Alice in Deadland Trilogy (26 page)

Alice could see the expression on Vince's face, and she
wasn't sure she wanted to answer the questions she knew he would have for her.
However, it was Edwards who spoke.

'Alice, I can understand why Arun and the others have made the
choices they did, but Vince and I need to leave.'

'Why? Where will you go? I thought you wanted to seek us out
in the first place.'

Vince got up, looking out the glass windows.

'We were trying to find a place that had become almost
legendary among American prisoners. A place where ordinary people were finally
fighting back to regain their freedom. A place where a young girl had united
humans and Biters in trying to overthrow the tyrants of the Central Committee.
This is no longer that place. I cannot sit here and watch as fellow Americans
fight and die while the place that inspired their struggle in the first place
surrenders to the Central Committee.'

Alice didn't know what she could say or do. She had never
felt so helpless before.

'Vince, how do you think I feel? But I cannot abandon these
people or Wonderland. I trust the Central Committee even less than you do, but
the only way I can really help my people is to be here when I am needed.'

Edwards placed a reassuring arm on Alice's shoulder.

'Alice, Arun is playing a dangerous game. If there is one
thing history teaches us, it is that one can never reach a compromise with
tyrants, for they inevitably mistake any concessions for weakness. The Central
Committee will be plotting and I fear that in marginalizing you and your
friends, and in creating a rift between human and Biters once more, they will
have gained a critical advantage when they do move against you. I wish you all
the best, but I am of little use here. I need a lab to work on my vaccine and Arun
will not permit me one. I need to find a way back to America, and perhaps one
day we can find a cure.'

Before they could talk any further, Danish tapped on the
screen.

'It's a new message from our friend Commissar Hu. The
Central Committee is sending a plane-load of goods as a gesture of friendship
towards their fraternal brothers of Wonderland.'

Alice knew she had to get Satish, and fast.

***

Without their recon teams deep in the Deadland, they would
get little advance warning of what exactly the Central Committee was up to.
Alice could see that even Arun looked anxious. A lot was at stake, and if the
Central Committee were to launch an airborne assault, it would undo everything.
But Alice knew they would be far from defenseless. Within hours, Satish had a
plan in place. His men were ringing the airport and the outlying areas, armed
with SAM launchers. At any sign of trouble, they would shoot down the Red Guard
aircraft. Vince had taken off in the captured helicopter to give them some
advance warning of what was coming their way, and Arjun had gathered his
internal security teams to be ready for any eventuality.

All of Wonderland was on tenterhooks, and Alice and Arun
were standing near the airport when Vince's voice came in over the radio.

'It looks like a single transport aircraft. I can't see any
signs of other air or ground forces.'

Arun’s relieved sigh was audible.

Within minutes, they saw the faint outline of the
approaching aircraft. Despite the fact that it was one airplane, Alice felt
herself tense. Red Guard aircraft brought back memories that she wished she did
not have, memories of the air strike that had killed her mother and sister and
the other survivors from her settlement, and of the strikes that had been
launched against Wonderland when she had been captured.

The black plane banked to its right and then came in,
heading for the runway.

Alice saw Satish signal to one of his teams and she knew
that even as the aircraft approached, several missiles would have locked in on
it.

The aircraft landed bumpily on the old runway and came to a
rolling halt. Flanked by several men, Arun approached the plane as the ramp
behind the aircraft lowered and a solitary man walked out. Alice looked through
her binoculars and saw that he was a young officer dressed in the uniform of
the Red Guards. He saluted Arun and then offered his hand, which Arun shook.
Then he pointed inside the aircraft and motioned to someone inside.

As Alice watched, Red Guards brought out several dozen large
crates, which they left on the runway. As she watched, one of them opened a
crate and Arun peered inside. She saw a smile form on his face and wondered
what the Red Guards had brought with them. Within minutes, the crates had been
moved to the side of the runway and the plane had taken off and returned to its
base.

If anybody found it ironic that trucks captured from Red
Guards killed in battle were being to transport these gestures of goodwill from
the Central Committee, they kept their opinion to themselves. All the crates
were brought into a field near the Council building and a huge crowd had
gathered in no time, jostling to see what they contained.

Up until now, Arjun had been silent, but now he pulled Arun
and Alice aside. Arun bristled a bit at having to share decision making with
Alice, but a sideways glance from Arjun shut him up.

'Arun, let me and my men inspect all the crates thoroughly.
Only when we are sure that they are safe should we let people get at them.
Also, the last thing we need is a stampede, so get these people home and tell
them that we'll sort through what's been sent and get back to them tomorrow.'

