by Dhar, Mainak
Alice took a look at the cover of the pamphlet. It read, Alice in Deadland.
***
FOUR
They had been driving for more than thirty minutes when Alice began to notice the most obvious difference between the Deadland and the US Homeland. There were many, many small groups of armed men and women wandering around.
In the Deadland, her settlement had been set up by former Indian army soldiers and Marines at the US Embassy—so they had weapons and training. However, from what her parents had told her, almost all the Deadland civilians caught up in The Rising had no means of defending themselves and became easy prey. So most of them readily joined the labor camps set up by Zeus to work on farms in the Deadland and the Chinese Mainland. However, here it was very different. Cynthia told her that there were at least four different armed groups operating in this area, which Zeus had given up on after years of fighting. Vince elaborated further.
‘In India hardly any civilians had guns. In the US, many of us did, so people found it easier to defend themselves against Biters and also resist Zeus.’
That made sense to Alice. She had, after all, grown up learning that a working rifle close at hand was the best way of ensuring a good night’s sleep.
The windows were down, and Tom and Larry were keeping their guns visible. The wind blasted into their face as the SUV proceeded, and Bunny Ears in particular seemed to be expressing his displeasure by grunting and growling every few minutes. Alice had sensed that the humans were uncomfortable sitting next to him, so he was sitting in the front passenger seat while John drove.
‘Is there danger here? If Zeus is not around, then why are you keeping your weapons pointed out the window?’
John looked over his shoulder.
‘Everything Vince said is true, but there is a flip side to there being too many guns. The bandits here are sometimes more dangerous than Zeus.’
No sooner had he spoken than something pinged off the door of the SUV, followed a split second later by the unmistakable bark of an automatic rifle.
‘Barrister, get us out of here!’
John accelerated and the SUV turned a corner, only to find a fallen log blocking the road ahead.
‘No good, we’ll have to fight our way out of this one.’
He turned the SUV towards the edge of the road, and they dismounted, taking cover behind trees and rocks as more bullets whistled overhead. Josh was next to Alice, looking down the sight of his rifle, trying to see their enemies. Alice whispered to him.
‘Beaver, I see two men at one o’clock. There, just above that small rock.’
He whistled appreciatively.
‘Good eyes. Is it just the two of them?’
Cynthia was a few feet to their left and she answered in the affirmative.
‘Broker, do you have a clear shot? Alice says they’re behind the rock at one o’clock.’
Tom looked through the scope on his sniper rifle, then shook his head.
Before they could say or do anything else, Alice was running towards the rock, weaving left and right as bullets hit the ground around her. Within seconds, her companions had opened up a withering fire and their two attackers ducked for cover. By then, Alice was within ten feet of their attackers and she dove to the ground, coming up in a crouch as one of the men leaned out to fire.
An ear-splitting growl came as Bunny Ears charged towards the man, trying to protect her. Seeing a Biter in the middle of so many humans must have disoriented the man because he paused and that gave Alice the time to kneel and fire a three-round burst. The bullets caught the man in the neck, and he went down.
His friend ran into the bushes, and while Cynthia and the others fired, he was soon lost in the dense undergrowth. Alice got up to look at their dead attacker. The man was reed-thin, as if he had not eaten in days, and was wearing a tattered t-shirt which had the words ‘U.S.A.’ emblazoned on it.
Alice asked Vince as he joined her, ‘Were they crazy to attack such an obviously heavily armed target?’
Vince crossed himself as he knelt beside the man.
‘Not crazy, Alice. Just desperate. This was no bandit, just a man who has no food and still does not want to sell his freedom to Zeus. Sorry, brother, if you had asked, we would have helped you.’
When Alice walked back to the SUV, her new companions looked at her strangely. Josh said what was on all their minds.
‘That was a crazy stunt you pulled there. Who runs into automatic weapons fire like that?’
Alice answered, without missing a beat.
‘Someone who is half Biter and knows a bullet wound won’t hurt unless it’s to the head.’
Josh laughed and slapped Larry on the shoulder.
‘Hey, Butcher Boy, and we thought you were the crazy one in our bunch. I think you have competition.’
As they resumed their journey, Bunny Ears began to tense up and soon he was emitting a low-pitched howl.
‘What’s with him? I’ve never seen him this way.’
Alice replied to Vince that she had no idea. That was when she caught a glimpse of what Bunny Ears had spotted. John saw it too and stopped the SUV.
Bunny Ears was now howling loudly and Alice reached over, putting a reassuring arm on his shoulder.
‘Bunny Ears, it’s okay. We’re with friends.’
Even as she said the words, Alice knew how hollow they were. She had grown up in a land where men and Biters had been locked in mortal combat, and only her discovery of the truth behind The Rising and her meeting the Queen of the Biters had led her to restore some degree of peace between them. However, she had never seen the kind of brutality in front of her eyes now, even during the worst of the fighting in the Deadland.
All along the road to their right, Biters hung from tree trunks. Their heads had been blown open and then their bodies had been set on fire. As the SUV proceeded, Alice sat back, thinking. Men loved fanciful tales of monsters and villains, but was there anything to compete with the savagery that man himself was capable of?
