by Dhar, Mainak
‘They’re bad news, very bad news.’
***
FIVE
‘This place is what people call the Biters’ Backside. It’s so infested with Biters and bandits that Zeus has pretty much written it off. We captured a map from a Zeus officer once and it showed that the Executive Committee doesn’t even consider this as part of the Homeland that it administers.’
Alice took a look around her as Vince spoke and as far as she could see, there was nothing but the broken husks of buildings. She had seen more than her share of destruction and death, but there was something to this place that was different. It was as if death hung over it. Skeletons lay in the streets and every once in a while, she caught a glimpse of Biters in the shadows between the buildings. They had resumed their journey in a Jeep waiting for them in the resistance safehouse and had been driving for close to two hours.
John spoke up, a bitter twinge to his voice.
‘My home was a few miles from here. When The Rising happened, I was in New York meeting a client.’
‘What the hell happened here? I’ve seen the Ruins of Delhi, but this place somehow looks much worse.’
Tom had been silent so far, and he sighed as he answered Satish.
‘What you’re looking at used to be Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska. Home to close to three hundred thousand souls. In the days before The Rising, there was a meltdown at the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant just north of Omaha to the North East. Omaha was devastated by the fallout and refugees streamed towards Lincoln. Then The Rising happened, and you had close to a million people caught in a death trap.’
Alice was sure that the accident at the nuclear plant had been no accident at all.
‘John, your family…’
John averted his gaze. She knew what it was like to lose loved ones, and anyone who was still alive so many years after The Rising had likely lost someone, so she did not press her question.
They drove in silence, looking at the devastation and desolation that stretched all around them. As they passed a tall, glass-covered building, Bunny Ears growled and Alice spoke what was on his mind.
‘There are Biters in that building watching us.’
Cynthia had her rifle at her shoulder, scanning the building.
‘This place will be crawling with Biters soon. We need to get to the Night Witches before it gets dark.’
‘These Night Witches, are they also a part of your group?’
Vince laughed.
‘Not quite, Satish. These ladies are fiercely independent, and they don’t want to take orders from anyone. The story is that they were in a boarding school together when The Rising happened, and they’ve stuck together ever since. They’ve carved out a territory for themselves where they’ve declared independence from the Executive Committee. They’re a bit crazy if you ask me, but they can fight, and they hate Zeus and its masters even more than us. So, at times, we help each other out.’
‘How far is their base?’
‘They don’t really have a base, as far as I know. They live pretty much in the wild, but we have an hour or so to go before we get into their territory.’
As they drove, Alice clenched her rifle tight. Once again, strung up on the roadside, were burnt bodies of Biters. Konrath and Vince had told her about how some bandits tortured and burned Biters, out of blind hatred and sometimes for sport. That further enraged the Biters. Alice had learned that while they were very territorial and aggressive, they attacked humans when they felt threatened, perhaps no different from any animal. Their rage could be channeled, if they could be given a symbol and a leader to follow. That was what Protima, the Queen of the Biters in the Deadland, had managed to do, and that was what Alice had been doing since she herself was transformed. Since she had come to see the Biters as more than monsters, the death she saw around her seemed unnecessary and cruel. For all she had gone through and experienced, Alice still could not understand man’s desire for violence.
But she knew well how to deal with it. She saw some movement out of the corner of her eyes and asked Josh to stop the Jeep.
‘What’s up, Alice?’
Bunny Ears had also seen the group and was now growling. Alice put a hand on his shoulder and asked him to be quiet. Josh looked through his binoculars and brought them down, a look of disgust on his face.
‘Bastards are in the middle of stringing up Biters.’
Alice began to open the door when Cynthia stopped her.
‘This is not our fight. We never get involved, because if the bandits don’t get us, the Biters will. There’s nothing to be gained by getting involved.’
Alice looked at Cynthia, her usually lifeless eyes blazing with anger.
‘Cynthia, the reason humans lost their freedom is because everyone pretended it was someone else’s fight. If we are ever to reclaim this world, then we need to join the fight, all of us, and we need to stop thinking of Biters as the enemy. Join me if you want, otherwise I can do this myself.’
Alice got out of the Jeep and before anyone could stop her, she pulled her hood around her face and slipped to the grassy knoll that led to the spot where they had spotted the bandits. As she crept closer, she could smell burning.
One Biter was already on fire and shrieking as he kicked out in the air. Five bandits stood below him, and one of them took out a pistol from his belt and shot the burning Biter in the head. There were three more Biters on the ground, their hands and legs tied with rope. One of them was a child who could not have been more than ten years old, and they were all whimpering and keening as the bandits laughed, passing around a bottle between them.
At that moment, Alice’s mind was a red mist of rage, and she stepped out into the open.
‘Let them go and you may yet live.’
One of the bandits looked at her with disbelief and then laughed as he took a swig from his bottle.
‘Guys, we have a little girl who needs us to take care of her. If there’s anything more fun than a Biter barbeque it’s meeting up with young ladies like this one. I’m first, you guys get leftovers today.’
