Alice in Deadland Trilogy (44 page)

The first time he had seen one of
the Biters’ victims get up and join in the rampage, his heart had nearly
stopped. He had turned around to see if he could somehow shield Jane, but he
found her watching with tear-filled eyes. He did not know if he could protect
her physically, but he knew he had already failed to shield her from the horror
unfolding all around them.

There were bodies strewn around
this stretch of the road, as a company of troops, who had rushed into action
without knowing what they were up against, had been torn apart. Gladwell had
noticed a couple of things so far – one, that the Biters massacred anyone who
tried to resist, and second, that for all their terrifying invulnerability to
bullets, they could be killed. Two Biters lying in pools of blood near the
scene of this battle told him that. But for now, he could not contemplate what
that weakness must be, since there were at least a dozen Biters bearing down on
them.

‘Back off, we’ll find another side
street!’

Gladwell was trying to sound confident,
but he knew that they were lost. In trying to get around the maze of cars and
trying to avoid large groups of Biters, they had strayed too far from the main
roads, and were now trying to find their way through a warren of smaller side
streets. The two Marines had their rifles ready, but there was no way they were
going to roll down the windows. By now Jane had pretty much cried herself into
silence, and truth be told, the one who had most kept her wits about her was
Jo. She had her left hand on her belly, saying soothing things to their unborn
daughter, and in her right hand was a map of Delhi, with which she was now
trying to guide them. She caught Gladwell looking at her and he just smiled and
patted her knee. He wanted to tell her how proud he was of her strength and how
looking at her was making him feel braver than he really was, but for now that
little gesture said more than he could have hoped to have said in many minutes.

‘Go straight and then turn right
at the next traffic light. We should get onto a major road and then you can
find your way to the highway.’

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

The SUV careened down the narrow
street and for a moment Gladwell thought that they had finally got a lucky
break. The street seemed to be abandoned. That was when the four Biters ran
into their path.

If the driver had maintained his
speed, he could have run over the lead Biter, but he panicked and swerved the
SUV hard to the left. They hit one Biter and flung him to the side but brought
the SUV to a halt. As he fumbled with the keys to start the engine again, the
other three Biters started banging on the windows.

This was the closest Gladwell had
come to a Biter so far and he looked at the bloodied face staring at him from
just a few inches away, separated only by the glass of the window. The man was
wearing what had once been perhaps an expensive pair of designer sunglasses,
but now the shattered remains of those hung from one ear. His eyes were vacant
and drool and blood were streaming down his mouth. He had been bitten several
times on his neck and shoulder, and blood from those wounds joined that from
his mouth to almost completely cover the front of his shirt. He was banging on
the window with both hands and, not able to make much headway, he began banging
his head against it.

Gladwell was carrying his gun, a
small .25 Guernica he had acquired a license for a few months ago after the
attacks on diplomats intensified. The glass cracked as the Biter kept banging
his head against it, and without thinking, Gladwell raised his gun and fired a
single round straight into the Biter’s forehead. The Biter rocked back and fell
onto the pavement, and as blood seeped out of the single hole in the middle of
his head, he did not show any signs of getting up. Gladwell screamed to the Marines
in the rearmost seats.

‘Shoot them in the head! Aim for
their heads!’

Galvanized into action by
Gladwell’s words, the Marines selected single-shot mode on their M-16s and
fired a single round each into the heads of the Biters attacking the rear
windows. Both Biters went down and did not get back up. By now, the driver had
recovered enough of his wits and started the SUV again.

Everyone sat in silence, watching
the alleys around them for any further signs of Biters. Gladwell gripped his
pistol in both hands, scanning both sides of the road. He knew that they still
had a long way to go, but at least they had learned one important lesson –
Biters could be defeated.

***

‘I can see three more cars!’

The cry from Jo got everyone’s
attention. They had proceeded relatively unmolested for the last fifteen
minutes and were now close to the rendezvous point agreed with Randhawa. This
was at the point where the road intersected with the National Highway, and
Gladwell was heartened to see three cars already there. His spirits rose at the
thought that the staffers and their families had made it. There was no sign of
Randhawa, but then Gladwell expected that they would make slower progress in
their trucks. One of the Marines opened the door as the SUV stopped and was
about to step out when Gladwell stopped him.

‘Not so fast. Something doesn’t
seem right.’

He recognized at least one of the
cars as belonging to his staffers, but there was no sign of anyone there, and a
couple of the cars had their doors open. He asked the driver to keep the engine
running and stepped out, followed by one of the Marines. The other Marine
stayed in the vehicle to provide some cover for Jo and Jane in case there was
any trouble.

Gladwell had his gun in his hand,
and try as he might, he could not stop his hand shaking. He had seen combat up
close in the Balkans, but that was many years ago, and he had been facing men,
ruthless mercenaries but men like himself, who would bleed and die, not ghouls
of the sort that now roamed through Delhi. Something moved behind one of the
cars and he readied his gun, holding it in both hands, both to steady his aim
and stop his hands shaking. He motioned to the Marine to give him cover and
then he peered around the car. He was in no way prepared for what he saw.

It was, or rather had been,
Jonathan, a young staffer at the Embassy who had been there for less than a
year. His blond hair was matted with blood and his lean, dimpled face that had
once set many a woman’s heart aflutter at Embassy parties was pulled back in a
grotesque grimace. His eyes were closed and his breath came in ragged gasps.
The front of his shirt was covered in blood. As Gladwell leaned closer to see
if he was okay, his eyes snapped open, and instinctively Gladwell took a step
back.

