by Dhar, Mainak
Zohar was kneeling near two bodies—his parents—screaming out his fury and loss. His father had a knife by his side. There were no guns, as they had perhaps been looted by their attackers, but he had put up a fight. Three bodies lay near him, and a couple more around the area did not belong in the group. All of Zohar's people were similarly dressed, in loose pyjamas and shirts. Their attackers looked like city folks, wearing jeans, like the two Alice had encountered on the way here. And like them, when she turned one of the bodies over, their arms and torsos were covered in reptile-like scales and pus.
Zohar held onto her leg and cried. Alice wanted to tell him that his father had died well, that he had fought to save his family and people and taken at least three of the enemy with him. She wanted to tell him that we all died, and rarely had a choice about when our time came, but we could choose whether to die a coward or a hero, and his father had been a hero.
But she said nothing, for she knew the deep grief Zohar felt—the heart-wrenching pain of a child losing his or her parents. She had felt the same loss, and had turned that grief into a fury that had set her on her current path.
Zohar grabbed at her belt, pulling out her handgun. He screamed at nobody in particular, mouthing his rage.
'Come on, fight me. Kill me! Come on!'
Alice gently took the gun from his hand and hugged him, the first real human contact she had felt in years, and felt his racking sobs against her chest. Bunny Ears was keening now as he looked at the bodies. Who said Biters felt no grief? Who said they had no emotions left?
'We hurt nobody. My father always helped everyone. Why did they do this? I will kill them. I will kill them all.'
The little boy screaming out his rage and sorrow struck Alice to the core. She too had been young, just a few years older than Zohar, when she had embarked on her journey. Did vengeance ever bring back the lost? Did fallen enemies ever make up for having to see your family killed? But as the little boy cried in her arms, Alice decided that while she had set out to find some meaning to her journey, perhaps that meaning lay not in some grand new quest but in helping this boy come to grips with his loss. To help him realize that he was not helpless and alone. To help him realize that while injustice and evil could not always be avoided, it must never go unanswered.
She would find the men who had done this, and she would make them pay.
'We have some hunting to do.'
***
THREE
They had been walking for close to a day when Zohar finally told Alice about the medicines. Alice had spotted tracks belonging to the attackers and they had set out in pursuit. There seemed to be more than a dozen of them, so Alice had been taking it easy, tracking them, but also waiting for them to rest so that she could strike with the advantage of surprise on her side. She had been assuming that they had been bandits, on the lookout for random plunder, but what Zohar told her made her think otherwise.
'A few days before I left, my father found an abandoned factory far from our settlement looking for supplies. It had been half buried so he got some of the men to dig inside, and they came back with bags full of some pills they found there.'
Alice had not seen any such pills when they went through the settlement, looking for survivors or supplies. The attackers had taken none of the food or supplies, but the medicines were nowhere to be found.
Alice had seen Doctor Edwards use medicines to treat all kinds of ailments, and she knew just how valuable they could be, but why would someone massacre a whole settlement over a couple of bags of pills?
As they sat around a tree, Alice asked Bunny Ears to go on patrol and then she spoke to Zohar.
'All they took were the medicines. What's so special about them?'
Zohar shook his head.
'I have no idea, but a day before I ran away, some traders came asking whether we had found anything at the old factory. My father did not trust them and said no.'
None of it made sense to Alice. People being massacred for medicines. Men with lizard-like scales on their bodies. Bandits who took no plunder other than some old pills.
Zohar reached inside his loose, baggy shirt. Tucked into his waist was an old pistol.
'What are you doing with that gun?'
He looked at Alice, no apology in his eyes.
'It was my father's gun, and when I find the men who did this, I will use this gun to kill them.'
At that moment, seeing a kid with a gun in his hands, looking for vengeance, Alice was reminded of herself. She wanted to tell him that revenge was not the solution it seemed to be, that it changed you in ways you could never anticipate, that sometimes what began as revenge became a habit of seeking out violence. And that once you were caught in that cycle, it was very difficult to get out.
She said none of these things, but handed the gun back to him. While vengeance did not lead to happiness, living with injustice was no better. One made you a bitter, violent person, but the other robbed you of the very essence of being human.
'Do you know how to shoot?'
'Of course.'
Though he said the words, Alice could see the uncertainty in his eyes.
'Well then, maybe I can teach you a little bit so that when you need to, you can help me. Look, there are at least a dozen of them. I don't know how well trained they are or what weapons they have, but it will not be easy.'
'I don't want easy. I want revenge.'
Alice left Zohar alone and walked out to see what Bunny Ears was up to. He was not alone. He had managed to find six Biters who were now walking back behind him. He gave a low, pleased growl when he saw Alice.
'Good thinking, Bunny Ears. We did need some reinforcements.'
Alice took out the book and went down to meet her new friends.
***
The men they were pursuing might or might not have other weaknesses, but they did have one that Alice would make them pay dearly for. That weakness was arrogance. They had a head start of at least half a day, but had paused at least twice to drink and smoke. Alice had inspected those sites and concluded that there were indeed more than a dozen men, and judging by the empty bottles they left littered around, at least some of them would be too drunk to be effective in battle.
