Alice in Zombieland (10 page)

     
‘Very,’ said Alice: ‘—where’s the Duchess?’

     
‘Hush! Hush!’ said the Rat in a low, hurried tone. He looked anxiously over his shoulder as he spoke, and then raised himself upon tiptoe, put his mouth close to her ear, and whispered ‘She’s under sentence of execution.’

     
‘What for?’ said Alice.

     
‘Did you say “What a pity!”?’ the Rat asked.

     
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Alice: ‘I don’t think it’s at all a pity. I said “What for?”’

     
‘She boxed the Queen’s ears—’ the Rat began. Alice gave a little scream of laughter.

     
‘Oh, hush!’ the Rat whispered in a frightened tone. ‘The Queen will hear you! You see, she came rather late, and the Queen said—’

     
‘Get to your places!’ shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each other; however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game began. Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all ridges and furrows and tombstones; the balls were zombie heads, the mallets made up of severed human limbs and parts of skeletons, and the dead soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.

     
The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her leg mallet: she succeeded in getting it tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, but generally, just as she had got it nicely straightened out, and was going to give the gape-mouthed zombie head a blow with its bony ankle, it
would
twist itself round and try to tickle her nose with its decayed toes that she could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got it down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the zombie head had stuck out its blue tongue and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow or headstone in the way wherever she wanted to send the head, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed. Meanwhile, her hunger, which she thought taken quite care of by the small snack she’d had at that dreadful tea party, was coming on again, and her leg mallet was beginning to look particularly good for a nibble or two. She looked around cautiously, and when she saw no one was watching, she bent down for a bite. But the leg must’ve known her intentions because it began to kick and writhe in her grip and she had to give up the idea just so she could keep hold of it.

     
The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the wailing, tongue-boosting zombie heads; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting ‘Off with his head!’ or ‘Off with her head!’ about once in a minute.

     
Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute, ‘and then,’ thought she, ‘what would become of me? They’re dreadfully fond of beheading people here; the great wonder is, that there’s any one left alive!’

     
Just then one of the dead soldiers began to wail loudly and waved his arms about. One of the other players tried to quiet it down, but before he could the Red Queen was wading through the weeds, shoving aside the other guests, until she reached the disturbance. Without warning, she swung that heavy wooden stick of hers and struck the wailing soldier in the forehead. Blood and brains exploded in a gory shower and the soldier went dead silent and collapsed to the cold dirt.

     
The terrified player who had been trying to quiet the wailing zombie soldier looked sidewise at the Red Queen, unsure what to do.

     
But Alice saw the Red Queen had no such hesitancy: she also struck the player in the head and his skull similarly exploded, sending his brains into the air. The stunned player never had time to speak a word in his defense. Alice felt sick to her stomach at such casual violence and turned away to hide her face.

     
She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself ‘It’s the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to.’

     
‘How are you getting on?’ said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth enough for it to speak with.

     
Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. ‘It’s no use speaking to it,’ she thought, ‘till its ears have come, or at least one of them.’ In another minute the whole black furred head appeared, and then Alice put down her twitching leg mallet, and began an account of the game, feeling very glad she had someone to listen to her. The Cat seemed to think that there was enough of it now in sight, and no more of it appeared.

     
‘I don’t think they play at all fairly,’ Alice began, in rather a complaining tone, ‘and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can’t hear oneself speak—and they don’t seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them—and you’ve no idea how confusing it is all the things being undead; for instance, there’s the arch I’ve got to go through next walking about at the other end of the ground—and I should have croqueted the Queen’s zombie head just now, only it rolled itself away when it saw mine coming!’

     
‘How do you like the Queen?’ said the Cat in a low voice.

     
‘Not at all,’ said Alice: ‘she’s so extremely—’ Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went on, ‘—likely to win, that it’s hardly worth while finishing the game.’

     
The Queen smiled and passed on.

     
‘Who
are
you talking to?’ said the King, going up to Alice, and looking at the Cat’s black head with great curiosity.

     
‘It’s a friend of mine—a Cheshire Cat,’ said Alice: ‘allow me to introduce it.’

     
‘I don’t like the look of it at all,’ said the King: ‘however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.’

     
‘I’d rather not,’ the Cat remarked.

