Alice in Deadland Trilogy (9 page)

Alice asked the rest of the group to go ahead. She knew that
there were some abandoned mines about five kilometers away and that was to be
their resting place for the night. If they got there undetected, it would be
virtually impossible for Zeus to locate them from the air, and once the sun
rose, she planned to make contact with the Queen. Her hope was that she would
give refuge to Alice and her fellow humans. What followed then was something
Alice had not had time to plan for or think through. Alice took the dozen she
had asked to stay with her and asked them to gather in a circle.

'These are not Biters. They will not come in blindly to be
shot. They have better weapons than us and they know how to use them.'

'Thanks for that inspirational speech, boss,
’
one of the boys quipped.

Alice smiled as she replied, 'They are not Biters, but they
are human. That means they will feel one thing Biters do not.'

'What's that, Alice?'

'Fear.'

***

Alice sat with bated breath, some thirty feet above the
ground, hidden by the branches of the tree she was perched on. The others with
her were similarly hidden, waiting for the Zeus troopers to appear. Two boys
had been sent ahead as scouts, and when they had understood the likely route
the troopers were taking through the forest, Alice had told everyone to take
their positions. This was a tactic that they had often used before, born out of
the simple insight that no matter how ferocious Biters could be, nobody had yet
seen a Biter climb a tree. Alice could hear the troopers long before she saw
their shadows in the dark.

'They move like pregnant cows,
’
she thought to herself as she heard their heavy footfalls and their voices. For
someone who had grown up in the open countryside and learnt from an early age
what it meant to move with stealth and in the darkness, Alice knew this form of
warfare intimately. The Zeus troopers, used to swooping down from the air and
with heavy air cover to back them up, found this totally alien to how they
normally went to war. That was the fatal weakness Alice hoped to exploit.

As Alice sighted her rifle at the nearest shadow, a flicker
of doubt crossed her mind. This was not like shooting Biters, whom she had
regarded as lifeless, mindless zombies, but shooting men; men who would bleed,
men who would scream and thrash about as they died, men who were perhaps
conscripts in the Zeus force from other settlements. Then she remembered what
she had witnessed at her settlement and steeled herself and opened fire.

A single shot rang out and a trooper fell, hit in the leg.
He screamed aloud and his comrades stopped, watching for attackers they could
not see. They had night vision optics on their scopes, but night vision was of
use only when you knew what you were looking for. A flash bang grenade rolled
towards the troopers and as it exploded, it blinded them, rendering their night
vision useless and also illuminating them in a ghostly glow. Alice and her
comrades opened fire, using carefully aimed single shots. The firing lasted for
less than twenty seconds, and when it had finished, not one of the dozen Zeus
troopers was standing. Alice whistled, and all of them clambered down the trees
and ran towards their escape route. They would not go straight for the mines,
lest they lead the troopers to the larger group headed there, but would create
a diversion, moving north and then looping back when they were in the clear.

Alice ran through the trees, her heart hammering, and keenly
aware of the sounds behind her. She heard several helicopters overhead, and
while the helicopters would not be able to target them through the thick forest
cover, it meant that Zeus had perhaps called for reinforcements. More troopers
were coming after them to avenge their comrades and she thought she heard
Appleseed bellowing orders. Part of her wanted to stop and seek her vengeance
against him, but she knew that she would not be able to do what her father had
entrusted her with by leading a suicide mission. With the element of surprise
gone, they would be not much of a match for the more numerous and better
equipped Zeus troopers. She had to regain the advantage of surprise, otherwise
they would not live to see the next morning.

It was impossible for her to account for every man and woman
in her squad in the darkness and as she spotted a good hiding spot, she slid to
a stop behind a large fallen tree. She whistled, hoping her comrades would join
her, and soon enough they were sliding into position next to her. She did a
quick voice count and came up three short.

'Where are Rahul, Divya and Chetan?'

She was answered a second later when she heard bursts of
gunfire. A voice cried out for mercy and was silenced with a single shot. Alice
blinked back tears and tried to think what to do. She knew how to fight, but
had always counted on her father being there to lead everyone, to give
direction. Now being accountable for the lives of so many was a responsibility
she did not think she was ready for. But whether she was ready or not, she had
to act because she could now hear the Zeus troopers coming closer.

'Everyone, let's move west over the irrigation canal and
then we'll get to the mines.'

