by Dhar, Mainak
‘Haroula, who was at the farm?’
The old woman had a haunted look on her face. She too knew that they were going to be too late and her decision to leave behind only two sentries was weighing heavily on her conscience.
‘Just two guards. Kevin and Kris. Just two of them. I never thought…’
She never completed her sentence as someone fired from their left. In the darkness, they missed but their muzzle flash gave away their position. Their enemies did not have night vision scopes, but Alice did. She spotted them in the ghostly green glow of her scope. Two men, carrying Enfield rifles, partially hidden behind a small rise about twenty meters away. She whispered to Salil.
‘Slow down.’
Alice jumped out of the Jeep as their attackers fired again, this time kicking up dust around the Jeep’s tires. Alice took one more look at them through her scope and then slung her rifle across her back. Then she went towards them, carrying her handgun in one hand and knife in the other. They were easy to stalk, as their muzzle flashes kept giving away their position. Alice reasoned they were either very stupid or very desperate to keep firing away against unknown odds from a static, partially exposed position. She circled around, coming in from behind them. As one of them leaned out to fire from his rifle, Alice shot him in the back. There was no question of being chivalrous. Alice had learned at an early age that what mattered was that you came back alive and the other guy didn’t.
The second man turned to face this unexpected threat and Alice kicked away his rifle. He made a clumsy lunge towards her. She parried with her knife hand and kneed him in the face. Bleeding from his nose, the man fell back heavily on the ground, That was when Alice noticed that both men were bleeding profusely from gunshot wounds to the leg. She brought her handgun up.
‘Come with me.’
The man pleaded with her, ‘Don’t kill me, please.’
‘If I wanted you dead, you’d already be dead.’
She dragged him out of their cover and saw Salil there waiting for her.
‘Let me get this piece of dirt.’
He threw the man across the back of the Jeep. There was no need to restrain him, He was already in a lot of pain from his wounds and screamed in terror as he saw Bunny Ears sitting above him.
They drove on towards the farm and Alice began to see bodies lying by the side of the road. At least four men, all bandits like the man she had captured. She hoped Kevin and Kris were still alive, but even if they were not, they had clearly put up a hell of a fight. The lights in the farm were on, and the walls bore testament to a fierce battle. Many of the walls were pockmarked with bullets and there were blood trails all over the place where wounded men had tried to find safety. As Alice took a look around, the second Jeep arrived and Arjun was right behind her. He had totally sobered up.
‘Have those bandits lost their minds?’
Alice said nothing, still taking it all in. The bandits had never attacked Wonderland or their farms. Indeed, they had never ventured this close to Wonderland in at least a couple of years. She spotted some movement on the second floor of the barn and pointed to it.
‘Someone’s up there. Have a look.’
Salil and Brittany ran up, their rifles at the ready, and a couple of minutes later, Salil called out.
‘They’re ours. Both are badly wounded.’
Two more men ran up and helped them carry down Kevin and Kris, both bleeding from multiple wounds. Haroula had tears in her eyes and ran up to them.
‘Thank God you’re alive. Get them back to the clinic.’
As they were loaded up in one of the Jeeps, Kevin called out to Alice.
‘We thought they were bandits and fired on them when they came into the farm, but there were two men on horses. They carried automatic weapons and knew what they were doing. We fought as long as we could, but then we took shelter in the barn. Sorry we couldn’t get them all.’
Alice held his hand.
‘You did real good. I counted six dead and at least two wounded. Against odds like that, you did more than anyone could have asked for. Who were the men on horses? I’ve seen only a handful of horses out here, and never seen any bandit on horseback.’
‘They were no bandits, Alice. They were dressed in cloaks and their faces were masked, and they rode like devils, turning and firing from horseback. They had us cornered in the barn but they took a look around and then just melted away.’
As Kevin was carried to the Jeep and one Jeep drove back to Wonderland with the two wounded men, Alice surveyed the carnage around them. Something made no sense. Arjun had come up next to her.
‘What’s on your mind?’
‘Bandits attacking a defended settlement like this is rare, but even if I assume they got desperate and attacked, it doesn’t add up.’
Arjun raised his eyebrows.
‘They took nothing. Kevin and Kris were wounded and holed up in the barn. They could have looted clothes, food, tools—anything they wanted. But they took nothing. They just got into the farm and went away after looking for some time.’
‘Well, we have someone who can answer that.’
She called out to Salil, and he pulled the captured bandit in front of them. The man was in obvious pain and looked to be on the verge of tears. Alice called out to Bunny Ears.
‘Come here. This man may not be as co-operative as we would want, and you could help him understand what we need.’
Bunny Ears walked up next to the bandit and growled close to his ears. The man shrank back in fear.
‘Please, no. No, please.’
Alice walked up to him, her knife in her hand.
‘What were you looking for? Who were those men on horseback?’
The man hesitated and Alice provided him some encouragement by punching him hard in the solar plexus. The man doubled over, wheezing.
‘What were you looking for? Who were those men on horseback?’
When the man looked away, Alice hit him again.
