Alice in Deadland Trilogy Page 20

  ‘Pilots, fire at will and aim at the third jeep from the left. That’s where their leader is’

  The drone operator screamed out, ‘Sir, those three new jeeps are firing SAMs—’

  His transmission was cut short as the screen relaying footage from the drone was filled with static. A second later he heard calls for help from the two gunship pilots who reported multiple SAM trails headed towards them. Chen watched in impotent fury as the gunships tried to evade the incoming missiles, and then their display screens were also replaced by static. Liang seemed to be on the verge of panic, having just lost the edge in firepower he had. In his panic and anger, Chen snapped, all trace of civility gone.

  ‘You idiot! Stop staring at those screens. We still have our eyes and our weapons. Come on to the deck and get binoculars.’

  Chen walked outside and saw through his binoculars that the jeeps had stopped and all of them had their canvas covers removed, revealing multi-barrel rocket launchers of the sort that were carried underwing by Red Guard helicopter gunships. Chen’s lips tightened.

  ‘So that’s why they’ve been reported to be so interested in picking dry the wreckage of the choppers we lose.’

  He had no time to admire the ingenuity of the enemy as one of the jeeps fired. He saw a flash of light and six rockets streaked towards the base. It was an inaccurate weapon, but at such close range they did not need pinpoint accuracy. Three rockets exploded short of their target, but three arched into the base, exploding in the grounds outside, sending Red Guards scampering for cover. Chen looked down and saw several men lying bloodied after the strike.

  Liang was screaming at his men to open fire with the Gatling gun emplacements. Chen shouted at him to shut up.

  ‘Liang, they are out of range. They have clearly thought this through better than you.’

  Liang blanched as Chen walked back into the command center, trying to salvage the situation the best he could.

  ‘Order everyone into the underground shelters. They can fire all the rockets they want, but they can’t get us there. If they try and close in after that, we still have a fighting chance since they only seem to have a handful of men and we have more than two hundred fully armed soldiers here. Liang, get on the radio and call in an air strike.’

  Chen knew that any air strike would be at least fifteen minutes away, but he wanted the men to feel that the initiative still lay with them. That was when one of the guards on the perimeter wall wailed on the radio, the fear in his voice apparent. The words he said robbed Chen of all the fight he had left in him.

  ‘Sir, Biters are coming in from all sides. Hundreds of them just popped up from tunnels! What do we do?’

  ***

  Chen went back to the deck and froze at what he saw. As far as the eye could see, there were Biters walking towards their base. Each wall had a remotely controlled gun turret and he shouted for one of them to open fire. He heard the familiar buzzing sound as the gun turret fired, cutting through the front ranks of the approaching Biters like a scythe, tearing limbs and bodies. He could see some of the undead monsters still trying to crawl towards the base as the others behind them stepped over them and continued approaching. Just then, two more of the jeeps fired rockets. This time, their aim was better, and most of the rockets slammed into the base. One tore a gaping hole in the front wall, destroying the gun turret, while others hit the inside of the base, and Chen dove for cover as the helicopter he had come in exploded in a giant fireball.

  He crawled back inside, feeling the skin on his arm burn from a near miss from shrapnel. Liang was staring at him open-mouthed.

  ‘Sir, they are on the radio.’

  Chen heard a female voice on the radio.

  ‘Red Guards, surrender and I guarantee that you will be left alive. Fight us and you will be destroyed without mercy.’

  Chen had heard enough stories about other bases that had received similar messages. Some had fought till the end, but others had surrendered to be looted of all their weapons and equipment. The survivors brought back tales of horror that spread further fear and discontent in the Mainland, and uncomfortable questions about the nature of the enemy and the war they were really fighting. The Central Committee had initially reacted the only way it knew how: to sentence the officers and troops to long stints in labor camps to build back their ‘revolutionary fervor’. But that had only further sucked dry the supply of battle-hardened troops. Which is why fools like Liang were now here.

  Liang seemed to be on the verge of total panic and grabbed at the holster on his belt.

  ‘Sir, we cannot let those monsters take us!’

  Chen sighed. It would sound brave to talk of fighting to the end, but then he saw the frightened faces around him. Young men, many with families back in the Mainland, fighting a war that now had no clear agenda, far away from home, against an enemy whom they had been misled about. General Chen had always been a good Party Man but he could not let these young men be slaughtered for no purpose. He would surrender and take accountability for it, and plead that the soldiers had wanted to fight, but he had overridden them. He knew that he would not survive long in a labor camp, but perhaps it was time he finally did his true duty as an officer: to his men, not to his masters back in the Central Committee.

  He grabbed the mike from Liang and spoke, noting the horror in the major’s face. ‘I agree, but we will surrender to humans. Ask those monsters to hold back.’

  He asked all his men to put their weapons away, and then walked to the deck. He saw that the Biters had indeed stopped and wondered how this witch exercised such control over what were surely mindless brutes and monsters. The jeeps closed in on the base, and he saw black-clad men disembark from them and enter the base, assault rifles at the ready. The witch was among them, her blond hair marking her out from all the others. The black clad men fanned out across the base and gathered the Red Guards outside in a group, herding them into a room where they were locked. Others began to climb to the Command Center.

