Alice in Deadland Trilogy (21 page)

Alice had come to the Biters’ reserve and told Hatter and
Bunny Ears about what had happened. They knew the potential implications and
she sensed their panic, and within minutes they had brought the old Biter in
front of her. He had screeched and groaned as if pleading for mercy, but the
hand gestures Hatter made were clear enough. This Biter had let in a band of
outsiders in return for a thick bunch of ganja leaves that some of the Biters
favored. Pleading had soon given away to a desperate attempt to escape as the
Biter, like a cornered animal, had turned on Alice. That had been his last
mistake.

As the adrenaline wore off, Alice tried to calm herself down
and looked at Hatter and Bunny Ears. Hatter looked imposing, standing well over
six feet tall and built like a tank. The hat he guarded with such pride still
stood atop his head. He had suffered more than his share of wounds over the
years: at least six bullet holes pocked were visible on his chest and bites too
numerous to count crisscrossed his body. His eyes were dilated and red, and his
yellowed face was covered with dried blood. Just a year ago, Alice would have
run in terror at such a sight. Today he seemed to be cowering before her.

'Hatter, what the hell happened? I told you to make sure
everyone stays here and does not wander.'

Bunny Ears had his head down, like a pet that had just been
disciplined. His face was still contorted in what at first glance appeared to
be a lopsided grin, but Alice figured out later had been the result of a gash
drawn across his face by Biter nails when he had been bitten and turned.

'You do know what people will want to do, don't you? They
will start hunting you down again!'

At this, Hatter looked at her and a low growl came from the
back of his throat. Alice sighed.

'Yes, and you will fight, won't you? And then we'll be back
where we were. Tearing ourselves apart while the Red Guards and their masters
rule over us.'

Not wanting to face any of the affected families, Alice did
not go back to the city center but instead went back to the Looking Glass.
Danish was there, as usual, playing with his computers and radio equipment.

'Danish, anything new?'

He tapped on the monitor in front of him. 'The Americans
posted again.'

Alice leaned over and read the message.

Free American forces under Colonel Barnett swept aside
Red Guards at New Orleans, and are linking with other forces to press the
offensive to liberate the city. If you are anywhere near, find safety or join
the fight.

'They seem to have their communications working again,’ she
said, ‘How did they manage that?'

'America was much more developed thant India, and I suspect
their Armed Forces and government would have had secure and protected networks
and servers. They were ready to survive a nuclear apocalypse with Russia at one
time, so something must have survived. Also, in India hardly anyone other than
the Police and Armed Forces had guns since public gun ownership was limited. In
the US, lots of people had their own guns, so it was easier to fight back when
they needed to. I think it just took time for them to regroup and get over the
shock of the Biters to start organizing. Plus, I was on the radio with them
earlier today. They think we helped a lot.'

'How did we help?'

'Our postings and messages first started causing dissension
in Zeus. Before The Rising, Zeus was an American Private Military Contractor,
so most of their senior officers were American, especially ex-military folks.
When the news started coming out that the whole mess had been orchestrated by
elements in China and some American elites, many of them revolted. We're much
closer to China, so significant Red Guard reinforcements came faster. In
America, that took more time, and by then the Zeus deserters and local settlers
had made a lot of headway.'

Alice had to ask the next question given what she had been
through over the day.

'Danish, what about the Biters in America?'

Danish tutte looked away.

'Well, they hear that it’s more like a disease, that they
can be lived with – they hear about you. But they’re not buying it. I can't
blame them. Remember how things were here before you got here? They hunt down
Biters and burn them. They call it a Biter Barbeque. Not pretty.'

That night was anxious for Alice, spent wondering how she
could possibly keep things from exploding. The next morning, she did what she
thought was the right thing to do. She went to visit each of the families who
had lost children in the attack. She told them about what had happened in the
Biter Reservation and promised them that she would not allow such a thing to
happen again.

Then she called Arjun and Satish for a meeting in her room.

'Guys, there is no way such a thing can take place ever
again. I've told Hatter and Bunny Ears, but you know that discipline is too
much to expect from every Biter out there. So we need to help.'

'What do you have in mind?'

'Arjun, we need more security patrols inside Wonderland to
watch the borders from the inside.'

Arjun sadly shook his head. 'It’s not as simple as that now
we number so many. Now we'd need it voted in the Council, and you know how Arun
and his friends feel.'

'Come on, they would think differently after the attack,
wouldn't they?'

Arjun looked at Alice grimly. He realized that for all her combat
skills she was but a child, and unschooled in the murky world of politics that
Arun had mastered.

