Alice in Deadland Trilogy (37 page)

As she looked around, it struck her just how silent it was.
Normally, the bridge in front of her would have been full of cars and trucks,
honking their horns so much one would be forgiven for believing that was a
prerequisite to getting a driver’s license. There would have been children
flitting around the huts on the side of the road, where their parents would
have been hawking whatever they could – motorcycle helmets, coconuts,
magazines. The huts were there, but there were no people in sight. Vehicles
were strewn all over the bridge as if a child had scattered them around after
playing with them and forgotten to put them away. As Protima approached the
bridge, she realized that there were people there after all; it was just that
they were not alive any more. The stench of death permeated the whole area and
decomposed bodies lay in the cars and on the bridge.

A school bus stood abandoned on the side of the road and
Protima wondered if any of the children had made it to safety. She walked
closer, and was shocked as she heard a whimper, quickly cut off. Protima called
out, ‘If you’re in there, I mean no harm. Come out and we can help each other.’

Someone moved inside. Her hopes lifted for the first time in
days. The prospect of meeting another human being was so exciting that she threw
caution to the wind and ran towards the bus. A small girl emerged first,
perhaps no more than five years old. Behind her was a young woman. Both were
cut and bleeding, but looked to have avoided serious injury. The little girl
took a step towards Protima but the woman held her back with a hand on her
shoulder, her expression changing to undisguised horror. She screamed and broke
out into sobs.

‘What’s wrong? Are you hurt?’

The little girl was now staring at Protima and she spoke in
a hoarse whisper.

‘This Biter talks, Mama.’

Protima stopped, stunned at the words. That was when she
caught a look at her reflection in one of the bus’s windows. A gasp escaped her
lips as she realized what had happened to her. She sat down on the ground,
stunned. The vaccine. Was this what it had done to her? Death would have been
preferable to the monster staring back at her in her reflection. She had not
felt any hunger or fatigue after being bitten, and she had thought it had
something to do with the vaccine. It perhaps did, because while she could still
think and speak like a human, she looked like a Biter. Her eyes were yellowing,
and seemed to be devoid of any expression, and when Protima tried to force a
smile, she recoiled at the hideous grimace that was reflected back.

It was then that Protima realized another element of her
humanity she had lost. Try as she might, she could no longer cry.

Protima jerked her head up as the familiar shuffling of
Biters approached. She peered past the side of the bus and saw a crowd of more
than a dozen Biters. She flattened herself against the bus, hoping the Biters
would pass. The Biters walked on by, emitting growls and screeches, and Protima
kept willing them on.

That was when the little girl inside the bus coughed. The
Biters stopped in their tracks. Protima was lying flat on the ground, watching
from beneath the bus, as one or two took steps towards the bus. One of them, a
large man with most of his scalp missing and his face covered in blood,
screamed and the others began moving towards the bus. Protima knew what would
happen to the girl and her mother if the Biters got to them. If the mother
tried fighting back, she would be torn apart, and then the girl would either
meet a similar fate or become another monster like the Biters. With all the
death and devastation Protima had seen, what was the life of one little girl
worth?

With that thought, Protima stopped herself. No, she had to
do something, anything. She stepped out from behind the bus and stood between
the mob of Biters and the bus.

The large man bared his bloodied teeth and screamed
something at her. Protima was shocked as she thought she understood what he was
trying to say. He was telling her that the prey inside the bus was his. He
towered over Protima as he approached, the others following him. Protima felt
around herself for something she could use as a weapon. Her hands felt
something hard and she picked it up. She held it above her head and screamed at
the Biters.

‘Stand back! You will not move forward!’

The Biter was now just feet away from her and her impact on
him was immediate. He stepped back as if he had been jolted by electricity. The
other Biters had stopped, and one or two of them began to whimper. Perhaps it
was seeing someone like them who could talk like a human, or perhaps it was the
simple fact that someone had taken charge. Whatever the reason, the Biters
began to step back as Protima walked towards them. At any other time, it would
have seemed absurd to Protima – a pack of bloodthirsty Biters falling back
before a frail old woman – but now she had only one thought in her mind: she
had to save the little girl.

The large Biter got up, snarling at Protima, and was about
to lunge when Protima swatted him with the object in her hand.

‘I said no. No!’

Later, Protima would wonder where she got the courage and
strength from, but at that moment she felt as if she could have taken on a
dozen Biters in hand-to-hand combat. The Biter shrank before her as she swatted
at him again.

Much later, she would come to realize that every pack needed
a leader. She was the first and only Biter who had been able to order them
around. The object she was holding would also become a symbol of her authority.

