Alice in Deadland Trilogy (46 page)

The picture they painted was terrifying. Most of the world
had been laid waste by the wars that had erupted, and by the Biters. There were
reports that many governments had authorized nuclear airbursts over major
cities in a last-ditch, desperate attempt to wipe out the Biters and reclaim
the cities. Gladwell shuddered as he considered what would be happening to the
human survivors left in the cities.

The ground shook and he wondered whether on top of all the
other catastrophes they had endured, an earthquake was next. That was when Jo
screamed out to him. He rushed to her, and Jane came into the small room that
they shared with three other families.

A mushroom cloud billowed over the
city of Delhi. There had been air strikes on the city for the last couple of
days and Gladwell had assumed it was another one but the cloud told him that
Delhi had joined the list of cities that had succumbed to this madness.

One of the soldiers had told him
that if governments were indeed using air burst nuclear weapons then the risk
of residual radiation was small. Moreover, they were almost fifty kilometers
away from the city center. That was little consolation to Gladwell as he held
his family tight and watched another mushroom cloud join the first one. When
they stepped out of the room, all the people in their group were standing
there, tears in their eyes. If any of them had still hoped that they might go
back home, there was no question of that now.

Gladwell heard someone mumble next
to him, ‘We killed the world. It’s all dead land out here now.’

That evening, their settlement was
eerily quiet. Randhawa was still unconscious and Gladwell realized that no
matter how low people felt, Biters and human predators would not stop coming.
So he spent several hours making a schedule of who would be on guard duty and
also scheduling firearms classes for everyone. In the new reality they faced,
they would need every single one of them to be able to fight if needed.

Mentally and physically drained,
he joined Jo at night. As he walked in, Neha, the young girl they had picked up
on the highway, left.

‘How’s she holding up?’

Jo looked tired and miserable but
managed to smile.

‘Poor girl’s been through a lot.
Lost her family and then the young man who got her to us. At least we still
have each other.’

Gladwell hugged Jo and sat next to
her on the floor. He was due for sentry duty in two hours’ time, so he wanted
to get as much rest as he could. He ran his hand gently over Jo’s stomach.

‘How’s the little one doing?’

‘Still kicking and jumping
around.’

‘Thought of a name?’

Truth be told, Gladwell was so
drained that he no longer had the energy to debate names. He was happy to go
with whatever Jo chose.

Jo thought of the bunny-eared
young man who had got Neha to safety despite knowing that he was doomed and of
the wish they had set out to fulfill. She had heard people start referring to
the world outside as Deadland and the name had stuck. While she did not want
her daughter to be born into such a world, she was not yet ready to give her
hope. So she thought of a name that would pay homage to the brave man wearing
bunny ears, a name that harked back to childhood tales of a more innocent time,
a name that would hold out the promise of a land filled with wonder, not death.

She looked at Gladwell, her mind
made up.

‘We’ll name her Alice.’

***

HUNTING THE SNARK: AN ALICE IN DEADLAND ADVENTURE

It has now been
close to two years since Alice followed a bunny eared Biter down a hole,
triggering off events that changed her life and that of everyone in the Deadland.

The Central
Committee has been overthrown in Shanghai and the people of the Mainland freed
from its tyranny. Red Guards no longer threaten Alice and the people of
Wonderland and humans and Biters are beginning to learn to live with each
other.

That short-lived
sense of security is shattered when Shanghai is obliterated in a savage and
sudden attack. When that same new danger threatens Wonderland, Alice must
embark on a perilous journey to hunt down this threat.

This adventure
takes her deep into the Homeland, a desolate land where her parents once came
from; a land now torn apart by Zeus mercenaries, bandits and wild Biters; a
once mighty and prosperous nation known as the United States of America.

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The one day of freedom the people
of Shanghai enjoyed was exhilarating till it was ended by a mushroom cloud that
reduced most of them to ashes.

Galvanized by news from returning
veterans from the Indian Deadland about the true nature of the war on terror
being waged there, discontent had been simmering in the Mainland for months.
Then, one day, a young girl had appeared on TV screens, shocking at first due
to her half human, half Biter nature. The words she had to say however were
even more shocking than her appearance. Alice Gladwell's story laid bare the
lies the Central Committee had been peddling for years and finally brought home
to millions of Mainlanders what the war on terror had really been about. The
Rising had occurred more than fifteen years ago, but now they knew that it had
not been the sudden emergence of undead monsters called Biters that had brought
it about. They now knew the very human machinations and politics that had led
to the spread of the infection. They now knew that the war that was being waged
in the name of providing them security was in fact nothing more than a war
being waged to secure the interests of some members of the Central Committee
and Zeus, the mercenary army that acted on its behalf.

