by Dhar, Mainak
Alice didn’t want to get any of her friends in any more danger than she needed to, but with all the battles they had fought together, she knew Satish would not back down.
‘Fine, let’s prepare for our trip. General Konrath, can you help arrange for the transportation?’
‘I’ll get on it right now.’
That evening, Alice sat in her room, wondering what the next few days held in store for her. She had been born in a time when the nations of old meant nothing, but she did know that her parents had come from the United States, and had often told her and her sister stories of what life had been like there. The world her parents had grown up in would never return, but perhaps with all she had been through, there was one last twist of fate for her.
It was time for Alice to go back to the land her parents had once called home.
***
THREE
‘Ladies and gentlemen, don’t worry about your seatbelts because I don’t have any on this bird. There will be no refreshments served and no in-flight entertainment other than watching the ruins of the cities we pass on the way to Kolkata. Other than that, I hope you enjoy your flight with Hudson Air.’
Vince Hudson was grinning as he said the words but when he looked back into the cabin of the helicopter, he saw that his humor was lost on all but one of his passengers. Satish was smiling, but the joke meant nothing to Alice, who had never been in an airliner. The third passenger just growled when Vince caught his eye. Vince winked at the bunny-eared Biter and then turned his attention back to flying the helicopter.
Six months ago, they had captured this chopper from Red Guards when Vince had been on the run from a Red Guard prison camp along with Doctor Edwards. His rescue by Alice and her friends had meant not just a new lease of life for him, but also finally an opportunity to put his past training as a US Marine pilot to some use. He had used this helicopter to ferry Edwards along with Alice’s blood samples to Kolkata and then on a DC-3 to the US, a route he was going to repeat today.
Alice sat in the back, looking down at the shattered buildings that had once been the city of Agra. Before Alice had been born, this had been a bustling city that attracted millions of tourists wanting to visit the Taj Mahal. Now there was nothing for miles around the shattered ruins of the Taj Mahal other than a giant crater. This was where a Pakistani tactical nuclear missile had impacted in the madness following The Rising.
A growl sounded near her left ear and she laid a reassuring hand on Bunny Ears’ shoulder. She could sense how agitated he was at flying above the ground, and wondered how much her own nervousness showed. She had been in a helicopter only once before—in a Red Guards chopper much like this one—when she had been captured and taken to a Red Guard base to be tortured. Of course, even that had been only a thirty-minute ride. She had never really left the Deadland in all her life, and now she was headed to a foreign land, where unknown dangers awaited her. She had grown up with an irrational fear and hatred of Biters, seeing them as undead monsters, and that hatred still ran rampant in what had been the United States.
Bunny Ears grunted back and she wondered, not for the first time, how the virus that turned people into Biters made them aggressive and territorial, like wild animals, yet sometimes left very human characteristics intact. Traits like loyalty. When she had set out for the airfield along with Satish to meet Vince, Bunny Ears had simply sat down in the Jeep.
Ever since she had first followed him down a hole in the ground more than two years ago, the Bunny-Eared Biter seemed to have been an integral part of her life. At first, he had been her captor, but once she had transformed into her current self, he had been her most loyal follower, and more than once had put himself in harm’s way to serve her. Now, he simply assumed that he would come with her. She had tried telling him that there was no need for him to come, and also that he would be putting himself in great danger. Her arguments either didn’t register with him, or he just didn’t care, because when the helicopter touched down, he wordlessly followed her in.
Vince had joked about him being like a lost puppy following her around, but headed into an unknown and dangerous land, Alice decided that she didn’t mind having Bunny Ears around. He reminded her of home, and of who and what she really was.
As the helicopter approached the airport at Kolkata, Vince shouted at them to hold on. It had been raining heavily and he expected a rough landing with the strong winds that were still blowing. The landing did nothing to soothe Bunny Ears and as soon as the chopper landed, he tumbled out, screaming. Two startled soldiers near the landing zone raised their rifles to fire when Alice shouted at them to stop. They lowered their rifles, but when Alice stepped out, their eyes widened. A dozen more soldiers ran up to them and whispered among each other. She heard her name mentioned repeatedly, and as one of the soldiers came towards her, Satish put himself between them, his rifle half-raised.
‘Now, young man, you need to reconsider your next move.’
The American soldier started to protest when Vince stepped out of the helicopter.
‘Marine, stand down! Let me introduce all of you to Alice.’
As they walked into the control tower that also acted as the headquarters for the small Marine detachment there, Vince leaned towards Alice.
‘Don’t worry about their reaction. To them, you have been something of a legend, so if they’re excited or spooked on seeing you, they mean no harm.’
Alice smiled back, though with her currently stretched skin it came out looking more like a grimace.
‘Don’t worry, Vince. I’m used to people looking at me in a funny way.’
The US forces had reclaimed the airport just over six months ago, in an effort to recover Doctor Edwards and the blood samples, and now it had become a permanent base, the link between the Deadland and the US Homeland. Flights were still scarce, but when they really needed it, it was the only way to travel between the US and India. Their onward flight to the Homeland the next morning was to be in an old reclaimed DC-3 Dakota that looked like it had been taken out of a museum, which was in fact the truth. Not having enjoyed the flight to Kolkata, Alice wasn’t looking forward to the longer journey ahead, but she reminded herself that if the key to protecting her people lay there, then that was where she was headed.
