by Dhar, Mainak
The men in the valley near their cage were still smoking and a couple tottered as they walked, trying to hold onto the wall for support. Another one got up and started screaming in some foreign tongue, only to be battered down by a comrade. They were drugged out of their senses, but that made them unpredictable and even more dangerous. Their leader, The Khan, was nowhere to be seen, and a small light shone in his tent on the ledge above them. Presumably, their feasting would start when he came down to join his men, and Aalok had no intention of waiting that long. He got back to work, and within a few minutes, he felt Bunny Ears moving his hand freely.
‘That’s about all I can do. When it comes to it, I’ll try my best but I’m hardly a fighter so I don’t know how long I’ll last. Just make these thugs suffer as much as you can. I wish I had more time to get to know you and perhaps rediscover who you once were, but at least we’ll go out with a bang.’
He heard a scraping noise to his left and looked out the cage to see a thick rope being pulled by three masked men. Tethered to the rope at one end were six men, with the rope tied around their waists. They were a wretched sight, in tattered clothes and with their ribcages and bones showing prominently. A few of them looked towards Aalok but then quickly averted their gazes, perhaps in order to not incur the wrath of their captors. They were dumped next to the cage and left there. Apparently, they had come to accept their captivity to the extent that the Phantoms no longer worried about them making a break for it. Aalok whispered to the group.
‘Hey, there are eight of us. I just undid the ropes holding my friend and I can try to free one of you. These guys are too doped up to notice.’
A couple of the men now saw Bunny Ears and shrank back in fear. They had never anticipated seeing a Biter at such close quarters in a cage with a man. One of them answered.
‘My friend, we will be kept alive since we work their fields, but if we try and assist in your escape, we will join you in their cooking pot.’
Aalok spat in disgust.
‘Are you men? You will stand by and watch others get slaughtered. Do you not see that one day your time will come? Who will save you then?’
The man looked away but didn’t answer. The masked men stirred, and a couple of them got up and headed up to The Khan’s tent. They were fast running out of time, so Aalok tried a different tack.
‘We come from Wonderland, where Alice leads us. She will be on her way to rescue us, and you too can join us and leave this filth behind. Just help us.’
One of the men looked at Aalok, a haunted expression in his eyes.
‘There is nobody to help us anymore, and it’s best you accept that as well.’
***
Alice watched Negi drive back in the darkness. Now she was on her own.
She turned to look at the narrow mountain pass that the bandit had said the Phantoms rode down to meet them. Alice set off on a brisk jog. Fatigue was not a concern and she could run much faster, but she wanted to be a bit careful in the dark. While only a headshot would kill her, a broken leg would effectively bring her mission to an end.
She had a small flashlight that Aalok had attached to her handgun and gifted to her. Perhaps it was only fitting that she should use it while going to his rescue. She did not want to keep the flashlight on for extended periods, since she would likely be seen well before she saw anyone in the darkness, but she turned it on for a few seconds and swept her handgun around her. There were obvious and recent marks of men and animals on the move, and also what looked like the marks of wheels. Perhaps a wagon pulled by horses to carry Aalok and Bunny Ears.
She turned a corner and saw a much broader path, almost a paved road, and perhaps it had once been one. Arjun had told her that the armies of old used to move heavy cannon and trucks near these passes, so it was perhaps a remnant of those days. Now, more sure of the area she was heading into, Alice increased her speed, running at full tilt for the next ten minutes, passing a few abandoned check posts that stood like silent sentinels on the side of the road.
Alice paused as she came to another turn. Here the road snaked into a valley, ringed by peaks on both sides. If someone wanted to post sentries, this would be the spot, a great vantage point to see and strike down any intruders. Alice knew that the Phantoms likely had night vision equipment, given the accuracy of their night attack on the farm, and she flattened herself behind a large boulder.
She powered up the scope on her sniper rifle and brought it up to her shoulder, sweeping the area slowly from right to left.
There.
A man visible against the rocks, showing up bright green in the scope. He was facing away from her. Presumably whatever was happening at their camp beyond the valley was more interesting than watching for intruders. They were either very incompetent or very complacent. Given the tactics they had displayed in the attack on Wonderland, Alice was not going to take their incompetence for granted. Underestimating an enemy was usually a shortcut to an untimely death.
As she swept her rifle further to the left, she picked up one more sentry, this one also with his back to her. Her rifle had a silencer attached, and she would be able to drop both men without making much of a noise. However, she did not know how they were connected back to their base. With the kind of equipment they had displayed, it was more than likely that they had radios. If so, suddenly losing contact with both sentries would alert them, robbing Alice of the element of surprise.
Actually, Alice had overestimated the level of sophistication of The Khan’s men. In that he had succeeded in his ruse, of making her think they were a far more formidable adversary than they perhaps were. They had a lot of weapons and ammunition and battle-hardened men to handle them, but living in the remote valleys as they did without any electricity or steady supply of fuel for generators, they were far behind Alice’s forces in terms of communication equipment.