'Alice, Arun was very nice to you when he last met you, but
he's been telling anyone who'll listen that he doesn't believe the story about
it being Biters from the outside. He says he's sure it was Biters from the
Reservation. He won't vote to increase patrols; he'd much rather put the blame
on you for being too soft on the Biters.'

Alice gritted her teeth. 'So what does he want to do?'

'He hasn't said it out loud as such, but he thinks we should
move the Biters far away, and of course, he'd rather he run this place all by
himself as leader instead of a Council where you have such a large say given
your past. That's why he keeps asking for elections for a single leader.'

Satish broke his silence. 'I can help.'

Both Arjun and Alice looked at him as he elaborated.

'I could have two of my recon teams come in closer to the
city centre.'

Arjun spotted the obvious problem in the suggestion. 'We
send the deep recon boys out to watch for Red Guard incursions and wild bands
of Biters to intercept them before they get close. Your move would leave us
exposed.'

'Yes, but only till the situation stabilizes.'

Alice shook her head. 'Word will get out. Some of those boys
will speak to their wives in the city. Others will talk too much over a drink.
Arun and his friends will throw a fit and accuse us of overriding them.'

Just then, Alice's tactical radio crackled to life.

'White Queen, this is Looking Glass.'

It was Danish.

'Looking Glass, what do you have to report?'

'One of our recon teams called in and said that they found
fresh footprints, many of them, leading into the city. I don't know how they
evaded our patrols, but they say the footprints must be of Biters by the way
they seem to have moved. Then Rahul down at the farms just called on his radio,
saying he saw what seemed to be a group of Biters down the road.'

The words sent a chill down Alice's spine. Satish and Arjun
had both heard the transmission and they knew what the implications of another
Biter attack would be. Without a word being said between them, they gathered
their weapons. Alice was the first out the door, and roared down the road on
Danish’s bike, with Satish and Arjun following closely behind in a jeep. There
was no time to call for reinforcements. They would have to handle this
themselves.

Alice remembered the bodies of the children and vowed to
make these Biters pay dearly for what they had done.

***

Alice cursed as her first burst went wide, and the Biters in
front of her scattered behind the bushes overlooking the farmlands north of the
city center where the Biters had been reported. Alice had let her anger get the
better of her and fired even before her bike had come to a complete halt.
Firing her assault rifle one-handed and on the move was something her trainers
back at her settlement would have frowned upon, but then they had
also always advised her never to fight angry.

Stilling her mind she slipped off the bike, selecting
single-shot mode on her assault rifle. Spraying rounds was hardly a smart
tactic when all that mattered was putting one round into a Biter's head.

There.

She saw a Biter round the corner and she aimed and put a
round into his chest. The Biter staggered back and bared his teeth at her when
another round drilled him through the head. Another Biter was coming up just
behind her to the right and Alice swiveled towards him, firing at him. One
shot, one kill. By now Arjun and Satish had joined the battle and were firing away.
Alice saw Arjun kick a large Biter down and step on his chest before shredding
the Biter's head with automatic fire. Clearly she was not the only one who was
fighting angry today – but given the scene of the slaughtered children, it was
no surprise.

That momentary distraction almost cost her dearly. A
gnarled, bloody hand swept at her face, scratching her just below the eyes. She
turned towards the Biter, looking at her with red eyes, his skin coming off in
bloody patches. She brought her rifle around in an arc, shattering his jaw.
Then she kicked his feet from under him and shot him twice in the head.

The shooting had stopped.

‘Did we get them all?’

Satish was not about to let his guard down and swept the
area, his rifle raised. Arjun kicked one of the Biters to make sure he was
gone. It twitched, so he fired into the back of its head.

‘I think we got all the bastards now.’

The three of them looked at each other for some time, mixed emotions
coursing through all of them. They had not been in such an intense fight this
far inside Wonderland for many months, and certainly they had all thought that
the days of defending against Biter hordes was over. However, along with that
concern came a sense of catharsis. They had avenged the deaths of the children,
and while nothing would bring the kids back, this would hopefully start
bridging some of the rifts that had been created between Alice and the settlers
who seemed to favor Arun.

Satish and Arjun took a break, taking out their water
bottles. They were about to go back to their jeep when Alice noticed something.

‘Guys, something is not right here.’

They stopped and looked where she was pointing.

‘Check out their faces and bodies. They are decomposed like
Biters, but they don’t have too many visible wounds other than the rounds we
put in them. Normally they’re covered with unhealing wounds from their
conversion. These guys are barely scratched.’

Satish peeled off the clothes of a Biter at his feet with
his knife and stepped back, shocked.

‘Shit, this one has a totally clean body.’