A roaring sound filled the sky as four jets flew towards the
city center. They dived in and pulled up in steep dives, and fireballs erupted
where their bombs had hit. The government was bombing what had been densely
populated civilian areas.

The Biters were still kneeling before her and even the large
one was now keeping his head down. She called out to the woman and the girl in
the bus, but received no answer. They had slipped out. Protima doubted they
could last long, but she had done all she could.

Some figures came into view to her right as a long line of
Biters emerged from the nearby fields. They moved as a group now, with some
sense of co-ordination. They attacked humans on sight, yet they resembled wild
animals more than the monsters people had taken them to be.

Protima began to walk away, not entirely sure where what she
would do next. She sensed movement behind her. The Biters were following her.

‘Stop following me!’

The Biters stopped, but then they began following her again.
Resigned to having the mob of Biters following her around, she kept walking
away from the city.

More jets had appeared in the skies and explosions were
rocking the city. In the distance, she saw something that froze her heart. A
large mushroom cloud was rising into the sky. Protima did not know if this was
part of the nuclear madness that had erupted between India and Pakistan or part
of the desperate defensive measures adopted by governments to stave off the
spread of Biters. Either way, it was clear that it was no longer safe to be
above ground. She had already seen that the network of tunnels and sewers under
the ground could provide some sort of sanctuary. She laughed bitterly. At least
she would not have to worry about finding food or water.

She found an opening and began to pull at the heavy handle.
To her surprise, several pairs of hands reached out to help her and in no time,
the heavy lid covering the entrance to an underground tunnel was pushed aside.
She looked at the Biters following her, now more than two hundred strong, and
she saw that they were trying to communicate with her. One of them, a giant who
towered over her and wore a hat, growled in a low voice. Protima could not
understand the words, but he was telling her that all the Biters would follow
her, and that she should lead them to safety. As his eyes scanned the sky, looking
at the jets and at the huge fireballs now erupting over the city in the
distance, she saw that he and the other Biters were terrified. They might have
looked like monsters, but Protima began to understand that there was something
more to them. She really did not want to be their leader or to have them follow
her around, but there was no way she could turn them back, and besides, with
the devastation being rained on the city around them, she did not have much
time. So she entered the hole in the ground, and the big Biter with the hat and
the others behind him followed her in.

Protima clutched the package she had been carrying close to
her and realized she was still carrying the object she had picked up in the
stand-off with the Biters. She burst out laughing when she realized what she
had been trying to fight off a horde of Biters with.

It was a well-worn and slightly charred copy of a book she
had once enjoyed tremendously. Alice in Wonderland.

***

THE GENERAL’S
STRIPES

The first salvo in the Chinese Revolution of 2014 was typed
into a Google search bar while sipping on a glass of red wine in a five-star
hotel in Beijing.

Edward Johnson had come to Beijing on a business trip from
his company’s China headquarters in Guangzhou two days earlier. Wearing a tan
suit and carrying a leather laptop case, he looked like many of the other
guests at the East 33 restaurant at the Raffles Beijing Hotel – foreign
business travelers staying at the opulent hotel in the heart of the capital. He
had been employed with an American electronics firm as a sales director for
five years and spoke fluent Mandarin, something that had quickly endeared him
to his local Chinese business partners in the year he had been there. He had a
doting wife and a five-year-old son, who were now back in the United States
taking care of her mother, who had been diagnosed with cancer. Edward’s bosses
thought him a hard worker, and a stickler for detail, though his evaluations
would always call out that he perhaps lacked the leadership to stand out. His
Chinese business partners loved his humility and grace, and talked about how
despite his senior position, Edward would always be just another member of the
team.

Indeed, blending in was critical to Edward’s success. For
one did not become a professional assassin by attracting attention to oneself.

Edward was indeed on the payroll of the American company,
and his immediate bosses had no idea that he was anything but another dedicated
middle manager. However, his real employer was Zeus, and he had been placed in
China after a four-year mission in the United States where he joined his
employers straight out of a commission in the US Army.

Edward, which was not his real name, had been in the US
Special Forces, having seen action in Iraq and Afghanistan over multiple tours
of duty. He had seen friends torn apart by bombs and rockets and then been
ordered not to retaliate because the attackers were ‘good’ Taliban, on the
payroll of supposed US allies in the Kabul regime. He had come to hate how the
politicians put young men like him in harm’s way and then micro-managed how
they could operate. That was till he met Major Appleseed at Kandahar, where
Edward had been placed in detention for snapping and shooting dead three
civilians. Appleseed had told him he worked for people who wanted to change
things, who wanted to take the fight to the real enemies of America. Edward
joined in, partly driven by the conviction in Appleseed’s words, and partly to
avoid the court-martial and disgrace he knew waited for him back in the United
States.