They moved instantly on her suggestion, running through the
forest, their homemade and patched soft soles barely making a noise, in
contrast to the heavy boots of the Zeus troopers now in hot pursuit behind
them. Alice saw some shadows ahead of them and skidded to a stop as she saw one
of them raise a rifle.

'Stop!'

Her warning was too late as a rifle barked and Alice saw the
boy next to her fall. He screamed once and then was silent.

'They're in front of us!'

Alice had her group scatter for cover behind trees, but now
she knew the awful truth. Zeus had not just been flying in reinforcements, but
they were using the mobility of their helicopters to flank Alice and her group.
Now Alice had Zeus troopers on both sides of her, closing in on her position.
She raised her rifle and fired at the nearest shadow, but could not be sure if
she hit anything. The Zeus troopers, with their night vision scopes, had no
such disadvantages. Two bullets slammed into the tree trunk inches from her
face, showering her with splinters as she screamed and took cover, bleeding
from her right cheek. Gunshots were ringing out all around her and now she had
totally lost control of her situation. They were no longer a cohesive unit, but
just eight or nine scared individuals in the dark against a larger number of
heavily armed troopers.

She heard one of her friends scream in agony, and then
something snapped inside Alice. Her life had been tough enough, but at least
she had known a loving family, known the comfort that came from living among
people who cared about each other. She was not going to have all of that taken
away in one night because of the greed and cruelty of some men. She saw a large
group of Zeus troopers emerge in front of her, and she took out her last
remaining flash bang grenade and rolled it towards them, closing her eyes as it
exploded, temporarily blinding the Zeus troopers.

She slung her rifle across her back and took her handgun in
her right hand and her knife in her left and emerged from the shadows towards
the Zeus troopers, running towards them at full tilt. The first trooper she
encountered was one who was still rubbing his eyes to clear them. She fired two
rounds, aiming for the face, knowing that the troopers wore body armor that
would fend off small arms fire. As the trooper went down, she placed her right
hand on his back, vaulting over him and coming up in a crouch as she brought
her knife up into another trooper's leg. As he grabbed his leg and screamed,
she stood up and fired into his face. Another trooper behind her was trying to
raise his rifle when one of her friends shot him.

Alice jumped into the trees, leaving the disoriented Zeus
troopers behind. She saw fleeing shadows and knew that she had bought enough
time for her friends to get away, but now she was alone in the dark and
surrounded by enemy troopers.

She heard Appleseed shout, 'You little blond witch, come on
out and I may still let you surrender. Don't make us hunt you down, because
then it won't be pretty when we're finished with you.'

Alice tried to force herself to stay calm, but it felt like
her breathing was so loud that it could be heard across the entire forest. She
pressed herself flat against a tree, and could hear Zeus troopers move all
around her. It was just a matter of time before one of them looked in her
direction through his night vision scope and the game would be up. She thought
of climbing up the tree she was near but froze when she heard footsteps near
her. There was a Zeus trooper on the other side of the tree, and she heard him
unzip his trousers as he relieved himself. She stifled an urge to laugh at the
absurdity of the whole situation, and waited till he moved on.

She peered around to see if the coast was clear and then
moved slowly behind another tree. It was excruciatingly slow progress, moving
from one tree to another, but at least she was moving closer to where her
friends would be. The one thing she hoped was that they did not try and rescue
her; that would be sure suicide with the odds against them. She stepped on a
branch and the cracking noise made her cringe, but when she heard no response
from the troopers she moved on. And then she found herself face to face with a
grinning trooper. The man was at least twice as broad as Alice and towered over
her. In the dark, she saw the whites of his teeth as he grinned. It was the
first time she got a close look at the troopers they were fighting and she
realized that he looked very different from the brown skinned people of what
had been known as India in the Old Days, or even white-skinned people like
herself. This trooper had narrow, slanted eyes and spoke with a strange accent.
He must have been one of the Red Guards that people spoke of.

'Hello, darling. While the others get here maybe we could
have some fun.'

As he reached out to grab her, his fatal mistake was that he
saw a young girl alone in a forest, not a trained killer who had shot her first
Biter when she was ten years old. Alice caught his wrist in a lock, snapping it
back till she heard a popping noise, and as the man gasped in pain, she broke
his nose with a back-handed strike with the thick ivory handle of her knife.
She was tempted to shoot him, but that would have caused too much noise, so she
stepped beyond the sputtering, sobbing man and went to the next tree.