Alice moved silently in the darkness, sprinting to another tree and then seeing whether the sentries had reacted in any way. Then she waited for a few seconds, waiting to gauge their reaction before she moved forward to the next tree. It was painstaking progress and under normal circumstances, Alice would have rushed in without a care for her safety. In this case, however, there was much more at stake than her safety. She knew Aalok and Bunny Ears’ lives depended on her. If, that was, they were still alive. She shut that thought out and ran forward.
***
The first man to get close to Bunny Ears was swatted away with a blow delivered with his one good arm. Another man rushed into the cage, knife in hand, but Aalok stuck his leg out, tripping the man, and Bunny Ears snapped his neck in one smooth motion.
The Khan’s voice boomed out over the chaos.
‘I bring you fools a half-blind weakling and a one-armed Biter and you still cannot get them out.’
Aalok shouted out, hoping that his voice did not betray the terror he felt.
‘Freaks, you won’t get us alive. Come in and finish us. You wanted a meal, well, you’ll just have to spit out the bullets.’
For good measure, Bunny Ears reached out towards the man whom he had struck down and bit deep into his neck. The man fell down with a scream and flopped around in pain, and then he was silent.
‘Good thinking, Bunny Ears.’
Bunny Ears growled in acknowledgement of the compliment as Aalok fished out a knife from the robe of the dead man. He had no pretensions about his abilities to fight with a knife but it felt reassuring to have some sort of a weapon.
The Khan saw what was happening and screamed at his men.
‘Shoot him in the head. Now!’
He was standing on the ledge, and his guns were in the tent, so he knew he would not likely get there in time. He saw to his dismay that his men were too stoned to react, too shocked or both. What was supposed to have been a victory feast before the next day’s raid was turning out to be quite a fiasco.
‘If you want something done right around here, you’ve got to do it yourself.’
The Kh
an got a long machete from his tent and leapt down amidst his men. They all moved out of the way. This was not a time to get in The Khan’s way. He had ripped off his mask, and his hideous, deformed face, further contorted by his fury, was visible to all in the light of the torches. He raised his sword.
‘I will not shoot you, but I will hack you into pieces and drink your blood.’
That was when the Khan heard a flopping sound to his right. He looked up and saw one of his men fall off his vantage point where he had been put on guard. For a second, The Khan wondered if the fool had slipped and fallen. Then the other sentry cried out in pain and fell to his death.
This was no accident. They were under attack.
***
Alice had ideally wanted to get a bit closer but then she heard the unmistakable roar that could only have been Bunny Ears. She would have wanted to wait for reinforcements to come in, for her to have more numbers on her side, but now there was no choice. She had known Bunny Ears long enough to know exactly what that roar meant—he was in mortal danger.
She tracked her gun up and fired, a single shot bringing down the first sentry. In the same motion, she swung her rifle left to where she had remembered the second sentry being, and the many minutes of painstaking progress paid off, since she shot him down before he even had time to react to seeing his comrade fall. This kill wasn’t as silent as Alice would have liked as the man shouted out before he fell. She now raced ahead, knowing that she had lost her advantage of surprise.
The Khan screamed at his men to get their weapons. He had no idea how many men were attacking his camp, but he knew who must have led them. Alice. He felt a fleeting admiration for her—it took guts to recover so fast from the raid and to counterattack. She was a worthy enemy, and because of that, it would give him even greater pleasure to cut off her head.
As his men scrambled to gather their weapons, The Khan realized that in the chaos he had forgotten about the cage. When he turned, his man was getting up, blood flowing from the wound on his neck where Bunny Ears had bitten him, his eyes yellowed and lifeless. He looked at The Khan and bared his teeth and shuffled towards him.
The Khan stabbed him in the head with his sword and then kicked his body off his sword. A waste of a good man but better than having him roam around as a Biter. Then he swore in frustration—the captive and the Biter had disappeared in the melee.
Alice saw the unmistakable shuffle of a Biter and then saw the big man kill him with his sword. She felt a stab of panic, wondering if it had been Bunny Ears but then she caught a glimpse of Aalok and Bunny Ears running behind some rocks. They were alive! Three of the Phantoms had also spotted them and were in pursuit. One of them raised his rifle to fire at Aalok and fell dead a second later as a bullet from Alice’s rifle slammed into his body. Alice picked off a second man with a shot that hit him in the stomach. As he doubled over in pain, she put another bullet in his neck, killing him. The third man dove behind a rock and fired a wild, uncontrolled burst from his rifle that came nowhere near Alice but stitched the air near The Khan’s head.
The Khan roared in fury.
‘You idiots! Take cover, use your night vision optics and hunt them down.’
He grabbed the rifle from a fallen man and scanned the hills, looking for their attackers. For a moment, he regretted having sent Jamal and Rashid on suicide missions. They had been his best men, and also the ones most likely to challenge him when his sickness was obvious. If they had been around, they would have been rallying the men, leading a counterattack, but now he would just have to do that himself.
He saw another of his men fall and was about to raise his rifle when he felt a cough coming on. He hid behind the rock and coughed hard, spitting out blood, using all his strength to try and pull himself together.
Alice ducked as a few bullets hit the rocks around her. They had got a bead on her position and were now unloading on her. She guessed that there were at least three dozen men—much fewer than she had thought there would be, and also much more than she could handle alone.
