by Dhar, Mainak
'Don't worry. I've got out of worse situations before,' she said, not entirely believing her own words.
'Shut up!'
A kick to her back rocked her forward, and Alice was quiet. They drove for several minutes and then the vehicle stopped and Alice was hustled out and thrown into some other vehicle. As it began moving, Alice sensed that they were on water, on a boat of some sort. It was rocking from side to side and she heard the sound of waves lapping the sides of the boat.
Where were they taking them?
They kept going for some minutes and then the boat slowed down considerably and rocked violently as large waves hit it. She was dragged upright and pushed forward. Spray hit her body and Zohar gripped her leg tight. The boy's hand was shaking in terror.
'Nikolai, that is not a very polite way to treat an honored guest. Please take off the sack.'
The big man who had captured her yanked off the sack, and Alice blinked, trying to accustom her eyes to the sudden light. What she saw took her breath away.
The city of Karachi was well behind them, and they were out to sea. Alice had seen the sea from the airplane when she had flown to the Homeland but had never actually been in it. The vast expanse of water stretching all around her filled her with awe and dread. But even that was not the thing which most shocked her. In front of them was an immense black apparition that sat half submerged in the sea. Alice would have thought it was some monstrous creature had she not seen the metallic sheen on its body. It was a vessel or machine of some sort. High above her was the man who had ordered the sack to be taken off. He wore a uniform of some sort, with a cap atop a lean, hard face, and with medals across his chest. He spoke in a lightly accented English.
'My, my, so it is this Alice I have read so much about. Having you here at this time is indeed a sign from the Gods, is it not?'
Alice spat out her defiance.
'Who are you and what do you want?'
The man smiled, though there was little humor in his eyes.
'There will be a lot of time to talk business. First come aboard our humble ship. Alice, welcome to the Crocodile.'
***
'Just a month ago, if someone had told me they had seen a girl who was half Biter and half human coming our way, I would not have believed him. But here you are before me in the flesh, and I have now read all about you even before my men started describing you in our area of operations.'
Alice was sitting in a chair with her hands tied behind her and with chains around her legs. She had been hauled aboard the strange ship and then been separated from Zohar. She had been assured that he was safe, and would be so as long as she cooperated. The man took off his cap and bowed before her, his formality absurd.
'I am Captain Vladimir Chernenko of the Russian Navy, and you are aboard my little baby, the Yuriy Dolgorokiy, the lead ship of the Borei class of attack submarines.'
None of that meant anything to Alice, so she just stayed silent, wondering what this man and his strange ship were doing here.
'This submarine was one of the most powerful vessels ever built, and I dare say today there is nothing in the world to match its destructive power. With its nuclear reactors, we can keep sailing without needing fuel for many more years. We carry sixteen Bulava ICBMs, each with six warheads. That means we can destroy ninety-six cities at the touch of a button. Perhaps hundreds of millions of souls wiped out, just like that.'
As he snapped his fingers to make his point, Alice sat up, her eyes widening in horror. She had seen what a single nuclear rocket had done to Shanghai. The destructive power of ninety-six such weapons was almost beyond comprehension.
'We were trained for a war that never came—a war against the Americans, a war that would end it all. We did end it all, of course, but not by lobbing missiles at each other. Instead we ate each other up.'
He chuckled, and Alice began to get the feeling that despite his polished words and demeanor, the captain was quite unhinged.
The man named Nikolai, her captor, now entered the room.
'Welcome, Nikolai. Alice, this is Nikolai Talinin, sergeant of the small group of marines we have on board.'
The big man glared at Alice. He was a good head taller than his captain, and his face had several scars. His nose looked like it had been broken, and when he nodded, it was almost imperceptible with this thick, stub-like neck.
'Captain, now that you have this witch, should I kill the boy?'
He had said it so casually that it took a second for the words to register, and then Alice struggled against her bonds. The captain smiled at Alice.
