Alice in Deadland Trilogy (17 page)

‘
Alice,
my child. You cannot die or become just another Biter. The prophecy needs you
to live, to bring an end to all this suffering.
’

Alice felt the liquid flow down her throat and it felt as if
her entire body were on fire. She saw the Queen glance up and then she pushed
something into Alice
’
s
hand. Before Alice could say anything, she saw the Queen
’
s head disappear in a spray of blood. As the
Queen
’
s body fell,
she dropped Alice to the ground. Alice
’
s
head hit the ground hard and through the red mist that clouded her vision she
saw someone approaching, a pistol in his hand. Alice screamed as her body
spasmed time and again, and then went still.

Appleseed had come back into the room, looking for the key
card that he must have dropped in his struggle with Alice. He had only one hope
now: to hide in the small panic room near the Command Center and hope that he
was not discovered till Red Guard reinforcements arrived. When he entered the
room, he saw that all the Biters were down but also noted with satisfaction
that Alice was down as well. He had spotted the Biter Queen near Alice and had
taken her head off with a single shot.

As he came closer, in the dim light he saw Alice’s leg
twitching and he put a bullet into it. Her leg jerked once and was then moved
no more.

Appleseed screamed at nobody in particular, ‘I got you all,
didn’t I?’

He took out a small flashlight and began to search among the
mangled bodies littering the floor for his key card. He could now hear
footsteps on the roof, and he knew he had very limited time. His foot hit
something and he looked down to see a charred book clutched in Alice’s hand. He
stopped, wondering why anyone would be carrying an old children’s fairy tale
into a battle.

‘All that’s left of your damn Wonderland is ashes.’

He began to move on when he felt a cold, clammy hand grip
his feet. Appleseed froze with fear. One of the Biters was not yet destroyed.
He spun around to face the threat when the door above him swing open and Satish
and two other men ran in, rifles at the ready. Satish saw Appleseed and fired,
grazing him on the shoulder. Appleseed fell to the ground, and his flashlight
and pistol both fell from his hands. He clambered to his feet again, trying to
find his weapon, when cold hands gripped his wrist and twisted it till he
screamed in agony as his bones snapped. He managed to free his hand and saw his
pistol lying nearby, but before he could grab it he saw a hand reaching for it
and raising it towards him in the darkness. Bullet after bullet tore into
Appleseed as he fell, not knowing who or what had killed him.

***

EPILOGUE

Six months later

‘Comrade General, are you sure you want us to land at the
forward base?’

Chen glared at the pilot next to him. ‘Comrade Colonel, do I
take it that your revolutionary fervor is waning in the face of the enemy?’

The pilot blanched and looked away, taking the helicopter
into a slight turn as they approached the base near the Deadland. He knew that
for all that had changed in the last six months, a mere insinuation from
someone like Chen could send him and his family to a labor camp for
indoctrination. That, he knew, was a death sentence in all but name.

Chen looked down at the parked APCs and the Red Guards
milling about the base and wondered just how long they could keep any
meaningful presence in the Deadland. Expressing such thoughts in front of his
masters in the Central Committee would be unthinkable, but as a professional
military man, he knew the momentum was against them. While he knew his career,
and indeed his life, depended on unquestioning obedience to his masters, he
also knew that when political masters refused to see battlefield realities, it
usually meant that defeat was around the corner. It had begun with the events
in the Deadland, revolving around that damned Biter Queen and the girl called
Alice. The rout of the Red Guard base and Appleseed’s death was a minor
tactical reverse, but the larger strategic ramifications of those events had
been great. The large scale defections among Zeus had meant that the Central
Committee had deemed that only frontline Red Guard units be used in the
Deadland. That in turn had meant fewer troops for the continuing war in the
Americas, where the enemy was making steady progress in its brutal insurgency
campaign. But that was a military campaign – one Chen knew how to wage. What
had happened in the Deadland was different, and more dangerous. An idea had
been born: the idea that humans and Biters could somehow co-exist and that the
Central Committee and its masters were behind the catastrophe that had been The
Rising. The idea that it was possible to start to recreate civilization without
the control of the Central Committee and its Red Guards. That idea had taken
root throughout the Deadland and had begun to seep into the cities of the
Mainland. That, Chen mused with a bitter smile, had perhaps less to do with
ideology and more to do with the choking off of slave labor from the Deadland.
When the citizens of Shanghai and Guangzhou were called on to work the farms,
they realized the utopia the Central Committee had promised was not quite the
same without slave labor from the Deadland to lubricate the wheels of their
utopian society. A nascent campaign of resistance had begun, and many of the
dangerous messages which had preceded The Rising – calls for freedom, democracy
and accountability – were once again whispered in the Mainland.

