by Mainak Dhar
'What happened?'
'The Chinese found out what we were up to, and they knew that if we perfected this, we would be invincible. They infiltrated our program, and destroyed our key research lab in the US. We couldn't prove anything; it looked like an explosion caused by a gas cylinder, but we knew who was behind it. The American economy was in deep recession, China was on the ascendant, and this was our last hope in keeping them in check. We had extra stores of the agent the Chinese did not know about, and we decided to teach them a lesson, to show them that we were still the superpower. A covert mission was authorized and we dropped the agent into a village in Mongolia. It was the first time it had been used on humans outside controlled conditions, and nobody knew what to expect. I had pleaded against the decision, so many of us had, but we were overruled. Thousands fell, then tens of thousands as it spread.'
Alice knew only vaguely of the politics between countries of the Old Days, since national boundaries and the old countries now hardly mattered, but she found it hard to believe that people could have done this to themselves.
'What happened then? If you were in America then how did it spread there?'
The Queen sat down again.
'Hundreds of people were injured in the blast at the lab and were exposed to all the toxins and agents we were working on. The next day, they started transforming and biting all those around them.'
A chill went up Alice's spine, yet her mind refused to believe what she was hearing.
'Why should I believe you?'
The Queen went to her desk and fished out an identification card and some papers. Alice struggled to read what was on them, but the emblem of what she knew to be the United States Government was there.
'I was one of the head researchers on this project. I was born here in India but did my Doctorate in the US and joined the Department of Defense. I thought it was exciting, to be able to come up with new ways of treating our wounded, to make the world safer. But then we all got a bit drunk with our own power, and we started meddling with things we should have left alone. We tried to play God, and we were not ready for what we unleashed. When the decision to attack China was made, I quit and came back to India, but by then, nowhere was safe any more. At first, after being bitten, people changed after a few hours, so you had many cases of people being attacked in airport terminals and boarding their flights after what they thought were minor cuts. In days, all air travel was banned, but when you have tens of millions traveling by air every day, it spread like wildfire.'
Alice still refused to believe what she was hearing, so it was only harder for her to believe what came next.
'And the Great Fires, that too was of our making, of our petty jockeying for power. It began with the US and China using tactical nukes on each other. It had nothing to do with making the world secure from the so-called Biters. It was man destroying the world when it looked like all that mattered to us then – power, money, oil – were now going to be worthless. It was as if all the old rules and taboos were broken. Then Pakistan joined the party, and India retaliated. Iran and Israel nuked it out. Between the attacks and the spreading of the virus, the world became what it is, and nobody bothered to do the one thing that could have stopped it all.'
'And what was that?'
The Queen looked straight at Alice.
'We had a vaccine, Alice. We could have cured them all if we had chosen to co-operate and not turn on each other.'
***
Alice barely slept that night, despite being placed in a much more comfortable room with a mattress and a table with clean water on it. She didn't want to believe the Queen: she didn't want to believe that humans could have been so savage. All her life, the Biters had been the boogeymen, the monsters of our nightmares that had emerged from the dead to turn on humans. Her mind found it impossible to process the possibility that humans had been responsible for starting it all.
Unable to contain her curiosity, she went back to the Queen's chambers and found her sitting on her chair, reading the charred book that she held so dear. Did Biters never sleep? She looked up as Alice walked in.
'So, Alice, as the story in this fine book goes, have you become curiouser and curiouser?'
Alice had no idea what she was talking about so she got to the point.
'You have no proof for anything you've said. Maybe you did work in the Government, but everything else could be a story. I don't know why you think I have anything to do with this, or why your finding that book makes it a prophecy, but there's no reason for me to believe you.'
The Queen got up and went to her desk and brought out a small vial with a red cap that had a syringe in it. She held out the vial in front of Alice.
'Here is the vaccine. The last and only dose I know of. When the outbreak started, one of my colleagues in the US sent me a couple of vaccines. The Government had limited stocks and was starting to vaccinate key leaders, so it was a really big deal for her to try and save me.'
'If there is a vaccine, why didn't they save others?'
The Queen stopped, looking at the vial.
'Good question. Many of us believed that they did not want to.'
'Why would they do that?'
'There were always rumors – but nothing more than rumors – about how some powerful groups were actively manipulating events to create a New World Order. They believed the world was getting overpopulated and wanted to start over, with a select group of elites in charge. Powerful people, in Government, in the Military, in banks, engineering all this behind the scenes. The times before The Rising were one of chaos: many economies were in deep decline, and common people were starting to rise against the elite who seemed to get richer even as common folks lost their jobs and got poorer. The rumors said that these elites were seeing their grasp on power slip away and so they had a long-term plan to wipe out much of the population and start afresh. That's where people like Zeus come in. They could not rely on the Military to do all their dirty work, and that's why in the last few years before The Rising, Private Military Contractors were getting so prominent and powerful.'
For Alice, this was all too incredible to believe. Secret private armies, human elites trying to re-engineer the world and so on. What she had grown up knowing was so much simpler, and it was tempting to believe the simpler version than even consider such a possibility.