As the man walked towards Alice, she caught the strong whiff of liquor on his breath. He dwarfed her, and was no doubt much stronger than her. But then, Alice was hardly the helpless little girl he thought she was. And of course, she was not alone. She heard Tom over her earpiece.
‘Broker here, I’ve got the bastard to the right covered. Baker and Butcher are coming in.’
The bandit was a foot away from Alice when she pulled her hood back and glared at him. The man’s shock at seeing her face was equaled only by the pain he felt as Alice’s hand struck out at lightning speed, stabbing him in the gut with her knife. He staggered back, roaring to his friends.
‘What are you looking at? Kill the bitch!’
That was when the man to Alice’s right fell back, his head exploding from a direct hit from Tom’s sniper rifle. Cynthia ran onto to the road, her rifle firing on full automatic, and another bandit fell. As another bandit tried to aim his rifle at Alice, he was blown off his feet by a blast from Larry’s shotgun. The man Alice had stabbed was now reaching for the gun at his waist and shouting at Alice. Bunny Ears came up behind him and grabbed his hand and twisted it till it snapped. The bandit screamed and fell to the ground. Alice walked up to him calmly and pulled her knife out of his stomach and shot him once in the head. The last bandit was now in a state of panic, and began pleading for his life. Alice held up his head, and he began bawling at her to not kill him.
‘Go and spread the word. Anyone who strings up a Biter will get a visit from me and I may decide to feed him to my friend with the rabbit ears.’
Alice approached the three Biters on the ground, who were now hissing at her. She knelt beside them, speaking in a soothing voice.
‘Shh… I know you’ve been through a lot, but your pain is at an end. Follow me and stop attacking the humans. They are not your enemy, they are only scared of you, just as you’re scared of them. We can end this cycle of fear and
unite against our common enemies.’
One of the Biters, a large man with most of his face gouged out and a bloodied torso, spat at her and tried to bite her. Alice could hear her companions bring up their weapons behind her, and she raised an arm to stop them. She took out the book from the pouch at her waist and looked at the Biter.
‘This book is the symbol that unites us, the symbol that tells us that we are all victims of a common enemy, and I hold the book. My name is Alice Gladwell, and I am now your Queen.’
When the Biter tried to bite her again, she asked Bunny Ears to untie them. As soon as the ropes binding him were loosened, the Biter shrugged off Bunny Ears’ grip and came at Alice. She sidestepped him and sent him crashing to the ground with a kick to the back of his knee.
‘Fool! Listen to what I’m saying!’
She had the book raised in her hand, and as the Biter came at her again, she snapped his head back with a kick and then swept his feet from under him. As he fell to the ground, he did not get back up, and Alice raised her voice.
‘I know you’re all watching out there! Come out and meet us.’
As Vince and the others looked on dumbfounded, a dozen or more Biters emerged from the bushes and then knelt before Alice.
***
‘This is not looking too good, is it?’
What Sam wanted to do was to tell the Baron to shut up, but he was trying his best to contain the rising panic as the Baron continued.
‘I got your plan about starting the New World communication campaign in the FEMA camps, and that’s fine. I also know you’re looking for Bellman, and I hope for all our sakes that you succeed. But what in God’s name are you doing about this Alice? Word is spreading about this girl who can control the Biters and who is half-Biter. That drivel Konrath had written had been debunked by us as propaganda but now people are whispering that this Alice from the Deadland is not just real, but now among us, and you have been unable to neutralize her.’
Sam let the Baron rave and rant, since he had no real solutions to offer. The best he could hope to do was to buy himself more time. The nightmare scenario for the Executive Committee was fast becoming real—with food from the Deadland drying up and domestic unrest in the Homeland threatening supply from the few farms still running.
He had signed up for all the wrong reasons—power, money, a place of privilege in the new world that the Baron and others were trying to create. So many years later, and with so much blood on his hands, he no longer truly believed that he was doing any real good. However, ironically, his reasons for doing so were perhaps the right ones—if he failed the Executive Committee, his family would be thrown into a FEMA camp or worse. At times he wondered if doing the wrong thing for the right reason could ever be justified, but then those were the times when he most needed to turn to the bottle.
Sam was three drinks down when the phone buzzed. Hugh had got some news. Bellman had been located. Sam got up, his mind suddenly clear. There was a way out, after all. He called Aaron in and told him to get the security detail ready. He would be flying out to the local Zeus office to co-ordinate a mission.
Before he left, Sam sent one last message. It was a mail without a subject heading or text in the body sent from a specially created email address that only he and the recipient knew of. He hated dealing with the man and his gang, but to get rid of Alice, he needed more than what firepower Zeus could muster. As he pressed send, he hummed an old poem to himself.
Beware the Jabberwock,
The jaws that bite,
The claws that catch.
For all her supposed powers, Alice would meet her match in the Jabberwock.
***
‘Alice, you seem to have picked up quite a fan following.’
A couple of the others laughed, and Alice looked at Cynthia to see what was so funny. Cynthia just shrugged.
‘Hey, a couple of days ago, these Biters would have been trying to rip our throats out, and I’d gladly have drilled them in the head. Now they’re following us like pets.’
