Off With Their Heads: The Prequel to Alice in Deadland

by Dhar, Mainak

  With the growing tensions around the world, the last thing Chen wanted was war between India and China. The two Asian neighbors had prospered recently, and a war would set both nations back many years.

  Chen was happy to be back home so he could forget about his worries and spend some time with his wife. When he entered his apartment, his wife had already laid out dinner, and he kissed her as he sat down to eat.

  After months of eating whatever their cook could rustle up at their post, Chen found the home-cooked food heavenly. He took in the smell of the thick chicken soup and smiled as he tucked into the noodles and steamed dumplings. However, he had barely started his meal when there was a knock on the door. Then another.

  Only the Internal Security men would walk up to a senior officer’s home and knock like this without being stopped by the security guard in the apartment complex downstairs. He had taken a risk in agreeing to meet Liang, and he hoped he could talk his way out of this.

  Chen placed his hand over his wife’s before she could rise to answer the door. He spoke in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Get inside the bedroom and lock the door.’

  He kissed her again and ushered her into the bedroom. His pistol was in a drawer, but he knew that if they had indeed come for him, trying to resist would only make things worse. He forced a smile and opened the door to find two men in black suits.

  ‘Comrade Colonel Chen, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.’

  Chen felt his throat tighten but he forced himself to not let his fear show.

  ‘Comrades, come in. What has happened that you needed to come by so late at night?’

  One of the men held a black-and-white photograph in front of him. Chen blanched as he saw the two bodies lying in a pool of blood.

  ‘Comrade Colonel, a friend of yours, Bo Liang, met with an unfortunate accident this evening. As far as we can tell, his wife also died with him and we know of no other immediate family. The last dialed numbers on his phone were yours so we thought we would inform you so that you could help make the necessary arrangements.’

  *

  Edward smiled as he saw his Chinese colleagues talk in hushed whispers in the company cafeteria. There had been only one topic of conversation for the last five days. The Great Firewall was down and the Chinese people were lapping up information from the Internet that had been denied to them for decades. There had been an interruption previously, in early 2012, when the hacker group Anonymous had hacked into a couple of Chinese government websites. But this was on a totally different scale – the entire firewall had been compromised.

  The Chinese government had been taken unawares, and at first had tried to avoid any public comment on the situation, but as the days wore on and Facebook and Google+ pages called sprouted calling for political reform and Twitter messages abounded announcingannounced protests against local corruption, the government had been forced to act. The online protests were perhaps something the Chinese regime could have hoped to ignored, but when those led to mass gatherings and protest marches, it had did not have much of a choice but to respond. The response was just as Edward’s bosses had hoped. The Chinese regime had dismissed the protests as the work of `misguided terrorists’ in the media and had taken in some of the protestors for beatings at police stations. That had further inflamed public opinion.

  The TV in the cafeteria had been relaying news of ongoing demonstrations in Guangdong province when a news flash appeared, taking even Edward by surprise. As he listened, he reminded himself that he had no business feeling angry at his masters for not showing him the whole picture. He was a small cog in their plan. As reports emerged of a strange, highly contagious virus in inner Mongolia, with the Chinese government blaming the United States for an act of biological warfare, he realized the plan was far more dangerous than he had ever anticipated.

  *

  ‘Comrade Colonel, your men are ready for inspection.’

  Chen straightened his back and saluted as his men snapped to attention as one. He felt a strange sense of pride as he saw the assembled men. More than five hundred of his men had been flown into Beijing over the last two days. The rest of his garrison was still at their post, but his superiors had ordered more elite infantry units back to major cities, to deal with ‘potential unrest’. Chen hoped he would not have to order his men to march against Chinese civilians, and he wondered if this was a test of his loyalty, given his links to Bo Liang.

  The death of his friend still stung. Chen tried to tell himself it had been an accident, but there was a voice in the back of his head telling him things he did not want to hear. For now his men would stay in their barracks near the airport, and Chen had joined them, awaiting the orders that could come at any minute.

  The last week had been one of unprecedented chaos. The Great Firewall had been largely restored, but the damage had been done. Through much of 2011 and 2012, people in smaller towns had been rising up against local corruption and the fact that so many of them had been displaced to make way for the shining symbols of the new China. Many of those had been put down with brutal force. With the Great Firewall down, all those uncomfortable truths came out, and bereaved friends and relatives found a new outlet for their rage and anguish.

  The President had made an appearance on live TV, vowing that he would personally crush corruption. He claimed many of the excesses had been committed by local officials without his knowledge. Chen did not doubt that, since he knew how labyrinthine the Chinese bureaucracy could be, but these assurances did not placate ordinary Chinese. Many local government offices had already been sacked and officials beaten up, or worse, and while disturbances were yet to spill over into the larger cities, Chen knew it would take but one spark to set it all alight. A part of Chen’s mind also exhorted him to take a stand and to demand justice for the death of his friend, but that voice was quickly hushed by another reminding him that he had his wife and his parents back in the province to think of.