Arun agreed and the orders were soon passed out, and most of
Wonderland spent that night in eager anticipation of what they would find in
the crates the next morning.

***

'Alice, I am requesting you to help us. All we need is a
small sign from you. We have more than a dozen old combat aircraft almost
operational and every day we are bleeding the Red Guards dry. Our battle for liberation
got a second life thanks to you and your struggle in the Deadland, but now the
Red Guard propaganda says you have surrendered. They are dropping leaflets
saying that Wonderland has accepted the Central Committee's terms. Just issue a
statement saying it isn't so.'

'General Konrath, please give me some time to think things
over.'

Alice was seething with frustration and anger at her
helplessness. The American General was not asking for much, but Alice knew that
having accepted Arun as the leader of Wonderland and having decided to play
along with the treaty, she could not even do that much.

Vince said from beside her, 'Alice, it would be easy. There
was a webcam on board the helicopter we captured. Danish and I could rig it up
and we could upload your message to one of the American servers.'

Danish slammed his fist onto the desk in frustration. 'We
could, but then Arun would go crazy. He comes here every day supposedly to
twiddle with the radio, but I know he’s keeping tabs on what we do.'

Alice was looking at the screen.

'It's not just Arun and what he may think. The Central
Committee would certainly see this as an act of war, and they would react.'

Danish looked up at her. 'Alice, since when you have been
worried about what the Central Committee may or may not think?'

Alice walked out, a bitter tinge to her voice as she
replied, 'I was always happy to fight to the end. But I had people I could
count on, people I knew would fight by my side. How does one fight to free
people who have come to like the comfort of slavery?'

***

Chen was sitting in his office, which had been shifted to
the warehouse, and which he now shared with Li. He hated her stench, but then
he had not been given any option in the matter. The one saving grace was that
Li was usually out training most of the day, at the firing range or practicing
close combat with her Biters. Their presence at the base was still secret, and
when he went back to the cafeteria in the main building for meals he would get
questioning glances from his young conscripts – questions he could not answer.
Hu had expressly forbidden him from revealing the real identity of Li and her
Biters. The official line, which Chen parroted, was that they were a secret
Special Operations unit flown in from the Mainland. He knew he would have got
many uncomfortable questions had the peace treaty not been announced. At least
there was to be no more fighting in this accursed war. Chen had no idea what Hu
and his masters in the Central Committee were planning, but he just hoped that
he could go back home and no longer have to stain his hands with the blood of
innocents; both his young men and the civilians of Wonderland.

He saw a video conference call incoming on his tablet. It
was Hu.

'Greetings, Comrade General. Our token of goodwill has
reached the people of Wonderland. When the time is right, I will have another
shipment for them.'

Chen was a career soldier, and understood the cut and thrust
of combat, but he had no idea what political machinations lay behind Hu's
latest moves.

'Comrade Commissar, dare I ask what we plan to do after that
and what the orders for my men are in terms of combat readiness?'

He could see Hu smile and share a glance with someone off
camera. No doubt some political officers were on hand to judge if Chen's
revolutionary fervor was intact or not.

'Comrade General, we are still very much at war. The
people's revolution cannot be sustained as long as counter-revolutionary forces
spread the lie of democracy in savage places like Wonderland. The false idea of
democracy died in the flames of The Rising. Our people need to know that there
is only way to assure stability and progress, and that is for us to join
together under the benevolent guidance of the Central Committee.’

Chen's eyes were glazing over. A year ago, he might have
been more tolerant of such propaganda, no doubt uttered for the benefit of the
political officer watching Hu, but months of torture and ‘re-education' in the
camp had left Chen with little patience for such platitudes. Hu looked at him,
a new hard glint in his eyes.

'Comrade General, do you remember our own history and how we
were so addicted to opium that we did not see the occupiers for who they really
were? The people of Wonderland will learn a similar lesson, but it will be too
late for them to do much about it.'

***

The opening of the crates attracted thousands of people, and
Arun triumphantly stood on stage displaying what had been sent as if this were
yet another vindication of his decision. Alice was accompanied by Arjun and Satish,
their contempt scarcely disguised on their faces.

Each crate had two lines stenciled on its side in large red
letters:

'For our brothers and sisters in Wonderland.’

'Made in China.'

