Alice in Deadland Trilogy

by Mainak Dhar

  Dewan walked out, resting a friendly hand on Alice’s shoulder as he left. Alice looked back to see Appleseed looking at her with his chin in his hands, as if contemplating something. Finally he came around the table to sit next to Alice.

  ‘Alice, we will continue the debriefing when Dewan gets here, but there is one thing I needed to ask you in private. It is a highly confidential matter that nobody else should know about, but if you helped me with this, it could make a huge difference to the war effort.’

  He took out a photograph from his pocket and put it on the table in front of Alice. It was an old, faded photo, with some of the edges torn off, but the smiling face with greying hair in the middle of it was unmistakable. It was the woman whom Alice had met as the Queen. She tried to contain her reaction, but Appleseed must have noticed.

  ‘Alice, I need you to tell me if you saw this woman.’

  ***

  Alice was saved from having to answer by Dewan coming in with some sandwiches. As they ate, Alice told them about how after the encounter in the Embassy room, she had managed to hide in the underground caves and tunnels for the next two days. Appleseed was skeptical and his expression showed it.

  ‘When our men first saw you, it seems you were in the company of Biters. How did that happen?’

  Alice’s mind raced. At the best of times, she was terrible at making up excuses; now she had to find some plausible reason for why the Biters around her had not attacked her when they first encountered the Zeus helicopters.

  ‘General, I was hiding behind some ruins when your helicopters arrived. The Biters would have found me in minutes if they had not landed up when they did. I was hardly with the Biters then – but with all the fighting, I couldn’t get to the troopers and I hid underground.’

  ‘And what about the incident in the forest when we gave you the beacon? Or did you again just happen to be near the Biters? One of our men said that it looked like they had you in their custody.’

  Alice saw that Appleseed was not going to be so easily convinced.

  ‘Biters can hardly take anyone in their custody. They tried to get me in the forest and I was fighting them off when your men arrived. It was all so chaotic that someone must have mistakenly believed the Biters had captured me. I was scared and in the middle of so many Biters that I just dove into one of the openings in the ground. It seemed to lead into one of their bases and I hid there, waiting for you guys to get me.'

  Dewan nodded at Appleseed and whispered that he had indeed seen her fighting Biters when he first saw her. The general just grunted as Alice continued her tale about how she had been deep underground escaping the Biters when the rescue mission was mounted. As she talked, she noticed that the general seemed to be relaxing a bit as he clearly got pieces of information that he deemed useful, such as the exact location of the tunnels near the old Yamuna river, and more than once he whispered to Dewan to get sorties out over the areas to check them out for any sign of Biters. Finally he closed the writing pad in front of him and asked Dewan to go and check if the helicopter to fly Alice back had been arranged.

  As Dewan left the room, Appleseed was again right beside Alice, the photo in his hand.

  ‘Alice, in my time I’ve interrogated many men and women, and I know that you’re keeping something from me.’

  He reached over and gripped Alice’s knee hard, and then Alice felt his hand moving up her leg.

  ‘In my time, we had many ways of persuading young, attractive women like you to co-operate.’

  Alice cringed as the general’s hand moved higher – and then, on instinct, she grabbed his hand with her left hand, and just as her instructors had taught her, she twisted it and brought her right palm hard against the flat of his hand. Appleseed’s hand snapped back and he howled in pain as Alice stood up, ready to fight. The general towered over her and outweighed her by a big margin, but Alice’s parents had not brought her up to give in so easily. She would go down fighting if need be. Appleseed was holding his wrist and his face was red.

  ‘I should have known better than to reason with a wild girl from the Deadland like you. Savages like you aren’t fit to be with humans anymore. The days of isolated settlements are going to be a thing of the past – and you need to learn how to live in human society again.’

  Alice spat on the ground, knowing that there was no need to waste her effort on being polite any more.

  ‘So that we can be slaves to you and your masters, whoever they are? Is the war against the Biters your mission or is that an excuse to get power?’

  Appleseed smiled.

  ‘The woman whose photo I showed you is a known traitor and a Biter sympathizer. We know that she lives among them and claims to be some sort of leader. We don’t let that information get out because we don’t want anyone to know that the Biters can be lived with after all. She is a traitor and the Central Committee has already condemned her to death. Anyone collaborating with her is also a traitor.’

  Alice didn’t flinch at the threat.

  ‘I have no idea who she is, but it looks like you are the ones who are keeping secrets. How would your men feel if they knew that the Biters could actually co-exist with us, and that your war is based on lies?’

  Alice regretted what she said next a second after the words left her mouth, but she was angry and wanted to lash out, to see Appleseed on the defensive.

  ‘I cannot read fast, but I can read, and in the rooms below, I saw papers that I had lots of time to read. Papers that talked about experiments done before The Rising, about how the Great Fires were wars waged by elements in human governments to get power, about how people could have been vaccinated if your masters wanted to.’

  Appleseed looked as if he had been punched in the gut, but then he smiled: not a smile born out of good humor, but that of a predator looking at a helpless prey.

