‘Where are you, Neha? Are you okay?’
‘I’m hiding in our apartment. The Biters are all around the colony and I don’t think they’ve seen me yet.’
Hearing Neha’s terrified voice was like a splash of cold water. Neil was still scared, he still did not understand how a virus could have caused so much carnage, and he didn’t know how he was going to get through the rampaging Biters to get to Neha’s home. But hearing her gave him something to focus on, something that took his mind away from just how terrified he felt.
‘Neha, stay there. I’m less than a kilometer away, and I’m coming to get you.’
*
Around the next corner, Neil saw a scene straight out of a movie. An aging policeman was standing with a rifle in his hand, shepherding dozens of terrified people into a high-rise apartment building. Neil had no idea if that guaranteed them any safety against the Biters, but in a city where everyone seemed to have lost their mind, this one policeman’s selfless act of bravery stuck a chord.
A crowd of Biters, at least twenty strong, advanced towards the policeman, who had by now sent the last of the civilians into the building and turned to face the Biters. Neil had slowed his bike down, waiting to see what happened, praying that perhaps the policeman would stand a chance. The Biters were advancing, fanning out like a pack of animals to encircle their prey. The policeman showed no sign of panic, indeed he moved deliberately, and with, for lack of a better word, dignity. He knelt and brought his rifle up to his shoulder. As the Biters came in even closer, Neil sent up a silent prayer for the old man.
The policeman fired and Neil smiled as one Biter went down, spurting blood from a direct hit to the chest. The policeman fired again, and another Biter went down, this time with a gaping neck wound. The policeman might have been incredibly brave, but he was certainly not suicidal. Neil saw that he was buying time, and with every shot was moving closer to the building where the door was still ajar, and those he had saved were cheering him on. The old man fired twice more and two more Biters went down.
Then Neil saw something that in one fell swoop took away all the hope he had harbored. The first Biter who had been shot was now sitting up, and despite the bloody mess on his chest, got up and began walking towards the policeman. The second Biter, with a grotesque hole where his neck should have been and his head hanging slightly to one side, was also sitting up. The policeman dropped his rifle and Neil could see that the old man’s lips were moving rapidly in prayer, but there would be no saving him today. The Biters ripped into him in a frenzy, and they tore the policeman apart till there was nothing but a mess on the road.
The people shut the door but the Biters were banging on it, and Neil knew it would be a matter of time before the door gave way. Something snapped inside Neil, and he felt a surge of anger. He picked up a metal rod lying on the side of the road and drove his bike as fast as he could towards the Biters. He swung the rod with all his strength. It connected with a satisfying thud and a Biter fell, his head smashed in. He did not get back up. Neil knew he did not stand a chance against all the Biters, but, having extracted revenge for the policeman’s sacrifice, he swerved away towards Neha’s home, the rod now tucked under his arm.
Most roads were blocked by bands of Biters and he took another detour through the normally busy Khan Market toward Neha’s place. The market was deserted, other than Biters roaming around and bodies lying in the street. That was when he saw a group of Biters crouching over a prone figure. It was a thin, elderly woman, and she seemed paralyzed with fear, clutching a large package to her chest. Neil swooped in, and once again, his rod did its work, splattering the brains of a Biter on the pavement.
‘Come on!’ Neil grabbed the old woman with one hand and pulled her towards him. She seemed to have recovered her wits a bit and sat behind him as he sped away. She was mumbling something, clearly in shock.
‘Look, I need to get to my girlfriend’s place. Where can I drop you?’
There was no reply, and Neil was beginning to get irritated, knowing that every second with her was a second wasted.
‘You must have a home or a family somewhere?’
The woman just sobbed, and Neil realized that he was perhaps being too tough on her.
‘I’m sorry. Things are crazy and I just want to make sure she’s okay. I’ll drop you wherever you want, just tell me where.’
She looked at Neil, and he saw not just fear, but sadness in her eyes, as if she had lost something or someone of immense value. ‘Young man, you have done quite enough for me. Just drop me ahead near the India International Center. It doesn’t yet look overrun and I can see a lot of policemen in front of it.’