That was when she felt a searing pain in her left shoulder
and a split-second later heard the boom of a gunshot. Alice was lifted off the
ground by the impact and fell hard against the tree, the wind totally knocked
out of her. She felt for her left shoulder and her right palm came back covered
with blood. She didn't know if it was a flesh wound or if the bullet had gone
inside, but either way, she knew that unless she moved fast, she would lose too
much blood and be too weak to continue. As she started to get up, a bullet
smacked into the tree above her head and she flattened herself, feeling for the
handgun at her belt. She pulled it out and readied herself, just hoping that
she got a chance to take a few of the troopers with her.

She saw approaching shadows, wearing the unmistakable bulky
body armor of Zeus troopers and carrying assault rifles. They were laughing and
joking, no doubt thinking that they had killed her. Just then a large shadow
leaped out from behind a tree and snapped the neck of one of the troopers. As
the others turned to contend with their unseen attacker, two more shadows
jumped on them and beat them to the ground, smashing their heads with their
bare hands. The two remaining troopers turned to run, but the large shadow
grabbed them and bashed their heads together, tossing them aside like rag
dolls. As the three shadows walked closer, Alice got a better look at them. The
large figure was the huge Biter who wore the floppy hat. He just stood there,
glaring at Alice, and then slowly extended an arm with a grunt.

Alice took it, realizing that when all had seemed lost, help
had come from the most unexpected quarter.

***

EIGHT

Alice opened her eyes and, barely able to speak with her
parched throat, asked for water. Someone poured some cool water on her lips that
she lapped up gratefully, and then lay her head down again, slipping once more
into unconsciousness. She had no idea how long she had been out, and where she
was, but the one thing she remembered were the dreams she had. Dreams of
Appleseed burning her home, of strange slant-eyed men in black uniforms chasing
her, and dreams of her father telling her that she must live.

When she finally awoke, she found her mother by her side.
Her mother, always on the thin side, looked gaunt and haggard with her hair in
a mess and cheeks that were stained with tears.

'Alice! Thank God you're ok.'

Alice managed to sit up and fell into her mother's arms.

'Mom, what happened?'

She learnt that she had passed out from blood loss from her
wound, and had been carried back to the underground base where the Queen had
led the survivors from the settlement. As she heard her mother's story, she
learnt that the Queen had not abandoned them at all. Far from it: she may have
saved all their lives. She had appeared in the forest and led the humans to an
underground passage where they had been sheltering for the last three days, and
had sent out some Biters to fetch Alice and any other survivors from the small
band that had tried to hold off the Zeus troopers.

Alice got up and walked around a bit with her mother's help
and saw the large underground hall where all the humans were sheltered. They
were huddled together in small groups and as Alice walked in, all of them stood
up. They looked filthy, had not eaten a single decent meal or taken a bath in
three days, but every single one of them smiled. Many held out their hands to
shake hers when she passed, and some of them hugged her. Alice's father may
have appointed her to lead them, but her actions in the forest had earned her
not just their leadership, but something more than that. She had earned their
trust.

Alice looked towards the open door at the far end of the
large hall and saw several Biters standing there. Bunny Ears was there, as was
Hatter, and they all seemed to be just standing there, watching her. It was a
curious dynamic; the humans knew that they owed their lives to the Biters and
their Queen, and the Biters knew that Alice was somehow the key to their
salvation, so they had to obey their Queen. Yet both groups seemed to almost
shrink from each other. Years of mutual hatred and fear could not be undone in
a few days.

The Queen emerged from behind the Biters and watched as
Alice made her way towards her. Now that her true self had been revealed to all
the humans, she no longer bothered wearing her glasses or gloves, but stood
there as she was. Just a few days ago, the humans would have considered it
impossible to be in such a confined space with Biters without the two groups
bent on mutual annihilation, but they had come to realize that the world was
not quite what they had been taught to believe.

The Queen looked at Alice’s bandaged wounds and then at her.

‘I’m glad to see you have recovered. Thank you for the
sacrifices you have all made.’

Alice suddenly remembered her father and the others who had
been lost and struggled to keep her composure, leaning against her mother,
looking more like a frail, lost young girl than the leader the humans took her
to be.