When the first crate was opened, Arun took out what seemed to
be a bunch of plastic toys. Brightly colored cars, stuffed animals, and dolls
in frilly dresses. Alice could hear gasps in the audience and more than one
child demanded to take a closer look. Growing up in the Deadland, Alice had
never really had the luxury of toys, but had heard about how children before
The Rising had played with them. Seeing these bright new toys made her think of
all she had missed and would never really have. Even in the relative stability
of Wonderland, the best any family had managed was to fashion its own crude
toys from scavenged items. For the parents of the children gathered in front of
the stage, many of whom had wished they could give their children a real
child’s life instead of one filled with death and violence, there was no
mistaking the excitement in their eyes and voices.

The buzz of excitement was renewed when the second crate was
opened. Inside were fresh clean clothes, a blackboard and chalk for the school,
plates and cutlery, and finally a huge supply of canned meat and food that Arun
declared would form the new menu at McDonald's. At one stroke, Wonderland had
regained many of the comforts that most of its inhabitants had almost
forgotten.

The last crate contained the biggest prize of all: a large,
slim screen.

'It's a TV,’ whispered Satish.

Alice had never seen a TV before, and Arun read out some
instructions that came with the TV, saying that there would be a daily
broadcast for the people of Wonderland in the evening.

That evening, almost all of Wonderland gathered in front of
the large TV, and there were squeals of delight as the programming began. There
was a children's cartoon, something about a mouse Alice had never heard of, and
then something that Satish called a rerun of an old soap opera, which to Alice
merely seemed to be overweight and painted women flirting with men. But to the
gathered crowd it seemed to be a miracle. For more than fifteen years none of
them had watched TV, and they sat glued to it, including the ten minute capsule
after the soap opera that consisted of propaganda from the Central Committee
about how the ‘people's revolution' was restoring prosperity and civilization.

The next day, Alice and Edwards were strolling down the main
street, watching people queue up outside McDonald's for a taste of the canned
meat, when they spied two young boys fighting over a plastic car. Edwards shook
his head sadly.

'We never learn. Once more we sell our ideals for cheap
plastic toys.'

***

SEVEN

The following days fell into a predictable routine. Most
people at Wonderland would line up at McDonald’s for lunch and dinner, and soon
Arun found himself having to ration the stocks that had been sent. The people
of Wonderland wore better clothes than they had in years and when one of the
crates was found to contain bottles of shampoo and bars of soap, a small riot
had almost erupted to divide up the spoils. Alice was riding her bike by the
school and she saw a group of children walk by, all freshly scrubbed, wearing
bright clean clothes and carrying new toys. She remembered her own childhood
spent hiding and fighting in the Deadland, taking a bath once in a week, and
wearing the same clothes until they wore out. She stopped to see the laughing
children and wondered if Arun had been right after all. The Central Committee
was certainly not demanding that people be sent to work in labor camps and so
far they had made no aggressive moves towards the borders of Wonderland. Was
peace with the Mainland indeed possible?

While Arun and his supporters reveled in their newfound
comforts, Alice found herself totally out of place in this new world. The only
life she had known had been one of fighting to survive. With no war to fight,
how did warriors fit back into a society that had passed them by?

Arjun was hardly happy with the way Arun had compromised
with the Central Committee, but he was too busy maintaining order within
Wonderland. New clothes, toys and the TV meant that people had more things to
covet and fight over. Satish sat brooding in the Looking Glass with Danish most
of the time. He, like Alice, had defined himself by the war he had been
fighting, and now he was just as out of place as her. Many of his men had wives
and families in Wonderland and quickly lapsed into civilian life, but Satish
stayed at the Looking Glass, his soldier’s instinct telling him that this peace
was to be ephemeral.

Meanwhile, Vince and Edwards were plotting in their own
unique ways.

Vince had taken to spending most of his time tinkering with
the captured helicopter, which he guarded jealously. Alice rode by the
airfield, hoping to find someone to talk to. Vince was loading the helicopter
up with cans of fuel.

‘Hi, Vince. What are you doing?’

Vince wiped the sweat from his brow.

‘Alice, there’s a war on, and if the people of Wonderland are
going to ignore it, then I may as well try and get to America and join up with
our forces there.’

‘How on earth will you get there? It’s the other side of the
world.’

Vince tapped inside the cockpit. There was a small computer,
its screen covered in numbers and letters.

‘This bird has a pretty good navigational system and a
computer that uses old GPS co-ordinates. Wait until General Konrath and the
others find out that some of the old GPS satellites are still operational. We
could sure use some of that technology.’

Alice looked back at Vince blankly; she had no idea what he
was talking about.

