Alice in Deadland Trilogy (39 page)

He could almost smell the fear in the business-class lounge.
Most people were rooted to the TV sets, which were broadcasting details of how
the contagion had spread around the world in a matter of days. The monsters now
had a name.

Biters.

The major urban centers of China were still free of the
scourge, but with air travel carrying tens of millions of people around the
world every day, it was but a matter of time before the infection spread.
Edward could only guess as to the ultimate aim of the plan but even what little
he had seen was beginning to scare him.

There was a commotion outside and one of the airline
employees at the reception got up to see what was the matter. When she turned
to face the passengers, Edwards saw a look of fear that quickly gave way to a
forced smile as she bravely tried to do her job and reassure the passengers.

‘Please stay in the lounge, the police will deal with what
is happening outside.’

It would never be known how the first Biters entered
Beijing. Perhaps a passenger had brought the infection with him; Edward had
already read about flights landing full of Biters with the terrified crew
having locked themselves in the cockpits. Or perhaps a Biter had come into the
city from the countryside. As with all large cities, once the infection took
hold, it spread at an astonishing pace.

Edward was at the glass door now. Blood-covered figures in
torn clothes rampaged through the terminal. A man behind him screamed at him to
lock the door, but when the Biters smashed another lounge’s glass doors and
walked in, oblivious to the shards, Edward knew that hiding was not an option.
He was not going down without a fight.

As the first Biters approached the business-class lounge, he
shouted at the waiters to get knives from the kitchen. He armed himself with
two carving knives and met the first Biter as he smashed through the glass into
the lounge. Edward slashed him across the throat and kicked down the next Biter
before stabbing him through the heart. He heard a gurgling noise behind him and
turned to see the first Biter get back up, a gaping hole in his neck where
blood spurted out. The Biter bared his teeth and advanced on Edward.

Edward dropped the knife, a terror like he had never known before
taking hold of him. How did you fight an enemy you could not kill? He closed
his eyes and screamed as the Biter grabbed his hand and bit down hard.

***

Chen had fallen asleep within
minutes of getting home at three in the morning. However, it was anything but a
sound sleep. He kept dreaming of bloodied corpses and of mobs surging towards
him. He heard loud booms and for a minute he thought he was dreaming it. Then
his wife shook him awake.

‘Huahei, look out there!’

Chen looked out the window to see
the night sky light up in the distance with bright bursts of flame. As another
explosion sent up a crimson plume, he knew what he was looking at – an attack
from the air. The explosions seemed to be coming from the direction of the
airport. However, there was no return fire. There was no way an enemy could
attack the Chinese capital without its formidable anti-aircraft defenses firing
back. What was happening? He picked up his phone as it rang. It was an
unfamiliar voice, but the words Chen heard electrified him.

‘Comrade, the contagion has
spread to Beijing. The Biters overran the airport and we had to destroy it from
the air. There are more Biters headed to the city. We need you and your unit to
deploy now. A truck is on the way to fetch you.’

Chen’s wife had turned on the TV
and he saw that the contagion had consumed much of the world and now was at the
doorsteps of China’s major cities. China’s lack of freedom worked in its favor
now. Unlike major Western cities, the entrances to Chinese cities were closely
guarded. With rising tensions, crack Army units had been positioned outside
most cities to guard against escalating civil protests, and while nobody had
said it out aloud, the real possibility of a military coup. Together with the
network of spies in various communities, the Chinese leadership was able to get
word of the emerging outbreak before many other nations.

The President was on TV now and
Chen felt an emotion he thought he had forgotten – patriotism.

‘My fellow people. Today I speak
to you as our nation confronts an enemy we have never fought before. Nation
after nation has fallen to this scourge, but we will resist till the very end.
As I speak, units of the People’s Liberation Army are racing to intercept these
infected hordes before they breach our major cities. To civilians caught
outside major cities, we will be broadcasting safe zones where you can enter
the cities and seek sanctuary. Our nation has been divided, but now the time
has come for us to unite in facing this threat. If we fight shoulder to
shoulder as comrades, we may yet survive. But if we do not, one thing is
certain. Our nation will cease to exist.’

Chen passed through a city in
panic as he rode to join his unit. People were boarding up their homes and even
at five in the morning nervous crowds were gathering outside. One of the young
men began to clap as the Army trucks sped past to meet the oncoming hordes of
Biters. It was soon taken up by many others, and an old man emerged from a
group, wearing a crumpled old uniform with rows of medals on his chest. He
caught Chen’s eye and shouted out, ‘Go get them, boys! All of China depends on
you today.’

Chen spent the rest of the ride
thinking about everything he had seen and heard. Minutes later, he was in front
of his men.

‘Sir, I hear we cannot kill
these Biters with bullets.’

Chen stormed up to the young
infantryman and grabbed his helmet with both hands, pulling him close till his
face was inches away.

‘If not with bullets, then we
will rip their fucking hearts out with our bare hands.’

He loosened his grip on the
shaking soldier and addressed all his men now arrayed before him.

‘I know many of you have been
troubled, and after what happened yesterday, I cannot blame you. There will be
a reckoning one day for those innocent lives lost, but now we are all that
stands between those monsters and the millions of people in the city. Fight
like this is our last day on Earth because it may well be.’

***

The first Biters came within the
hour. There were six of them, all dressed in bloody remnants of Army uniforms.
Some of his men hesitated to fire at those wearing the uniform so Chen fired on
full auto. One of the Biters dropped as several rounds tore into him. Chen
lowered his rifle and then recoiled as the fallen Biter got up, blood covering
his torso, and joined the others in walking towards the troops. Some men took a
step back and Chen knew he had just a few seconds before his men gave into
full-scale panic. His men were well trained, but they had never fought an enemy
who could not be shot dead.