  One evening Chen had sat alone and gotten quite drunk. He had told himself that ifIf he had been fifteen years younger, he would have stormed off and demanded justice for what in his heart he knew to be the murder of his friend. But he was almost forty and had a family to think of, so he needed to weigh his actions. What Chen did not realize at the time was that rationalizing one’s inaction was the first step in accepting tyranny. You either stood up against tyranny or became a slave to it, there was nothing in between.

  That night, he had an unexpected visitor in his room near the barracks. It was General Hong, the man who had trained him at the Academy and who had been his mentor ever since.

  ‘Sir, you could have called me. I would have come.’

  The old general waved Chen’s objections aside and sat down, producing a bottle of rice wine and a handful of small packets labeled ‘05 Compressed Food’. Chen smiled as he saw the biscuit packets. These were the battlefield rations of the Chinese infantry – hard, dry biscuits that packed more than a thousand calories with the nourishment making up for the taste.

  ‘Are you going on a march?’

  Chen had meant it as a joke, but there was no humor in Hong’s eyes as he looked at his protégé. ‘We are already at war. We have been sharing these biscuits to remind everyone that we should forget the comforts of the last few years and learn to be soldiers again. Now share a drink with this old man.’

  They drank in silence for some minutes, and Chen was increasingly anxious about what his mentor wanted of him. Finally, Hong looked at him.

  ‘In two days’ time, officers loyal to me will seize control of key government buildings. We will then announce that the government is working with foreign powers to create the current instability. We will help keep the peace while we can normalize the situation.’ The general poured himself another drink, as if he were talking about the weather.

  Chen was in turmoil. His long-time mentor was asking him to take part in an armed coup. To disobey all the orders he had followed, to turn against the same leade
rs he had sworn to defend.

  ‘Sir, you’re one of the most decorated officers in the whole People’s Liberation Army. How can we turn against the government?’

  Hong poured Chen a drink. There was a look of infinite sadness in the old man’s eyes.

  ‘Chen, I am fiercely loyal to China and would die for my nation. But I serve the people, not a few rich men and their backers. I believe our President is an honest man and he has been trying to steer our nation towards progress, but there are forces at play who have their own agenda. They are the ones who have been discrediting him and the government. There are those in our own Army and government who have benefitted much by being in power, and there are whispers of outside powers working with them to lead us down a path to war with the Americans.’

  ‘Why would anyone want that? If they drive us to war with the Americans, what does anyone gain?’

  Hong looked straight into Chen’s eyes, and Chen saw an expression in the general’s eyes that he had never seen before – fear.

  ‘I don’t know, but that’s why we need to help restore some stability and secure the President against the forces plotting against him. Will you join us?’

  Chen sat frozen in place. Joining Hong would be a huge leap of faith. His mentor was persuasive as always, and Chen did not quite know how to refuse a man who had been more than a father to him. However, joining Hong would mean throwing away his career and placing his wife in tremendous danger. He thought back to the photographs of Liang and his wife, and felt his resolve slipping. Having been a combat soldier for much of his adult life, Chen did not fear much for his own personal safety, but the thought of his wife lying on the road after another such `accident’ almost paralyzed him with fear. Hong must have sensed what was on his mind.

  ‘Chen, I have other officers to meet, so I will be on my way. I know what I am asking of you, and I would never place you in such a predicament unless our nation was facing extraordinary danger. You will know when the action starts, and your men are one of the most battle-trained units now in the capital. They will ask you to stop us, and I hope we don’t have to meet on the battleground.’

  With those words, Hong got up and left.

  *

  Hong’s plan never got off the ground. The next morning, a Chinese destroyer attacked a Taiwanese frigate in open seas and sank it with a volley of missiles. A dogfight broke out when Chinese fighter jets attacked two Taiwanese planes that had flown to the scene. The Taiwanese government was pleading for help from the United States, but with tensions escalating between Israel and Iran, US forces were not in a position to intervene.

  Chen got a sense of just how confused things were when he realized that the actions of the destroyer and the jets had not been sanctioned by the government. His friends in the government said the President was fuming because the commanders involved had acted without orders to open fire. Perhaps Hong had been right after all about renegade elements driving the nation towards confrontation.

  Chen had been ordered with his men to Tiananmen Square where more than five thousand civilians had gathered, protesting human rights violations and asking for criminal action against those who had killed the student protestors at the square in late 2012. Chen had told his men to ensure that the safety switches on their guns were on and to keep a safe distance from the crowd. He did not want a nervous kid to get trigger-happy and start another massacre. He kept hoping that the demonstrators would disperse when the President came to address them, as had been promised.

  Chen waited a few more hours as the crowd swelled. He noted with dismay that some were carrying pipes and bottles. The youngsters had started taunting the policemen and troops. Chen intervened quickly, but the situation was volatile and he was afraid that it could explode at any minute.