     
‘Don’t be impertinent,’ said the King, ‘and don’t look at me like that!’ He got behind Alice as he spoke.

     
‘A cat may look at a king,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve read that in some book, but I don’t remember where.’

     
‘Well, it must be removed,’ said the King very decidedly, and he called the Queen, who was passing at the moment, ‘My dear! I wish you would have this cat removed!’

     
The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ‘Off with his head!’ she said, without even looking round.

     
‘I’ll fetch the executioner myself,’ said the King eagerly, and he hurried off.

     
Alice thought she might as well go back, and see how the game was going on, as she heard the Queen’s voice in the distance, screaming with passion. She had already heard her sentence three of the players to be executed for having missed their turns, and she did not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So she went in search of her zombie head, which unfortunately looked a great deal like all the other moaning, rolling heads on the cemetery field of play that she was confused straight away as to which was which.

     
Finally she did find hers; it was engaged in a fight with another head, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her leg mallet had pulled itself across to the other side of the graveyard, where Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to dig itself back into the ground, using its rotted heel and grasping toes.

     
By the time she had caught the leg and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the heads were out of sight: ‘but it doesn’t matter much,’ thought Alice, ‘as all the arches are gone from this side of the ground.’ So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend.

     
As she passed by one of the dead soldiers, she stopped to admire the strange jeweled collar. It seemed to be welded together rather clumsily, so much so that when she reached up to test it, the thing fell off the soldier’s neck and fell to the ground.

     
Suddenly the soldier began to stumble and moan, his eyes rolling round in his head. His teeth began to gnash terribly and he turned on Alice. She fell back, and the soldier reached for her. But before he could touch her, a small squad of soldiers were advancing on their mate and bearing long sharp axes. A swing, a swipe, and the zombie soldier’s head went flying off to join the other heads gnashing and tonguing at the ground around her. The poor dead soldier’s body fell to the ground next to his collar. The other soldiers gazed at the loosed collar in suspicion.

     
Alice said nothing and hurried away. Oh, how she hoped the Red Queen didn’t hear about that.

     
When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.

     
The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said.

     
The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at
his
time of life.

     
The King’s argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren’t to talk nonsense.

     
The Queen’s argument was, that if something wasn’t done about it in less than no time she’d have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.)

     
Alice could think of nothing else to say but ‘It belongs to the Duchess: you’d better ask
her
about it.’

     
‘She’s in prison,’ the Queen said to the executioner: ‘fetch her here.’ And the executioner went off like an arrow.

     
The Cat’s scraggly black head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had come back with the Duchess, it had entirely disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game.

Chapter IX

The Corpse Turtle
’
s Story

     
‘Y
ou can’t think
how glad I am to see you again, you dear old thing!’ said the Duchess, as she tucked her arm affectionately into Alice’s, and they walked off together.

     
Alice was very glad to find her in such a pleasant temper, and thought to herself that perhaps it was only the pepper that had made her so savage when they met in the kitchen.

     
‘When I’M a Duchess,’ she said to herself, (not in a very hopeful tone though), ‘I won’t have any pepper in my kitchen
at all
. Soup does very well without—Maybe it’s always pepper that makes people hot-tempered,’ she went on, very much pleased at having found out a new kind of rule, ‘and vinegar that makes them sour—and chamomile that makes them bitter—and—and barley-sugar and such things that make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then they wouldn’t be so stingy about it, you know—’

     
She had quite forgotten the Duchess by this time, and was a little startled when she heard her voice close to her ear. ‘You’re thinking about something, my dear, and that makes you forget to talk. I can’t tell you just now what the moral of that is, but I shall remember it in a bit.’

     
‘Perhaps it hasn’t one,’ Alice ventured to remark.

     
‘Tut, tut, child!’ said the Duchess. ‘Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.’ And she squeezed herself up closer to Alice’s side as she spoke.

     
Alice did not much like keeping so close to her: first, because the Duchess was
very
ugly; and secondly, because she was exactly the right height to rest her chin upon Alice’s shoulder, and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin. However, she did not like to be rude, so she bore it as well as she could.

     
‘The game’s going on rather better now,’ she said, by way of keeping up the conversation a little.

     
‘’Tis so,’ said the Duchess: ‘and the moral of that is— “Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love, that makes the world go round!”’