'Not yet. Is that any way to treat our guests? First let me discuss a few business propositions with Alice and then you can cut the urchin's throat and feed him to the sharks if she doesn't comply.'
Then he turned to Alice, all business, all politeness gone from his eyes.
'I am the most powerful man left in this stinking world. I can literally destroy the whole world and every human being still alive, and nobody can touch me in my Crocodile. Yet what have I been reduced to? After the Rising, we sailed the world and kept waiting to hear back from our headquarters. Nobody called. Nobody was alive to call. We stopped at a dozen ports. All the big ones were nuclear cesspools, the others overflowing with Biters. My young First Officer, Yuriy, had a romantic notion. Why don't we find a nice, untouched island paradise and settle down there? So we explored a lot of places—the Maldives, Seychelles, islands in the Pacific. We went to Hawaii, to coastal cities around the world. We sailed for years. Nobody was untouched by the Biters, but there were humans. Many more than I would have believed. There were settlements everywhere, small groups trying to keep alive, trying to make sense of it all. Yuriy and some of the others settled down with some of our hosts, but I kept going, trying to see where a man like me fit into this mad new world.'
Alice sat up. She had believed that the humans in the Deadland where she had grown up had been an aberration. Later, she had learnt of all the survivors in the US Homeland. Now she was learning that many, many more humans had survived across the world.
'Then I began to think. I was the most powerful man in the world—by then, I was quite sure none of the mighty navies or armies of the old world existed. Yet here I was, living like a vagabond, begging our hosts for food or shelter while we docked there. So, I began to take what I wanted, what my men wanted. Food, women, supplies.'
Alice spat out, 'For all your words, you are nothing but a bandit.'
The captain looked at Nikolai.
'I told you she would have spirit. She does her reputation justice.'
Then he leaned forward and slapped Alice hard across the face.
'Talk when I ask you to talk. Otherwise, keep silent.
'Six months ago, we came to Karachi. My Comms Officer is the eternal optimist. After all these years, once a month or so, he would listen for signals, see if anyone was out there. And then we heard you, your friends, your allies in the Homeland. We saw the Internet start to come back on, and I learned of your story, of the war that had been waged here while I vacationed in my island paradises. I learned of your city of Wonderland and others in the US Homeland—cities where people live by the thousands, farms that grow food, a whole new world being created. A world worthy of being ruled by someone like me.'
***
The door of her cell creaked open, and she was instantly on her guard. She had no weapons, but she would not go down without a fight.
The door opened just enough for a small figure to be thrown in. It was Zohar. The room was illuminated by a single, flickering bulb on the ceiling, and in the dim light she saw crusted blood on Zohar's lips and nose, and when she held his left arm, he groaned in pain.
'Are you okay?'
Zohar hung his head down in shame.
'I tried to fight them. I'm sorry, they captured you because of me.'
Alice's heart went out to the brave boy in front of her and she hugged him.
'We'll get out of here, kid.'
The door opened again and this time Nikolai stood there, grinning.
'You have your kid back, as you wanted. Now the captain wants you on the bridge to talk about how you can help us.'
Alice would have lashed out then and there had it not been for the two marines behind him with their rifles trained on Zohar. Having him hurt would not be worth the satisfaction of wiping the grin off Nikolai's face. However, she was not going to give in so easily. She had figured out that the captain thought she could be of some use to him, which was why she was still alive. She would use that leverage to whatever extent she could, and learn more about what was really going on in this strange ship.
'I am not meeting anyone till a doctor comes and dresses Zohar's injuries. Unfortunately you and your men think it's brave to hit a small boy.'
Nikolai's eyes narrowed in rage but he controlled himself and slammed the door. A few minutes later, a young woman entered. She looked around furtively, her eyes widening as she saw Alice. But then she quickly averted her gaze with the practiced discretion of the weak and the enslaved. This woman was out of place on the ship, not just because she was the only woman Alice had seen so far, but also because she seemed to be ethnically from the local region versus the fair-skinned and blond or brown-haired crewmembers. The woman knelt before Zohar and tended to his wounds, swabbing them with cotton pads doused in antiseptics, and then gave him some painkillers to take.