  He had tried calling Hong several times that morning, but had not been able to get through. The local police who were to be the first line of defense seemed terrified and Chen doubted they would hold their lines if there was trouble. If anything, some of the younger policemen showed sympathy towards the protestors.

  *

  Edward finished his coffee at the café near Tiananmen Square. He looked at the growing crowd and shook his head sadly. He would much rather his mission be achieved with the minimum collateral damage. The Chinese troops were there, just as his bosses had anticipated, and the poorly trained police would bolt at the first sight of trouble. That would leave heavily armed infantry brought in straight from a hostile international border facing agitated civilians. Combat infantry was trained to kill, not detain or disarm civilians. Edward wondered just how well-connected his bosses were; to manipulate things to this extent would require access to the Chinese government. As he climbed up the fire escape behind the café, he knew that he would never know the full story, and he knew better than to ask questions. Curiosity might or might not kill the cat, but it would certainly lead to a short and exciting life.

  Once he was on the roof, Edward opened the briefcase he had been carrying. To anyone looking at the contents, his briefcase contained nothing that would have been out of place for an executive on a business trip. Edward moved the files and papers a bit and snapped open a hidden compartment. He took only five minutes to assemble the sniper rifle.

  *

  Chen’s phone rang and he picked it up, relieved to finally hear from Hong.

  ‘Sir, thanks for calling. I’ve been trying to call you all morning. We are in an impossible situation here and I have no idea why they ordered my men here, but if anything goes wrong, my boys are not trained to handle civil disturbance. I’ve been thinking of what you said and I wanted to talk to you.’

  To Chen’s shock, Hong’s voice betrayed panic. ‘They are on to us. Someone in our group betrayed us, and they are hunting us down. I don’t have much time. Take care, my son.’

  With those last words, Hong disconnected the line. Chen would have tried calling him back had one of his men not shouted in alarm.

  ‘Sir, someone’s shooting the protestors!’

  Three protestors lay in expanding pools of blood. Chen looked on in horror as another one fell, a mist of blood spraying from his head. Chen’s trained eyes knew immediately that someone from an elevated area to the right was shooting at the protestors, and that they were using a silenced weapon. Chen scanned the buildings with his assault rifle ready in his hands.

  There! He saw a glint of light from what could have been a sniper scope. Another protestor fell. Chen turned to his men.

  ‘Make sure none of you fire. If the crowd stirs up, try and hold them back with minimum force. I’m going after that bastard who’s shooting.’

  Chen began to run towards the building where he had spotted the shooter, but he was too late. Some of the youth in the crowd recovered from their shock and gave vent to their fury.

  ‘Those swine shot us in cold blood. Get them!’

  Bricks and bottles began raining down on the police and soon a group of young men charged the policemen. The policemen tried to rally but two of the police fell, victims to the unseen sniper he was racing towards. A policeman thought someone in the crowd had shot his comrade and opened fire with his pistol, shooting two civilians.

  After that, nobody could do anything to stop the unfolding bloodbath at Tiananmen Square.

  *

  Chen was sitting alone, his clothes drenched in sweat and blood and his body bleeding from at least a dozen cuts and scrapes. He had tried to hold his men back, but once the police fired, a few protestors had snatched guns from them and started firing at the troops. The square was littered with bodies. The sniper who had started it all was gone. Chen’s wife had been calling him all day to check if he was okay, and he just grunted once in reply and then did not answer any more calls. Hong was nowhere to be found, and many officers loyal to Hong were missing. The massacre at Tiananmen Square had been a smokescreen for a wholesale purge of officers in the Army who were likely to oppose whoever was orchestrating the events overtaking China.

/>   A TV was on in the corner and Chen saw that the entire world was being engulfed by a catastrophe of the likes that had never been seen before. Regional wars were flaring up, and the disease that he had heard of in Mongolia was spreading like wildfire. There were rumors that it transformed people into undead monsters who preyed on human flesh. Chen had dismissed those stories as the product of an overactive imagination, but now he was no longer so sure. The images of mobs of men and women hunting down others and biting them to death would have been horrible enough, but what made it even more terrifying was that the victims came back to life as monsters themselves. Several cities had been overrun by the contagion and Chen wondered if Hong had been right after all, and if there were indeed forces orchestrating such global chaos.

  ‘Comrade, we need to talk.’

  Chen looked up to see a young officer, whom he had not met before.

  ‘Comrade Chen, General Hong told me to come to you if his plans were compromised. He is gone, as are most of the officers, but the men are ready, and they just need a leader to follow.’

  ‘Why don’t you lead them?’

  The man smiled.

  ‘My friend, I am an accountant who has never been in battle, which is why nobody suspects me of being a part of the plan. We need a warrior, not a bean counter, to lead the troops. You surely know now the kind of ruthless men we are up against, and unless we act fast, all will be lost. I don’t know what their plan is and what they ultimately want, but they clearly are in the highest reaches of the government and the Army. We must act fast before more innocent lives are lost.’