the wreckage of their comrades.