‘Two of our men are wounded and may not make it. I am not in a mood to wait here all night for you to answer. I’ll ask the question again. If you don’t answer, then Bunny Ears will bite your face off.’
Arjun was watching impassively, but something in him was troubled at the sight of the girl he had seen a few years ago transformed into the fearsome warrior in front of him. As Alice repeated the question, the man spoke.
‘I cannot. They will kill me.’
‘They left you here to die anyways, and I don’t think a vermin like you is important enough to them to come and rescue you. Tell me what I want to know and we’ll treat your wounds, give you some food and set you free in the Deadland. That’s all I can do for you, but it’s better than dying here tonight or being turned into a Biter.’
The bandit had of course not been vaccinated and still had the supernatural fear of the undead that had been so common before people began to understand that coexistence with Biters was possible. He had heard about it, and thought of negotiating the best deal for himself.
‘Vaccinate me and I’ll tell you what you want to know.’
Alice glanced at Arjun, who nodded.
‘Tell me and you better be telling the truth.’
‘We were made to come here by them. They promised us Dreamweed and AK-47s and this time two of them came along to show how serious they are.’
Alice thought back to what she had seen and heard previously at the bandit camp they had attacked.
‘Why would you do this for some drugs and weapons? Are they so important to you that you would throw your lives away?’
The man’s eyes had a haunted look in them, a fear even greater than Alice had seen when he had been thrown at Bunny Ears’ feet.
‘You don’t say no to them, and you have brought them upon your people. You chose to mess with their plan out in the wastelands, and they have decided to come to your land to take what they want.’
‘Who are they? What do they want?’
‘They want
people, and they are monsters. Monsters we call the Phantoms. And you and your people don’t know what you’ve brought upon yourselves.’
***
FOUR
The next morning, Wonderland woke to a much more somber mood than the festivities of the previous night. Everyone had been shaken by the attack on the farm, and while Alice had asked people to not spread too much news about the attackers on horseback, rumors were already spreading about mysterious attackers on horses with automatic weapons.
Alice was at the Looking Glass with Arjun, Danish and Doctor Edwards, talking over the events of the previous night. Arjun had spent the morning interrogating the captured bandit and Alice asked him if he had got anything new. He shook his head. ‘No. This guy didn’t know much—their leader was in contact with these Phantoms, and all our man knew was that they were offered weapons and drugs to supply people. Seems like they were new to this business. They had been small-time bandits, but these Phantoms reached out to them recently, probably because we cleaned up many of their usual crew.’
Alice had been thinking about the men on horseback.
‘What does Phantom mean? Who could they be?’
Doctor Edwards answered that one.
‘It literally means a ghost, and I guess if they’ve spread the name then they are led by someone who’s educated and knows English. From whatever we’ve heard so far, they live across the old border, in what would have been wild tribal areas. There was no shortage of horses and men who could ride them, and the area was awash in weapons. Also, that area was a big drug route, so the Dreamweed also fits in. Could just be a tribe that survived The Rising and the nuclear explosions.’
Arjun looked skeptical. ‘They may have started as a tribe, but the way the bandits are terrified of them, there’s something more to them than just another tribe with guns and horses. Also, why do they need to capture people? I had assumed it would be for slave labor, but then we caught them capturing Biters.’
There were many more questions than there were answers, but shortly Alice got the first good news of the day. Norbert radioed in from the clinic to say that both Kevin and Kris would make it, though both of them had lost a fair bit of blood and would need several days of careful observation and rest before being able to leave the clinic. At least they were alive, and Alice was thankful for that.
In all the frenetic activity of the past day, she had totally forgotten something which Danish reminded her of. ‘The next flight from the Homeland is due this evening. Konrath knows nothing about yesterday so the flight’s left.’
With the farm going so smoothly, they had agreed for more machines and yet more settlers, and this time families were on the way, enthused by the early reports from those who had arrived. They had no idea that they would be landing in the middle of the new danger Wonderland faced.
Alice sat down, wondering what she could do. ‘Can we have them turn back?’
‘No, they would be more than halfway here and wouldn’t have enough fuel to go back.’
‘Get Konrath on the line. At least he can then decide if he wants to call his people back.’
‘Would that be wise? I mean we’ve had one attack that just two defenders beat off. Whoever these horsemen are, they would be operating far from home and on our turf.’
The speaker was Aalok, who had just joined them. His eyes were still red from the excesses of the previous night, but he had been jolted wide awake by news of the attack.
‘Things could get worse, and now we’d have families living on the farms.’
‘We could have the families inside Wonderland, defended by our patrols. The farms are off to a great start, and the plans for the factory are also well in the works. If we scare off the settlers, we’ll be back to dealing with the problem of how to feed our people.’
Alice saw the sense in what Aalok was saying, but she had long learned that the best way of getting into trouble was to underestimate the threat posed by adversaries. Best to overreact and with decisive force than to wait till the enemy was at your doorstep. She looked at Aalok, who struck a more conciliatory tone.
‘I’m still new here, and you guys have the right to decide what you want to do for Wonderland, but I think we’d be overreacting. The people and machines will land here anyways, so why not keep them secured inside Wonderland till we find out a bit more about this threat?’