Bunny Ears was driving their new Biter companions hard, growling, pushing and herding them on to catch the scent of the men they were pursuing. People said Biters had no feelings, that they lost all emotions they had as people, but Bunny Ears had been agitated ever since they saw the scene of the massacre, and Alice had seen him shuffle near Zohar. The boy was still wary of him and the other Biters, but Alice could tell that Bunny Ears wanted to comfort him, but he just didn't have the words to do so. She caught up with Bunny Ears and said in a whisper, 'You okay, Bunny Ears?'
He looked at her and Alice could tell he was angry.
'Don't worry, Bunny Ears. We'll make these men pay.'
An hour later, Alice saw something that truly puzzled her. Tire marks. The men had been met by someone in a vehicle, which had driven off, but the men had continued on foot.
A few hundred meters away, Bunny Ears stopped as one of the Biters growled. They had found their quarry.
The men were sitting around a small pond, eating and laughing. Some of them injected themselves with syringes and lay down, closing their eyes. Alice asked Bunny Ears to pull the Biters back and then Zohar took his gun out. She stayed his hand.
'I want to kill them!'
Alice gently pulled him back.
'We will kill them all, but when they least expect it. You know what I've learned in all these years of fighting? Avoid fights if you can, but if you have to, don't give the other guy a chance.'
'But I want to fight.'
Alice knelt down next to Zohar and looked into his eyes.
'Zohar, a fair fight is not what I have in mind. These men will pay but they will not know what hit them.'
Two men had stumbled to the bushes to empty their bladders. They staggered in, unarmed, only half consc
ious. They never came back. The first was bitten by Bunny Ears and the other was taken down by two more Biters. Neither so much as screamed, other than a brief muffled shout that their comrades seemed not to notice.
Alice was now just twenty meters away, hidden behind a rock, studying the men through the scope on her rifle. One more injected his arm with a needle and lay back, his eyes closed. Two men who had injected themselves earlier were now shaking, as if suffering from convulsions. Another man raised his shirt to inject himself just below the waist. She saw the same scaly skin on all the men, and the scales converged around the points where they stuck themselves with needles. Ten men. She reckoned she could put down at least five before they responded, and then it would be a gunfight. One which would be short, for they would then be swarmed from behind by Bunny Ears and his Biters. It was a massacre, but after what they had done at Zohar's settlement, these men deserved nothing better.
The first shot, muffled by the suppressor on Alice's rifle, took a man's head off. The man next to him sat up as his friend's head exploded, looking around, trying to understand what had happened. He joined his friend a second later as another shot took him in the neck. Alice was now moving her rifle in a steady, deadly arc, left to right. Aim, pull the trigger, watch for the spray of blood and move to the next target. She shot six men before the first of them grabbed a gun and raised it to shoot at her, only to be cut down by a burst from Alice that caught him in the stomach. Another shot passed Alice's head and she swiveled to aim at the shooter and caught him in the throat with a bullet. But then someone else was shooting, poorly aimed shots that rang off the rocks and ground near the two remaining bandits.
It was Zohar. He was running towards the two men, shouting and firing from the ancient revolver he held. Alice groaned as he passed between her and the men, robbing her of a clean shot, and she abandoned her rifle and ran forward, handgun and knife in hand.
Zohar had fired four bullets of the six his revolver held, but he was hardly keeping count. He just wanted revenge upon the men who had slaughtered his family, and he wanted to see them die up close, not have Alice shoot them from far. He wanted to avenge his family with his own hands. His father had taught him to shoot, but of course shooting practice when you're standing still is very different from the adrenaline-charged rage that was propelling him now. He realized all his shots had missed and forced himself to slow down and take more careful aim.
The two men were just a few feet from him, and one of them was reaching for an ancient gun by his side. Zohar aimed as his father had taught him, holding the revolver steady with both hands, and fired twice. The man groaned as he was hit in the midsection and toppled over. Zohar turned his gun to the remaining man and shouted, though later he would have no recollection of what he said.
The man looked at Zohar and smiled with crooked, yellowed teeth.
'Child, I will cut off your head and throw it away.'
Zohar pulled the trigger and heard a click. He pulled it again and realized with a sinking feeling that he was out of bullets. The man took out a curved knife from his belt and ran towards Zohar.
That was when Alice slammed into the man and he went down in a heap. Alice twisted the man's wrist. Bones snapped and he dropped the knife, screaming in agony. The man tried to say something but Alice hit him hard on the back of his neck with the hilt of her knife and he slumped to the ground.
Alice looked up to see Zohar sitting down, shaking slightly. Then he bent and retched.
***
'It's always easier to talk of vengeance than to kill a man with your own hands.'
Zohar was trying to avoid Alice's gaze, and seemed ashamed of what he had done. Alice had seen more than her share of killing and knew just how difficult it would be for Zohar to come to grips not just with the loss of his family, but the fact that killing their murderers did not make things any better.
