Alice in Deadland Trilogy (36 page)

She was shaken out of her stupor
by a man shouting at the top of his voice outside the library. A Caucasian man,
his face reddening, shouted to no one in particular.

‘I am the bloody Defense Attaché
of the United Kingdom. I cannot be holed up here like an animal. Someone get on
the phone to the bloody High Commission and tell them to get me out!’

Nobody stirred, and a woman tried
to pacify him as his shouting gave way to sobs and he collapsed. It would take
time to sink in that ranks and badges of status no longer counted for much.

A helicopter passed overhead and
several people got up, shouting excitedly, pointing out the window.

‘They’ve come to get us out!’

‘Finally, we’re saved!’

Protima looked out the window, and
her heart sank. It was a small, black helicopter, certainly not one that could
carry more than a couple of passengers. A single man stepped out, wearing black
sunglasses and a dark suit. The British Attaché had raced out of the building
and met the man as he approached the library. Protima strained to hear their
exchange.

‘Thank God you’re here. Get me
out. I’m the British Defense Attaché.’

The man who had just arrived
fished into his pocket to take out a photograph, which he showed to the British
diplomat.

‘Have you seen this woman? Our
aerial team saw her headed here.’

Protima felt her mouth go dry as
she saw that the photograph was hers.

Getting no answer, the man pushed
the diplomat out the way and walked towards the library. The British diplomat
took the man by his shoulder, spinning him around.

‘How dare you push me? Which
government do you represent?’

The man calmly reached into his
suit, took out a pistol and shot the diplomat in the head. Then he continued
walking towards the library. Several people had witnessed the scene and screams
rang out all around Protima as people scrambled towards the back of the
library. The door swung open and the man walked inside. His eyes locked on
Protima and he smiled.

‘Doctor, I had hoped to meet you
here. Now, will you be kind enough to hand me the package or should I take it
from you?’

There was a sudden barrage of
firing outside and the man turned to see what was going on. That gave Protima
the time to run deeper into the library. Hiding behind a bookshelf, she saw the
man talk into his earpiece.

‘She’s here, but looks like the
Biters are at the gate. I’ll get the package and be out in a minute. Bloody
Biters are everywhere.’

There was another rattle of gunfire and then it stopped. Protima
thought of the policemen at the gate, but for now her greater concern was
survival. She went deeper into the library, people screaming and sobbing all
around her. The man pursuing her was now just feet away and through the gaps
between the books, Protima saw the library door open once more. She caught a
glimpse of khaki police uniforms and was about to call out for help when she
stopped. The ones who had just entered the library were no longer policemen,.
They had blood all over their tattered uniforms, and they shuffled inside the
library, emitting low-pitched moans.

The Zeus agent turned and fired at the approaching Biters,
and a couple of them went down. But there were too many of them entering the
library and the people inside were screaming in panic, producing an
ear-splitting crescendo. Protima didn’t wait to see what happened. She ran
further towards the back of the library. That was when she saw the vent. She
pulled it open, breaking a couple of her nails in the process, and scrambled
inside, crawling on all fours. From behind her came screams and the sickening
sounds of teeth tearing into human flesh. Protima kept crawling and turned a
corner, finding herself in total darkness. She clutched the package tighter,
and moved forward, trying to feel ahead of her with her free hand. The floor
moved under her hand and she tried to put more pressure on it to see how stable
it was. The next thing she knew, a whole section of the piping gave way and she
fell. She hit her head on something, and then there was darkness.

***

Protima woke up face down in something wet, her head aching
terribly. She was lying in a pool of her own blood. As she tried to get her
bearings, she realized she was lying in near-total darkness with a foul stench
all around her. She felt a stab of panic as she tried to remember what had
happened to the package she had been carrying. She felt around her for the
envelope and clutched it to her chest as she sat up. Protima reached into her
pocket to take out her mobile phone. As she shone it around her, she saw that
she was inside drainage pipes or perhaps sewers. She had lost all track of time
in her flight from the Biters, but with the mobile showing that it was now past
seven in the evening, she must have been out for several hours. She drifted in
and out of consciousness for some time before she finally managed to get
herself up and walk down the tunnel.

