Alice in Deadland Trilogy Page 10

  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.’
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br />   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.

  ‘Hold your fire!’

  She turned and saw Dewan standing there, with his rifle raised to his shoulders. For a second, she harbored hopes that he would rescue her, but she realized that his rifle was pointing straight at her.

  Without taking his eyes off her, he spoke to the troopers. ‘Do you morons ever think with your brains? Check the Communicator and see who she is.’

  Alice was frozen in place, knowing that there was no way she could get away without being shot as one of the troopers took out a small device from his pocket and looked at it. All four troopers were now standing at attention in front of Dewan as he continued to give them a tongue lashing.

  ‘She is a wanted terrorist, not a plaything for you idiots, and I want her alive for questioning. Now go and join the unit and I’ll bring her in myself.’

  Suitably chastised, the four troopers left as Dewan walked towards Alice, his gun still raised.

  ‘Colonel...’

  ‘Shut up!’

  Alice was shocked by the reply she got from Dewan, who had be
en so friendly and helpful when she had last met him. He kept his gun raised in his left hand while he took out a small device with his right hand and pointed it at Alice.

  ‘Take a look at this.’

  The screen showed a picture of Alice with a lot of words around it. On top were the words `Wanted’. Alice would have taken too long to try and decipher all the other words so she asked Dewan what it said.

  ‘It says that you’re a dangerous terrorist wanted in the deaths of several Red Guards and suspected of collaborating with elements who are out to destabilize the peace that the Central Committee is trying to bring to the Deadland.’

  Alice almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.

  ‘Come on, Colonel, you know I’m no terrorist. Do you even know what that Appleseed did?’

  Dewan came close and now Alice could see that he looked frightened.

  ‘I know it all, which is why I’ve been looking for you. I know this terrorist thing is all garbage, but I don’t know why this is happening. When I found out what happened to your settlement and that they were hunting you, I came down to try and get to you first.’

  Alice felt a wave of relief wash over her, but she noticed that Dewan was suddenly alert.

  ‘The rest of the squad will be here anytime. Got anywhere we can talk in private?’

  Alice wondered if she should mention that her definition of private meant being in the company of two hundred people and several Biters, but thought better of it. She remembered what the Queen had said about finding someone in authority who would be willing to believe them, and Dewan seemed like her last hope.

  She motioned for Dewan to follow her and they disappeared in the jungle before the first trooper got there.

  ***

  Alice guided Dewan through one of the hidden entrances to the base, which had been carved out of the trunk of a tree. Dewan looked around as he entered the narrow tunnel.