Ten minutes ago, he had received a simple text message from
his wife. It said, ‘The wall near our house is cracked. We should fix it when
you’re back home.’ To anyone intercepting the message, and in China that was
always a possibility, it would appear to be innocuous. In reality, it told
Edward that the Great Chinese Firewall, which restricted the Internet content
available to Chinese citizens, had been taken down. He typed ‘Tiananmen Square’
into the Google search bar on his smartphone and smiled. A day earlier, the
only images he would have been permitted to see would have been those of happy,
smiling Chinese citizens strolling in the square. Today, he saw what the rest
of the world saw – tanks crushing demonstrators, troops firing into massed
youth. Images from the original 1989 massacre and also from the more recent
outbreak in late 2012. Edward copied the links and sent out an email from a
secure account to a list he already had saved on his phone: a list of the most
prominent political dissidents in China. He finished his wine and walked out of
the hotel, planning to walk to the nearby Tiananmen Square. He figured he might
as well enjoy the square while he could.

***

‘Chen, we need you. Please help us out.’

Colonel Chen tried hard to not look into the pleading eyes
of his childhood friend, Bo Liang. Liang had been an editor at a local
newspaper and a published author and had done very well for himself. The two
men, the soldier and the poet, had stayed in touch over the years. That was
till Chen had received a notice from the Internal Security Service that he
should avoid all contact with his childhood friend since he had been placed
under house arrest for ‘anti-national activities’. What Liang had done was to
post a piece on his blog that had been mildly critical of the force used by the
authorities in breaking up the protests in Tiananmen Square in late 2012. Chen
had not heard from his friend for some months, and now he had suddenly called
him for a meeting at a café. Chen’s wife had told him to not go, since he would
be watched, but Chen owed his old friend at least that much.

When Chen did not reply, Liang put some printouts on the
table.

‘Chen, look at these. I had blogged about them killing a few
dozen young kids, but it seems they did much more. The Net is open for some
reason, and we downloaded these. There was a terrible massacre at Tiananmen,
one they hushed up. They took away dozens of people and killed them afterwards.
Is this why you joined the army, Chen? To kill your own people?’

At that, Chen’s head snapped up. ‘Liang, you sit in your
cafes and air-conditioned homes and talk of democracy. Look around us and
compare to the poverty we ourselves saw as children. See how much our nation
has progressed. You talk of democracy – take a look at the United States. Their
poor are protesting in the streets and being set upon by hired guns of the
elite. With the Occupy protests, many American cities resemble war zones. Europe
is in the throes of rioting by unemployed youth and one economy after another
is collapsing like a pack of dominos. At least here the Army holds us together
against anarchy.’

‘Please then, look at this. With the Great Firewall down, we
can see what is on the Internet. Please have a look and see the truth for
yourself.’

Liang handed a tablet computer to Chen with the browser open
to an unfamiliar website. Chen’s English was pretty good and he scanned through
the page – it was a posting from someone called Dr. Stan on a conspiracy forum.
It read, ‘The chaos around us is engineered by powerful men. The virus reported
in China, the lab fire in Washington everybody is covering up. It will all lead
to a catastrophe bigger than anything you can imagine. And don’t for a minute
think that the wars flaring up around the world are an accident. This is all
part of their plan.’

Chen scrolled down and saw that many other posters had
responded, most calling the original poster crazy and paranoid. Dr. Stan had
never posted again. Chen handed back the tablet, exasperated.

‘You expect me to believe this? The ravings of a lunatic on
some crazy forum? Seeing stuff like this makes me believe the Great Firewall
has its uses after all.’

Chen saw Liang’s look of disappointment as he gathered his
things and got ready to leave.

‘Very well, my old friend. Thank you for coming to meet me.
I don’t know if we will meet again but good luck.’

With those words, he got up and left. Chen kept looking at
the door for some time, wishing he had said something else. But in his heart,
he knew he was right. The world was slipping into chaos – the Middle East was
on the verge of all-out war between Israel and Iran; the US economy was
tottering and social unrest there was boiling over. Closer to home, Islamic
insurgents had intensified their campaign in China’s Xinxiang province. The war
of words with the US over Taiwan had grown sharper, and blood had already been
drawn in dogfights over the straits. This was hardly the time when China needed
internal strife. Chen knew only too well that the Chinese system was far from
perfect, but which system was? At least the nation was prospering, and children
in small towns did not have to scrounge for food or an education like his
parents had to.

