Alice in Deadland Trilogy (41 page)

When Neil found an isolated patch hidden by a clump of
trees, he stopped his bike. He retched and retched again as he remembered the
blood, the fat man screaming as he was bitten and the sickening fetid odor.

Neil sat there for some time, wondering what was going on.
Just then, his phone rang. It was Neha.

‘Neil, please don’t come here. They’re calling them Biters.
They attack any person they see, and once they bite you, you become like them
in a few hours. They’re saying on TV that the government is trying to
quarantine parts of the city to contain the spread of the virus.’

‘Where are you, Neha? Are you okay?’

‘I’m hiding in our apartment. The Biters are all around the
colony and I don’t think they’ve seen me yet.’

Hearing Neha’s terrified voice was like a splash of cold
water. Neil was still scared, he still did not understand how a virus could
have caused so much carnage, and he didn’t know how he was going to get through
the rampaging Biters to get to Neha’s home. But hearing her gave him something
to focus on, something that took his mind away from just how terrified he felt.

‘Neha, stay there. I’m less than a kilometer away, and I’m
coming to get you.’

***

Around the next corner, Neil saw a scene straight out of a
movie. An aging policeman was standing with a rifle in his hand, shepherding
dozens of terrified people into a high-rise apartment building. Neil had no
idea if that guaranteed them any safety against the Biters, but in a city where
everyone seemed to have lost their mind, this one policeman’s selfless act of
bravery stuck a chord.

A crowd of Biters, at least twenty strong, advanced towards
the policeman, who had by now sent the last of the civilians into the building
and turned to face the Biters. Neil had slowed his bike down, waiting to see
what happened, praying that perhaps the policeman would stand a chance. The
Biters were advancing, fanning out like a pack of animals to encircle their
prey. The policeman showed no sign of panic, indeed he moved deliberately, and
with, for lack of a better word, dignity. He knelt and brought his rifle up to
his shoulder. As the Biters came in even closer, Neil sent up a silent prayer
for the old man.

The policeman fired and Neil smiled as one Biter went down,
spurting blood from a direct hit to the chest. The policeman fired again, and
another Biter went down, this time with a gaping neck wound. The policeman
might have been incredibly brave, but he was certainly not suicidal. Neil saw
that he was buying time, and with every shot was moving closer to the building
where the door was still ajar, and those he had saved were cheering him on. The
old man fired twice more and two more Biters went down.

Then Neil saw something that in one fell swoop took away all
the hope he had harbored. The first Biter who had been shot was now sitting up,
and despite the bloody mess on his chest, got up and began walking towards the
policeman. The second Biter, with a grotesque hole where his neck should have
been and his head hanging slightly to one side, was also sitting up. The
policeman dropped his rifle and Neil could see that the old man’s lips were
moving rapidly in prayer, but there would be no saving him today. The Biters
ripped into him in a frenzy, and they tore the policeman apart till there was
nothing but a mess on the road.

The people shut the door but the Biters were banging on it,
and Neil knew it would be a matter of time before the door gave way. Something snapped
inside Neil, and he felt a surge of anger. He picked up a metal rod lying on
the side of the road and drove his bike as fast as he could towards the Biters.
He swung the rod with all his strength. It connected with a satisfying thud and
a Biter fell, his head smashed in. He did not get back up. Neil knew he did not
stand a chance against all the Biters, but, having extracted revenge for the
policeman’s sacrifice, he swerved away towards Neha’s home, the rod now tucked
under his arm.

Most roads were blocked by bands of Biters and he took
another detour through the normally busy Khan Market toward Neha’s place. The
market was deserted, other than Biters roaming around and bodies lying in the
street. That was when he saw a group of Biters crouching over a prone figure.
It was a thin, elderly woman, and she seemed paralyzed with fear, clutching a
large package to her chest. Neil swooped in, and once again, his rod did its
work, splattering the brains of a Biter on the pavement.

‘Come on!’ Neil grabbed the old woman with one hand and
pulled her towards him. She seemed to have recovered her wits a bit and sat
behind him as he sped away. She was mumbling something, clearly in shock.

‘Look, I need to get to my
girlfriend’s place. Where can I drop you?’

There was no reply, and Neil was
beginning to get irritated, knowing that every second with her was a second
wasted.

‘You must have a home or a family
somewhere?’

The woman just sobbed, and Neil
realized that he was perhaps being too tough on her.

‘I’m sorry. Things are crazy and I
just want to make sure she’s okay. I’ll drop you wherever you want, just tell
me where.’

She looked at Neil, and he saw not
just fear, but sadness in her eyes, as if she had lost something or someone of
immense value. ‘Young man, you have done quite enough for me. Just drop me
ahead near the India International Center. It doesn’t yet look overrun and I
can see a lot of policemen in front of it.’

He took her near the gate and as
she dismounted, he smiled.

‘There must be something really
important in that packet you’re carrying. You didn’t let go.’

As she walked into the Center,
Neil turned his bike and drove towards Neha’s home, hoping she was still okay
and wondering if he would be able to protect her.

***

The last few hours had been so
chaotic that Neil had almost run straight into the dozen or so Biters now
crossing the road. Neil ditched his bike just in time and lay flat on the grass
near the sidewalk. If he had not been so terrified, he might have found it
amusing. The Biters were crossing the road single file, slowly, deliberately,
displaying better traffic-safety consciousness than the good citizens of Delhi.

For the first time, Neil got a
longer look at the Biters, and he was surprised at what he saw. In the initial
chaos, the Biters had seemed rabid, attacking people at random. He now saw that
they were moving with some sort of co-ordination. The group that had just
passed had perhaps been members of one family or one neighborhood, and seemed
to be moving together, with the adults in front and back and children in the
middle.