Arjun was nodding, and without anything being said, Alice knew that the balance had shifted against her. Arjun had known her far too long and far too well to disagree with her openly like this. He knew how Alice could be when she sensed danger, and how more often than not she had proven to be all too right.
‘Aalok, give us a minute.’
As Arjun and Alice stepped out, she turned to him.
‘You agree with him, don’t you?’
‘Yes and no, Alice.’
Alice smiled, with very little humor in her voice.
‘Have you also become a politician?’
Arjun laughed at the suggestion.
‘Not at all, Alice. There is a danger out there, but we don’t know if it’s some small drugged-up tribe or something bigger. What we do know is that we won’t have enough food to feed all our people and that these farms and the machines give us the only answer to that problem we have on hand.’
‘So what do you propose?’
‘Keep the farms going. Increase security there and keep the families flying from the Homeland inside Wonderland, but there’s one more thing I’d do.’
As Alice looked at him, he answered with a smile.
‘We thought we had scattered the bandits, but clearly these horsemen either scare them enough or tempt them enough with their Dreamweed to get them to attack us again. We need to put these bandits out of business. We need to make them fear us more than they fear these horsemen.’
Alice smiled for the first time that morning.
***
To anyone watching, the next morning seemed as if Wonderland had declared war on some as yet unknown enemy. Three Jeeps laden with armed men and women and more than a dozen bicycles with armed riders, traveling in groups of three, set out of Wonderland. Add to that more than a hundred Biters who had set out under Bunny Ears’ command, and you had a veritable army on the march. The mission was simple—to seek and destroy any bandits they found, and to strike fear into any who saw them pass.
As a show of force, it was admirable, especially since the three Jeeps were mounted with heavy caliber machine guns captured from Zeus long ago during the fighting in the city ruins. The bandits might have been many things, but they were not suicidal, and for the first hour, they were nowhere to be seen. Alice had expected that, but what she was counting on was the fact that the bandits had no idea just how effective a hunting party of Biters could be.
The humans were all linked by radio, to help co-ordinate their efforts, but of course Biters could not use radios, so Alice had asked Bunny Ears to stay close to the jeep she was in. She saw them in the distance, fanning out, scouring the area around them. She hadn’t wanted any of them to be killed needlessly, so her instructions to Bunny Ears had been clear. If the Biters got any sign of bandits, he would call for Alice.
The thing was, humans looked for vehicle or human tracks, but Biters didn’t look for those, they hunted based on smell. And on a clear day like this, with the wind blowing at a fair clip, Alice was betting on the fact that they would find bandits where human patrols might not have succeeded.
They swept through the wastelands three times before they made contact. It started with a Biter stopping and growling. That got all the other Biters to stop and join in the growing crescendo of noise. Alice got out of the Jeep and ran down the line. The Biter who had started it all had been a young woman before she had been turned, and was wearing the bloodstained white gown that she had been wearing at the time. She turned to look at Alice and began screeching, low-pitched sounds that would have been unintelligible to any human. After all these years of seeing Biters
up close, Alice knew that they were trying to communicate, perhaps in their minds they were also formulating the thoughts and words to convey what they wanted. It was just that they could not express those into words any more when they spoke. But as the Biter walked towards a group of huts near an abandoned village, it was clear enough where she had sensed the bandits.
Salil and Brittany, who had been in the Jeep with Alice, also drove up. ‘There are at least three or four huts still intact in there where they could be hiding. We’ll be sitting ducks if we go in with them behind cover.’
Alice considered the situation for a second and then made her plan.
‘Get the Jeep set up so that you have a clear field of fire for the machine gun. I’ll get the Biters to fall back. No point in them rushing in and getting shot. Brittany and I’ll go closer. If anyone fires at us, destroy the hut with the machine gun.’
Alice and Brittany crept closer to the huts, and from a distance of about twenty meters, hidden behind a large rock, Alice shouted so that her voice could be heard.
‘If you’re in there, come out without your weapons and I will ensure that no harm comes to you.’
There was silence for a couple of seconds, as if they were deciding what to do, and then a bullet pinged off the rock.
‘Bad choice,’ muttered Alice as she took cover and Salil opened up with the machine gun mounted on the Jeep. The huts were ramshackle structures, perhaps put up by a group of villagers who used to graze their animals here before The Rising. They were little more than straw and wood cobbled together. As the first shells hit the hut where the shot had come from, it literally disintegrated. Salil kept firing till there was little left standing. As Alice peeked from behind the rock, she saw a man’s body visible in the ruins of where the hut had been.
‘If there’s anyone else there, don’t throw away your lives. Come out and you live.’
It took a few more minutes, but then three men came out of the huts, their hands in the air. They had the look that all bandits out in the wasteland seemed to share—tattered clothes and a slightly wild look in their eyes. Perhaps years of surviving out here had done that to them, or perhaps it was the Dreamweed. Salil and Brittany ran up to them and made sure they were not armed, and then made them kneel on the ground. Bunny Ears came up behind Alice, but this time there was no need to frighten the bandits any more. They were shaking, and one man was crying freely.