  Chen turned to see the door open and four heavily armed men walk inside. They were all locals, and wore old Zeus uniforms. One of them looked at Chen and whistled.

  ‘I never thought we’d have a general here as our guest. Everyone, get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head.’

  Chen nodded to his men and they all complied. He noted that he could not see Liang and wondered where the fool was. Then he looked up and saw the witch enter, flanked by two men wielding shotguns. She seemed little more than a girl, dressed all in black and with her mouth covered by a mask and her eyes obscured by dark sunglasses. She was armed to the teeth, with a shotgun and sniper rifle slung across her back and a pistol and knife at her belt. Tied at her belt was a book. When Chen took a closer look, he noticed that it seemed to be some old children’s book. She may not have looked physically imposing, but her very sight made several of the Red Guards break out into sobs of terror, crying for mercy.

  She walked towards Chen and motioned for him to stand up.

  ‘General, my men will be clearing out all your weapons and communications equipment. We will leave enough food to last you a day and then leave. I’m sure your reinforcements will be here soon enough.’

  She came closer, and Chen found himself involuntarily shrinking back.

  ‘When you get back, do one thing for me. Tell your masters that the Deadland is now free, and we don’t want any Red Guards here. Not a single settler will go to your camps and we will continue rebuilding society the way we want.’

  Chen saw a blur of movement from the corner of his eye, and the girl saw his reaction, turning just in time to see Liang emerge from a closet, carrying a pistol. He fired a shot at point blank range before two of the black-clad men shredded him with shotgun blasts. Chen watched the girl stagger to the ground and then gasped in horror as she got up, calmly picking at a hole in her torso. There was barely a thin trickle of blood, and a shot that should have killed her did not even seem to faze her. She turned to Chen,
pointing at what remained of Liang.

  ‘Tell your other men not to be so stupid. I don’t want any unnecessary bloodshed.’

  Chen stammered out the words that were paramount on his mind. ‘What…what are you?’

  The girl came closer and said in almost a whisper, ‘You should remember me, General Chen, and you should have killed me when you had the chance all those months ago.’

  Then she removed her glasses and mask and Chen gasped as he looked into her lifeless yellow eyes and skin that was peeling off in patches from her face.

  She said her last words to Chen and disappeared with her men.

  ‘My name is Alice Gladwell. They call me the Queen of Wonderland.’

  ***

  THROUGH THE KILLING GLASS:

  ALICE IN DEADLAND BOOK II

  ONE

  What Alice regretted the most about not being fully human was the fact that she could no longer cry. cry. More than a year had passed since Alice set in motion events that had changed her life and that of everyone in the Deadland by following a Biter with bunny ears down a hole in the ground. Events that had led to the creation of a new settlement, a settlement unlike any the world had seen since The Rising. What had followed had been the re-settlement of the city of Delhi by thousands of humans who had streamed in from the Deadland to live together in a community. A community that had laws, security and houses for people to live in. A community where every night was not spent in dread of marauding Biters or raids by the Red Guards. A community that was now known simply as Wonderland.

  The cost of this victory had been high. Thousands had perished in the Deadland during the struggle against the Red Guards, and hundreds more in the air raids that had been unleashed when Alice had been captured. Alice’s personal costs had been high, too. She had lost her entire family, and her identity. No longer was she the mercurial fifteen year-old girl her father had doted upon. She was now the Queen of Wonderland, whom people looked at with awe and fear. But being part-Biter, she could never taste food again; she now simply had no need for it. She could never dream of her family again, for Biters could not dream, and while she often thought back to all she had lost, she could not cry to lessen that pain, for Biters shed no tears.

  To her enemies, Alice was a formidable adversary, with the training and battle-tested instincts of the most elite human soldier, but also with the inexhaustible stamina and immunity to all forms of damage short of a direct head shot that her Biter half gave her. To her human followers, she was a messiah who had rescued them from the Deadland to give them hope that they could live again like civilized people. To the Biters who followed her, she was the leader of the pack, to be followed with animal instinct and devotion.

  But to herself, she was still Alice Gladwell, daughter and sister to her murdered family. . She had taken her vengeance against the Red Guards, and what had begun as a mission of personal vendetta had led to something much bigger. Alice had never fashioned herself as a leader, but now she knew more than ten thousand humans in Wonderland depended on her. Whether or not she wanted this burden of leadership, it was now hers, and she was determined not to let down those who counted on her.

  Much of her own young life had been spent forged in battle, and her education had consisted of little more than learning to fight and to survive in the Deadland, but today Alice was going to do something she had never done before. She was going to inaugurate the first school in Wonderland.

  There was a hush among the gathered thousands as she stepped onto the makeshift podium. Arjun, her confidante and trusted advisor, had chosen the location with his usual sense of humor. The school was to be located in what had once been the Delhi Zoo.

  ‘People of Wonderland, thank you for coming. I myself had little education beyond learning to survive in the Deadland, but now our children will learn what people did before The Rising, and one day they will revive our world the way it was.’