'What is your name?'
The woman would not meet Alice's gaze and ignored her, making sure she stayed away from Alice as she tended to Zohar. Part of it was the fright at seeing someone who looked like a Biter but could talk, but part of it was an even bigger fear. As she finished and gathered her things, she whispered to Alice.
'They will kill me if I am seen talking to you.'
Yet even as she opened the door to go out, she slipped a piece of warm bread from under the folds of her clothes to Zohar.
'Eat it. My name is Neha.'
Nikolai was back within a few minutes.
'The little bastard has got his medicine. Come now, and remember he stays with my men here, so if you try anything funny, we'll cut him so badly there won't be anything left to stitch back together.'
Zohar shuddered and she stood to face Nikolai, her eyes blazing with fury.
'Touch him and I will rip your throat out. Now take me to your captain.'
Alice walked to the bridge of the submarine, flanked by two marines armed with assault rifles. The captain was humming some tune when she appeared and he smiled at her.
'Alice, there are so many ways in which you can help me. I'm struggling to choose which way to take, but I've been browsing this tablet that you carry, and I now know that I don't need to choose. I can have it all.'
Alice listened silently as he continued.
'When we learned what was happening out there, I got in touch with Konrath. In my time, the United States was the world's only real superpower, so I assumed that he would still be the man in charge. Turns out the US is a wasteland and they're still recovering from their civil war and depend on the farms in Wonderland to feed their people. Still, I made Konrath a simple offer. I would get leadership of his nation, get a land to call my own, and I would spare his people. Otherwise, I would destroy his nation. Imagine me as the President of the known world, with my little Crocodile off the coast as my insurance policy.'
Alice had heard of the threat from Robertson, but what the captain said next left her stunned.
'Konrath did not agree, but there were men more agreeable to my proposition. He had a heart attack, which I suspect was delivered from close range with a pistol to the head, and Robertson wanted to deal. The problem is that I don't trust him—he is a greedy man, and he wants the power I have. It seems Konrath was an idealist and a bit of a fool. He had ordered the destruction of all the old nuclear missiles they could find so that they could never again be used to threaten people—and just a week before he died, it was celebrated as a great achievement. So Robertson is in charge, and has no weapons that could threaten me so far away. He wants control of the weapons on this ship to make him the most powerful man in the world. So we've been negotiating and dancing our little dance for a few days, and now you show up, and I realize I have some leverage after all.'
Alice's mind was abuzz with the implications of all she had heard. Had Konrath really been deposed in a coup? Had Robertson used her as a pawn in his struggle with the captain?
'You see, I doubt Robertson cares about you, so your role as a prisoner is of little consequence. But from your tablet, I now have detailed maps and co-ordinates of your Wonderland and all the farms that are feeding your people and those of the Homeland. He surely cares about those food supplies, and turning Wonderland into radioactive sludge would mean Robertson's people starve and perhaps turn against him.'
Alice recoiled as if she had been struck. The thousands of people who had come to count on her were in the most terrible danger and she had to act fast to save them. She took a step towards the captain when he smiled. A marine dug his rifle into Alice's back, and she spun on her feet, slamming the heel of her right hand into the bridge of the man's nose. He went down in a heap, screaming in pain and clutching his broken nose. The other marine was about to fire when the captain asked him to stop.
'If you hurt me, my men are under orders to deliver a missile straight into the heart of Wonderland, so you may want to choose what you do next more carefully. You may kill me, but you will not know how to stop my man, who at this moment is in the weapons room, awaiting news from the bridge.'
Alice stopped, feeling trapped, feeling helpless.
'What do you want me to do?'