Of course, she was not entirely alone. Aalok whispered to Bunny Ears to stay down, but he had spotted something and growled in a low voice which meant that he was pleased with something.
‘Come on, Bunny Ears! Nothing to be happy about here. We’ll be dead and their dinner soon.’
Then Bunny Ears said something that made Aalok’s hair stand on end.
‘Aaa…lissss.’
Aalok followed Bunny Ears’ gaze and thought he saw a quick glimpse of blonde hair disappearing behind a rock. Alice had come for them. The rocks around her erupted with gunfire, and in a few seconds Aalok realized that she was alone. Nobody else was firing back. She had come for them alone.
Four men were less than ten meters away from them, firing away at Alice, and Bunny Ears had spotted them as well. Bunny Ears looked at Aalok and nodded. No words were needed. It was clear what they had to do.
‘Come on, Bunny Ears. Time for the geek and the Biter to play hero.’
Bunny Ears needed no encouragement. He rushed towards the four men, who were preoccupied in tracking Alice and had no idea of what was coming behind them. Another man fired at Bunny Ears and Aalok saw him stagger as a bullet grazed his leg, but he roared and bore down on the four men. Aalok ran after him, armed with the knife he had taken from one of the men in the cage. As he came closer Bunny Ears sank his teeth into one of the men, who screamed and went down. The other three men whirled to face this new threat and one of them raised his rifle at Bunny Ears. Aalok dove at him, plunging his knife into the man’s stomach. Both of them went down in a clumsy heap, grappling with each other.
***
‘Smart move, Bunny Ears.’
Alice had seen him bite into one of the Phantoms, who would in a few minutes rise as a Biter and turn on his comrades. Aalok was grappling with one of them on the ground and Bunny Ears had taken down another man. The fourth man behind the rock was about to fire at Bunny Ears when Alice sent a bullet into his head.
She looked to her right and saw the big man, whom she had assumed by now to be their leader, bark orders to his men. Three of them moved from cover to cover, trying to flank her. Alice picked a flashbang grenade from her belt and flung it, followed a split second later by a fragmentation grenade aimed a few feet to the left.
The Khan thought he had a clear shot at Alice and was about to fire when he was blinded by a flash of light. He looked away, trying to clear his vision. A part of his mind knew what had happened, and training from years ago kicked in. He kept blinking his eyes in quick succession, but his men had received no such training and had never fought an adversary like Alice. Three of them stumbled into the path of the blast zone of the second grenade and were shredded by its explosion. The Khan screamed in frustration and rage and got up. Alice had taken cover but her beloved Biter was there, just a few feet away from him, biting deep into the arm of one of his men. Another of his men had already turned into a mindless Biter and was shuffling towards him. The Khan took aim and sent a bullet into his head and then shot the man who was being bitten.
Bunny Ears looked at the giant of a man who had shot his prey and bared his teeth, but Aalok pushed him aside and behind the cover of some rocks.
‘Bunny Ears, we need to take cover!’
As The Khan advanced on them, Aalok picked up the handgun lying on the ground where it had been dropped by a Phantom before Bunny Ears had grabbed him. He pointed it over the rock and fired, squeezing the trigger again and again.
The Khan, taken by surprise, dove behind a rock as bullets whizzed past him and got ready to advance again when Alice jumped down into the camp. She had discarded her rifle and was now running straight in, handgun in one hand, knife in the other. Two Phantoms were in her path, and without breaking stride, she shot one of them. As he fell, she slid along the ground, sweeping the other man off his feet, plunging her knife into his neck as she got up and took cover. Another man got a shot off at her and she ducked and shot at h
im, seeing him go down. By now, she had lost count of how many Phantoms were there, or indeed if there were other reinforcements on the way. Her mission had not been to wipe them out, and indeed she harbored no hopes that she would be able to do so alone. Her goal, and her best bet, was to get Aalok and Bunny Ears out of harm’s way and ideally kill the leader of the Phantoms before she too escaped.
The Khan had seen Alice and he smiled. Now she was in his lair and it was clear that she was all alone. She had been brave to come alone to rescue her friends, but that same bravery would be the cause of her death.
‘Aalok, get over here!’
Aalok pulled Bunny Ears along as he got to the rock behind which Alice had taken cover.
‘I’ll cover you. Make a break for that gap you see there. The sentries are down and once we’re out there in the open we have a chance.’
‘But…’
Alice shook her head. ‘Aalok, listen to me. Get out now. There are still too many of them, and we can’t hold out forever in here. We’re trapped in by the hills on three sides.’
Aalok began to run and Alice rolled her remaining flashbang grenade along the ground. Several Phantoms got up from behind cover to fire at Aalok but then the grenade exploded, blinding them as Aalok continued to sprint. Alice watched him go, willing him on, hoping he made it beyond the gap.
Then she saw him fall from a direct hit.
***
The Khan had aimed low, firing two bursts at the running man. His shots had kicked up the dust around Aalok’s feet and one or two had finally struck home. The Khan didn’t wait to see how badly the man was wounded, though he was clearly alive and moaning in agony. He was hardly of much consequence in the larger scheme of things.