He took her near the gate and as she dismounted, he smiled.
‘There must be something really important in that packet you’re carrying. You didn’t let go.’
As she walked into the Center, Neil turned his bike and drove towards Neha’s home, hoping she was still okay and wondering if he would be able to protect her.
*
The last few hours had been so chaotic that Neil had almost run straight into the dozen or so Biters now crossing the road. Neil ditched his bike just in time and lay flat on the grass near the sidewalk. If he had not been so terrified, he might have found it amusing. The Biters were crossing the road single file, slowly, deliberately, displaying better traffic-safety consciousness than the good citizens of Delhi.
For the first time, Neil got a longer look at the Biters, and he was surprised at what he saw. In the initial chaos, the Biters had seemed rabid, attacking people at random. He now saw that they were moving with some sort of co-ordination. The group that had just passed had perhaps been members of one family or one neighborhood, and seemed to be moving together, with the adults in front and back and children in the middle.
Before proceeding to Neha’s home, Neil fished out his phone and checked the news. What he saw froze his heart.
There were unconfirmed reports of nuclear war in the Middle East and tactical nuclear exchanges between India and Pakistan had already taken place. North Korea had lobbed missiles armed with chemical weapons at Seoul and Taiwan and the Chinese mainland were trading missile strikes. Biters were roaming freely in all major cities in the world and most governments seemed paralyzed by the sudden chaos. What had begun as an outbreak of some sort of deadly virus was heading towards a climax where the world melted in a nuclear holocaust.
Neil clicked on the Facebook icon and saw that updates were now scarce. People were perhaps just too busy trying to stay alive… or… Neil didn’t want to contemplate what might have happened. A day earlier, they had been sharing an update on their new dress, or a bad grade in a test, or their mood. There were a couple of updates on the page of Make-A-Wish India, one posted by Dr. Joanne Gladwell, who was one of the senior volunteers at the foundation and took care of a lot of their fundraising activities.
‘Calling all friends. The US Embassy staff and families are all headed to a safe zone near the Domestic Airport. The Indian Army has secured the area and is calling on all civilians to head there.’
The airport was at least an hour’s ride away, and Neil considered the corpse-littered street ahead of him. He could just get on his bike and make straight for the airport. The Biters, as horrifying as they were, did not move too fast, so there was a good chance that he could get there in safety. Or he could still try and get to Neha. He weighed it for a few seconds. Sure, he had called Neha his girlfriend to the old woman, but that was wishful thinking. Neha was someone he had a bad crush on, but to be perfectly honest, she was not even a close friend. He looked at the last update from Neha on Facebook.
‘Neil, they are in the apartment downstairs! Don’t come, please. I want you to be safe.’
That made up Neil’s mind for him. Here he was, worrying about his pathetic little life, and there was Neha, in imminent danger, trying to keep him safe. It did not matter whether she was his girlfriend or indeed, whether they would ever get a chance to form any sort of relationship. There was a relationship bigger than one formed by love, lust or relation. That was the fact that they were all human, and if people were to have any chance of surviving, they would have to stick their necks out for each other.
Neil hefted the metal rod in his hands. Till that morning, he had never struck another person, even in a schoolyard scrap. Neil had always been the one to walk away. Other boys in the orphanage had only paid lip service to the sermons doled out by the Catholic nuns who ran it, but without a family or much to call his own, Neil had embraced their teachings. He wondered how what he was seeing around him squared with all that he had been taught about good and evil. In his young mind he reconciled himself to the fact that the devastation unfolding around the world was a sign of the End Times, and that now was the time when good and pious people would have to step up and help others.
He waited till the last of the Biters was out sight and then mounted his bike for the last stretch of his ride to Neha’s home.
*
Neil had been a pretty keen cricket player as a child, and he tried to block out the blood and splattered brains, instead pretending that he was playing a game of cricket and dispatching each delivery out of sight. He held the thick metal rod in a two-handed grip, almost perpendicular to his body, in a stance that would have been more at home on a baseball diamond than a cricket pitch, and waded into the Biters outside Neha’s home.