  There was thunderous applause, but when Alice stepped off the podium, she felt a bit hollow inside. She knew nothing of what life had been like before The Rising, and while she was proud of what they had achieved together, she wondered if she was really needed in Wonderland anymore. She knew nothing of managing a city, with its squabbles over water and romantic affairs. She itched for the camaraderie she had known in the settlement where everyone knew each other, not the anonymity of urban life, where people huddled in their apartments in the center of what had once been posh government colonies in Delhi.

  She saw a young couple holding hands, and she looked away. That was another experience she was never to have. She was young enough and human enough to regret never being able to be loved, but she was Biter enough to never feel such emotions. Besides, her appearance did enough to seal that deal.

  As she walked back to her room in what had once been the Red Fort in the heart of Delhi, Arjun caught up with her.

  ‘Alice, we’ve sent out patrols north of Wonderland again this week, but people are beginning to complain about the patrols. They say that we haven’t seen Red Guards for months.’

  Alice turned towards Arjun and she noted with dismay how even he flinched at her sight. Her impish smile and twinkling eyes were long gone, replaced by a vacant, yellowed gaze and skin that seemed to be rotting, giving off a foul stench. She turned away, trying not to see the expression on his face.

  ‘Arjun, people grow fat and happy. They forget that this safety was won with blood, and that the war still rages outside of their apartments, and any day it may visit us again.’

  Arjun was with Alice – she knew that – but she also knew the pressure he faced. It was no longer popular to talk about the war. After their crippling losses in battle, the Red Guards had effectively ceded control of what had been the Deadland in North India. Occasionally a jet would be spotted high in the skies, but even they did not come lower, knowing that Wonderland’s defenses bristled with hand held Surface to Air missiles wielded by experienced troopers who had once served Zeus, the mercenary arm that had done the Central Committee’s bidding before they had mutinied and the Red Guards had been called in from the mainland in China.

  At times like this, Alice got on her bicycle and rode alone, crossing the dried up Yamuna river to the forested area that had now been reserved for Biters. Someone had said it was like an animal reserve from before The Rising, and strangely Alice had felt herself bristle at that comment. The Biters were kept confined in a wooded area ringed by electrified fences with tunnels that allowed them to go out to the Deadland. Was the Biter part of her so strong now that she identified herself more with them than with humans? She drove with the wind blowing her flowing blond hair behind her. That was the one part of her body that had not changed when she had been transformed into the hybrid she had become.

  By now, the sun was setting and darkness settling over the forests, and she saw a couple of familiar shapes. Closest to her was a Biter wearing bunny ears, with a shuffling gait and a left hand that been taken off below the elbow by a Red Guard grenade. The second was a hulking Biter wearing a hat. If Alice was the leader of the pack, then Bunny Ears and Hatter were her enforcers. After being transformed, she realized that while the Biters could not really communicate in any human language, they did communicate like animals, and had a strong pack mentality. Bringing an end to the war in the Deadland meant not just fighting the Red Guards to a bloody standstill but also ensuring that Biters and humans could at least co-exist, if not actively work together. Doing that had meant establishing herself as the leader of the pack. Now she commanded an army of thousands of Biters who emerged from the dark forest, kneeling before her.

  Alice held an old, charred book in her left hand. It was the last book left in the Deadland and she had first encountered it in the underground base of the Biters in the possession of the Biter Queen. Its title was Alice in Wonderland. The Queen had believed that the book held a prophecy for healing the world, and that Alice was destined to carry out the prophecy it contained. Now that Alice had brushed up on
her reading skills, she understood the coincidences leading to the Queen’s belief in the ‘prophecy’ and Alice’s part in it. Alice did not know if there was any truth to the supposed prophecy, but she did know two things. One, until someone actually sat down and wrote another book, this was indeed perhaps the last book in the Deadland, and that in itself made it a precious thing to protect, and second, that the Biters held it in an almost religious awe. That was the reason why she carried it with her every time she came to them.

  Alice had come to realize that loyalty from Biters was never a given, since they were as impulsive and as aggressive as rabid animals, and when one or two of the newcomers shuffled towards her, Hatter stepped in front of them and swatted them away. Before, Alice had been disgusted by their fetid smell of rot. Now it barely bothered her.

  She sat down by a tree, looking at the night sky. But now more than stars illuminated what had once been the Deadland: lights from several apartments flickered in the dark.

  ‘They grow complacent. They light up the settlement to be the easiest target for miles.’

  She had just whispered to herself but Bunny Ears came and sat down next to her, awaiting her orders. While the Biters communicated in grunts and screeches, they seemed to understand human language to some extent. Perhaps some part of their brains still functioned despite the virus that had reduced them to this condition.

  ‘Don’t worry, Bunny Ears. Nothing I can’t handle.’

  She waved him away when the tactical radio strapped to her side came to life.

  ‘White Queen, this is White Rook. Please come to the Looking Glass immediately.’

  Alice got up and sped away towards the nearby temple that served as their communication center, their only real window to what was happening in the outside world. Satish – or White Rook – had named this place Looking Glass. Before he defected, Satish had been a Zeus warrior, and over time he had effectively become the head of the armed forces of Wonderland.