Arjun was still taking it all in.

‘Maybe they got infected recently. Maybe that’s why there
aren’t too many wounds.’

Alice wasn’t satisfied.

‘Could a dozen of them be infected at the same time? All of
them without a single visible bite or scratch mark?’

Just then Satish heard a message coming over his radio in
the jeep. He ran to it and picked up the mike. As he spoke, Alice saw the color
leave his face.

‘Satish, what happened?’

He looked her, a fear in his eyes that Alice had never seen
before, even in the thick of combat against the Red Guards.

‘Alice, come on. We need to get you to the Looking Glass.
That’s the only safe place I can think of now till things cool down.’

‘What happened?’

Satish looked at her, his eyes filling with tears. ‘This was
a decoy. Another group of Biters got into the city. They got to some apartments
before some of the men stopped them. They’re saying more than twenty of us are
dead, most of them women and children. Some of the Biters got away, but they
killed eight of them. From what Danish said, they seem to be the same sort as
the ones we killed.’

Alice held onto the side of the jeep for support, trying to
comprehend what was happening.

‘Biters don’t use tactics like these. I don’t understand
what is going on.’

Satish grabbed her hand and pushed her towards the jeep.
‘We’ll figure all that out later. Now we need to get you to safety.’

‘Safety? Satish, this is my home. We started this place together.
I am not going to hide in my own home.’

As soon as she finished her sentence, a bullet whizzed past
her, missing her head by inches. Driven by instinct and training, Alice rolled
to her right, bringing up her handgun in a two-handed grip, aiming at where the
shot had come from. The shooter was a young boy, perhaps no more than twelve
years old, carrying a rifle that was too heavy for him. He was crying and had
blood covering his shirt.

‘Your Biters killed my brother!’

Alice lowered her handgun, too shocked to react, when Arjun
snatched the gun away from the boy. Satish was still on the radio and Danish
spoke with renewed urgency.

‘Don’t bring the White Queen here. My men report that a
large mob is headed here, and another group is on its way to the Biter
Reservation. They’re saying that it’s time to wipe out the Biters.’

Satish put the radio down.

‘A war with the Biters will destroy Wonderland, and
everything we’ve created.’

***

THREE

‘Hatter, I know you did not do this, but we don’t have time to
prove or explain anything!’

As soon as they had got the news, Alice and Satish had
rushed to the Biter Reservation on Danish’s bike, while Arjun had headed to the
Looking Glass, both to try and pacify the people headed there and also to keep
Danish safe. Danish was not as closely associated with Alice as Satish was, but
neither did he have any qualms about making his distaste for Arun known
publicly. Alice had gathered the Biters and told them what had happened and
their reaction was clear. Even without human language, their surprise and
indignation was apparent.

Hatter reared up to his full height, roaring in frustration.
Alice reached out, touching the rough, bloodied skin on his hand.

‘If you fight the humans today then all will be lost. We
will be back to what our lives had been like in the Deadland, fighting and
slaughtering each other, and then the Red Guards and their masters would have
won. Do you understand what I am asking you to do?’

Hatter had put his head down, but refused to acknowledge
what Alice had just asked. Bunny Ears, however, stood next to him and emitted a
low keening sound. Alice knew that he was sad, much like a pet being asked to
go away, but that he would listen to her. Alice just wanted them to get out of
sight while she tried to figure out where the attacking Biters had come from,
and also try and cool things down with people in Wonderland.

Within minutes, there was no sign of the Biters. They had
disappeared down the warren of underground tunnels and bomb shelters where
Alice had first encountered them. Arun and his closest supporters were relative
newcomers and would have no idea of the full extent of the tunnel network. The
ones who had some idea of where the tunnels opened were the recon teams that
worked for Satish, and they would not betray him or Alice.

‘Satish, come on! Let’s get to the Looking Glass.’

As she started her the bike, they got their first glimpse of
the approaching mob. There were more than a hundred men on foot, some carrying
lit torches, and all of them armed. As they saw Alice speed away, a couple of
them fired, sending dust and gravel flying all around her as Alice rode away.
The fact that they had opened fire without even giving her a chance to explain
meant that things had totally gone out of control. She also knew that sending
the Biters into hiding would only make her and the Biters look even guiltier,
but that was a better option than the bloodbath that would have followed
otherwise.

When they approached the Looking Glass, Alice knew that
something was wrong. Arjun had driven in Satish’s jeep, and now it was lying on
the side of the road, pockmarked with bullet holes and with its windshield
shattered. Anxious about her friend, Alice jumped off the bike and was about to
run to the Looking Glass when Satish grabbed her hand.