***
‘Where the hell can they be? Don’t tell me that on top of all her other supposed superpowers, this freak can now disappear at will?’
Hugh Covey kept his head down, trying not to meet Sam King’s eyes as he continued to rave and rant about the lack of success in tracking Alice down. He had served as Sam’s Intelligence Head for more than five years and knew his boss well. Soon, he would calm down and then Hugh could get some real work done.
The news that Alice was in the Homeland had come as a shock, and as Sam rubbed his throbbing head, he cursed her for arriving at the worst possible time. Just the previous evening, he had sent a report to the Baron and the Executive Committee that the leaders of the Deadland had agreed in principle to the terms he had dictated. The Baron had made some soothing noises about how the shareholders were positively predisposed and how it looked very likely that Sam’s performance appraisal would get him and his family another year at the retreat in the Cheyenne Mountains.
Now, at one stroke, all of that was under threat. Shouting at Hugh was not going to solve anything, but he was terrified at how the Baron would react. Alice was in the Homeland! Some vagabond had been blabbering about a half-Biter girl shooting her way through an ambush in Oregon. If Sam had any doubts, they were laid to rest when the rumors spoke of a bunny-eared Biter accompanying the girl. Sam took a deep breath and poured himself a drink. He waited for the Scotch to work its way down his throat before he faced Hugh again.
‘We had three Predators up over Oregon the moment you got information on the girl. How could we not spot her?’
Hugh shifted uncomfortably on his feet.
‘Sir, you know that the insurgents have spotters out to look for our drones, and they’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years. I guess they ditched the SUV they were reported to be in when our drones were spotted. If they’re on foot, we can’t hope to spot them from the air. We need boots on the ground.’
Sam considered the
suggestion. He had lost many men in the past trying to hunt down insurgents where Alice had last been spotted, and he himself had recommended to the Baron that they not waste any more lives.
‘I’m going to send in a Quick Reaction Force of troopers to flush them out. Keep working your sources on the ground. We must get this bitch before she does any real damage.’
As Hugh left, Sam sat down. He had another call with the Baron later in the evening, and he knew that news of Alice’s sudden appearance in the Homeland would be greeted with fury. He slammed his fist on the table in frustration.
‘Stupid, stupid fools!’
He poured himself another drink, both to dull the rage and to calm himself so that he could get on with conjuring up a plan before he spoke to the Baron. He had warned the Baron that they had moved too fast, that they had no way of delivering on the warning they had served Deadland, but he had been told to find a way. They had managed to get five rockets ready, and three had not even been certified for launch. The first that had been fired at Shanghai had malfunctioned and detonated over the ocean but luckily the next one had struck home. Now, he had two warheads and a scientist who could ensure the warheads worked, but no working rocket to carry them. There were two more rockets somewhere in the Biter-infested forests around Cape Canaveral but he needed the scientist to lead him to them. He looked at the slim folder on his desk, and then he called Hugh back to his room.
‘I need you to find Bellman for me.’
‘Sir, Bellman’s disappeared, and there’s no telling where she could be. For all we know, she could be dead, or a Biter by now.’
Sam shouted, ‘Go and find Bellman! I don’t care where you have to look or what you have to do. Find Bellman or I’ll put you in a bloody FEMA camp.’
A plan began to form in his mind. The more he thought of it, the more he liked the plan. At one stroke, it would reduce discontent in the Homeland and re-establish the supply of food from the Deadland. To do that, he needed to get a rocket operational and of course, he needed to find a way of dealing with Alice.
As Hugh walked out, Aaron slipped into the room, ostensibly to ensure that the video link for the call with the Baron was working. Sam paid him little attention, but as he was sitting at his desk, pouring himself another drink, Aaron was unable to get a look at what was on his desk. Aaron was about to leave the room, disappointed that he had not been able to pick up any useful information, when he heard Sam mumble to himself.
‘We’ve got to find Bellman. Without her, the Snarks are no better than bloody lawn ornaments.’
***
‘Any news of the General?’
Vince shook his head.
‘No, Alice. He’s still lying low as Zeus is all over the area. We have a couple of teams there trying to get him out, but it could be a day or two before we re-establish contact. The plan is to get him to a safehouse outside Cincinnati and that’s where we’re headed as well.’
‘I really don’t like this place,’ muttered Cynthia as she kept looking around the dark, wooded area.
On that, Alice could not disagree. They had ditched their vehicle after roughly a day of driving when a spotter had called in on the radio, saying that Zeus drones were in the air. They were now proceeding on foot to another safehouse three hours away where they would get another vehicle to resume their journey. The problem was that it was now night, and their best bet was to camp for the night and resume at dawn.
‘Where’s Bunny Ears?’
Alice looked around and groaned at Satish’s question. The last thing she needed was for Bunny Ears to get lost in the darkness. ‘I’ll go look for him.’
As soon as she got up, a bullet slammed into the tree behind which she had been hiding, missing her head by inches.
‘Incoming!’