  ‘Your friend Dr. Protima had tried to reach out to her associates in the early days, telling them such stories, and I personally had the pleasure of breaking many of them. I never got her but I managed to stamp out these lies. My masters have been working for years to create a new Earth, one where there is no overpopulation, no poverty, no weakness. They selected those who were to be vaccinated and we would have repopulated our cities and started afresh. The spread of the infection and the way it mutated surprised us, but we would have achieved what we wanted long ago by wiping out those critters had it not been for that stubborn hag.’

  Alice was suddenly very afraid. There was only one reason Appleseed could be sharing all this so openly: if he had no fear that she could give away these secrets. He loomed over her.

  ‘And you, my dear, a wild girl from an inconsequential settlement, ruled by that delusional, idealistic father of yours. Do you think you can come in the way of the vision of the most powerful men in the world? The Central Committee is based in China, but unlike what your father believes, it’s not just the Chinese. Elements of the Chinese government of old are there, together with the richest and most powerful bankers and politicians of the Old World. You are like an insect before their vision for a New World.’

  He heard the door open as Dewan came back, and he leaned close and whispered, ‘Be careful, my dear. Accidents are known to happen all the time in the Deadland where you live.’

  Alice walked to the helicopter, numb with fear and dreading what was to follow. A part of her had wanted to believe that the Queen's rants and prophecies were nothing more than the product of a delusional mind. She had wanted nothing more than to forget about all that she had seen and heard while she had been among the Biters and to get on with her life. To have Appleseed so casually admit that it was all true chilled her. There was, of course, the realization that perhaps everything the Queen had said had been true after all, and that perhaps the Biters were not the only, or even the most dangerous, enemies ordinary people like Alice and her family had to fear. As the helicopter took off, she saw Appleseed standing on the flight line, waving to her.

  Her first thou
ght was that she would go and tell her father everything. She didn't know if he would believe her, but she was sure that he would have some ideas on what to do. After all, what could she do alone against someone like Appleseed, his masters, and all the force Zeus could bring to bear? Between the hordes of Biters, who regarded every human with fear and hatred, and Zeus, what chance did she have alone?

  Then an even greater fear gripped her. Appleseed had known who her father was. He would know that she would likely go and tell him everything. She suddenly felt very afraid for what the coming days were going to bring for her and her settlement.

  ***

  SIX

  Alice had a quiet dinner back at the settlement, but found it impossible to sleep. Jane was lying in her own sleeping bag just feet from her, and Alice considered waking her up, but then dismissed the thought. What could she possibly tell her older sister that would make the story she had to tell sound anything other than ludicrous? She lay in silence for a few more minutes, but soon realized that she was so on edge that there was no way she could sleep. Her ears seemed to be picking up every sound and magnifying it, mirroring her fears. A solitary footstep sounded like a full squad of Zeus troopers; the sound of a bird or bat flying made her wonder if a helicopter was on the way. Finally, Alice sat up and realized that the risk of her being laughed at or not believed was nothing compared to what would happen if Appleseed did carry out his threat and the settlement was taken totally by surprise.

  She got up and quietly walked to the room her parents were in. Her mother was asleep, but her father was poring over some papers. The brutal fact was that everyone who had survived so long in the Deadland had to know how to take a life, and she knew her father had done his share of fighting and killing, but he always was more in his element as a man of peace. Which was why he was the de facto leader of their settlement. He was the person people knew they could rely on to get fair advice on how to solve a dispute. He was the one who was trusted to tally and apportion their stocks of food and fuel, which he was doing now. And he was the only person in the world whom Alice could contemplate trusting with her secret.

  He looked up at Alice and smiled, motioning for her to sit down next to him.

  'Dad, can we talk outside?'

  He put the papers aside and joined her in the chill of the night. As they walked together around the settlement, he didn't say a word, choosing to wait for when Alice would be ready to say what was on her mind.

  'Dad, I think I found out some stuff. It sounds crazy, but I think it's true, and because of it, we may all be in danger. I'm really scared.'

  He stopped and looked at her.

  'Alice, all those years ago when everything suddenly went to hell, I was just as scared. Your mom was expecting you and with all the chaos in the last few days, I had no idea how I could protect my family.'

  'So what did you do?'

  He smiled, the light from torches burning around the settlement's walls reflecting in his glasses.

  'I got help. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to ask for help. I went to a general in the Indian Army who had become a friend, and he let us shelter with his unit in their barracks when the Biters came out. He and I started this settlement once we had to leave the cities after they became unlivable and we realized that there was no more government and no more help coming our way.'

  Alice wrapped her hands around herself, not just because of the chill, but because she needed to brace herself to tell her story. Her father put an arm around her and they continued walking as she spoke. He didn't interrupt her once, though he did see his face cloud over with a flash of anger when she related what had happened with Appleseed.

  Finally, he stopped and seemed to be staring off into the distance. When he said nothing for several seconds, Alice tugged at his hand.

  ‘Dad, I know it sounds crazy. That’s why I was so afraid of saying anything to you.’