Everyone else had settled down for the night, and Alice was sitting in a room reading to Bunny Ears from the charred book that the Queen of the Biters had given her long ago, a book that held the key to why she had been thrust into the center-stage of events in the Deadland in the first place. A book called Alice in Wonderland. To Protima, the Queen of the Biters, the book had contained a prophecy for how a girl called Alice would restore peace to the Deadland, but to Alice it was a symbol that ensured the Biters followed her.
She was less than halfway into the book when gunfire broke out and one of the Marines screamed, ‘Biters outside the gate!’
Alice calmly gathered up the book and motioned for Bunny Ears to wait. She walked past the Marines who were getting their weapons ready and stepped towards the gate, saying, ‘Don’t fire. Let me have a word with them.’
***
Konrath was at his desk, listening to the reports coming out of Kolkata. Even before Alice had stepped foot on US soil, her legend was spreading. More than weapons or ammunition, what the resistance needed was hope. Alice was living proof that the Biters were not a supernatural evil, and she was also the only person who could bring about peace between humans and Biters so that they could focus on fighting the Executive Committee. Konrath was sure that legends grew in the telling, but in this case he didn’t mind it.
The first reports, radioed in by the Marines at Kolkata, spoke of how Alice had walked out into the rain among a hundred bloodthirsty Biters, and by holding aloft her book and speaking to them, managed to subdue them. Within minutes, they were following her around. Over the last few months, the Marines had expended lives, ammunition and effort holding off the Biters who stumbled onto the airfield and attacked th
em. Alice talked to the Biters, her bunny-eared Biter escort standing next to her, and told them to leave the humans at the airfield alone. Even a couple of hours after she had left, the Biters made no move to attack. Everyone in the communications room had clapped and cheered and many had come over to ask Konrath if she could work the same kind of magic in the US.
He leaned back on his chair and was about to get up for a coffee when a woman burst into the room.
‘General, our recce teams have spotted choppers coming this way!’
‘Maybe they’re just on a recce mission themselves. They overfly us at least a couple of times a month.’
Vicki Evans shook her head, her anxiety showing. ‘This is different. There are at least three troop carriers. Our position may have been compromised.’
Konrath gathered his things and they prepared to evacuate. The restoring of some portions of the Internet and radio communications had proved to be a double-edged sword. While it allowed Konrath to stay in touch with other members of the resistance, it also meant that over time, Zeus was able to intercept some of their communications and frequencies. A virtual game of cat-and-mouse was being waged on the Internet and across the airwaves, and the outcome was no less deadly than the battles waged in the physical world. The losers paid with their lives.
There were only five of them at the headquarters and they quickly gathered their communications gear and their weapons and left by a back door. Konrath heard the approaching helicopters and turned to have a look when the first rocket hit the building, sending shards of bricks and glass flying. Konrath was thrown to the ground by the explosion, and Vicki helped him up as they ran into the bushes behind the building.
‘We’ll set up a trip wire here. You go on.’
When the resistance was still new and he was not so inured to seeing people he cared about dying, Konrath would have never allowed the four young men and women to stay behind to sacrifice themselves. However, he had to get away. He had worked hard to forge some sort of unified resistance among the various groups and militias battling Zeus. His death would end any organized resistance and Zeus would mop up what remained. He knew all that, yet he hated himself for melting into the forests as Vicki and the three others stayed behind to delay the Zeus troopers as long as they could.
As he ran into the darkness of the forest, he wondered where Alice would be. She was heading into a dangerous and unfamiliar new land, and now on the run himself, he would not be able to help her.
***
When the plane finally landed, Alice found it inconceivable how people had travelled before The Rising stuck in a noisy, unstable piece of metal. Satish had gone to a small room that Vince had told them they could rest in and fallen asleep, saying something about jet lag, a concept that puzzled Alice. Bunny Ears seemed so happy to be back on solid ground that he walked about incessantly, growling out his pleasure. Vince and their pilot had gone to fetch the people they were to meet, and that left Alice, sitting alone in an abandoned airbase in Oregon, wondering what was in store for her next.
The DC-3 that had taken off with them from Kolkata had been heavily modified to accommodate more fuel and extend its range. Yet it had to stop at the burnt ruins of Changi airport in Singapore and then outside the irradiated remains of Tokyo where it was refueled by the small contingent of Marines stationed there. Alice had learnt from Vince that General Konrath had sacrificed at least three planes and dozens of lives to secure this aerial lifeline to the Deadland, in an attempt to get back Doctor Edwards and also to establish contact with Alice.