‘This could be an ambush. Let’s not rush into it.’

Both of them unslung their assault rifles and approached the
temple complex.

Alice said, ‘I saw some movement near the doorway.’

Satish knelt down, looking through his scope. ‘There’s someone
hiding there.’

Alice crept along the far wall while Satish hid behind the
jeep, covering the doorway. Alice did not want to harm any of the people of
Wonderland– after all, they were like family. But if any of them had hurt
Arjun, there would be hell to pay.

Alice was now just feet away from the doorway and she dove
in front of it, coming up with her rifle raised. She saw Arjun sitting huddled
against the door. He had his rifle in his hands, but there was a small pool of
blood forming under him, and he was struggling to keep his eyes open.

‘Arjun, no!’

Hearing Alice’s anguished shout, Satish ran over and they
took Arjun inside the complex. Danish was there, his hands and face cut. Some
of the glass surrounding the communications room had been shattered and there
were three bodies lying among the bloodied glass fragments. The men wore
filthy, dust-covered clothes of the sort that Alice had not seen since her
people formed Wonderland.

Satish was tending to Arjun’s wounds while Danish filled
them in on what had happened.

‘They heard that you were headed to the Reservation so most
of them went there. That bastard Humpy Dumpty ordered the mob to go there. I
heard him myself on the radio.’

Humpty Dumpty was Danish’s preferred term for Arun, in
reference to his weight and nearly bald head.

‘Arjun and I were here when these three bastards came to
kill us. These were not our people, Alice. They are stragglers from the
Deadland someone must have hired to do their dirty work. I bet some of them are
mixed in with the mobs, riling them up. Arjun took them all out, but they
managed to shoot him.’

Alice took it in, but her mind refused to believe it. There
were still people out in the Deadlands, mostly small groups of bandits who had
terrorized the settlements before Wonderland had been formed. Alice had
steadfastly refused to let any of them into Wonderland. Alice knew they would
have hated her for that decision, but to think that someone from inside
Wonderland had let them in to kill her was too much to believe. Satish would
have seen her doubt.

‘Alice, you are still too young to know how messed up people
can be when they want power. I don’t have any trouble believing Arun could have
done this. I say we get my boys and bust him.’

‘No. No.’

Everyone started at Arjun’s words. He struggled to sit.
Satish had bandaged the wound on his thigh, but he was clearly weak from the
loss of blood.

‘No, Satish. That would mean civil war, and ordinary folks
would believe that Alice and our Biters were guilty of the attacks and side
with Arun. We would destroy Wonderland.’

‘What, then?’

‘Look, these three goons here are obviously Deadlander
bandits and even if Arun hired them, he would never own up to it publicly. But
people are baying for blood and I can’t blame them. So many families have lost
people in the last two days that they aren’t thinking straight.’

‘So what do we do, Arjun?’

‘Alice, you need to find out who’s behind this. Those Biters
were inserted here for these attacks, and someone human, someone very smart,
thought it all up. But you can’t do that from the inside. You need to get back
to the Deadland and find out what’s going on.’

‘What about you?’

‘Hey, I’ll just say these bandits hurt me, which is true
enough, and that I’ve got no idea where you are. Remember, I used to sell
useless vacuum cleaners for a living to people who didn’t need them. I can sell
Arun any story I want.’

Arjun smiled as he said the words, but there was a pained
grimace apparent on his face. Alice took a look around, weighing
the decision before her.

‘Danish, radio the folks in town, telling them bandits
attacked the Looking Glass, and ask for medical help. Tell nobody we were
here.’

Danish looked at her, grim determination on his face.

‘Alice, you can trust me. Here, take this so you can know
what’s going on inside and I can tell you what Humpty Dumpty is up to.’

Alice gratefully took the portable radio set he had given
her and put it in her backpack. She was about to leave when Satish joined her.

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘Satish, you don’t have to…’

He never let her finish. ‘We’ve fought too many battles
together for me to let you go alone on this one.’

And so Alice and Satish walked out through the shattered
glass facade of the Looking Glass, the bloodied glass fragments crunching under
their feet as they set out for their trip back into the Deadland.