The Central Committee had reacted
as tyrants have throughout history when confronted with the prospect of those they
had been ruling finally rising against them. They lashed out with overwhelming
force. But again, as history teaches us, air power and artillery are never
powerful enough to crush a people’s desire for freedom. Under the guidance of
senior Red Guard officers who had defected to their cause, and their armory
bolstered by missiles and heavy weapons defectors brought with them, the
dissidents began to turn the tide. There was fierce fighting for four months,
with heavy losses on both sides, and then suddenly the Zeus troopers began to
leave. It was as if their unseen masters had seen that the Central Committee
was now living on borrowed time, and they wanted to cut their losses. That
finally turned the tide, and the Central Committee fell. As with most revolutions,
the end was not pretty. Old men, who had clung onto power at the cost of
thousands of lives, were executed in the streets, and in a particularly vicious
form of justice, several Central Committee members were exiled out of the city,
to try and survive in lands infested with Biters.

That morning, General Chen had
been on the video link with Wonderland, relaying news of their final victory to
his comrades there. It had been more than a month since he had seen Alice, the
girl he had first tried to destroy, and then been inspired by, as he waged his
own battle for liberation in the Mainland. Alice had told him that the people
of Wonderland had used the last four months to gradually rebuild their city
after the damage it had suffered in the assault by the Red Guards, spearheaded
by the half-Biter Red Queen that the Central Committee had created in its labs
to destroy Alice. Biters and humans were beginning to live together, and while
trust was perhaps going to take time to build, at least coexistence was something
that most people in Wonderland had come to accept. Hearing and seeing the
progress in Wonderland gave Chen hope that his own nation would one day know
such peace. If the barren wasteland that had come to be known as the Deadland
could now be the home of such a flourishing and peaceful city, there was indeed
hope that humanity, and human civilization, could be resurrected after more
than fifteen years of war.

His time in the torture chambers
of the Central Committee had left him with one ruined eye and a leg that didn’t
quite work any more. However, his days of fighting were long over. Now as he
watched civilians and Red Guards mingle in the battle scarred streets of
Shanghai, he felt that perhaps there was indeed going to be a time of peace
again in his homeland.

Soon after his call with Alice, he
was called by one of his officers, the man’s wavering voice betraying his
panic.

‘Sir, there’s something wrong. The
men at the airfield are picking up an incoming target on their radar.’

Chen got on the radio to the
airfield, which had been won in a bitterly fought battle just a couple of weeks
ago. Loyal Red Guards were now manning the radar and the few helicopters that
had survived the battles. When the radar operator told him that the contact was
moving in at over a thousand kilometers per hour, Chen began to worry. There
were no fighter jets left in the Mainland and the handful of helicopters that
had survived the fighting were now under the control of his forces. Perhaps
fifteen years ago, a combat veteran like Chen would have instinctively thought
of what the incoming threat could have been, but nobody had fired a cruise
missile in more than fifteen years. Indeed, there were not supposed to be any
such weapons left. A forward patrol then radioed in, saying that they had
spotted a low-flying rocket flying towards Shanghai. Chen slammed his fist on
the table in frustration. When the American Zeus officers had left, he had been
puzzled as to why they had gone to such lengths to sabotage the few air defenses
left around Shanghai. Now he began to suspect that their withdrawal had been
part of a plan. Still, some of his men would have hand held surface to air
missiles, and he began barking orders to have them moved to the likely path of
the incoming rocket. Even as he started issuing his orders, he knew that in a
city the size of Shanghai, he would never get enough men in position in time.

‘Sir, the rocket is now just a
minute away from impact. Target seems to be the centre of the city.’

Chen put down his headset and went
to the balcony of the hotel that had been serving as his makeshift
headquarters. People were still celebrating outside and he saw a group of young
soldiers flirting with a few women. He smiled sadly, knowing now that the
battle was far from over. Someone had fired one missile at the city, and it
would certainly not be the last. Part of his mind wondered where the rocket
would have come from. As the Central Committee had fallen and many of their
archives and documents revealed, Chen had learned that the men who had
seemingly ruled the Mainland had only been functionaries of hidden masters who
lived in what had been the United States, forming what was called the Executive
Committee. He had no idea about their identity, but he now knew that the Executive
Committee had been calling the shots, and had worked with some Chinese generals
and politicians to set up the Central Committee to run the Mainland on its
behalf. Perhaps, the Executive Committee had retaliated for the loss of its
dominions in China with the missile strike. There were no more functioning air
raid warnings, so word was being passed around, largely through word of mouth
or radios, warning people to take cover. Someone below shouted, pointing at the
sky, and Chen looked up to see a small, dark shape diving in towards the city.
He thought of going back to warn the radar operator to keep a watch for more
missiles when the missile exploded.

Chen died a few seconds later,
along with thousands of others caught in the fireball of the initial explosion.
As the blast wave spread through the city, thousands more perished, and the few
who survived perhaps counted themselves unlucky to have to live out the
remainder of their lives with the pain and suffering of burns and radiation,
and with no access to any medical facilities.