Holding the mobile in front of her like a torch, she
proceeded down the tunnel. She tried to brush away the wetness around her eyes,
and when she saw the red smear on her hand, Protima gasped. She had no idea how
badly she had been hurt, but there was no way for her to stop and check. She
had to get to… safety. She stopped herself at that thought. There was no safety
for her. If the Biters did not get her, the Zeus agents would.

She sat down against the wall, trying to collect her
thoughts. Her stomach was rumbling, but hunger was the least of her worries.
She had to push on and hope she could find a way up to the surface soon. What
she would do then she forced herself not to think about.

Something brushed past her leg and she screamed, only to
realize it had been a rat. When man had finished destroying civilization,
perhaps rats would reclaim what remained. She got up and walked on, flashing
her mobile in front of her every once in a while. It was now past two in the
morning according to the display on her phone, but down here time did not
matter. It was dark, with the floor covered in slime and puddles of water.
Finally, unable to walk any more, Protima curled up against a wall and slept.

When she woke up, for a minute she hoped it had all been a
nightmare and perhaps she was back in her hotel room. However, the musty odor
and her dark surroundings told her that her nightmare was only too real. She
walked some more, but realized that unless she ate or drank something, she
would not last long. Water was more important to keep herself hydrated, so she
forced herself to take a drink from a puddle of water. It smelt terrible and
had a metallic tinge to it, but she forced it down.

Her fear and disorientation had given way to anger. Anger at
the men who had brought so much destruction upon her and millions of others. No
matter what it took, she would survive and get the truth out. She pushed on and
smiled for the first time in many days as she saw a flicker of light up ahead.
She could not tell how far it was, but at least there was hope. Her stomach
continued to growl and she felt faint with exhaustion and hunger, but she kept
going.

When she came closer to the light, she screamed in
frustration. The beacon of hope she had been following was a single hole about
a few inches in diameter in the roof through which daylight was streaming in.
Protima sat down against the wall, drained of energy and hope. She tried to get
back up but her legs did not have the strength. Through the light streaming
into the tunnel, she took a look around and saw what appeared to be grass or
leaves lying near her feet. The wind must have carried them through the hole in
the roof. She picked them up, trying to determine if they were edible. Having
already drunk the filthy gutter water, Protima was beyond the point where taste
mattered, but she didn’t want to eat something that could make her sick or
worse.

She smiled a bit as the smell brought back long-lost
memories of joints smoked surreptitiously in college. Ganja leaves were
abundant in this part of India, and while they could not sustain her for long,
it was better than dying of hunger. She bit down on the leaves and ate about
half of them within seconds, tucking the rest into her pockets for later. A
short nap later, she resumed her journey.

After a few more hours of walking, she began to feel giddy.
Whether it was exhaustion or the ganja, she did not know, but she held onto the
wall for support. Protima saw shadows ahead of her and called out, but there
was nobody else there. She heard her husband call out to her, which was
impossible. She stopped again, her head spinning, and sat down and took a nap
before continuing.

As much as she knew it was messing with her head, hunger and
desperation won over rational thought and Protima finished the rest of the
ganja leaves over the next two meals. She thought she had been down for more
than three or four days, but it was impossible to tell. More than once she saw
light up ahead, only to find nothing more than small holes. She wondered what
the world up there was like, whether there were any more people left, or if the
whole world had now been infested with Biters. She wondered what the men who
had brought this upon the world were doing now.

She sat down once again, trying to clear her head. She had
found more ganja leaves, and they had left her in a dreamlike state. She knew
she was hallucinating when she saw her husband, but it was beginning to feel
good. She welcomed the thought that she was not alone down here. So when she
heard her husband’s voice, she would answer back.