She decided to give him some space. She had left the last man alive to learn more about their attack and their comrades in the vehicle. The man was lying down, blood crusted around his head and lips. When he had come to, he had begun shouting, and Alice had shut him up with a blow to the face. There had been little need to tie him up. Bunny Ears and two more Biters stood over him, and every time the man stirred, Bunny Ears growled menacingly. The man had never seen Biters under such control, and was at Alice's feet begging for mercy the moment she arrived.
She pulled off his loose shirt and revealed the scales all over his hands and mid-section.
'Are you sick with some illness? What are these marks? What were you injecting into yourself?'
The man kept his head lowered, not daring to meet her eyes.
'Don't kill me. I am just a poor man who was given a job to recover some bags from that settlement and pass it on. They give us odd jobs once in a while, and pay us in these drugs. I take it to forget all I have seen and done. Please spare me.'
Alice was no stranger to what drugs did to men, having seen the effects of Dreamweed on the bandits who had raided her land to capture people and Biters for the Khan and his cannibal horde. She presumed there was another warlord like the Khan who was using drugs to get bandits to do his bidding. Arjun and Danish had told her that these areas had once been part of a thriving drug trade, with drugs from neighboring Afghanistan being funneled to markets around the world, where they ruined minds and lives. Once Alice had heard of what drugs did and how widespread the scourge had been, she wondered why people thought Biters were the ultimate horror; it seemed man had enough ways to destroy himself without needing any help from the supposed undead.
After a few more minutes of interrogation, it was clear the man knew nothing more and had no real idea of who had put him and his friends up to this latest job. The leader of their gang, who might have known more, had died in the attack on the settlement. Alice finally got up and nodded to Bunny Ears. As she walked back to Zohar, the man screamed as he was bitten. After what he had done, Alice could not release the man unscathed, but neither would she kill him in cold blood. As one of her Biters, he might yet prove to be of some use.
She found Zohar sitting there and began gathering her things.
'Zohar, I will push on. I will keep going south and see what else I find. There are men behind this gang, men who use gangs like this to prey on other settlements. Let me see if there are other settlements who need aid.'
As she began walking, she felt a tug on her arm. It was Zohar, a new resolve in his eyes.
'I will come with you. I have nothing and nobody to go back to anyways, and I'll try and help you.'
With their new companions, Alice and Bunny Ears pushed on south, where the tire tracks had led.
***
They walked for more than three days, seeing nothing but desolation around them. Zohar was quiet for most of the time. Like Alice, he had grown up in a sheltered little settlement. In just a few days, he had lost his family and was now coming to grips with the fact that the world he lived in was a wasteland within which lurked hidden dangers.
The tire tracks had led to a major highway, which was still littered with the hulks of long-abandoned trucks and cars. Almost everything of use in the vehicles had long been stripped off by scavengers, and they looked very much like the skeletons of a long-vanished race of metal monsters. Bunny Ears walked a few feet ahead, ever protective of Alice, while the dozen Biters they had picked up along the way walked behind them. Normally Alice would have preferred to travel light and let the Biters go on their way, but not knowing the odds she would be up against, she had not objected to them following her.
As they crested a small rise, a large body of water lay in the distance. A sign a few meters away proclaimed that they were near Manchar Lake. Alice and her Biters needed no water to drink, but Alice had held onto one old habit despite her transformation—that of taking a bath, and especially washing her long, golden hair. She longed for some fresh water and knew that Zohar was parched. He had carried on manfully, never complaining about the meagre
water they had carried and a diet that consisted of nothing more than the occasional fruit or nuts they found. The large lake promised to provide water and Alice spotted some trees near it that might yield more food for the boy. There were no animals in sight, otherwise she would have hunted something for him.
She motioned to Bunny Ears and they turned towards the lake. Zohar's eyes lit up on seeing the water and he ran ahead, forgetting his fatigue. As he jumped into the water and shouted in glee, Alice saw him for the little boy he should be, instead of carrying the burdens of all his losses.
'Come on, the water's great!'
Caught up in Zohar's infectious enthusiasm, Alice stripped off her weapons and joined him, feeling the cool water wash off her skin and rinsing her hair, untangling the knots with her fingers. Bunny Ears and the other Biters stayed on the banks, watching them, shuffling about. Zohar was telling a tale, no doubt amplified beyond resemblance to actual events, of how he had once caught a giant fish in a lake near their home. Alice began telling him of her own life back in the settlement, of how her father had taught her to hunt and live off the land. For a few moments, they were once again two young people reminiscing about their families and the lives they had led.
Alice should have known such snatches of normalcy were only too rare in the world she lived in. However, she was so caught up in chatting with Zohar that she never noticed Bunny Ears' head snap up as he sensed something.
Bunny Ears turned to his right as he heard some rustling in the bushes. The smell confirmed his suspicions—there were strange humans nearby. Perhaps they had come to hurt Alice. He turned to see Alice in the water with her back to him, oblivious to the danger she was in. He growled at the other Biters, and they followed him as he charged towards the bush, baring his teeth, ready to kill and be killed to save the girl whom he had taken upon himself to protect.