  When her father turned to look at her, Alice was shocked to see his eyes well up with tears.

  ‘Alice, when the first infections emerged and within a day or two all law and order broke down, a lady had come to meet me at the Embassy, pleading with me to pass on some information to my superiors in Washington. The Ambassador was in the US so she wanted to meet me. Just before she was to come and visit me, I got a call direct from someone in the White House that I was not to meet her or to entertain anything she had to say. I thought she was another wacko who had lost it in the madness of those days and I did not meet her.’

  Alice felt her heart almost stop as she guessed what was to come next.

  ‘That lady’s name was Dr. Protima Dasgupta. She was an Indian-American researcher who had recently left the government. My background check showed that she had been working on some classified projects, which had such a high level of secrecy that I couldn’t even find out what they were.’

  ‘So everything she said is….’

  Her father exhaled loudly, as if clearing his mind and trying to come to grips with what he now faced.

  ‘Alice, I don’t know if everything she said is true or not, but what’s clear based on what you saw is that there is more to the Biters than we’ve always been led to believe. In the five days after The Rising, when the media was still on, did you know what was on TV every single day?’

  Alice had never watched TV but knew of it from her parents and sister, so she just shook her head.

  ‘Reports about how horrible these creatures, these mutants, were. Reports about how our brave troops were fighting a new war on terror. Every single channel was screaming about how these creatures needed to be wiped out. But what was funny was that ordinary folks had no real protection; most National Guard units in the US were pulled back to barracks. Then all of a sudden, wars started breaking out all over. If I were a conspiracy nut, which I most certainly am not, I could start connecting all those dots and say that what this Queen or Dr. Protima has to say may well be more true than not. But that’s not what worries me most. Something else terrifies me.’

  ‘What, Dad?’

  He looked at Alice, his eyes dead serious.

  ‘If Protima lives, there is a chance that this secret could come out, and getting to her is the only chance Zeus and its masters have of wiping out the Biters as per their plan and then bring the surviving humans under their control. Appleseed now suspects that you know where she may be. He will be coming for you.’

  Alice tried to put on a brave face.

  ‘Dad, can we hold them? We have almost two hundred men and women who can fight. We can all shoot well, and we know this area better than they ever will.’

  He shook his head sadly.

  ‘No, sweetheart, we won’t be able to hold them. You’ve seen a lot more death and evil than I would have ever wished upon a child of mine, but the most evil thing in this world is what one man can do to another. If Zeus comes here with their air power and heavy weapons, we won’t last more than a few minutes. They will wipe us out and take you away.’

  Alice didn't know what to say. Part of her felt guilty for having involved her father. The rational part of her knew that the dangers would have been just as great and just as real even if she had not told a soul, but telling her father and seeing how scared even he seemed made it even more real, and infinitely more frightening.

  ***

  'Gladwell, we don't know if even a word of this is true.'

  The speaker was Rajiv, a former banker who had become one of the pillars of their settlement ever since he and his wife had stumbled onto them while running from a horde of Biters. Alice had sat quietly for the half hour her father had taken to relate her story. He had thankfully spared her the ordeal of having to speak in front of more than two hundred people, most of whom looked increasingly skeptical as the tale progressed. Alice saw more than a few of them get up and leave. She knew they were among the many who had lost family and friends to the Biters, and even an insinuation that the Biters were anything but a mindless, bloodthirsty horde offended them. Wh
at made it worse was that the first accusation came not from one of the rabble-rousers but the normally placid Rajiv.

  Alice's father looked at Rajiv, pleading with him. 'Why on Earth would Alice make all this up?'

  Rajiv looked sheepish and shrugged his shoulders. 'She is but a girl. Maybe she just got scared in the tunnels down there and imagined things.'

  'Or maybe this is just you trying to hold onto your so-called freedom!'

  That stinging accusation came from the rear of the group, and Alice saw her father flinch as if he had been struck physically. His accuser was now standing up, and as three or four more men stood up, felt emboldened to continue his tirade.

  'For years, Zeus has been coming to us. What they want isn't much: our boys to join their army, a share of whatever we find by way of salvage, and maintaining a tally of our weapons with them. In return, we get some fixed rations, ammunition and safety.’

  Alice saw her father’s face tighten.

  ‘We are FREE! That counts for something. We all owed allegiance to others, and several of you served in government or in uniform, so we all know what that meant. But that was different: that was allegiance to a nation, to our identity. Zeus are a bunch of hired guns, and their real masters never reveal themselves openly. Have you forgotten about those settlements who signed up and then had their weapons taken because Zeus decided they were needed elsewhere? Who saved them from attacks after that? What about those who were re-settled into farms to grow food, half of which is taken away by Zeus for their masters with no payment? What about all those young people who are taken away and never seen again – and the rumors that they are being used as bonded labour in the factories and mines of the elites who control Zeus? Why become their slaves when we can be free?’

  It was an old argument, one that had consumed many meetings before, but tonight the revelations about what Alice had found had given it a new, bitter edge. The man who had been arguing with her father refused to back down.