Before proceeding to Neha’s home,
Neil fished out his phone and checked the news. What he saw froze his heart.

There were unconfirmed reports of
nuclear war in the Middle East and tactical nuclear exchanges between India and
Pakistan had already taken place. North Korea had lobbed missiles armed with
chemical weapons at Seoul and Taiwan and the Chinese mainland were trading
missile strikes. Biters were roaming freely in all major cities in the world
and most governments seemed paralyzed by the sudden chaos. What had begun as an
outbreak of some sort of deadly virus was heading towards a climax where the
world melted in a nuclear holocaust.

Neil clicked on the Facebook icon
and saw that updates were now scarce. People were perhaps just too busy trying
to stay alive… or… Neil didn’t want to contemplate what might have happened. A
day earlier, they had been sharing an update on their new dress, or a bad grade
in a test, or their mood. There were a couple of updates on the page of
Make-A-Wish India, one posted by Dr. Joanne Gladwell, who was one of the senior
volunteers at the foundation and took care of a lot of their fundraising
activities.

‘Calling all friends. The US
Embassy staff and families are all headed to a safe zone near the Domestic
Airport. The Indian Army has secured the area and is calling on all civilians
to head there.’

The airport was at least an hour’s
ride away, and Neil considered the corpse-littered street ahead of him. He
could just get on his bike and make straight for the airport. The Biters, as
horrifying as they were, did not move too fast, so there was a good chance that
he could get there in safety. Or he could still try and get to Neha. He weighed
it for a few seconds. Sure, he had called Neha his girlfriend to the old woman,
but that was wishful thinking. Neha was someone he had a bad crush on, but to
be perfectly honest, she was not even a close friend. He looked at the last
update from Neha on Facebook.

‘Neil, they are in the apartment
downstairs! Don’t come, please. I want you to be safe.’

That made up Neil’s mind for him.
Here he was, worrying about his pathetic little life, and there was Neha, in
imminent danger, trying to keep him safe. It did not matter whether she was his
girlfriend or indeed, whether they would ever get a chance to form any sort of
relationship. There was a relationship bigger than one formed by love, lust or
relation. That was the fact that they were all human, and if people were to have
any chance of surviving, they would have to stick their necks out for each
other.

Neil hefted the metal rod in his
hands. Till that morning, he had never struck another person, even in a
schoolyard scrap. Neil had always been the one to walk away. Other boys in the
orphanage had only paid lip service to the sermons doled out by the Catholic
nuns who ran it, but without a family or much to call his own, Neil had
embraced their teachings. He wondered how what he was seeing around him squared
with all that he had been taught about good and evil. In his young mind he
reconciled himself to the fact that the devastation unfolding around the world
was a sign of the End Times, and that now was the time when good and pious
people would have to step up and help others.

He waited till the last of the
Biters was out sight and then mounted his bike for the last stretch of his ride
to Neha’s home.

***

Neil had been a pretty keen
cricket player as a child, and he tried to block out the blood and splattered
brains, instead pretending that he was playing a game of cricket and
dispatching each delivery out of sight. He held the thick metal rod in a
two-handed grip, almost perpendicular to his body, in a stance that would have
been more at home on a baseball diamond than a cricket pitch, and waded into
the Biters outside Neha’s home.

He had arrived to find a good
half-dozen Biters clawing at the door to the stairwell that led up to her
apartment. The apartment downstairs had been torn apart, and other than huge
bloodstains around the floor there was no sign of the inhabitants. The rod made
solid contact with another Biter’s head, this one a middle-aged woman who had
an iPod dangling around her chest, the earbuds still in her ears. As the Biter
fell, her head cracked open and Neil took a breather. Fueled by rage and
adrenaline, he had waded into the Biters, and now three of them lay at his
feet. But that still left three more closing in on him, drooling and growling,
and his shoulder felt like it was on fire. He resolved that if he got out
alive, and if anyone made movies ever again, he’d write to them telling them
just how unrealistic their fight sequences were. He could barely breathe, and
had to muster every single ounce of strength left in him to lift up the rod
again and smash it against a Biter’s head. He missed but made solid contact
with his shoulder. The Biter, a big man in a bloody, torn vest, roared and
clawed at Neil’s hand, drawing blood.

‘Shit!’

Neil looked at the growing trickle
of blood on his forearm and backed away. He had no idea if the virus or
whatever made people into ghouls could be transmitted by a scratch, but he
figured he would find out soon enough.

‘Sissies scratch. Men do this!’
The normally mild-mannered Neil’s face was a mask of rage as he swung his rod
again and smashed open the Biter’s head. The two remaining Biters looked down
at the carnage around them, and for a second, Neil hoped that they would decide
to cut their losses and find easier prey. Instead, they roared in fury and
advanced on him again.

In his duels so far, Neil had
learnt an important lesson. He could break their hands, smash their knees,
crack open their ribs, but they would keep coming. The only thing that stopped
them was smashing open their heads. So he had quickly overcome his
squeamishness and started aiming only for the head. The first time he had made
solid contact and taken off a Biter’s head, he had screamed aloud.

‘Off with their heads!’

Wearing his bunny ears and having
set out to enact Alice in Wonderland, he though it only appropriate and he was
repeating that battle cry as he took on the remaining Biters.

The rod he was carrying was
covered with blood and other gore that Neil did not want to think about. Neil
swung his rod at one of the remaining two Biters and missed, slipping on the
blood on the floor. He tried to recover his footing but fell hard on his back,
the rod rolling a few feet away. Neil backed away as the two Biters steadily
advanced on him. Both had their blood-stained teeth bared and were a mere
couple of feet away when they staggered back as a thick foam enveloped them.
Neha stood in the doorway, a portable fire extinguisher in her hands. She
sprayed the Biters again and then screamed at Neil.