Alice in Deadland Trilogy (33 page)

OFF WITH THEIR HEADS

THE PREQUEL TO ALICE IN DEADLAND

THE ACCIDENTAL QUEEN

‘Stan, what have we done?’

Dr. Protima Dasgupta was
struggling to choke back her tears as she spoke to her colleague many thousands
of miles away in the United States.

‘Protima, I’m a bit busy. I’ll
talk to you later.’

Protima slammed her phone down.
Even Stan, one of the most outspoken critics of the decision to use Sample Z in
what the spooks had euphemistically called ‘accelerated field tests’, was no
longer talking to her. She had spent more than twenty years of her life serving
the United States Government, but it was as if her decision to leave the
project and come back to India had burnt all bridges with friends and
colleagues.

She walked unsteadily to the
dining table and poured herself another glass of wine. She had been stupid to
call Stan. It was likely his phone was tapped, but she was beyond caring now.
She had argued that even if one disregarded the morality of using Sample Z on
foreign populations, it was just too unstable to use yet. But of course, she
had been overridden, and a week later, Global Hawk stealth drones had dropped
canisters of the biological agent onto a Red Army garrison in Inner Mongolia.

Dr. Protima was not senior enough
to be privy to the decision-making process, but she was senior enough to access
some of the documents passed between her bosses and the men who had ordered the
mission.

A shot across the bow to show
them we still have an edge.

A reminder of who the
superpower really is.

Those were two lines she
remembered. Tensions between the US and China had reached a boiling point over
the last year, with the US economy tottering and China reeling under increasing
protests demanding democracy and human rights. The US had slammed the second
Tiananmen Square massacre, only to be blamed by China for supporting what it
called ‘terrorist activity’ in China to distract the US population from its
economic woes. A humiliating bloody nose given to the US Navy off Taiwan had
added injury to the considerable insult of the US economy having now been
reduced to surviving on Chinese holding of its debt.

The fact that the garrison in
Mongolia housed research facilities engaged in China’s own biological warfare
program was of scant consolation as Protima saw the chaos unfold on TV. When
reports had come in of a strange virus spreading throughout Mongolia that
turned people hyper-aggressive, attacking anyone in sight, she knew her worst
fears had come true.

Sample Z had begun as a potential
miracle cure for troops whose nervous systems had been badly damaged by
battlefield injuries. Initial trials had been exciting, with troops doctors had
given up on making recoveries to lead near-normal lives, and Protima had been
exhilarated at being part of something that would help save thousands of lives.
Then came the fateful meetings three years ago, when Protima and her team were
asked to work on modifying Sample Z to incapacitate enemy troops, destroying
their nervous systems and rendering them incapable of rational thought. A
separate team had been working on another strain to dramatically enhance the
strength and endurance of troops, turning them into berserkers immune to pain.
Protima had warned that the differences between them were still not fully
understood and the virus was very unstable. Ultimately, her objections had
counted for little, and she had quit the program.

The scrolling news bar on the TV
announced that there were at least ten thousand confirmed fatalities in China in
the last week from the mysterious virus.

Protima turned off the TV and
slept fitfully, dreaming of men with their faces peeling off, running towards
her to attack her.

The next morning, she woke up to a
beautiful summer morning, with the sun streaming through the windows of her
hotel room. She pulled aside the curtains and saw the road already rapidly
filling with the chaotic traffic that was the norm for New Delhi. She had a job
interview at eleven o’clock, so she dressed quickly. She looked at herself in
the mirror and for a moment she was looking at a stranger. Her grey hair was
the same as usual, as were her lean, gaunt features. But her eyes, which
normally sparkled with laughter, were now ringed with dark circles, and try as
she might, she could not bring back the smile that had been a permanent feature
on her face. After losing her husband in an accident several years ago, Protima
had worked hard to recreate herself from the nervous wreck she had become, and
she had almost succeeded, till the past few days.

But now she had another chance to
start over. While some of her work, like Sample Z, would never be known outside
a small group with the highest security clearances, she had been published
widely in fields related to genetic engineering and had been given glowing
references by her former bosses on the condition that she sign a very strict
non-disclosure agreement. So she had no doubt she would get the job with a
leading research institute using genetic engineering to improve crop yields to
feed India’s rural poor. Finally her experience and knowledge would be put to
some good use.

She was in a taxi on her way to
the interview when her phone rang. It was Stan.

‘I should have left when you did.
They’re all dead. They’re all dead.’

Protima sat up with a jolt. Stan
was slurring, as if he had been drinking. ‘Stan, calm down. What happened? Have
you been drinking?’

‘Lab 12 burned down a few hours
ago. Most of the people there are dead, and the few that made it...’

Protima felt a chill going down
her spine. Close friends of hers had worked at Lab 12, located just outside
Washington, where Sample Z had finally been weaponized for use in China.

‘I don’t know if it was the
Chinese retaliating for what we did or if our own government is covering its
tracks...’

‘Stan, stop! Please stop! We’re on
an open phone line.’

What Stan said next scared Protima
more than she had ever been in her life. ‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters
any more. What the news is saying about the outbreak in China is not even close
to how bad it is. I’ve seen what happened to the survivors of Lab 12. Protima,
it’s like nothing we imagined. The media is trying to keep it quiet under
government orders, but when the news breaks, it’ll be too late. You need to
save yourself and get the truth out. I’ve sent a package for you with files
from our project and the orders to use it in weaponized form. There are also
papers about experiments on prisoners in Afghanistan. Go and meet Gladwell at
the Embassy there in New Delhi. He’s an old friend and a good man.’