That was when she heard the shuffling noises up ahead. Her
mind snapped, as if waking from a dream. This was no ganja-induced
hallucination.

She was not alone.

By now her eyes had begun to adjust to the dark and she saw
a flicker of movement ahead of her where the tunnel curved to the left. She took
out her mobile phone and held it in front of her, but its feeble light did
little to illuminate whoever was coming her way.

‘Hello, who’s there?’

Protima regretted the words the moment they left her mouth
for her question was answered by a series of grunts and screeches. Down here,
in the dark and in the endless tunnels, there was no escape. The growls and
grunts ahead intensified as the Biters came towards her with increasing speed.
She saw several figures moving towards her in the light her mobile threw out
and she turned to run. Biters were not exactly known for their speed, but down
here, trapped and with her mind numb with fear, the Biters would not need much
speed to catch up with her.

She kept running, her heart pounding, trying to ignore the
howling coming from the pursuing Biters. She held her mobile up to see what lay
ahead and her heart sank. She was approaching a dead end. The Biters were now
no more than a dozen feet away. There seemed to be at least three or four of
them. For a moment Protima was paralyzed with fear, with the injustice of
having her life snuffed out in a sewer. Then a thought came to her. As the
Biters shuffled closer, she reached into the package she had been carrying and
took out one of the vials Stan had sent. She had no idea if it would work, but
if there was even a slim chance she could survive to unmask a conspiracy that
had led to the deaths of untold thousands, she would take it.

The nearest Biter was now almost within touching distance
and Protima gagged at the stench of decay. She opened the vial and drank its
contents in one long swallow. A burning sensation worked its way down her
throat, but she did not have much time to contemplate what the liquid was doing
to her. A callused and bloody hand grabbed her shoulder and pushed her down.
The next thing she felt was the sharp pain of teeth biting down on her arms.
The other Biters gathered around her prone body, and as more of them bit into
her, Protima screamed again and again. Tears were flowing down her cheeks as she
felt her eyes closing. Then she saw no more.

***

Protima opened her eyes and sat up in a panic, expecting the
Biters to be still around her. There was no sign of them. Her phone was lying
by her side, and when she picked it up, the screen was cracked, but there was
still a faint light coming from the display. The battery was likely almost dead
and she passed the phone over her body, seeing bloody bite marks all over her
upper arms and chest. The blood had largely dried, telling her that she must
have been out for several hours at least. The weird thing was that while she
was bloody and mangled like a freshly butchered animal, she felt no pain. Had
the vaccine worked? She gathered up the courage and spoke out aloud.

‘Hello, my name is Protima and I am definitely not a bloody
Biter.’

As her own voice echoed back to her in the tunnel, she burst
out into uncontrollable laughter. She had not been transformed into a Biter
after all! As she began walking down the tunnel, she found her earlier fatigue
and hunger had disappeared. She was feeling reinvigorated with a spring in her
step. What had the vaccine done to her?

The Biters must have come down into the tunnels somehow, so
there must be an exit. She broke into a near-run, eager to escape her
underground prison.

After fifteen minutes, she saw light ahead. Part of her was
wary that this would turn out to be another hole in the ceiling but she kept
going, and soon she saw that it was an opening to the outside world. A small
ladder led up to a circular manhole. Protima tucked the package under one arm
and climbed up.

After so much time in the darkness, the daylight blinded
her. When she forced her eyes open, she saw she was near the Yamuna river, with
the Commonwealth Games village to her right and the large Akshardham temple
complex a few hundred meters away. She was more than fifteen kilometers away
from the India International Center where she had fallen into the underground
tunnels. Just how long had she been underground? Her mobile phone was long out
of battery and she had lost her watch somewhere down there. Between the extreme
fatigue and hunger and the hallucinations brought on by the ganja leaves, she
had fuzzy memories of how long she had wandered underground till the Biters
found her.