Vince explained, ‘I’ve run the calculations. This bird can
fly about 3000 kilometers one way on its internal fuel and the external tanks if
I fly slow and easy. If I carry some extra fuel with me, I may be able to
stretch that by five hundred kilometers or more. I’ll have to stop along the
way since I can’t fly that long non-stop, but I could feasibly reach Thailand
or Israel in a couple of days, depending on the direction I fly. Given that the
Middle East is still stewing in its radioactive juices, my best bet may be to
fly east.’

He took out a map he had found in the cockpit and showed it
to Alice. It was the first time Alice had seen a map of the world and she was
both fascinated by both the world’s vastness, and the tiny insignificance of
their minute patch of land.

‘Vince, even if you make it to this place called Bangkok,
your home in America is still far away across the ocean. How will you get
there?’

Vince put away the map and grumbled. ‘I’m still working on
it, but I am not going to sit around here and become a slave to the Central
Committee all over again.’

Alice’s next stop was the Looking Glass. Danish and Satish
had stepped out for a breath of fresh air and she found Edwards inside. He was
furiously tapping away on the keyboard. When he heard Alice enter, he quickly
turned around to see who was there.

‘Thank God, it’s just you.’

‘What are you doing, Doctor?’

Edwards pointed to the screen, on which he had written a
seemingly incomprehensible sequence of letters. On the table in front of him
was a crumpled and dirty piece of paper that he seemed to be copying the
letters from.

‘I don’t know if I will ever get back to America or not, but
I don’t need to be there physically to share some of what I’ve learnt. As
Danish would have told you, we’re restoring many of the old servers there and
many websites have cropped up. Many of them are being used to pass messages
between the resistance forces there, but I found that at least a couple of my
old colleagues are still alive and well. I had written down some of the things
I had learnt about the structure of the virus in the Central Committee’s labs
and am posting on a message board one of my old colleagues in America had
visited.’

‘Doctor, could they make a cure or vaccine with that
information?’

Edwards shook his head.

‘No, they would not be able to do that with this alone. To
do that they would need a real blood sample, but at least all this knowledge
will not be lost.’

He pressed a key and sat back.

‘Well, that’s gone now. What news of Wonderland?’

Alice sat down. ‘I don’t know how to describe it. People
seem happier than I’ve ever seen them. They’ve got better food, cleaner
clothes, the children have real toys to play with and they watch that box every
night that seems to bring them such pleasure. Maybe I’m the one who is wrong.
All I knew is fighting and distrust. Maybe I am the one who needs to change.’

Edwards smiled as he looked at Alice. Fierce Biter Queen or
not, she was at her core still a young girl trying to figure out which was the
right path to take.

‘Alice, you don’t need to change at all. I’ve seen the world
torn apart once before when it looked like we had everything we needed to be
happy. The point is that the more people have, the more they crave. That greed
is what led us to ruin once before, and I’m afraid that Arun and the others
never learnt that lesson.’

Alice asked the next question with a bit of hesitation, not
wanting to seem totally ignorant.

‘Doctor, this TV they watch so much – I don’t see what’s so
interesting about watching some videos of people pretending to be what they
aren’t.’

Edwards laughed, his wrinkles creasing across his face.

‘My dear, you have a way of perceiving things well beyond
your age. The sad reality is that what they consider entertainment on TV is
like a drug that dulls their ability to see the real world outside. The world
where a bloody war still rages.’

Danish and Arjun entered the Looking Glass. Both looked
quite agitated.

‘Alice, we need to get to the Council building now. Arun’s
called a cabinet meeting and we need to be there as soon as we can.’

‘What’s going on?’

Arjun looked at Edwards.

‘Doctor, it seems the Central Committee has sent a new message.
They gave Arun a tablet, so he gets their postings directly, but we can see
what they’re saying here in the Looking Glass. Bring up their Intranet.’

When Edwards brought up the screen, they all read the
announcement with a growing sense of dread.

The Central Committee had requested that the government of
Wonderland cease all communications with the counter-revolutionaries in the
American Deadland as such actions were detrimental to the creation of a
peaceful people’s revolution and would come in the way of further fraternal
relations between the people of Wonderland and the Mainland.

Edwards whispered, ‘Maybe they saw my posting.’

Arjun pretended to be throwing up, and Alice smiled.

‘Arjun, it’s the standard ridiculous propaganda they throw
out.’

Danish just stood there, a grim expression on his face.

‘Alice, I think Arun intends to do as they say.’

***

'You cannot let them control the Looking Glass!'