He had arrived to find a good half-dozen Biters clawing at the door to the stairwell that led up to her apartment. The apartment downstairs had been torn apart, and other than huge bloodstains around the floor there was no sign of the inhabitants. The rod made solid contact with another Biter’s head, this one a middle-aged woman who had an iPod dangling around her chest, the earbuds still in her ears. As the Biter fell, her head cracked open and Neil took a breather. Fueled by rage and adrenaline, he had waded into the Biters, and now three of them lay at his feet. But that still left three more closing in on him, drooling and growling, and his shoulder felt like it was on fire. He resolved that if he got out alive, and if anyone made movies ever again, he’d write to them telling them just how unrealistic their fight sequences were. He could barely breathe, and had to muster every single ounce of strength left in him to lift up the rod again and smash it against a Biter’s head. He missed but made solid contact with his shoulder. The Biter, a big man in a bloody, torn vest, roared and clawed at Neil’s hand, drawing blood.
‘Shit!’
Neil looked at the growing trickle of blood on his forearm and backed away. He had no idea if the virus or whatever made people into ghouls could be transmitted by a scratch, but he figured he would find out soon enough.
‘Sissies scratch. Men do this!’ The normally mild-mannered Neil’s face was a mask of rage as he swung his rod again and smashed open the Biter’s head. The two remaining Biters looked down at the carnage around them, and for a second, Neil hoped that they would decide to cut their losses and find easier prey. Instead, they roared in fury and advanced on him again.
In his duels so far, Neil had learnt an important lesson. He could break their hands, smash their knees, crack open their ribs, but they would keep coming. The only thing that stopped them was smashing open their heads. So he had quickly overcome his squeamishness and started aiming only for the head. The first time he had made solid contact and taken off a Biter’s head, he had screamed aloud.
‘Off with their heads!’
Wearing his bunny ears and having set out to enact Alice in Wonderland, he though it only appropriate and he was repeating that battle cry as he took on the remaining Biters.
The rod he was carrying was covered with blood and other gore that Neil did not want to think about. Neil swung his rod at one of the remaining two Biters and missed, slipping on the blood on the floor. He tried to recover his footing but fell hard on his back, the rod rolling a few feet away. Neil backed away as the two Biters steadily advanced on him. Both had their blood-stained teeth bared and were a mere couple of feet away when they staggered back as a thick foam enveloped them. Neha stood in the doorway, a portable fire extinguisher in her hands. She sprayed the Biters again and then screamed at Neil.
‘Come on!’
He grabbed the rod and the two of them ran out of the apartment building, leaving the two Biters behind. Neha got on the bike behind Neil and they sped away.
‘Where do we go now?’
Neil knew the answer to that. The problem was getting there in the fading light with millions of Biters rampaging through the streets of Delhi.
*
They had stopped at an abandoned gas station to top up Neil’s bike for the remainder of the ride to the airport. In the twenty minutes since they had left Neha’s home, they had seen plenty of Biters roaming in the streets, but moving at speed, they had managed to get this far without incident. The remainder of the trip to the airport would require them to get on the highway, where Neil hoped they could pass unmolested, but they would not have many opportunities to top up his fuel tank, which was nearing empty. So he had taken the risk of stopping to pump gas into the bike, the rod that had served him so well in his other hand. Neil caught a glimpse in the mirror ahead of him, and he scowled.
‘I forgot I’m still wearing these silly bunny ears.’
He was about to take them off when Neha’s hand gently tousled his hair. Her touch sent a jolt through him.
‘I think you look cute in these.’
Neha laughed but then Neil noticed a change in her tone as she touched his shoulder.
‘Neil, you’re bleeding!’
Neil looked at his hand, still bloody from the scratch he had suffered at Neha’s apartment. ‘Relax, it’s just a scratch.’
‘No, I mean up here.’
Neil caught the tension in her voice and took a look in the mirror near him. There was a red patch on his left shoulder. He dropped the rod and peeled back his shirt. His shoulder was covered in a thin film of blood. He wiped some of it away to reveal puncture wounds.