'If that was their plan, they succeeded, right?'
The Queen looked and Alice saw the hint of a smile on the corners of her lips.
'We came in the way. They had never bargained for just how...contagious this turned out to be, or indeed the fact that so many of us survived by going underground into sewers and bomb shelters. They thought we would be mindless animals who would wander around and get nuked, but I led so many of us underground and then we emerged.'
Alice now asked the question that had been on her mind from the beginning. 'Excuse me, but what happened to you?'
'As things unraveled, and I found out more about the possible conspiracy behind all this, I got very disillusioned and angry and started reaching out to people. One of my sources told me that there were elites in the Unites States who were colluding with elements in the Chinese government to orchestrate all this. They tried to kill me twice with the Zeus thugs and I went into hiding. But when the chaos took Delhi, I was attacked and bitten. I had two doses of the vaccine on me, and I injected myself seconds after being bitten. I was unconscious for several hours and I woke up the way I am. I don't understand it entirely but perhaps the combination of being bitten and than taking the vaccine within seconds left me this way. Many aspects of me were transformed, but I could still think like a human, and I was furious at what we had done to ourselves, and what we had allowed to happen.'
'What about the other Bit—'
'I saw them for who they really are. Yes, they are very unlike the people they were as humans. What the virus does, especially as it mutates over time, is activate the most primitive parts of the brain – so you get no sensation
of pain, hyper aggressiveness, and an almost reflexive desire to reproduce. In this case, bite others to increase their numbers.'
Alice refused to think of the Biters as just innocent victims.
'Wait a minute, I have seen so many innocent settlements and groups massacred by the Biters. They aren't just scared innocent animals.'
The Queen sighed, a gesture that made her suddenly seem much more human.
'We are all animals. We all experience fear, and when scared, we lash out. That's what you and the other human survivors have been doing. I can't make them understand everything I know since their brains have regressed a lot, but they are in awe of me because I am like them yet I can speak and can think more rationally. I helped save thousands of them by bringing them into these underground shelters.'
'What about this prophecy of yours?'
The Queen now had the book in her hands again.
'Oh, that is very real. I found the book when I had lost all hope, and in that fevered dream, I saw you. I saw us finally reclaiming the world from the evil men who made this happen. I saw us and humans stop fighting each other.'
'It was just a dream.'
'Every prophecy is a dream, but if we believe in something, we can make it happen. The powers behind this conspiracy have a vested interest in keeping this war alive. Have you considered how they keep those helicopters flying? How do they get those weapons, and why do they focus so much on bringing more and more human settlements under their control using the fear of Biters as an excuse? We fight it out in these barren wastelands while the elites behind all of this are perhaps living in luxury somewhere, in their own settlements from which they rule over us, with all the wealth and resources of the world at their disposal. You’ve seen only the Zeus troopers since they patrol the Deadland, but I know they are commanded by Red Guards, Chinese shock troops. I have seen them myself near Zeus bases beyond the Deadland. How is it the Chinese still seem to have such an organized force?'
Suddenly a beeping noise came from Alice's pockets and she froze in fear. She had forgotten all about the beacon. The Queen reached out and took out the small sphere from Alice's pocket and recoiled as she saw the logo on the side.
'What have you done?'
Then Alice started hearing the dull thud of explosions overhead.
***
Alice used the distraction of the explosions to bolt from the room, narrowly evading Bunny Ears' outstretched arms. The Queen was screaming now, all human speech and civility replaced by the wild screeching of Biters. Alice heard footsteps behind her, and given the rage the Queen had flown into, Alice thought it more prudent to get to safety instead of trying to reason with her. The sound of explosions was now closer and Alice ran into a corridor that seemed to lead towards the explosions. Overwhelmed by panic and the hope that she might get back to her parents, Alice put aside all that the Queen had said and focused on finding whoever had come to rescue her.
She came across a group of four Biters huddled in a corner and realized just how foolhardy she had been in running out alone. Without the Queen or Bunny Ears to save her, and with the attack on the base unfolding outside, the Biters would tear her to shreds. The four of them took one look at Alice and stood, moving towards her with their teeth bared. In such a confined space, the only silver lining was that they would have to come for her one by one, and she used that to her advantage. As the first Biter, a fat woman with her scalp half shorn off, came within reach, Alice kicked her in the chest, putting all her body weight behind the kick. The kick sent the Biter stumbling back and into the path of the one behind her, and the two of them stumbled down in an ungainly heap. However, Alice had lost her footing and was now on the floor. She knew she was now in severe danger. There was no way she could fight off all four Biters in such a confined space, and with Bunny Ears and others likely chasing her, there was no question of her going back the way she had come.
As the first Biter reached for Alice, his head exploded and he fell to the side. The other Biters turned to face this new threat and within seconds, all three were down, with their heads split open by precisely aimed shots. Alice looked down the passageway to see three black-clad soldiers. She recognized one of them as the grey-haired officer she had seen in the forest. He waved at her with his assault rifle.
