Sardar Khan's Interview

UDAIPUR LAKE PALACE, LAKE PICHOLA, RAJASTHAN, INDIA

 [Completely covering its foundation of Jagniwas Island, this idyllic, almost fairy-tale structure was once a maharaja’s residence, then a
luxury hotel, then a haven to several hundred refugees, until an
outbreak of cholera killed them all. Under the direction of Project
Manager Sardar Khan, the hotel, like the lake and surrounding city, is
finally beginning to return to life. During his recollections, Mister
Khan sounds less like a battle-hardened, highly educated civilian
engineer, and more like a young, frightened lance corporal who once
found himself on a chaotic mountain road.]

 I remember the monkeys, hundreds of them, climbing and skittering among
 the vehicles, even over the tops of people’s heads. I’d watched them as
 far back as Chandigarh, leaping from roofs and balconies as the living
dead filled the street. I remember them scattering, chattering,
scrambling straight up telephone poles to escape the zombies’ grasping
arms. Some didn’t even wait to be attacked; they knew. And now they were
 here, on this narrow, twisting Himalayan goat track. They called it a
road, but even in peacetime it had been a notorious death trap.
Thousands of refugees were streaming past, or climbing over the stalled
and abandoned vehicles. People were still trying to struggle with
suitcases, boxes; one man was stubbornly holding on to the monitor for a
 desktop PC. A monkey landed on his head, trying to use it as a
stepping-stone, but the man was too close to the edge and the two of
them went tumbling over the side. It seemed like every second someone
would lose their footing. There were just too many people. The road
didn’t even have a guardrail. I saw a whole bus go over, I don’t even
know how, it wasn’t even moving. Passengers were climbing out of the
windows because the doors of the bus had been jammed by foot traffic.
One woman was halfway out the window when the bus tipped over. Something
 was in her arms, something clutched tightly to her. I tell myself that
it wasn’t moving, or crying, that it was just a bundle of clothes. No
one within arm’s reach tried to help her. No one even looked, they just
kept streaming by. Sometimes when I dream about that moment, I can’t
tell the difference between them and the monkeys.

 I wasn’t supposed to be there, I wasn’t even a combat engineer. I was
with the BRO 1 ; my job was to build roads, not blow them up. I’d just
been wandering through the assembly area at Shimla, trying to find what
remained of my unit, when this engineer, Sergeant Mukherjee, grabbed me
by the arm and said, “You, soldier, you know how to drive?”

 I think I stammered something to the affirmative, and suddenly he was
shoving me into the driver’s side of a jeep while he jumped in next to
me with some kind of radiolike device on his lap. “Get back to the pass!
 Go! Go!” I took off down the road, screeching and skidding and trying
desperately to explain that I was actually a steamroller driver, and not
 even fully qualified at that. Mukherjee didn’t hear me. He was too busy
 fiddling with the device on his lap. “The charges are already set,” he
explained. “All we have to do is wait for the order!”

 “What charges?” I asked. “What order?”

 “To blow the pass, you arse head!” he yelled, motioning to what I now
recognized as a detonator on his lap. “How the hell else are we going to
 stop them?”

 I knew, vaguely, that our retreat into the Himalayas had something to
do with some kind of master plan, and that part of that plan meant
closing all the mountain passes to the living dead. I never dreamed,
however, that I would be such a vital participant! For the sake of civil
 conversation, I will not repeat my profane reaction to Mukherjee, nor
Mukherjee’s equally profane reaction when we arrived at the pass and
found it still full of refugees.

 “It’s supposed to be clear!” he shouted. “No more refugees!”

 We noticed a soldier from the Rashtriya Rifles, the outfit that was
supposed to be securing the road’s mountain entrance, come running past
the jeep. Mukherjee jumped out and grabbed the man. “What the hell is
this?” he asked; he was a big man, tough and angry. “You were supposed
to keep the road clear.” The other man was just as angry, just as
scared. “You want to shoot your grandmother, go ahead!” He shoved the
sergeant aside and kept going.

 Mukherjee keyed his radio and reported that the road was still highly
active. A voice came back to him, a high-pitched, frantic younger voice
of an officer screaming that his orders were to blow the road no matter
how many people were on it. Mukherjee responded angrily that he had to
wait till it was clear. If we blew it now, not only would we be sending
dozens of people hurtling to their deaths, but we would be trapping
thousands on the other side. The voice shot back that the road would
never be clear, that the only thing behind those people was a raging
swarm of God knows how many million zombies. Mukherjee answered that he
would blow it when the zombies got here, and not a second before. He
wasn’t about to commit murder no matter what some pissant lieutenant…

 But then Mukherjee stopped in midsentence and looked at something over
my head. I whipped around, and suddenly found myself staring into the
face of General Raj-Singh! I don’t know where he came from, why he was
there…to this day no one believes me, not that he wasn’t there, but that
 I was. I was inches away from him, from the Tiger of Delhi! I’ve heard
that people tend to view those they respect as appearing physically
taller than they actually are. In my mind, he appears as a virtual
giant. Even with his torn uniform, his bloody turban, the patch on his
right eye and the bandage on his nose (one of his men had smashed him in
 the face to get him on the last chopper out of Gandhi Park). General
Raj-Singh…

 [Khan takes a deep breath, his chest filling with pride.]