Alice stopped. ‘These are people. They are different, they are diseased, they are not like you, but they are people—and you know what, a Biter will not stab a friend in the back, and a Biter will not betray his comrades for personal gain. And by the way, Baker, they are not following us. They are following me.’
The point made, Alice proceeded. They had ditched the Jeep twenty minutes ago, and were progressing on foot. As they walked, more than five hundred Biters had joined them. One or two of them had tried to attack, but Bunny Ears would step in and flatten them with a blow. After a few met this fate, the rest began to follow Alice and not molest the humans.
Alice looked at Vince to say something when she noticed a red dot moving across his forehead.
‘Stop! Someone’s targeting us!’
Everyone stopped and Alice could now see another dot on her chest. Tom had his sniper rifle up and was scanning the forests around them.
‘Can’t see anyone out there.’
Alice put her rifle down.
‘Guys, just put your weapons down.’
‘What if they’re not friendly?’
‘Butcher, if they wanted to kill us, we’d already be dead.’
Suitably chastened, Larry also laid his shotgun down as the rest of them followed.
‘Bunny Ears, make sure the group does not panic.’
As Bunny Ears passed on Alice’s instructions to the Biters though a series of grunts and growls, Alice walked towards the forest in front of her. Satish and Vince were right behind her, and Satish was muttering.
‘I don’t like the look of this.’
Suddenly, a female voice spoke.
‘Why it’s our pilot friend. Vince, we were expecting you and a small group, not every Biter in all of Nebraska. What the hell are you doing bringing so many Biters into our territory?’
Vince stepped ahead of Alice. ‘Is that you, Kayla Hudson? You should stop aiming guns at us. Accidents happen, you know? And I wouldn’t like to shoot my kid sister.’
The girl laughed. ‘Come on in. Just ask the Biters to stay where they are.’
Alice spoke up. ‘Kayla, the Biters are with me.’
The bushes parted and a young woman came out. She was carrying a rifle and had her blonde hair in a ponytail. She looked at Alice closely.
‘So, you’re real after all. The Exec Committee would have everyone believe that you’re some fictional character the General dreamed up. I never thought those stories of Biters following you were true, but looks like I learned something new today.’
‘Who are you? Are you the Night Witches?’
Kayla laughed. ‘Oh, that’s such a silly name. We’re just a bunch of girls hanging out together.’ Then she got a hard glint in her eyes. ‘Of course, if you’re a bandit trying to get at us we’ll cut your balls out, if you’re a Zeus trooper we’ll shoot you dead, and if you’re a Biter, well, we know how to aim for the head pretty well by now.’
‘Doesn’t sound like you have too many friends.’
Kayla smiled. ‘When you’re a bunch of schoolgirls caught in The Rising, you kind of learn that you don’t have too many friends. Come on in.’
Kayla whistled and the bushes parted and several more armed women came out and ushered them deeper into the forest.
A few minutes later, the humans were eating and Bunny Ears kept the Biters to one side in a clearing as Alice got to meet their hosts. They were all young women—perhaps the same age as Alice’s older sister, Jane, who would have been in her mid-twenties had she still been alive. All of them were armed to the teeth, with assault rifles, handguns, and Alice spotted a couple of portable rocket launchers lying near the small collection of tents that seemed to be their base.
They all shook hands as they introduced themselves.
‘Kristina David.’
‘Alexis Campbell.’
‘Alexandra Mitchell.’
‘Heather Harper.’
Kayla sat down in fr
ont of Alice and her companions. ‘There are a few more on patrol duty, but I did have a message from the General. He said that you need to find someone called Bellman to get to the Snark, whatever that means.’
‘Where is this Bellman?’
Alexis laughed. ‘You get straight to business, don’t you? We don’t know, and our job was just to relay the message, but Vince, I heard you were going to get us an extra shipment of captured Zeus ammo, weren’t you?’
Vince nodded, and Alice began to understand some of the layers that defined the relationship between the resistance and the Night Witches.
‘That’s good, because we’ve got our people asking around, and we should be hearing back tonight. Till then, you’re all welcome to rest here.’
As they settled down, Alice asked Kayla if she was really Vince’s sister.
‘Oh no, we just share the same family name, and it’s become kind of a running joke between us. Vince flies his chopper on recce missions or supply drops almost every week, and he started stopping by, giving us weapons and picking up info once in a while.’
They sat and chatted for the next hour, and the Night Witches were all very interested in Alice’s story. They had read about her, and were keen to know details of what she had been through. Finally, Alice asked them why they didn’t join the resistance. Alexis spoke up.
‘We don’t want to take orders from anyone. Sure, we hate Zeus and the Exec Committee, but what we want most is to be free. If helping the resistance once in a while helps us, we’re cool with it, but that’s all.’
Alexandra chipped in. ‘We were all young kids when The Rising took place. We were far from home in our boarding school, and all we had was ourselves. You have no idea how tough it was in those days for a bunch of young girls to survive—and believe me, Biters were not the worst danger we faced. So we had to learn to look out for ourselves.’
Alice couldn’t disagree, but she did add that fighting for one’s own safety was of course important, but it was when people began to fight for each other that change truly came about.