‘Alice, I know you have had a very tough time, but we do
need to talk. Please come to my room as soon as you can.’

A few minutes later, Alice was in front of the Queen, and
the dilemma that was weighing on the Queen’s mind was clear. She could easily
shelter more than a hundred humans in her underground lair, but she had no way
of feeding them or getting them drinking water.

‘We don’t need any food or water, Alice, but you do. I
cannot send my folks out to get it. They won’t even understand what to get.’

Alice thought back to the years of scavenging, hunting,
baking homemade bread, looking for wild fruits and berries, and when they
stayed in a place long enough, the occasional attempts at farming. With Zeus no
doubt looking for them, there was no way such a large group could go out and
look for food, so a smaller group would have to go out and forage for food and
water. Alice immediately set about explaining the task, and after all they had
been through together, she was not surprised when several dozen hands went up
when she asked for four volunteers to scout the nearby area for food or water.
She picked four of them, all young boys, all known to be fast and to have had
at least some combat experience. She asked them to wait and went to the corner
where her mother and sister were sitting to gather her weapons. Her mother held
her hand tight.

‘Alice, you must be crazy to head out in the state you’re
in! You’ve barely recovered.’

Alice looked at her mother, and gently removed her hand.

‘Mom, I cannot ask any of them to head out if I’m not
willing to go myself. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.’

When they stepped out of the hidden entrance to the base,
Alice saw that the Queen had chosen well. The entrance to the base was hidden
among some old construction pipes. From even fifty meters away, nobody would
guess what lay under the ground. Alice was carrying only her handgun and knife,
and the boys with her were similarly armed. They planned to travel light, since
the last thing they wanted to do was to get in a fight. They moved in the
woods, and Alice kept her ears pricked, not just for any Zeus troopers but also
for the sound of water. She knew that there was a stream nearby, and that was
their best bet to get water. After just a few minutes of scouting, she heard
something, and walked towards the source of the sound.

‘Water!’

The boys were by her side in seconds, and they looked on
with wide grins at the water flowing slowly in front of them. Three of the boys
were carrying bottles tied around their waists and filled them one by one. It
would hardly be enough for all the people with them, but it was a start, and
Alice planned to get a larger group out to fetch more water once they knew the
area was secure. Next they picked some of the nearby trees clean of berries and
fruits, and when they went back, they received a heroes’ welcome. The meal they
shared that night was frugal by any standards, but they were all smiling, and
in their eyes Alice saw the glimmer of something she had though had been lost
with the ashes of their settlement: hope.

So when the Queen came to visit them, Alice was understandably
in good spirits. The Queen sat down in front of her.

‘We cannot keep going like this forever. Now that Zeus and
their masters are onto us, sooner or later they will crush us.’

Alice was a bit surprised at this frank admission of defeat.

‘You were the one who wanted to fight them.’

The Queen looked at her with her lifeless red eyes.

‘Yes, but we cannot simply win in an armed conflict. That’s
why I so looked forward to you – a human who could help get our message and the
vaccine into the right hands. The way I am, nobody would believe me.’

Alice’s mother chipped in, ‘You’ve seen what Zeus is capable
of. Who could we possibly reach out to?’

‘Mrs. Gladwell, of course I know many of the senior officers
in Zeus are a part of the conspiracy, but do you really believe every foot
soldier is? Most of them are not very different from what you were till a few
days ago; scared humans from the Deadland who really believe the Biters are
monsters out to exterminate them. Even at senior levels, there must be some
people who also don’t know the full truth. Such a conspiracy could not have
involved everyone in the chain of command.’

As Alice went to sleep, she thought over the Queen’s words.
Was it really possible that there were men in power out there who were not part
of the conspiracy? Was there hope after all?

***

A few days later, Alice and two others were on a scouting
mission a few kilometers away from the base. Alice was beginning to appreciate
just how difficult and complicated managing logistics was. Feeding close to two
hundred mouths required a lot of supplies, and they had to ensure that there
were sources of food close by. She caught a glimpse of Hatter through the bush,
and she knew the Queen had sent some of her Biters out to ensure that Zeus
troopers were not nearby. There was still no real possibility of the humans and
Biters co-operating in any organized way. The humans would likely listen to
Alice if she told them that they were to work together with the Biters on their
missions, but the Biters only seemed to take their orders from the Queen, and
Alice did not want to risk them turning on the humans with them if they did get
into a fight.

