Under Foot by Christopher Nuttall

Author:Christopher Nuttall [Nuttall, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B00AHAY3J2
Goodreads: 17654614
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Published: 2012-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chicago, USA (Occupied)

Day 150

“Keep your heads down,” the guide advised. “There are snipers watching for the slightest hint of weakness.”

Abigail nodded and followed his advice. She was wearing a set of body armour and a helmet, but she had no illusions as to how effective they would be if someone took it into their mind to take a shot at her. A sniper with a military-grade sniper rifle or even a hunting rifle could splatter her brains all over the streets, along with the other reporters and observers. The Order Policemen escorting them looked nervous, gripping their weapons as if they were lucky talismans and for once she was grateful for their presence. They’d draw fire away from her.

Chicago, the sections that had been ‘liberated,’ looked considerably worse for wear. It was worse than the part of Washington that had been destroyed when the massive alien ship came down on top of it, for it was completely unnecessary. Buildings had been damaged, or destroyed and left as piles of rubble or blackened ruins. Dead bodies lay everywhere, causing a health hazard. Drainpipes and sewer tunnels lay exposed to the air, pushing a vile stench towards their delicate noses. A handful of prisoners were engaged in clearing up the dead bodies and transporting them to a mass grave outside the city – rumour had it that the aliens intended to feed the human bodies to their warriors, although honesty compelled her to admit that it was only a rumour, if one repeated enough to make people believe in it – while conscripted doctors and nurses worked on the wounded. There was no difference between a wounded American and a wounded Arab. They both looked terrible.

If this is liberation, she thought, I’d hate to see occupation. The resistance still held over half the city and was fighting savagely to bleed the Arabs as much as possible. The briefings they’d been given had all been sweetness and light, promising that there was no danger from a handful of isolated holdouts, but everyone knew better. The sound of shooting still echoed out over the city, joined by mortars, bombs and random explosions as one booby-trap or another was triggered. The entire ‘secured’ area of the city was still a dangerous maze loaded with traps; she’d heard that the Arabs had taken to shooting at anything suspicious from a distance, hoping to set the IED off before it could harm them. Prisoners had sometimes hidden grenades on their person and used them against their captors; the dying had booby-trapped their own bodies in hopes that their deaths would still serve America. A week of hard fighting had cost the Arabs dearly and many thousands of them would never see home again. Those that did go home, if the aliens allowed them to go home, would be forever scarred by the experience. They had had no experience in fighting such a determined foe. The idea of picking up and checking every person in the zone had been replaced by the desperate struggle to survive.

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