***

General Chen watched the black helicopter glide in and land
in a far corner of the airfield. It was always cold in Ladakh, where he was
based, but he felt a chill go through him that had nothing to do with the
temperature. After he had surrendered a forward base to Alice and her forces,
he had been stripped of his command of the Red Guard forces in the Deadland,
and had been sent to an indoctrination camp near Guangzhou. The Central
Committee propaganda machine called these camps ‘holiday camps for tired
veterans to recuperate and regain their revolutionary fervor’. In reality, it
was a torture camp where veterans who had become politically inconvenient or
had started asking uncomfortable questions were shipped out. Like the purges of
all dictators in the past, those who were perhaps most capable of defending the
regime were punished, because the best soldiers are also those who dare to
think. Chen had made that mistake when he surrendered his base to Alice to
prevent his men from being slaughtered. He had been an officer in the Chinese
Red Army before The Rising, and with the nuclear and biological weapon
exchanges with the Americans and the chaos enveloping the world in the days
that followed, he had devoted himself to defending his people against the
Biters. It had been a clear-cut mission, one where he had little doubt as to
whether he was doing the right thing or not. That was until he learnt of this
girl called Alice and the stories she was spreading. He had dismissed them as
propaganda, and had captured her once, intending to send her to the mainland
for execution. But something had changed when he had looked at her during her
attack on the Red Guard base he had been inspecting close to a year ago. He had
seen the Biters following her, had seen that she was not quite human, yet not
Biter either. That had planted the seeds of doubt in his mind, and he had
confided to a brother officer back in Shanghai. He had raised questions about
whether what the Central Committee had been telling the people about the true
nature of the Biters and the war in the Deadland was entirely true. That more
than his battlefield surrender had been his undoing. Chen’s only relief was that
his wife had been spared the horrors of the camp.

He had been rehabilitated just six months later and
re-instated with all honors, to be sent to the new base at Ladakh where the Red
Guards kept a watch on the community called Wonderland. It had been nothing
more than glorified sentry duty and he had begun to wonder why he had been
spared. Then the stealthy black helicopter he had just seen land had arrived
and started going out on sorties to the Deadland. Its crew and passengers had
been flown in from Shanghai and even though he was the base commander, Chen had
not been allowed any access to them. They stayed in their own quarters behind a
walled complex, and did not report to him.

He wondered what the old men in the Central Committee were
up to now, but knew that whatever it was, the cost in blood would be paid by
the young conscripts he was now supposed to lead.

***

The dust was swirling around her and Alice had the hood on
her sweatshirt pulled up around her face. She had grown up in the Deadland, but
just a few months of living in the relative comfort of Wonderland told her just
how brutal and uncompromising life in the Deadland could be in comparison. When
she had lived there with her family in their settlement, conventional wisdom
was that no human could survive in the Deadland unless they were in a large,
organized group. The Deadland was teeming with predators, Biter and human
alike, and now Satish and Alice would have to contend with them on their own if
they were to try and solve the mystery of the Biter attacks. Alice knew that
Bunny Ears, Hatter and her other Biters would be close at hand through their
network of hidden underground tunnels, but there was no way for her to contact
them, and depending on them to show up when she needed help was hardly a good
survival strategy.

‘Alice, my boys told me that this was the only sector they
did not patrol yesterday. If the attackers came into Wonderland from the
outside, then it must have been through here.’

It was now getting dark, and Satish suggested that they
rest. Alice was not going to get tired from walking, and Satish was a
professional soldier who could keep going for some hours yet. However, they did
not want to take the chance of bumping into unwelcome company in the darkness.

Alice hid the bike in the bushes and then called out, ‘Up
the trees.’

Satish looked at Alice incredulously.

‘Come on, are you serious? Do we have to hang from branches
like Tarzan?’

That puzzled Alice; she came from a time after cartoons had
ceased to exist, and she had no idea who or what Tarzan was.

. She passed over it.

‘No, because Biters cannot climb trees, and we’ll see
bandits while they’re far away.’

Satish grunted at the wisdom and clambered up a tree. Taking
the adjoining tree, Alice whispered, ‘Take a nap. I’ll keep watch.’

About two hours later, Alice heard a rustling noise nearby.
She raised her rifle, looking through the night vision scope to see three men
walking towards them. They were armed, though it looked like they carried a
motley collection of homemade pistols and an antique looking shotgun; the
hallmarks of Deadland bandits. But despite the nature of the weapons, they were
no less dangerousAlice knew that men such as these could be deadly.

As the men sat down and proceeded to take some food out,
Alice relaxed. They had no idea Alice and Satish were sitting just a few feet
above them, and they would soon hopefully be on their way.

Then she saw something that made her take a closer look. One
of the bandits was taking something out of a bag. Only it was not just any bag.
It was a child’s bag, cobbled together from old clothes, patched together by a
loving mother, embellished with cartoon characters that the child must have
heard of in tales told by the adults who had experienced them on screen and in
books before The Rising. There was only one place in the Deadland where such a
bag could be found now: in Wonderland. And it was likely that this had been
made as a school bag for a child who had been murdered just two days ago.