The helicopter landed and Chen stepped out, saluting the Red
Guards outside who stood at attention. He singled out the commanding officer, a
burly officer whose eyes seemed to be constantly scanning the horizon. Chen had
read his dossier. The major had never been in combat before, but had been a
rising star back in Shanghai due to his political connections. The mere fact
that officers like him were being shipped out to the Deadland to make up for
losses among frontline troops was a clear sign of how the war was going.

‘Comrade Major Liang, how is the war progressing?’

The major snapped to attention, but Chen noticed that he
seemed to be on edge.

‘Sir, we are carrying on our struggle to liberate the citizens
of the Deadland from the tyranny of fear that the Biters impose and the
counter-revolutionary ideas of the terrorists.’

Chen smirked. The young officer no doubt had excelled in his
political education back in Shanghai. He just wondered how long he would last
out here. As Chen sat in the Command Center and was subjected to a briefing
containing what he had little doubt were largely fictional figures of losses
the unit had inflicted on the enemy, his mind began to wander. He had no wish
to be out here, but the Central Committee had decreed that senior officers
needed to visit forward bases to bolster morale and no doubt provide photo-ops
which would reassure the people back home that things were under control.

He was snapped back to reality when they heard a sentry cry
out on the radio.

‘Multiple contacts coming in fast.’

Liang was instantly at his command screen, where live video
from a circling unmanned drone overhead was being streamed. The looting of
man-portable SAMs from overrun Red Guard armories and experienced Zeus
operators to use them had meant that several drones had been lost in the last
few months. As a result, drones were being used for largely static defense,
hovering close to bases like this one. Still, it was better than getting no
warning at all. Chen peered over Liang’s shoulder and saw six jeeps kicking up
dust as they approached the base.

Something didn’t seem right to Chen. From all he had heard,
the enemy was not so stupid as to walk into overwhelming firepower.

Liang barked into his radio, ‘Get the two gunships in the
air. I want them obliterated before they get within RPG range.’

Another display showed the footage from both helicopter
gunships as they took off and turned towards the approaching vehicles. The
radio crackled with another transmission from the drone operator.

‘Sir, I have three more jeeps coming in from the opposite
direction.’

Chen had a sinking feeling in his gut. They had two gunships
at their base and should theoretically be able to deal with such a threat, but
he had heard of too many bases being overrun. Part of him told him to get to
his chopper and get out, but he could not abandon his troops when they were
under attack.

He heard Liang speak in little more than a whisper.

‘It’s the witch. She rides with them.’

Chen’s attention snapped to the display and he saw a close
up of one of the jeeps, and standing there was a young woman with her fair hair
streaming behind her, her eyes covered by dark glasses. The other jeeps seemed
to have only a driver, with the cab behind covered in what appeared to be
canvas.

‘Sir, she cannot be killed. I have heard so many comrades…’

Chen shut Liang up viciously. ‘Comrade Major, you are the
ranking officer in charge of this base. Weakness and superstitious babbling will
not help your men. Decisive action will.’

Even as Chen said the words, he had to admit that he too
felt a stab of irrational fear. It was one thing to fight men who could be
killed and to hunt mindless Biters, but it was quite another to fight an enemy
who supposedly could not be killed but could fight like the best trained
soldier and handle the most sophisticated weaponry. This witch had been leading
the enemy to victory after victory and now she seemed to be bearing down on
him. Liang was so focused on the jeep carrying the witch that he paid little
attention to the three jeeps that the drone had picked up.

‘Pilots, fire at will and aim at the third jeep from the
left. That’s where their leader is’

The drone operator screamed out, ‘Sir, those three new jeeps
are firing SAMs—’

His transmission was cut short as the screen relaying
footage from the drone was filled with static. A second later he heard calls
for help from the two gunship pilots who reported multiple SAM trails headed
towards them. Chen watched in impotent fury as the gunships tried to evade the
incoming missiles, and then their display screens were also replaced by static.
Liang seemed to be on the verge of panic, having just lost the edge in
firepower he had. In his panic and anger, Chen snapped, all trace of civility
gone.

‘You idiot! Stop staring at those screens. We still have our
eyes and our weapons. Come on to the deck and get binoculars.’

Chen walked outside and saw through his binoculars that the
jeeps had stopped and all of them had their canvas covers removed, revealing
multi-barrel rocket launchers of the sort that were carried underwing by Red
Guard helicopter gunships. Chen’s lips tightened.

‘So that’s why they’ve been reported to be so interested in
picking dry the wreckage of the choppers we lose.’

He had no time to admire the ingenuity of the enemy as one
of the jeeps fired. He saw a flash of light and six rockets streaked towards
the base. It was an inaccurate weapon, but at such close range they did not
need pinpoint accuracy. Three rockets exploded short of their target, but three
arched into the base, exploding in the grounds outside, sending Red Guards
scampering for cover. Chen looked down and saw several men lying bloodied after
the strike.