He had already heard how other
units had panicked and tried to run. That never worked. The moment one of them
was bitten, the contagion spread, and within minutes, a disciplined platoon of
crack troops was turned into bloodthirsty and mindless Biters.

Chen ordered one of his men to
fire an RPG and within seconds the rocket snaked out towards the approaching
Biters. It exploded in their midst, scattering all but three of them.

‘Did we get them?’

Chen did not answer the man who
had asked the question but brought up his rifle scope to his eyes to take a
closer look. The Biters who had been torn apart by the rocket were not dead
yet. One of them had his leg taken apart by the rocket but his torso was still
trying to crawl towards them, his mouth open with blood and drool streaming out
of it. Another had lost much of one side of his body, but both halves were
flopping around. As horrified as he was, Chen had just learned an important
lesson. Even if the Biters could not be killed, they could be stopped.

‘Take their legs apart! Aim low
and fire on full auto!’

A volley of rifle fire on full
automatic targeted the three approaching Biters and all three of them went
down, their legs shredded. What remained of them continued to move and wriggle
around on the ground, but they were no longer an imminent threat.

‘RPG!’

At Chen’s command, another
rocket streaked out and obliterated what had remained of the Biters. For all
Chen knew, their body parts were still moving, but they were not getting any closer
and for now, that was victory enough. A cheer went up as his men realized that
the enemy they were fighting could be defeated after all. He turned to smile at
the men and shouted loudly enough so that they could all hear him.

‘Every bastard thinks he’s tough
till we put a few rounds into him. If they come again, just remember to shoot
low and anyone who hits them in the balls gets a drink from me.’

A few chuckled but then his
radioman’s face turned ashen.

‘Sir, scouts are reporting more
of them.’

‘Deploy into fire teams of six
men. One RPG and five riflemen. Shoot only for the legs and then mop them up
with rockets.’

As his men began to deploy, he
saw the hesitation on his radioman’s face.

‘What is it?’

‘Sir, aerial recon is reporting that there are hundreds of
thousands of Biters headed this way. We just got news that Guangzhou has been
overrun, and all radio contact has been lost with the city.’

***

‘Sir, we are out of bullets for the sniper rifles.’

That was the last thing Chen needed to hear. All day they
had picked off Biters at long range with their snipers. He had ten specialized
snipers with him, and they had fired and fired again till their fingers bled
and their guns overheated to dangerous levels. But Chen had known it would
never be enough. The People’s Liberation Air Force had been flying all day as
well, but China was a vast nation and the PLAAF was already dangerously
overextended.

War had broken out in the Middle East, and with all
seemingly lost, Iran had launched nuclear missiles at Israel. Chen had heard
that the Middle East was now a radioactive wasteland. India and Pakistan were
trading blows as well, and then had come the news that some fool in Taiwan had
ordered missiles fired at the mainland. The Chinese had retaliated with a fury,
unleashing a barrage of missiles and air strikes. What the Biters could not
accomplish in terms of wiping out civilization, it seemed humans would finish
on their own. But for now, Chen had more immediate concerns. He had heard back
from the Air Force that short of using tactical nuclear weapons, there was no
way they could hold the Biters back.

The one silver lining was that news had spread along the
line on how to stop the Biters. It was simple really.

Aim for the head. Only the head. That was the only thing
would bring a Biter down for good.

So Chen’s snipers had been busy for over an hour, shooting
down hundreds of Biters from more than two kilometers away. The problem was
that they were now out of bullets and there were still thousands of Biters shuffling
towards Chen’s position. Chen ordered his riflemen to take position, but he did
not have high hopes. They could not guarantee head shots at long range, and if
the Biters could get close enough, he knew they would be overwhelmed by sheer
weight of numbers. Chen thought back to his days in the Military Academy and
smiled at the irony of it all. The Chinese Red Army had made itself infamous
for its near suicidal ‘human wave’ tactics which had come as such a nasty
surprise to the Americans in Korea. Now the same Red Army faced the prospect of
being overwhelmed by sheer numbers, but this time the oncoming wave was hardly
human.

Some of the men pointed to the sky as two jet fighters
swooped in low, releasing bombs over the approaching sea of Biters. As the
bombs exploded, a wave of fire expanded from the point of impact. Even from a
kilometer away, Chen could feel the extreme heat they unleashed.

‘Was it a nuke?’ one of the nervous men whispered. No, it
was not a nuclear weapon, but a napalm bomb dropped right in the middle of the
approaching Biters.

For a few seconds, all that was visible was a wall of fire
and Chen heard cheers. Those disappeared when the Biters emerged from behind
the flames. Some of the Biters were on fire, yet they shuffled on, stepping
over the burnt bodies of their comrades. Any normal army would have collapsed
under the firepower unleashed against them and the devastating losses they had
suffered, but the Biters were unlike any army Chen had imagined.

Chen sighted his rifle and took aim, sending a bullet
through a Biter’s head. A couple of men whistled appreciatively at his aim.

Chen tried to put up a brave front and turned to look at his
men.

‘Just take off their heads. Not much to it.’

A few of his men took aim and fired and a couple of Biters
went down from direct hits to the head. It was but a small victory, but Chen
knew the war was far from over, and he was no longer sure he would live to see
it through to its conclusion.

***

‘Blow the bridge.’

Chen watched as the explosive charges were triggered and the
bridge went down, taking with it several dozen Biters. It was now almost dark
and they had retreated well into the residential areas of Beijing. Any further
and the Biters would be among the millions of civilians now cowering inside the
city.