Jonathan’s lively blue eyes were
gone, replaced by a yellowed stare that Gladwell had seen earlier in the Biters
that had attacked their SUV. Jonathan’s mouth opened, and for a second Gladwell
hoped that he might say something, that his humanity might yet be preserved.
Instead, he emitted a low growl that was more animal than human. He bared his
teeth and snapped at Gladwell, who jumped back. Gladwell’s gun was pointed at
the figure in front of him, but Gladwell could not bring himself to shoot
someone who had till a few hours ago been a friend.

He stumbled back towards the SUV,
almost bumping into the Marine, whose eyes widened as he saw the figure
shuffling towards them. He had his M-16 raised, but Gladwell could tell by the
hesitation in his eyes that he was also having trouble pulling the trigger.

A group emerged from the side of
the road. There were two more staffers, their wives and, most horrifying of
all, their four children. They shuffled towards Gladwell, teeth bared, their
clothes and bodies covered in blood, and Gladwell gave up all pretense of
bravado.

‘Run!’

The two of them sprinted to the
SUV and he could tell by Jane’s haunted expression that she had seen
everything. He got into the front seat and asked the driver to pass the cars
and get on the highway. He called Randhawa. He heard the soldier’s voice on the
third ring, but had to strain to hear what Randhawa was saying as every word
seemed to be cut off by loud pops.

‘We’re fighting our way through an
absolute mob of Biters. Get on the highway and wait for us. We’ll catch up soon
enough.’

***

‘Sir, we can’t just wait here in the middle of the highway.
We’ll be a magnet for Biters for miles around.’

Gladwell knew that there was a lot of truth in what the Marine
had said. But the people gathered around him were waiting for him to make a
decision. It was one thing to decide on matters of protocol sitting in his
air-conditioned office, quite another to be making life-and-death decisions in
the middle of a warzone.

Waiting for Randhawa and his men left them exposed since
Randhawa was at least twenty minutes away and his last conversation had been
interrupted several times by the sound of automatic fire. On the other hand,
their chances of survival on their own were slim. He did not know the exact
location of the base they were headed towards and even if he got that from
Randhawa, he did not fancy his chances of getting there in one car with four
armed men. The outlying areas of Delhi they would have to pass were slums. Once
the contagion had taken hold, it had taken mere hours to spread through those
packed shanty huts. The local radio channels had stopped broadcasting an hour
ago but the Internet still seemed to be up and Jo had read out heartwrenching
updates on thousands of Biters from these slums spilling over into posh
condominiums built in the suburbs. The impoverished and the elite had become
one as a bloodthirsty mob of Biters that was consuming everyone in its path and
fast spreading towards the city center.

‘We wait.’

Gladwell stared down the young Marine till it was clear who
was in charge. Then he got to work, half-forgotten training and half-remembered
instincts taking over. For a second, he was brought back to a misty morning in
Bosnia.

Then, as now, he was a reluctant warrior forced to fight to
save innocent lives. There were two big differences. One, he was no longer a
twenty-two-year-old who believed he could not be touched, and second, he was
now fighting for his family. The first made him less impulsive and the second
made him determined that if the Biters got to Jo or Jane, they would do so by
stepping over his corpse.

He asked for the SUV to be parked near the side of the road
on the large flyover. That ensured they could not be attacked from behind and
also that they would have the advantage of height. Neither of the Marines had
seen combat before and Gladwell gave them sentry duty, hoping that they would
be too busy to be afraid. The driver was a Diplomatic Service agent who had
served in the Middle East and quickly got the Marines in place.

Gladwell felt a hand on his arm. It was Jo. ‘Bob, ask the
Marines to give me and Jane their handguns and tell us how to shoot them if we
need to.’

Gladwell didn’t know what to say. His family was in as much
danger as the rest of them but he had never contemplated little Jane and his
own Jo carrying guns.

Jim, the driver, cut in. ‘Sir, she’s right. If there are as
many Biters out there as they say, we’ll need every gun we can get.’

And so they began the wait for Randhawa and his men,
watching the roads and slums nearby for Biters.

They did not have to wait long. Their position overlooked
the Radisson hotel, and one of the Marines shouted out a warning that he had
spotted some movement. Looking down from their vantage point, they saw the
first of the Biters appear from among the decrepit shops that surrounded the
area and then several more appeared from the shattered front door of the
Radisson. As Gladwell watched, their numbers continued to swell till many hundreds
of Biters streamed out of the buildings, heading towards the city. Gladwell’s
first thought was that they seemed to be like a swarm of locusts, consuming
everything in their path, but he knew they were much more dangerous, for with
each victim they swelled their ranks till they were too numerous to stop or
fight. He looked around him and realized that with their modest numbers and
firepower, they would not have lasted more than a few minutes if that mob of
Biters had been headed for them.

Deciding quickly that discretion was the better part of
valor, he asked everyone to get down, and they all sat with their backs pressed
to the side of the road, hearing the thumps and growls of the Biters as they
passed under them. Gladwell had put down his gun and was holding Jo’s hand with
one hand and Jane’s with the other. He had never been a particularly religious
person, but this seemed like as good a time as any to send up a prayer for the
safety of his wife, his daughter and their unborn child.

***

They had been waiting for about ten minutes when Jo
whispered, ‘Some of them are on the highway.’

Gladwell didn’t know if they had been spotted, but a group
of about twenty Biters had detached itself and turned onto the flyover where
Gladwell’s group was huddled. With the SUV partially obscuring them, Gladwell
wasn’t sure they had been spotted yet, but if the Biters got much closer then
there would be no option left but to try and fight it out. Gladwell looked to
Jim, aware that of all of them, he had perhaps the most field experience.

‘Jim, what do you reckon are our chances of taking them out
before they get too close?’