‘Come over here!’
As she ran towards them, she heard howling behind her. The officer shouted to his two men, ‘Set up Claymores here and let’s withdraw.’
Both troopers set the anti-personnel mines and then joined Alice and the officer who were already racing up the tunnel. Alice saw some movement to her right and dove to the ground just as a Biter hiding in an opening jumped at them. The trooper behind her was not so lucky as the big Biter grabbed him and bit his throat. The trooper’s screams soon gave way to gurgling pleas for help as he fell to the ground, bleeding from his throat and face. The grey-haired officer with her kicked the Biter off his comrade and then shot him in the head twice. He then paused and looked at the fallen soldier, and Alice saw him close his eyes as he shot him in the head.
They then continued running up the tunnel. Alice could now see the light ahead from the tunnel’s opening as they heard the Claymore mines explode behind them. As they got closer to the opening, she saw more than a dozen Zeus troopers, each carrying an assault rifle and standing at attention. The officer shouted to them.
‘Hold them while I call in the air strike! The Red Guard jet should be on patrol now.’
Alice stumbled out, slipping and falling on the grass outside, which was slick with the dew that came with Delhi winter nights, as the troopers took position and began firing into the tunnel. The officer pulled her to one side and asked her to wait while he reached into a backpack lying nearby for a handheld radio.
‘Apache One requests immediate air strike at last reported co-ordinates. We’ll be clear in five.’
With that, he ordered his men to plant a few more mines at the entrance and then get as far away from the tunnel as possible. It seemed like an eternity since Alice had been standing in front of the Queen, but in reality it had all taken less than five minutes. Alice was still in a bit of shock, and followed meekly when the officer pulled her along. It was now nearly Sunset and the sky was beginning to darken as they jogged to a nearby hill and then the officer pushed her down, telling her to lie flat. She saw the other troopers take up position next to them. She now had a clear look at the tunnel, from which Biters were flowing out. The troopers all had their rifles at their shoulders and were firing away. Many of the Biters were hit by bursts of full automatic fire and twisted and turned before falling. Alice knew only a head shot would take them out permanently, but the damage the bullets did would make sure many of them never walked, as she saw legs torn off by the land mines and withering fire. She had accurately read the officer’s mind as he bellowed to his men.
‘Don’t bother with head shots. Take their legs off so they can’t move away from the target zone in time.’
Suddenly Alice saw the entire tunnel disappear behind a giant cloud of smoke, and a split second later she heard the deafening boom of the explosion. The shock wave almost lifted her off the ground and as she looked again, she saw that the tunnel had largely caved in and there was a gaping hole in the ground, exposing the warren of tunnels underneath. There were dozens of Biters littered around, their bodies burning in the wreckage.
The officer spoke calmly into his radio. ‘One more pass. Aim for the opening.’
Alice heard the roar of an aircraft flying overhead and looked up to see a dark shape silhouetted against the setting sun. It turned towards them and dove down, and Alice saw a small cylinder detach itself from the aircraft and track down towards the tunnel. It entered the hole opened by the previous explosion, and once again there was a thunderous explosion as the bomb struck home. Alice had never witnessed such an awesome demonstration of firepower and she was in total awe of what Zeus seemed to be capable of when the officer told her to keep going.
They ran through the forest, and Alice was soon setting the pace that the Zeus troopers were trying hard to match up to. When the officer yelled for her to stop in a clearing, she saw that he was panting a bit when he caught up with her.
‘You sure are fast. Wait here while I radio in to confirm where our pickup zone is.’
The troopers set up a perimeter as the officer radioed in. It was now nearly pitch black and Alice was beginning to get worried. It was one thing to bomb the Biters from thousands of feet in the air as the Zeus forces or these so-called Red Guards had done, but it was quite another to contend with them on the ground in the dark. Alice had grown up in an environment where knowing how to best survive exactly in such circumstances was the difference between life and death every single day. As she scanned the Zeus troopers around her in the dim light thrown up by their emergency lights, she realized that for all their heavy weaponry and fancy equipment, they looked terrified. Only the officer seemed a bit composed, and as he finished asking for the helicopters to zero in on their lights, he smiled at her.
‘I never introduced myself. My name is Colonel Dewan and I am in charge of the North Indian operations for Zeus.’
‘Hi. I’m Alice Gladwell.’
Dewan smiled as he packed his radio.
‘Alice, everyone knows who you are by now. The only human to be a captive of the Biters and live to tell the tale.’
Alice felt more than heard something and whispered to the colonel, ‘Should your men have those lights on?’
He replied, even as he was putting a scope on his rifle, ‘All of them have night vision scopes like these on their rifles. We are quite safe here.’
Alice was not so sure. Having lived and fought in the woods since she was a child, she knew that in the darkness, victory went not to those with the most firepower but those who knew how to use the darkness to their advantage. The troopers, including the colonel, seemed to believe, as she had done just days ago, that the Biters would just mindlessly walk in to be slaughtered. But after what she had seen, she wondered if they even knew what they were up against.