***

‘Come on, turn on the screen!’

Arjun had spoken the words, giving
voice to what many of the hundreds gathered around the screen felt. As had been
the routine over the last few months, the people of Wonderland had gathered
around a giant TV screen which Danish had hooked up to his computer, projecting
the latest news from around the world and also updates on what was happening at
Wonderland. The small community that had started out in the ruins of what had
once been the city of Delhi had almost been decimated by the attack launched by
the Central Committee’s Red Guards and the force of Biters led by the
half-Biter Red Queen. Everyone at Wonderland knew that they had enjoyed a very
narrow escape, and the crowd around the screen at the abandoned stadium
reflected that. Alice was there of course, and while she had decided not to
seek any formal position of authority, it was an unspoken truth that this young
girl was their leader. There were those who had started Wonderland with Alice,
men like Arjun, the guerilla fighter who had once been a shoe salesman; Satish,
the Zeus officer who had defected with many of his men and weapons and played a
pivotal role in the battles that had followed; and then there were the Biters.
Just six months ago, the Biters had been shunted off to a reservation on the
outskirts of Wonderland, but now they were standing mingled among the human
inhabitants of Wonderland. Part of that was due to the fact that Alice’s blood
samples that Dr. Edwards had taken back to the United States with him had led
to the development of a vaccine, which had over the last two months been
administered to all the humans in Wonderland. At one stroke, knowing that they
could no longer be transformed into Biters on being bitten made people far more
comfortable with the idea of having Biters around. Also, it brought home the
truth that the Biters were not some sort of supernatural undead, but were
suffering from some sort of disease- a disease that could still not be cured,
but at least could now be vaccinated against. However, part of that new-found
acceptance of the Biters came from the knowledge that without Alice and her
Biters, Wonderland would have been lost. Biters like Bunny Ears, now standing
next to Alice, with one hand missing below the elbow and bloody scars over his
body- testament to the many battles he had fought in defense of Wonderland.

Danish, who had become the eyes
and ears of Wonderland, monitoring the world outside from the communications
center called Looking Glass set up in an old temple, was now hooking up his
computers to the screen. All morning, he had been in communication with his
counterparts in Shanghai, and the people of Wonderland had been rejoicing in
the news that the Central Committee had finally crumbled. What would follow was
still unclear, but at least the destiny of the Mainland now lay in the hands of
her people, not some men in the Central Committee who were looking out for only
their own interests and pursuit of power. Danish was trying to hook up his
computers to cameras set up in the middle of Shanghai where General Chen had
told them they would formally announce victory and lay out the path ahead.

Alice saw the people gathered
around her, and she knew that finally, she was home. She had been born soon
after The Rising, when the Biters emerged and the world’s powers tore
themselves apart in an orgy of nuclear madness. She had grown up in the
Deadland outside what had been Delhi, and her home had been a settlement whose
security from bandits and Biters and freedom from the mercenary armies of the
Central Committee had been zealously defended by her father and others like
him. They had paid dearly for that freedom- Alice had lost her family in the
fighting, and she had also lost her humanity. She was now half-Biter, and after
all that she had gone through, she perhaps did not regret it any more. At
sixteen, she was too young to think of things like destiny, but Arjun had once
told her that perhaps this was what she was meant to do, and she was beginning
to think he was right. Seeing the Biters and humans standing together, seeing
children playing freely, seeing people laughing and joking together, without
worrying about air raids or attacks by Red Guards, she felt that perhaps it had
all been worth it. She was looking forward to seeing the people of the Mainland
rejoice in their own hard-fought freedom. There is nothing sweeter than
freedom, other than perhaps a freedom that has been won at the cost of your own
blood, sweat and tears.

‘It’s coming online in a minute.’

At Danish’s declaration, a buzz of
anticipation swept through the people gathered around the screen. Alice had
been born in a time when young girls fought for their lives in the Deadland
instead of surfing the Net, so she had very little understanding of the
technology involved, or indeed of how they would soon see what was happening
thousands of kilometers away. All she knew was that the machines man could make
were not just meant for killing, and in the hands of men like Danish, could be
put to very good use.

The screen flickered to life and
when the black and white picture resolved itself, there was an audible gasp
that swept through the crowd. Alice couldn't believe what she saw on the screen
before her. In the morning's chat with Chen, she had caught glimpses of
Shanghai- tall buildings with lights on, streets bustling with people- all
things that had given her hope for what Wonderland could one day become. Now,
she saw nothing but rubble. Most buildings that she saw were shattered, a cloud
of dust seemed to hang over the city, and there was absolutely no sign of life.

Then Alice saw a solitary figure
stumble into view. The man was covered in dust and seemed to be burnt badly. He
staggered forward and fell to the ground, not to get up again. Alice looked on
in horror, as everyone around her stared at the devastated ruins that had hours
ago been Shanghai.

***