 “Gentlemen,” he began…he called us “Gentlemen” and explained, very
carefully, that the road had to be destroyed immediately. The air force,
 what was left of it, had its own orders concerning the closure of all
mountain passes. At this moment, a single Shamsher fighter bomber was
already on station above our position. If we found ourselves unable, or
unwilling, to accomplish our mission, then the Jaguar’s pilot was
ordered to execute “Shiva’s Wrath.” “Do you know what that means?”
Raj-Singh asked. Maybe he thought I was too young to understand, or
maybe he must have guessed, somehow, that I was Muslim, but even if I’d
known absolutely nothing about the Hindu deity of destruction, everyone
in uniform had heard rumors about the “secret” code name for the use of
thermonuclear weapons.

 Wouldn’t that have destroyed the pass?

 Yes, and half the mountain as well! Instead of a narrow choke point
hemmed in by sheer cliff walls, you would have had little more than a
massive, gently sloping ramp. The whole point of destroying these roads
was to create a barrier inaccessible to the living dead, and now some
ignorant air force general with an atomic erection was going to give
them the perfect entrance right into the safe zone!

 Mukherjee gulped, not sure of what to do, until the Tiger held out his
hand for the detonator. Ever the hero, he was now willing to accept the
burden of mass murderer. The sergeant handed it over, close to tears.
General Raj-Singh thanked him, thanked us both, whispered a prayer, then
 pressed his thumbs down on the firing buttons. Nothing happened, he
tried again, no response. He checked the batteries, all the connections,
 and tried a third time. Nothing. The problem wasn’t the detonator.
Something had gone wrong with the charges that were buried half a
kilometer down the road, set right in the middle of the refugees.

 This is the end, I thought, we’re all going to die. All I could think
of was getting out of there, far enough away to maybe avoid the nuclear
blast. I still feel guilty about those thoughts, caring only for myself
in a moment like that.

 Thank God for General Raj-Singh. He reacted…exactly how you would
expect a living legend to react. He ordered us to get out of here, save
ourselves and get to Shimla, then turned and ran right into crowd.
Mukherjee and I looked at each other, without much hesitation, I’m happy
 to say, and took off after him.

 Now we wanted to be heroes, too, to protect our general and shield him
from the crowd. What a joke. We never even saw him once the masses
enveloped us like a raging river. I was pushed and shoved from all
directions. I don’t know when I was punched in the eye. I shouted that I
 needed to get past, that this was army business. No one listened. I
fired several shots in the air. No one noticed. I considered actually
firing into the crowd. I was becoming as desperate as them. Out of the
corner of my eye I saw Mukherjee go tumbling over the side with another
man still fighting for his rifle. I turned to tell General Raj-Singh but
 couldn’t find him in the crowd. I called his name, tried to spot him
above the other heads. I climbed onto the roof of a microbus, trying to
get my bearings. Then the wind came up; it brought the stink and moan
whipping through the valley. In front of me, about half a kilometer
ahead, the crowd began running. I strained my eyes…squinted. The dead
were coming. Slow and deliberate, and just as tightly packed as the
refugees they were devouring.

 The microbus shook and I fell. First I was floating on a sea of human
bodies, then suddenly I was beneath them, shoes and bare feet trampling
on my flesh. I felt my ribs crack, I coughed and tasted blood. I pulled
myself under the microbus. My body was aching, burning. I couldn’t
speak. I could barely see. I heard the sound of the approaching zombies.
 I guessed that they couldn’t be more than two hundred meters away. I
swore I wouldn’t die like the others, all those victims torn to pieces,
that cow I saw struggling and bleeding on the banks of the Satluj River
in Rupnagar. I fumbled for my sidearm, my hand wouldn’t work. I cursed
and cried. I thought I’d be religious at that point, but I was just so
scared and angry I started beating my head against the underside of the
van. I thought if I hit it hard enough I could bash in my own skull.
Suddenly there was a deafening roar and the ground rose up underneath
me. A wave of screams and moans mixed with this powerful blast of
pressurized dust. My face slammed into the machinery above, knocking me
cold.

 The first thing I remember when I came to was a very faint sound. At
first I thought it was water. It sounded like a fast drip…tap-tap-tap,
like that. The tap became clearer, and I suddenly became aware of two
other sounds, the crackle of my radio…how that wasn’t smashed I’ll never
 know…and the ever-present howling of the living dead. I crawled out
from under the microbus. At least my legs were still working well enough
 to stand. I realized that I was alone, no refugees, no General
Raj-Singh. I was standing among a collection of discarded personal
belongings in the middle of a deserted mountain path. In front of me was
 a charred cliff wall. Beyond it was the other side of the severed road.

 That’s where the moan was coming from. The living dead were still
coming for me. With eyes front and arms outstretched, they were falling
in droves off the shattered edge. That was the tapping sound: their
bodies smashing on the valley floor far below.

 The Tiger must have set the demolition charges off by hand. I guessed
he must have reached them the same time as the living dead. I hope they
didn’t get their teeth in him first. I hope he’s pleased with his statue
 that now stands over a modern, four-lane mountain freeway. I wasn’t
thinking about his sacrifice at that moment. I wasn’t even sure if any
of this was real. Staring silently at this undead waterfall, listening
to my radio report from the other units:

 “Vikasnagar: Secure.”

 “Bilaspur: Secure.”

 “Jawala Mukhi: Secure.”

 “All passes report secure: Over!”

 Am I dreaming, I thought, am I insane?

 The monkey didn’t help matters any. He was sitting on top of the
microbus, just watching the undead plunge to their end. His face
appeared so serene, so intelligent, as if he truly understood the
situation. I almost wanted him to turn to me and say, “This is the
turning point of the war! We’ve finally stopped them! We’re finally
safe!” But instead his little penis popped out and he peed in my face.