'I want you to speak to Robertson over the video link I see you have in your tablet, and tell him the reality of the situation. He will find it more credible coming from you, and he should know that if he thinks he can come after me, he is sadly mistaken. Then I want you to talk to your people at Wonderland and tell them that I am an ally, a friend with technology that can help. My Crocodile will stay in the waters, with its missiles aimed at Wonderland and the Homeland, and I will come to Wonderland. Why rule over the ruins of the Homeland when I can stay near the nice farms of Wonderland and create my empire there?'
***
EIGHT
John scrambled for cover as a jeep drove past, and he waited for a good five minutes till he was sure enough that there were no more men out there. Only then did he emerge from behind the old building that had sheltered him for much of the day since the firefight.
He still cursed his luck and his inability to do more to help. Early on in the firefight, a grenade had exploded nearby and he had caught some shrapnel in his left arm. That had been painful, but he would not have been put out of the fight if another one had not landed a few seconds later. He had felt himself being bodily lifted by the impact and his head had struck something hard. When he had come to, Alice and the boy were gone. He had roamed the area for hours, but found no sign of them. He did find Bunny Ears, bleeding from several bullet wounds to the torso, and what looked like the remains of a good half-dozen of their attackers strewn around the area. Bunny Ears had fought ferociously, but he had been too far to help Alice.
John glanced inside to see Bunny Ears, brooding and hissing under his breath. John had heard from Alice about how loyal he had been to her, and now John saw it for himself. For someone who had believed Biters to be little more than mindless monsters, he was seeing with his own eyes that Bunny Ears felt emotions that were very human. Bunny Ears was blaming himself for the loss of Alice, and had been roaring, virtually going around in circles, when John had pleaded with him that all that would do was to attract attention to them and get them killed. After a few minutes, John seemed to have gotten through and now they were deep inside the old city of Karachi, with no idea of where Alice might be or the condition she might be in.
John walked behind Bunny Ears. While they had spent several days on the road together, this
was the first time he had been alone with Bunny Ears without Alice there. He knew that he should be able to count on Bunny Ears, but years of conditioning were hard to undo in an instant. So he kept his distance, and unconsciously, his finger stayed on the trigger of his rifle. Bunny Ears didn't seem to notice or care and shuffled closer.
'Aaaaa… lii… sss.'
John was shocked. He had never heard a Biter speak before, and hearing Bunny Ears say Alice's name made him wonder just how human Biters actually were despite their external appearance.
'Buddy, I want to find her almost as badly as you do. I had thought I was going to look after them. I'm the trained soldier, right? And I messed it all up. The problem is where do we start? This was a huge city, and they could be anywhere by now. The two of us can't possibly cover enough ground.'
What was of course left unsaid was that he didn't even know if they were alive. Bunny Ears walked out soundlessly and began sniffing in the air. John had heard that Biters had a much more evolved sense of smell and used it to seek out humans or avoid danger, and now he saw that in action. As Bunny Ears grunted and set off on a fast trot to his right, John gathered his gear and followed him.
'When in doubt, follow your nose, I guess.'
They had walked for twenty minutes when John spotted the jeep that had passed them. It was parked near a large building that looked like a warehouse or factory of some sort ringed by a wall that was broken in several places. John whispered to Bunny Ears to fall back as he took a closer look through the scope on his rifle. There were two men armed with rifles in a tower near the gate.
'Anything worth guarding in this shithole must be something important, and the only people we've come across who can organize such a thing are the ones who attacked us.'
Bunny Ears glared and started towards the building, but John held out a hand, feeling the cold, clammy skin as he touched his arm.
'Buddy, there are two guards I can see. For all we know there might be more in there, and without knowing what we're up against, we could get slaughtered without achieving much. Let's hang around a bit and learn a bit more about this place. Then we hit it, ideally at night. These guards are the drugged-up locals, not the uniformed foreigners I saw at the ambush. I doubt they have night vision scopes.'