After a few minutes, Alice found a stream and asked the
others to go back while she freshened up and followed them. She knelt by the
water, and splashed the cool water on her face. She looked at her reflection in
the water, and perhaps she was imagining it, but she looked different from what
she had remembered. The old Alice always had a mischievous smile on her face,
always looking to play jokes and pranks on the others in the settlement. A
pixie, her father had once lovingly called her. The Alice that looked back at
her had a harder face, with eyes that seemed more focused, yet much colder.

Alice got up to leave when she froze. She had just heard the
voices of men talking nearby. She was in the open, with no cover and with no
weapons on her other than her handgun and knife. If there was a Zeus patrol
nearby, her chances of surviving a firefight were going to be slim.

She flattened herself and crawled towards a gentle rise to
her left and peeked over the other side. Sitting there, less than ten feet from
her, were three fully armed Zeus troopers. They apparently had not got wind of
her, since they had their helmets off, with their rifles on the ground beside
them, and were eating a snack. From their looks, Alice guessed they were local
boys, which was confirmed when they began speaking to each other in a mixture
of Hindi and English, a combination Alice had grown up both hearing and
speaking every day. One of them, who looked to be the youngest of the lot, and
perhaps not much older than Alice, seemed to be troubled by something.

‘Ashok, you know what all the other guys are saying, don’t
you?’

The older and larger boy he had just spoken to spat on the
ground.

‘Jeevan, how many times do I have to tell you to keep both
your ears and mouth shut? Don’t you get it? We have a stable job. Our families
get rations and are safe. Remember what our lives were like out in the
Deadland?’

The third boy, who had stayed silent till now, looked up.
‘Ashok, he does have a point. We signed up not just for the food and safety,
but because we thought we would get a chance to protect other people and
finally get back at the Biters who had taken so much from us. Where does the
attack on a human settlement figure in that?’

Now they had Alice’s full attention, since she realized that
they must have been speaking about the attack on her settlement. Curious to
know what else the troopers might know, she let her curiosity get the better of
her and crept closer, peering as far beyond the edge of the rise as she dared.

‘Naveen, they said they were traitors!’

The boy called Naveen whirled around at the older boy, his
voice displaying barely controlled fury.

‘Traitors? Why did our local officers not tell us anything
about it before? Why was that explanation given after the attack by that bald
white officer? And tell me this: why did they not use any local units for it,
but flew in their Chinese Red Guards?’

It suddenly struck Alice why the troopers she had
encountered looked so different from any men she had seen before. She had heard
about China in the context of the Old Nations and about how the Red Guards were
supposed to be the real army of the hidden masters behind Zeus, but she
wondered why Zeus would fly in troops from there.

‘Naveen, those troops were based in Ladakh, and you know the
Red Guards are all Chinese.’

‘It still doesn’t add up, and I don’t like it.’

There was an uncomfortable silence while the boys finished
their snacks, and then began packing their kit. Alice began backing up the way
she had come when she felt her foot hit something. She whirled around and saw a
large Zeus trooper looming over her. She tried to reach the gun tucked into her
belt, but he had his gun up in a second, and Alice found herself peering down
the barrel of an assault rifle.

‘Guys, we have ourselves some company!’

The other troopers clambered over the rise, and Alice was
now surrounded by armed Zeus troopers. She got up to her feet and addressed the
young trooper she had heard speak first.

‘I heard you talk about the settlement that was attacked.
I’m from there.’

The big trooper who had caught her spun her around.

‘Talk to me! I’m in charge here, and you are my prisoner.’

He said the last word with a leer forming on his face, and
in an instant Alice knew what his intentions were. A girl her age in more
innocent times before the world had gone up in flames might have been paralyzed
with fear in a situation like this, but for Alice, instinct and training came
first, and fear followed only later. She kicked out at the boy’s groin, making
solid contact as the boy doubled over in agony. Another boy tried to grab her
from behind, but she caught his arm at the elbow, twisting it so he fell to his
knees, and then she kneed him hard in the face. The boy fell back, his nose
broken as Alice jumped over the rise, sprinting for the cover of the trees. She
heard guns being cocked behind her and prepared herself for the spray of
automatic weapons fire that would no doubt follow, when she heard an order
bellowed with such force and authority that she found herself unconsciously
slowing down and turning to see who it was.