As Vince shouted out his warning, everyone took cover. Alice looked out through the night vision scope on her rifle and saw shapes moving in the forest ahead.
‘More bandits?’
Josh answered her, ‘No, not the way they’re moving. Looks like a Zeus team.’
Tom’s sniper rifle barked out once, and one of their attackers fell. The others scrambled for cover, the advantage of surprise lost.
‘Barrister here. Get them to move to the right.’
They opened up a barrage of fire to the left of their attackers. In the darkness, and against trained attackers who were moving from cover to cover, they didn’t score any hits that Alice could be sure of, but certainly they were causing their attackers to move to the right. Satish shouted on the radio for Butcher to hold his fire, and despite being in the middle of a firefight, Alice had to suppress a laugh. The big man was screaming obscenities and firing away on full auto. During the drive, Alice had heard tales of how he had killed Zeus troopers with his bare hands, and she could believe it.
There was a loud boom and men began screaming. John exulted over the radio.
‘Gotcha! Unfortunately that was the only Claymore I had.’
‘White Knight here. We can’t get pinned down, otherwise they’ll have reinforcements all over us. Let’s move out. Make sure the White Queen gets out first.’
There was no way she was going to be herded out to safety while the rest of her companions were engaged in battle. So she shrugged off Cynthia when she tried to pull Alice back and then crept towards their attackers. It had been a while since Alice had been in such a pitched battle. Her entire childhood had been spent preparing her for moments like this—when she would be locked in a life-and-death struggle against attackers—human and undead. That training had been tested time and again in the battles against Zeus and the Red Guards in the Deadland, and ever since she was transformed into her current form, her abilities had taken on a whole new dimension. She retained all her old training and instincts, but now she felt no pain, felt no fatigue and could be killed only by a direct head shot.
Alice moved from cover to cover and was more than halfway to the Zeus troopers when as she crawled to cover behind a fallen tree trunk, a bullet grazed her foot. One of the Zeus troopers screamed in triumph.
‘I think I got her!’
Alice lay behind the tree, her foot in the open, watching the Zeus troopers through a gap below the trunk. Her companions were doing their best to cover her and she could hear them shouting into her headset.
‘White Queen, are you okay?’
‘White Queen, we’ll provide cover fire, please retreat!’
Alice just lay still, ignoring the calls streaming into her headset, while the Zeus troopers moved closer. By now her eyes were accustomed enough to the dark to not need her scope and she watched as three troopers moved towards her as their comrades pinned Vince and the others down with heavy fire. The lead trooper was less than four feet away when Alice sprang into action. She had put her rifle on the ground and leaped over the trunk, her pistol in her left hand and the knife in her right. The Zeus trooper was too surprised to react before she fired three shots into him at point-blank range, and he went down. The second trooper was about to bring his rifle up when she threw her knife, which buried itself to the handle in his chest. As he grabbed at the knife, Alice shot him twice. The third trooper fired, missing her narrowly with a burst as she rolled to the ground and came up in a crouch, shooting him dead.
It had all taken less than ten seconds, and three Zeus troopers were lying dead around Alice. As quickly as she had attacked, she leaped back over the trunk and behind cover and picked up her rifle. She aimed for the nearest muzzle flash and fired and was rewarded by a shout of pain as she hit a trooper. Tom’s sniper rifle rang out once more and another trooper fell. Through her scope, she could see the other Zeus troopers retreat. One of them was pulled back into the darkness and began to scream uncontrollably as Bunny Ears bit into his shoulder and then snapped his neck before emitting an angry growl audible even over the gunfire.
A squad of twenty Zeus commandos had come in, guided by a drone flying overhead that had picked up the trail of Alice and her comp
anions. With the advantage of numbers and surprise on their side, they had thought this would be a one-sided battle. Now more than half of them were dead, and they now seemed to be under attack by Biters. The Squad Leader took stock of the situation and decided to retreat. He called for his men to back up as another was snatched by Bunny Ears and began screaming as he was mauled to death.
When the Zeus troopers had retreated, Alice shouted out to Bunny Ears to stop since he was setting off in pursuit. They ran through the forest for the next twenty minutes, only pausing when they were sure that there were no more troopers following them. As everyone stopped to catch their breath, Larry doubled over, wheezing.
‘Jesus, girl, you are crazy!’
‘Running away from a fight never helps. The fight will catch up with you sooner or later.’
Tom had come up behind her.
‘A fighter and a philosopher. What now, Flyboy?’
Vince was looking at the tablet computer he was carrying. It had been captured from Zeus stocks and the resistance had set up a primitive network of its own where coded messages could be exchanged. He took a minute to decode the message that had been posted on a message board.
‘Guys, the General is back in business, and he says there’s a mission for us if we want to get to this Snark.’
‘What mission is that?’
‘That part of the message wouldn’t be posted on a board where Zeus could intercept it. Most of our secrets are traded the old-fashioned way with runners carrying paper messages. The General says we’re to meet up with a group that has more information on our mission.’
‘Who’re they?’
‘The Night Witches.’
When Alice looked at Vince, wondering what he was talking about, Josh cut in.