Chen was on leave in Beijing for the next two days, after
which he had to report back to his unit near the Indian border. While the two
Asian giants enjoyed an uneasy peace, Chen knew just how rapidly that could
change. There were dozens of incidents at the border each year, and if it came
to a shooting match, Chen and his men would not be facing the ill-equipped
infantrymen the Chinese Red Army had smashed through in the 1962 war. The
Indian army had grown into a modern army and the fact that both Asian giants
now had nuclear weapons made any conflict much more dangerous than it had been
in 1962. Chen had found Indian officers to be rational and pragmatic, but what
bothered them most was their shared unstable neighbor, Pakistan. If things came
to a boil between India and Pakistan, then Chen’s leaders would likely ask his
troops to take up an offensive posture along the border to tie up India’s
Mountain Divisions.

With the growing tensions around the world, the last thing
Chen wanted was war between India and China. The two Asian neighbors had
prospered recently, and a war would set both nations back many years.

Chen was happy to be back home so he could forget about his
worries and spend some time with his wife. When he entered his apartment, his
wife had already laid out dinner, and he kissed her as he sat down to eat.

After months of eating whatever their cook could rustle up
at their post, Chen found the home-cooked food heavenly. He took in the smell
of the thick chicken soup and smiled as he tucked into the noodles and steamed
dumplings. However, he had barely started his meal when there was a knock on
the door. Then another.

Only the Internal Security men would walk up to a senior
officer’s home and knock like this without being stopped by the security guard
in the apartment complex downstairs. He had taken a risk in agreeing to meet
Liang, and he hoped he could talk his way out of this.

Chen placed his hand over his wife’s before she could rise
to answer the door. He spoke in a hoarse whisper.

‘Get inside the bedroom and lock the door.’

He kissed her again and ushered her into the bedroom. His
pistol was in a drawer, but he knew that if they had indeed come for him,
trying to resist would only make things worse. He forced a smile and opened the
door to find two men in black suits.

‘Comrade Colonel Chen, I’m afraid I have some bad news for
you.’

Chen felt his throat tighten but he forced himself to not
let his fear show.

‘Comrades, come in. What has happened that you needed to
come by so late at night?’

One of the men held a black-and-white photograph in front of
him. Chen blanched as he saw the two bodies lying in a pool of blood.

‘Comrade Colonel, a friend of yours, Bo Liang, met with an
unfortunate accident this evening. As far as we can tell, his wife also died
with him and we know of no other immediate family. The last dialed numbers on
his phone were yours so we thought we would inform you so that you could help
make the necessary arrangements.’

***

Edward smiled as he saw his Chinese colleagues talk in hushed
whispers in the company cafeteria. There had been only one topic of
conversation for the last five days. The Great Firewall was down and the
Chinese people were lapping up information from the Internet that had been
denied to them for decades. There had been an interruption previously, in early
2012, when the hacker group Anonymous had hacked into a couple of Chinese
government websites. But this was on a totally different scale – the entire
firewall had been compromised.

The Chinese government had been taken unawares, and at first
had tried to avoid any public comment on the situation, but as the days wore on
and Facebook and Google+ pages called sprouted calling for political reform and
Twitter messages abounded announcing protests against local
corruption, the government had been forced to act. The online protests were
perhaps something the Chinese regime could have hoped to ignored, but when
those led to mass gatherings and protest marches, it had did not have much of a
choice but to respond. The response was just as Edward’s bosses had hoped. The
Chinese regime had dismissed the protests as the work of `misguided terrorists’
in the media and had taken in some of the protestors for beatings at police
stations. That had further inflamed public opinion.

The TV in the cafeteria had been relaying news of ongoing
demonstrations in Guangdong province when a news flash appeared, taking even
Edward by surprise. As he listened, he reminded himself that he had no business
feeling angry at his masters for not showing him the whole picture. He was a
small cog in their plan. As reports emerged of a strange, highly contagious
virus in inner Mongolia, with the Chinese government blaming the United States
for an act of biological warfare, he realized the plan was far more dangerous
than he had ever anticipated.

***

‘Comrade Colonel, your men are ready for inspection.’

Chen straightened his back and saluted as his men snapped to
attention as one. He felt a strange sense of pride as he saw the assembled men.
More than five hundred of his men had been flown into Beijing over the last two
days. The rest of his garrison was still at their post, but his superiors had
ordered more elite infantry units back to major cities, to deal with ‘potential
unrest’. Chen hoped he would not have to order his men to march against Chinese
civilians, and he wondered if this was a test of his loyalty, given his links
to Bo Liang.

The death of his friend still stung. Chen tried to tell
himself it had been an accident, but there was a voice in the back of his head
telling him things he did not want to hear. For now his men would stay in their
barracks near the airport, and Chen had joined them, awaiting the orders that
could come at any minute.