‘You’re in Washington. Why don’t
you get it to someone there?’

‘It’s too late for me now. They
caught me printing out the files and I just managed to get away. They’re here
now. Goodbye, Protima.’

With that, the phone went silent. Protima
tried calling him back, but there was no answer.

While she was waiting to be called
in for the interview, Protima wondered if she would be able to go through with
it. After what she had heard from Stan, she found it hard to concentrate. Her
hands seemed to be shaking uncontrollably, and her heart was pounding. However,
once she sat before the interview panel, she managed to control her nerves and
her interview went very smoothly, but all the while she thought of Stan’s call.
When she got back to her hotel room, she checked the TV and the Internet, but
there was no mention of the fire Stan had talked about. He seemed like he had
been drinking, and he would have been hit hard by the use of their research in
the Mongolia operation. Finally, she decided to get some fresh air and walked
outside, sitting at a coffee shop overlooking the busy street.

It was now six in the evening, and
the Delhi summer heat had begun to dissipate. Protima sipped on her coffee,
contemplating her future. At the age of forty-seven, it seemed too late to make
a fresh beginning, but she was going to try. She had left India more than
twenty-five years ago, on a scholarship to the US for her Masters, and her work
there had earned her an internship in the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, working on studying viral strains. She had excelled there, and one
day had been approached for a full-time position in the government, working on
classified biological programs. Now, she would try and put that behind her. She
would get an apartment, buy a car, and start afresh with her new job.

Protima was jolted out of her
thoughts by the man at the next table exclaiming to a girl, ‘Oh my God! Have
you seen this video? They’re saying the dead are coming back to life!’

Some wiseass at another table
mumbled something about how he always felt like a zombie on Monday mornings,
but nobody laughed.

***

Within minutes, dozens gathered
around the young man who had the YouTube video playing on his phone. Several
others were now checking the video on their own phones, and Protima saw from
their horrified faces that something was very wrong. She was about to ask one
of them what the matter was when the owner of the cafe shouted above the din.

‘Folks, it’s on CNN now. Just quiet
down and let’s see what they’re saying.’

Protima edged towards the TV set
up above the bar, and saw the familiar shape of the US Capitol Building in the
background as the young news anchor adjusted her mike and looked at the camera.
Protima had been in New York when 9-11 had happened, and she had seen how
shaken the news anchors had been. This anchor had the same expression. Protima
hushed two young girls next to her so she could hear what was being said.

‘The Department of Homeland
Security has said that it is premature to say whether the outbreak is a
possible act of terror and has dismissed any link to the fire last night at a
government lab featured in Wikileaks documents as a possible biological weapons
research lab.’

The news cut to blurry mobile
phone footage. The moment Protima saw the group of men, she knew something was
wrong. They seemed to be shuffling more than walking, with their heads and
hands bent at strange angles, and occasionally one would violently jerk his
head. Protima had seen those symptoms before, as side effects of Sample Z.

Two police officers walked into
the path of the men and fired. Protima heard gasps around her as two of the men
fell to the ground, their bodies jerking as bullet after bullet tore into them.

‘Why are they shooting? What the
hell is happening?’

Protima ignored the cries from
those around her as she tried to think what might have happened. Clearly Stan
had been right and there had been a fire at the lab. It was possible the vials
of Sample Z might have been compromised and some people might have been
infected. But why on Earth were the cops shooting at them?

That was when something even
stranger happened.

The two men who had been hit by
dozens of bullets got up and the group rushed towards the policemen, who ran in
panic. Then the footage stopped. The anchor was back and was reading from a
sheet of paper in her hands.

‘The Department of Homeland
Security has decided to place some affected neighborhoods of Washington under
immediate curfew. Anyone seen outside without prior authorization after noon
tomorrow will be presumed to be infected. They are requesting all citizens to
cooperate while the authorities contain this outbreak.’

The anchor put the sheet down, and
looked at the camera. Protima could tell this part was not scripted. The young
woman crossed herself and said, ‘God help us all.’

Protima spent a tortured night,
trying to come to grips with the role she and her colleagues had played in
unleashing the outbreak now devastating Washington. She tried to tell herself
she had just been doing her job, but how would that make her any different from
an accessory to murder? She tried calling Stan again, but his phone was
switched off.

That night, as she watched events
unfold on TV and the Internet, she realized there was no containing the
outbreak. Cases began to be reported across the United States, and the symptoms
were terrifyingly the same. Reports had been leaked of how the first infected
had seemed to be dead, and then got up and attacked anyone in sight, biting and
clawing them to infect them as well. Police were still maintaining their
position that rumors of the infected being impervious to gunshots were
unfounded, but more videos had been posted online.

When Protima went down to the
lobby of the hotel, it was crammed with tourists and visiting businessmen. With
the outbreak now reported in Canada and the United Kingdom, people were
beginning to panic and trying to catch the first flights home so they could be
with their families.

The Concierge greeted her as she
passed. ‘Dr. Dasgupta, a courier landed for you yesterday.’

The package was marked as
diplomatic mail. She smiled, remembering Stan joking that he could never get
into too much trouble no matter how insubordinate he was because he had a
brother in-law in the Foreign Service. Clearly, Stan had been able to call in
one last favor before... Protima stopped herself. Despite all that had
happened, there was no proof anything bad had happened to Stan.