Zombiestan

'I know, but what choice do we have? When the Biters tossed the paper over the wall during their first attack, I went to their villa, thinking I could take the boy then. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. Then they came back with automatic weapons-as if to warn us. There are no guarantees that they'll leave us alone, but I can guarantee that they will tear us all to shreds if we don't do what they say.'

Mayukh heart was already pounding with what he had overheard, but when he saw the bloodied piece of paper in the Swami's hand, he was terrified. Scrawled in red, as if with blood, were just three words on it.

Gives the boye.

Mayukh turned, to go and warn David and the others when he saw Mikhail standing behind him. Before he could do anything, the big man shoved him, and he fell into the villa. The Swami and Walter both looked at him in shock and then at each other. Seeing the outrage and anger in Mayukh's eyes they knew that he had overheard their conversation. The Swami walked up to Mayukh, even now trying to be his usual smooth and civil self.

'Mayukh, we don't have a choice. If we give the boy, we can all live. So many have already been lost. One boy could save us all.'

Mayukh got up unsteadily to his feet and waited for the Swami to get closer. Then he put all his strength into a kick right into the Swami's groin. The Swami doubled over with a scream and fell to his knees, as Walter struck Mayukh with a blow to the head with the butt of his pistol. Mayukh found himself flat on the ground, his head spinning and warm blood beginning to stream down his face. He tried to get up, but Mikhail kicked him in the stomach, sending him down again, his body wracked with pain.

He heard the Swami shout.

'Go get the boy! And kill the soldier if you have to!'

Mayukh tried to get up again, but his legs felt like jelly and he fell again. He saw Walter looking down at him, grinning and then lashing out with his leg towards Mayukh's head.

Then Mayukh saw no more.

TEN

Hina crawled along the side of the wall, conscious of not making too much noise. It was now almost five in the evening, and from what she had heard, Abhi was to be handed over as soon as the Sun set. She knew she had less an hour in which to do something about it. The problem was that being an old college Professor and closet romance novelist meant that she had little by way of the practical skills such a situation warranted.

She remembered Walter and Mikhail running towards the gate earlier in the day, shouting that they had found a car that was in running condition, and that they wanted David to have a look at it before they loaded all their supplies into it. Swati had been playing with Abhi near the gate while she had stepped into one of the communal washrooms to relieve herself. Hina had looked outside, hearing the loud voices, and had been overjoyed at hearing the message that Walter and Mikhail brought with them. David had put his gun in its holster and started to walk away with them.

That was when everything went very, very wrong.

One of Walter's men had come up behind David and hit him hard on the back of the head with the butt of his shotgun. David staggered to the ground, bleeding from the head, but even then, he had not gone down without a fight. He had roared in anger at this betrayal and turned around and struck the man in the throat with his fist. The big man went down, screaming in pain, and did not get up again, but he had done his damage. David grabbed at his bloody head when Walter and Mikhail hit him again, sending him down for good. Two more of Walter's men ran onto the scene, grabbing Swati and Abhi. Swati scratched and kicked with all her strength, but it was not enough, and they were carted away. Hina then saw the Swami and Sharma appear on the scene. The Swami was shouting to Walter.

'Where is that old hag? Go and find her!'

Hina had slipped out of the villa that had acted as a communal washroom and hid under its slightly raised stilts for the next few hours while Walter and his henchmen searched for her. She had no idea what had happened to cause this betrayal at that time, and had been focused purely on remaining hidden. That was till she overheard the Swami and Walter talking. Then it all became clear.

She was old, she was weak, and she had no idea what to do, but if she was sure of one thing, it was the fact that she could not let Abhi be sacrificed like this.

Mayukh woke up, his head pounding with pain and his face sticky with dried blood. He could barely see out of his left eye, and as he awoke, he wiped the blood off the left side of his face so he could see clearly again. The first thing he heard was a sobbing noise to his right, and he turned to see Swati there, looking pale and scared. Her smile was gone, replaced by a mask of fear and desperation.

'They took Abhi!'

It all came back to Mayukh then. What he had heard at the Swami's villa, the blows Mikhail and Walter had showered on him, the deal the Swami thought he could strike with the Biters. He tried to speak but his throat was parched, and a mere croak escaped his lips. Swati rushed to him, cradling him in her arms, and pouring some water into his mouth. He drank it greedily, and then sputtered and coughed as he took in more than he should have. As he got up, he saw that he and Swati had been locked inside the bathroom of the villa he and David had been assigned, with nothing but a bottle of water to eat or drink between them. He asked where Hina and David were but Swati merely shook her head between sobs.

The pain in his head was excruciating, but Mayukh felt something even more overpowering than the pain. Anger. A red hot rage more intense than anything he had felt before. He was sure that if the Swami or Walter had been in front of him, he would have killed them without a second thought. The problem was that he was unarmed, locked in and as he looked at his watch, he realized that there was very little time left before the Swami offered up Abhi as sacrifice to the Biters in his misguided hope that they would leave him and his followers alone. He banged on the door and kicked against it with all his strength but it would not budge. Then he closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down, praying that some idea would occur to him.

Hina heard the scream and stiffened. It had sounded like Mayukh, but she could not be sure. Yet, if there was a chance that he was alive, joining him would at least make it two of them, and hopefully he would have some ideas about how to save Abhi. She overcame her fear and crept out of her hiding place behind the villa and saw that the scream had come from the villa David and Mayukh had been in. Then she stopped in her tracks. In front of the villa were seated Sharma and one of Walter's meatheads, a tall, strongly built European cradling a shotgun. She flattened herself against the villa's back wall again, thinking furiously of what she could do. What the hell could she do? She was an old woman, and her only skills were a passing knowledge of history and the ability to write steamy romances.

Then a thought came to her. If she had been writing a novel, what would her heroine have done? She remembered one of her bestselling novels, The Thuggees, where her heroine, an Indian Princess, is abducted by a group of medieval Indian bandits, and has to escape while her British lover mounts a rescue mission. The heroine makes it because her aging attendant does something the bandits never expected her to, and that element of surprise gives the Princess the chance to escape. Of course, she had put much more time and energy into describing the torrid romance between the Princess and her British lover, but she did remember the old attendant's final charge. And now it seemed that her fiction was going to come true, though of course, she was not going to be the ravenously beautiful Princess but the doomed old hag. Oh well, one has to play the cards one is dealt, she thought, and then steeled herself as she walked out into the open and towards the two men.

Sharma looked at Hina walking calmly towards them, a smile on her face, and stood up, ashen faced as if he had seen a ghost. The man next to him asked him what had happened and then he too stiffened on seeing Hina walk towards them, humming a song, as if oblivious to the fate that had befallen her friends. Hina's heart was pounding and every ounce of common sense in her told her to run and hide, but somehow she pushed that aside and kept walking calmly towards the two men, smiling broadly.

'Hello, Mr Sharma!'

David couldn't believe what he was seeing. Hina had either completely lost her mind or was about to perform