Liang was screaming at his men to open fire with the Gatling
gun emplacements. Chen shouted at him to shut up.

‘Liang, they are out of range. They have clearly thought
this through better than you.’

Liang blanched as Chen walked back into the command center,
trying to salvage the situation the best he could.

‘Order everyone into the underground shelters. They can fire
all the rockets they want, but they can’t get us there. If they try and close
in after that, we still have a fighting chance since they only seem to have a
handful of men and we have more than two hundred fully armed soldiers here.
Liang, get on the radio and call in an air strike.’

Chen knew that any air strike would be at least fifteen
minutes away, but he wanted the men to feel that the initiative still lay with
them. That was when one of the guards on the perimeter wall wailed on the
radio, the fear in his voice apparent. The words he said robbed Chen of all the
fight he had left in him.

‘Sir, Biters are coming in from all sides. Hundreds of them
just popped up from tunnels! What do we do?’

***

Chen went back to the deck and froze at what he saw. As far
as the eye could see, there were Biters walking towards their base. Each wall
had a remotely controlled gun turret and he shouted for one of them to open
fire. He heard the familiar buzzing sound as the gun turret fired, cutting
through the front ranks of the approaching Biters like a scythe, tearing limbs
and bodies. He could see some of the undead monsters still trying to crawl
towards the base as the others behind them stepped over them and continued
approaching. Just then, two more of the jeeps fired rockets. This time, their
aim was better, and most of the rockets slammed into the base. One tore a
gaping hole in the front wall, destroying the gun turret, while others hit the
inside of the base, and Chen dove for cover as the helicopter he had come in
exploded in a giant fireball.

He crawled back inside, feeling the skin on his arm burn
from a near miss from shrapnel. Liang was staring at him open-mouthed.

‘Sir, they are on the radio.’

Chen heard a female voice on the radio.

‘Red Guards, surrender and I guarantee that you will be left
alive. Fight us and you will be destroyed without mercy.’

Chen had heard enough stories about other bases that had
received similar messages. Some had fought till the end, but others had
surrendered to be looted of all their weapons and equipment. The survivors
brought back tales of horror that spread further fear and discontent in the
Mainland, and uncomfortable questions about the nature of the enemy and the war
they were really fighting. The Central Committee had initially reacted the only
way it knew how: to sentence the officers and troops to long stints in labor
camps to build back their ‘revolutionary fervor’. But that had only further
sucked dry the supply of battle-hardened troops. Which is why fools like Liang
were now here.

Liang seemed to be on the verge of total panic and grabbed
at the holster on his belt.

‘Sir, we cannot let those monsters take us!’

Chen sighed. It would sound brave to talk of fighting to the
end, but then he saw the frightened faces around him. Young men, many with
families back in the Mainland, fighting a war that now had no clear agenda, far
away from home, against an enemy whom they had been misled about. General Chen
had always been a good Party Man but he could not let these young men be
slaughtered for no purpose. He would surrender and take accountability for it,
and plead that the soldiers had wanted to fight, but he had overridden them. He
knew that he would not survive long in a labor camp, but perhaps it was time he
finally did his true duty as an officer: to his men, not to his masters back in
the Central Committee.

He grabbed the mike from Liang and spoke, noting the horror in
the major’s face. ‘I agree, but we will surrender to humans. Ask those monsters
to hold back.’

He asked all his men to put their weapons away, and then
walked to the deck. He saw that the Biters had indeed stopped and wondered how
this witch exercised such control over what were surely mindless brutes and
monsters. The jeeps closed in on the base, and he saw black-clad men disembark
from them and enter the base, assault rifles at the ready. The witch was among
them, her blond hair marking her out from all the others. The black clad men
fanned out across the base and gathered the Red Guards outside in a group,
herding them into a room where they were locked. Others began to climb to the
Command Center.

Chen turned to see the door open and four heavily armed men
walk inside. They were all locals, and wore old Zeus uniforms. One of them
looked at Chen and whistled.

‘I never thought we’d have a general here as our guest.
Everyone, get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head.’

Chen nodded to his men and they all complied. He noted that
he could not see Liang and wondered where the fool was. Then he looked up and
saw the witch enter, flanked by two men wielding shotguns. She seemed little
more than a girl, dressed all in black and with her mouth covered by a mask and
her eyes obscured by dark sunglasses. She was armed to the teeth, with a
shotgun and sniper rifle slung across her back and a pistol and knife at her
belt. Tied at her belt was a book. When Chen took a closer look, he noticed
that it seemed to be some old children’s book. She may not have looked
physically imposing, but her very sight made several of the Red Guards break
out into sobs of terror, crying for mercy.