Keith Laumer: Zone Yellow

“So you’re the big man, eh?” the old witch cackled. “Let’s see some papers to prove that, feller! Anyways, I never heard o’ this Net Survey and all!”

“There wasn’t time to issue written orders,” I told them, feeling like someone offering lame excuses. “But while we stand here and gab, the Ylokk are making their troop dispositions. I say let’s interfere a little! You―” I pointed to the fellow who’d jumped me earlier. “You like to get rough; come with me and I’ll give you something to get rough with.” He stepped forward and opened his mouth to tell me to go to hell, but just then we all heard a yell from down below. I was first to look down into the courtyard; it was swarming with aliens, who had already pushed the carts over and herded the dozen or so men back into one corner. Aspman was dithering; then he drew a pistol he’d gotten from somewhere and before he could fire it, a rat-man flattened him with a disruptor. The people behind me screamed. “Why, they killed Captain Aspman! Look! He’s dead! His insides―”

The next moment they were all yelling at me to do something. I told them to calm down and wait for further instructions, and went down to the courtyard. The rat-men were still crowding in through the open gate that I had locked an hour before. I could see them in the street where the roadblocks had been removed, advancing unimpeded, the nearest only a few yards away. I pushed past an overturned cart and collared the uniformed sergeant who was taking over for Aspman and asked him what the hell was going on. I had to yell to be heard, and I used my dress saber on one Ylokk who seemed to have picked me as his special project.

“Had to get out, Cap’n said,” the sergeant told me, at the same time putting a slug into the midsection of a tall, lean alien with three-inch incisors. “Said how the big shots were grabbing all the food and guns for themselves, and planned to make a deal with the enemy to let em have the townspeople in return for―”

“That’s all lunatic ravings, Sergeant. Who unlocked the gate?”

“I did, sir; Cap’n’s order, sir, to clear the way so we could make a run for it, sir.”

“You also removed the barricades, I suppose,” I said.

He nodded. “Had to move fast, Cap’n said.” He glanced at Aspman’s messy remains. “Guess Cap’n was wrong, sir. But he had the rank, and―”

“You did what you had to do, Sarge,” I comforted him. “Didn’t you think about the fact that you were opening a way in as well as out?”

“Cap’n said . . . they wouldn’t advance, had a deal with you, sir. I see now he was lying, just wanted to save his own sweet butt.”

“What about the guard detail at the city gate?” was my next query.

“Called ‘em in,” the non-com admitted. “They’re here, somewhere, I guess.” He looked around the crowded yard, where the Ylokk had now subdued all but two small groups of bleeding men, herding them into corners, and leaping it to bite, rather than using their weapons. The men were still firing, bringing down the Ylokks until their corpses formed makeshift breastworks. A few of the aliens had abandoned the attack and were now crouched, nibbling on their own dead. They ignored the human corpses. Apparently they liked rat meat better. I wondered why they were taking so many prisoners.

I gave the Sergeant his instructions and told him to get through to one of the embattled squads, and I forced my way to the other, climbed over the heap of dead Ylokk, and joined the firing into the crowd of now-confused aliens until it became hard to find a moving target. Someone had closed and barred the gate, so no more were arriving via that route, and the ones inside couldn t get out, but I heard a yell over the din and looked up to see a man fall from a third-story window. It was Borg, the greedy merchant. A Ylokk was looking out the window from which the man had clearly been pushed. I took aim and put a round right between his long, ivory-yellow incisors and he fell back, but was replaced in a moment by two others. They went down in a hail of gunfire from the sergeant’s bunch. I nailed the next one. Things began to get quieter, then almost silent. I looked across the hundred-foot-square courtyard and saw no Ylokk on their feet. One, with a yellow stripe on his overcoat, was lying near me, with his eyes open, moaning feebly. He’d been gut-shot. I climbed over to him to put him out of his misery, but he looked around at me and said clearly if squeakily in Swedish:

“Let me save my life and I will give you an empire.” Clearly, he’d boned up on our local history: those were Mussolini’s last words.

Before I could tell him I didn’t need an empire, the red eyes closed and he was dead.

I managed to get the uniformed troops lined up, and assigned them the job of shaping up the civilians. “We have to get through and close the city gate,” I told them. “We’ll form two squads”―I picked one of my NCOs to lead number two, so as to leave my sergeant in charge in the courtyard―”and advance along the parallel streets to the old city wall. Then we’ll move in on the gate.”

There were no rat-men in the side streets, and we made our rendezvous with no strife. The gate stood open; it was a rusty wrought-iron affair, intended only as a decorative replacement for the original Medieval oak-plank-and-iron-strap barrier, but it would at least slow an advance.

I did a reconnoiter of the area; no Ylokk in sight. Apparently the ones who had been in the street had retreated. They weren’t very enthusiastic warriors. Outside the gate I saw a party of them forming up in a column, no doubt preparing to make use of the treacherously opened gateway. They noticed me closing it, and two started toward me in the unbalanced-looking, slanting-forward, feet-pedaling gait of their kind. It appeared the rodentia hadn’t made the transition to upright posture as successfully as the early primates had. They looked like oversized meerkats. Maybe that was why in all our familiar A-lines, Men were in charge while the rats hid and lived on what they could steal from Man’s bounty. Anyway, I stepped out to where I had a clear shot, put one over their heads―they still apparently hadn’t realized our weapons would kill at a distance―and they went to all fours and ran down a side-alley.

“No guts for the close-in work,” my top sergeant, one Per Larsson, commented. “All we got to do,” he said, “is to get our manpower organized, and charge. They’ll run.”

“I hope so,” I told him. “Fall ‘em in now, Sarge, and try to explain what we have to do.”

“We going to take that bunch there?” he asked, sounding a little shocked.

“That very one,” I confirmed. “Let’s have a twenty-man front, ten deep. Fall in here, outside the gate, make sure your front rank are armed, and the rear ranks, too, as far as our weapons will go. Rear ranks to load and pass weapons forward. We’ll start at a walk, laying down aimed fire; when we reach the letter-box there”―I pointed to the blue kiosk with the yellow bugle―”we’ll double time. As we take casualties, we’ll close up and concentrate our fire on whoever’s leading them.”

“Yessir,” Larsson said, saluted, and took off, yelling orders.

My assault force didn’t look prepossessing; just a roughly-aligned crowd of the younger, healthier men, and a few tough women, handling their issue revolvers gingerly, as if afraid they’d bite the hand that held them―but willing enough, even eager to go—

I took the pistols away from the two fellows directly behind me and my NCOIC, asked the others to try not to shoot me or Larsson in the back, and gave the order to commence firing and to forward march, hup, two, three, four. They held together pretty well and kept up a lively rate of fire. The Ylokk kept right on with what they were doing until a wild shot hit one of them in the arm. He squealed like a rusty spring and ran―not from us, but from his buddies, who had turned as one to eat him alive. As we got closer, he fell, and the still-healthy ones started to eat. Our fire was hitting targets now. The eaters became the eaten. It was pretty sickening. By the time we reached them, only the dead and dying were left.