Alice had never seen Danish this angry before. His cheeks
had turned red and his breathing was jagged. Worried about the old man's
health, Alice gently took his hand and asked him to sit down. As much as she
shared Danish's sentiments, she knew that this was an argument they had little
chance of winning. Over the months, the earlier flood of visitors to the
Looking Glass had dried to a trickle. When the threat of imminent Red Guard
attacks had reduced, people had almost inevitably started focusing on domestic
squabbles and issues within Wonderland instead of worrying about a war that
seemed distant. If anything, support for the Looking Glass would have gone down
over the last few days. As Edwards had whispered to Alice, people would much
rather watch inane soap operas than bother about the unpleasant realities of
faraway wars.

Arun had himself spent a lot of time in the Looking Glass,
and Alice knew that he was fond of Danish, so he was trying his best to placate
the old man instead of forcing a decision.

'Danish, they do not want us to shut it down. We are still
free to see the Intranet from the Mainland and we can continue to use our
internal radio transmissions. All they ask is that we not have any contact with
the Americans and that their technicians will come over to install some
firewalls.'

Danish spat on the ground.

'Arun, listen to yourself! Today they are trying to control
what we see; tomorrow they will try and control what we think. Soon we will
become their puppets. They could not win this war through arms, but now they
will conquer us with their cheap toys, clothes and cosmetics.'

The audience stirred.

Vince said, 'Arun, you know that the war rages in the
American Deadland, a renewed struggle inspired by your own actions in creating
Wonderland. I have lived in the Central Committee's labor camps and I can tell
you that they see us as no more than pawns and slave labor. Every concession we
make towards them makes us weaker in their eyes, and you know what they said
about bullies, don't you? They feed on weakness.'

Arun sat down, his head in his hands.

'Folks, let's get real here. Do we want a renewed war? All
I'm trying to do is to keep our people safe. How will posting messages to the
Americans in any way help us make Wonderland safer? Tell me that and I'll
listen to you.'

And so it was done. Two Red Guard technicians flew in, and
undeterred by the murderous looks Danish gave them, installed software on the
computers at the Looking Glass which would prevent them from accessing any of
the pages uploaded from the American Deadland. Any second thoughts or concerns
the people of Wonderland might have had were silenced by another plane-load of
crates, filled with food, cosmetics, and another television.

They did not have to wait long for the next move in the
intricate game of chess that Commissar Hu and his masters were playing. After
the nightly soap opera, a grim faced woman appeared on TV, with a red ‘breaking
news' scroll across the screen.

'People of Wonderland, recent investigations have revealed a
most shocking truth concerning the disturbances in the past in the area known
as the Deadland. These have led to much misunderstanding between our nations.
Newly discovered documents show that some Zeus officers in the Deadland had
overstepped their authority and had engaged in illegal smuggling of people
without any knowledge of the Central Committee. They were working hand in hand
with smugglers in the Mainland who were running illegal farms and then selling
food to the people in the Mainland at exorbitant prices in a black market. Two
of these smugglers have already accepted all charges against them and have been
executed.'

There was a stunned silence among the hundreds gathered in
front of the TV. Satish, who had dozed off, suddenly woke up. Arjun sensed what
was coming and went to call Alice as the woman continued speaking.

'When their illegal activities were at risk of being
discovered, they blamed the Central Committee and instigated the people of the
Deadland against us. Then they engaged in terrorist attacks that started the
unfortunate war between our nations. Now that our people are once more bound
together by fraternal relations of love and respect, it’s time we unmasked who
these villains are. Ironically today these same men are in charge of
Wonderland's security.'

Alice had now arrived, and she watched in shock as several
photos appeared on the screen. There was Colonel Dewan, who had played a
pivotal role in their struggle by believing in Alice and helping the resistance
in the Deadland, until he paid the ultimate price by losing his life to the Red
Guards. A string of officers followed – and finally there was Satish.

She saw several people in the crowd turn towards him. Satish
was now on his feet, his eyes narrowed in anger.

'Those bastards!'

A meeting followed the next morning between Arun, Alice,
Satish and Arjun.

'Arun, you do realize they are lying, don't you?'

For the first time in weeks, Arun looked actually scared. He
had been in his element as Prime Minister, believing he was bringing peace to
Wonderland and achieving a destiny he had thought had been taken from him
forever. Now his place as little more than another pawn was becoming clearer
and clearer to him.

'Satish, I sought refuge here with my family and you saved
us from Biters and Red Guards alike. I would trust you with my life any day. I was
a politician before The Rising, so I know well what propaganda means and how it
can be used and abused, but there's something I had never realized. Something
that may yet prove to be our undoing.'