While she waited for Vince to come back, she walked around the base. A broken sign proclaimed the base to be Kingsley Airfield, the home of the 173rd Fighter Squadron. Around the runway were littered the rusting and often burnt remains of fighter planes. She had heard from Vince about how the resistance could have really taken the fight to Zeus if it had more air power to combat Zeus’ attack helicopters and small fleet of fighters. However, all they had been able to salvage were a few small crop-dusters and light aircraft. After the Rising, when Zeus began to grab power, many of those serving in the US military had tried to resist, only to be imprisoned or killed by the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee had penetrated the government and armed forces, and many soldiers and airmen were betrayed by their own. Vince’s own squadron had been wiped out and he had been thrown into a prison camp, but many like Vince had sabotaged their own aircraft and weapons to prevent them from falling into Zeus’ hands. That was what seemed to have happened at this air base.
A poster on a wall had the flag her father had once served. Below it, someone had spray-painted:
Welcome to the land of the free and the home of the undead.
When she got back to the main building, Satish was gathered with Vince and a group of armed men and women. Alice saw Vince’s expression and knew that something was wrong.
‘I have some bad news. General Konrath’s headquarters was attacked yesterday and he is on the run so we can’t get in touch with him yet. Our plan was to meet up with him and then co-ordinate a plan to get to Cape Canaveral but now it looks like we’re on our own till we find out where he is.’
‘Where is the General?’
‘He was last spotted near a town called Mason in Ohio. We had a small airstrip near there where we were to have landed, but now that’s been taken over by Zeus.’
‘Then let’s drive there and find the General.’
While Alice and Vince had been talking, the newcomers with Vince had been watching silently, their eyes locked on Alice. One of them, a beefy man carrying an assault rifle, spoke up.
‘It’s almost a two-day drive there, through Biters and Zeus patrols. You don’t want to do that, girl, it’s suicidal. We should just wait.’
Alice took a step towards the man, and looked him straight in the eye.
‘I don’t have time to wait. My people face destruction if we don’t get to this Cape Canaveral and take out whatever this Snark is. As for suicidal, you may not have noticed, but you could say I’m half undead already.’
Satish bit his lip as the man blanched under Alice’s glare and Vince stepped in.
‘Let’s get going, but we will need all the firepower we can get.’
He turned to the group gathered around him. There were four men and a woman, all carrying rifles.
‘Folks, you heard Alice. Are you joining us or have you decided you’re all too chicken to go on a little road trip?’
Several of them stiffened and from the look in their eyes, most, if not all, of them were hardly enthusiastic about joining her on the journey. However, none of them would back down in front of his or her peers. As they got their gear ready, Bunny Ears walked into view, and growled at the big man who had spoken to Alice. He took a step back and shook his head, and muttered.
‘Now we’re going to have to babysit Biters. We must be really out of ideas.’
Vince came out of the terminal building in a few minutes, carrying a large backpack and an assault rifle. Satish was a step behind him, and he leaned towards Alice as he passed.
‘Without the General there, are we sure they’ll stick with us in case we run into trouble?’
Alice had her own doubts, but she had few options. Vince gathered everyone together for a round of introductions. The beefy man spoke first.
‘The name’s Larry Sullivan, though I can’t remember the last time anyone called me that. Now my call sign is Butcher.’
When Satish raised an eyebrow, Larry actually looked sheepish, as the woman in their group spoke up with a snort.
‘Larry ran a meat shop in Atlanta when the shit hit the fan. Was a real gentleman, doing bloody origami in his spare time. Then Zeus confiscated his shop, and he went Rambo on them.’
Alice didn’t get the references but she liked the fact that the group was not as tightly wound as she had thought as more than one of them smiled. The woman was next. She was not much taller than Alice’s five feet, but much broader and carrying a
large shotgun.
‘Hi, I’m Cynthia, call sign Baker. When I’m not killing mercs, I bake cupcakes to destress.’
The next man was black and tall, even taller than Vince, who towered over Alice. He seemed the most friendly of the lot, and he was armed much like Alice, with an assault rifle slung across his shoulder, a handgun in a holster at his left waist and a large hunting knife on his right.
‘Good evening, Ma’am. My name’s Josh Baskins, call sign Beaver. I was a Navy SEAL in the old days, and I guess the enemy’s a bit more complicated than it was back in Afghanistan or Iraq, but the war is still very much on. We’ve all heard a lot about you and I’m glad to have you here.’
Alice nodded at him, smiling.
The next man was slight of build, wearing glasses and carrying a sniper rifle.
‘I’m Tom Riley, call sign Broker. I run the accounts and supplies for our group but I’m pretty handy with this beauty here.’
The last man was a heavily bearded man who seemed to be by far the oldest of the lot. He didn’t seem to be carrying any weapons, but he opened the top of his backpack to reveal several cubes of C4 explosives and cords.
‘I’m John Garner, the Barrister. I was a lawyer in New York, and soon I realized that in this new world, my old education counted for little. I did, however, discover a new talent of mine—blowing stuff up.’
As they loaded up their gear on the SUV that Vince had arranged for their trip, Alice looked at Josh.
‘Josh, I mean Beaver, we seem to have the same taste in weapons.’
He smiled as he replied.
‘Actually, that’s exactly what I thought when I read about you.’
He held up a slim book from his backpack.
‘The General wrote a short book based on his visit to the Deadland and what he learnt there, and copies are all over the Homeland. The Exec Committee’s banned it and having a copy is punishable with death, but people are beginning to know that our enemies can be beaten, and that the Biters can be lived with.’