Resurrection

Chapter 25 : Chronicles of War

"Bravery without forethought causes a man to fight blindly and desperately like a mad bull. Such an opponent, must not be encountered with brute force, but may be lured into an ambush and slain." - Sun Tzu

Despite contrary beliefs, Sun Tzu was a real person but when I met him, he wasn't exactly battle hardened like William Wallace, preferring to unleash his dogs of war from a distance. Nonetheless his teachings have been valuable over the centuries and are certainly not to be ignored.

The gang of NT's pulled up in a number of vans along the alleyway in a matter of seconds. Each member spilled out of the back doors and sprinted along, having been given some instructions for the layout of our hideout. They swarmed like locusts hoping to gain the tactical element of surprise and through strength in numbers. They rammed open the door to our main living area, catching a few disciples off guard. A few cowardly gangsters decided to shoot first while others came in hurling fists and an assortment of knives in frenzied bloodlust. These disciples were completely overwhelmed and the young Javed, splashed with pinstripes of blood, was feeling the glow of victory. "Now where is the professor?" He shouted out, surveying the corpses lying at his feet.

Unfortunately he was not going to live long enough to realise just how imperceptibly wrong he was. For these young disciples were our very own sacrificial lambs. They were loyal but also completely unaware of their part in our ambush. Before the vans had reached a stop our scouts had already tipped us off.

A few of our youngest lambs that were not murdered were sprawled out on the floor, tentatively licking wounds and nursing broken limbs as each standing member of the NTs were standing over them, threatening to bludgeon them to death. The rest of our disciples were gathered on the rooftops and mezzanine floors within our little factory hideout. The best part of this hideout was that it was ill-gotten and had no prime real estate value. So that when I gave the signal to unleash Hades, each of our members dropped a molitov cocktail on either a British Indian piece of flesh or on the floor lying adjacent to one, no one caring for the damage this would create. The effect was instantaneous: with the shattering of each bottle, the tinkling of glass spread a fire that consumed the skin of each victim that caught it. A maelstrom of cotton and polyester went up in the blaze, fast-cooking the body it contained as almost each member of the NTs were engulfed and screamed out in a bone-rattling roar that would forever be etched in memory. The smell that emanated upwards was a cross burning of laundry combined with a pork crackling, making a steady contrast between horror and hunger as many of my disciples fought down the urge to regurgitate their suppers.

Some of our injured human lambs were caught up in the fire and proceeded to cook alongside. In the aftermath of this shock and awe attack, the remaining NTs were divided. A few clever ones decided to run out the back, hugging both tears on their face and faeces on their pants as they decided to keep their precious lives. The remaining brave souls decided to charge up the stair well of our factory hideout. Each one desperately bounding up the concrete blocks with blades drawn, thrashing wildly at their foes.

We let them spread out over the mezzanine floor and replicated their dance with our own thrashings; my disciples not responding to a typical knife fight with fear and unnecessary caution.

Javed knew that he had no other option. If he fled he would be tortured and bled to death by his superiors. His only grace would be to try and snatch victory and sought to cut the proverbial snake off at the head, making a beeline for yours truly in a dance of death. Like I had taught my disciples, most people get caught up in a fear of the knife, not seeing it as merely an extension of a fist. We would not make that same mistake and use both hands to counter our enemy. As Javed slashed at me wildly with his one blade hand, I parried his knife hand away and in one fluid motion, smash a left hook into his forehead, letting his nose bone crunch under the impact. He managed to get lucky despite this resounding blow, and in a random slash cut across my host's flesh, cutting across my leg and opening up a medium size cut. I followed this up with a kick to his knee, feeling the kneecap fold over, jarring Javed into a heap. He was ready to be finished off.

The problem with urban warfare is that it can be random and non –sequential. A member of the NT came at me from my diagonal, slashing as wildly as Javed. His appetite for chaos allowed him to cut a series of random arcs, quickly finding a mark as a point sank into my shoulder blade. I was caught off-guard and realised if I didn't react quickly, I would be exposed. A mortal death was impossible however the key to my survival was anonymity and if I showed the gang my party trick, I would quickly become a target for the masses.

In spite of this logic, another overenthusiastic NT member slashed at me from another direction. I quickly sidestepped and was lucky to avoid this entanglement. My shoulder was starting to bleed more and for a brief moment, I began to lose my inner calm and became enraged. I was surrounded as another gang member thought to cut the head off the hydra. I had allowed myself to be distracted and become completely engulfed. How had these flesh monkeys managed to get the best of me?

You shouldn't underestimate us!

In my vision, I could see the skinheads were all distracted; this was a crucial opportunity. Another NT swiped at me, narrowly missing my stomach. A burning intensity inside me; my inner darkness hit critical mass and I hurled out a shockwave of demonic power which thrust back two of my attackers, pinning them against the wall before strangling out their life force. With two of them out of the way, I evened up the odds and was able to parry the blows of my startled NT attackers. With a flurry, I knocked one opponent unconscious. My last quarry was permanently disabled as I used one hand to block his knife and in the other I plucked out an eyeball. The rotund piece of jelly throbbed in my hand as its owner wailed out in a bloodcurdling scream. I used the opportunity to pry the knife from his dominant hand and thrust it inside his other eye, piercing his brain in the same motion. He was dead before he hit the ground. Doing my best Van Helsing impression I silenced the last of my four potential eye witnesses with quick stabs in the head to push them out of existence.

This was all my disciples were able to see and they merely thought I was a cold blooded psychopath than a demonic force. So far my supernatural secret had remained intact and would be able to whisk myself away into the background. There was no time to bask in our victory as we briefly surveyed the smouldering wreckage of our battle ground: There were corpses lying randomly across the floor, all in a scattered mess of well done and rare hulks of meat. The flames were licking higher up the walls and the smoke was threatening to suffocate all who consumed it; but we knew we were victorious despite our sacrifices. We also knew the police would be around the corner and so we gathered our injured and beat several paths across the urban jungle (luckily it was mostly an assortment of unprofitable or abandoned factories and workshops), desperately urging each other to go to ground and reunite at a safer time. I was very proud of my skinhead disciples. It was a decent body count but there were also a number of souls extinguished forever and on a path to a favourable plain of existence. They were about to offer themselves to the servitude of my maker. More examples of mankind that were not only killed but also corrupted; they died bloody and lubricated by evil. Fortune favours the wicked and I would be receiving an existential pat on the back from my maker.

During this awkwardly bloody period of time England would call a second bout of 'the troubles', bodies had stacked up, souls corrupted, skinheads and NT gang members arrested. People eventually pointed fingers in my direction but law enforcement had no idea whom they were looking for. The disguise of a pasty white , early thirties Male with known aliases as 'the Professor' 'Master' 'Messiah' was far too favourably common and by the time anyone would have skirted my arrival within Adam's vessel, I had long gone, vanished to broader horizons and the promise of a more gullible and  greater flock of followers to corrupt.