Alice in Deadland Trilogy

by Mainak Dhar

  ***

  Alice brought up her gun to fire, but Li’s hand shot out at blinding speed, and the gun flew from Alice’s grip. She looked down to see a metallic star embedded in her right palm. Even before Alice had fully pulled it out, Li was upon her, screaming with her sword raised above her head with both hands. Alice brought up her knife to parry the blow and barely succeeded, the razor sharp edge of the sword slicing through part of her left arm. Alice might have felt no pain, but she realized that she was up against a formidable enemy, so she rolled out of the way to gain some space and time to think.

  Li’s red eyes were glowering and she hissed in rage.

  ‘I have heard much about you, Yellow Witch. Now I will avenge all you have done by cutting your head off and taking it with me.’

  Alice had her knife ready, but she knew that her enemy would have a big reach advantage with her sword. She seemed to be perhaps only a few years older than Alice, and like the other enemy Biters she had seen, her face and skin seemed relatively unmarked. She came in again, thrusting with the sword, and Alice side-stepped her, twisting the knife into her stomach as she passed. As Alice regained her balance, she saw Li spit in contempt.

  ‘You cannot gut me like a mere human, witch!’

  This woman was unlike any enemy she had ever faced. Biters were simple to deal with; they knew nothing of tactics nor skill. Human adversaries, no matter how skilled or strong, were at a disadvantage versus her because they would tire, fall victim to wounds – she would not. However, for the first time she was facing someone like her, and she would have to rethink how she fought.

  Li struck again and Alice again weaved out of the way, this time sweeping Li’s leg under her as she passed. Li hit the ground hard as Alice turned to face the next attack. She did not know where this half-Biter had come from or where she fit into the Central Committee’s plans, but one thing was clear. She was making an elementary mistake: she was fighting angry.

  Li swung her sword again and grunted in despair as she missed and overshot and once again Alice stabbed her in the back before rolling away.

  Li and her elder brother had been brought up in a Red Guard Academy since she had been five years old when her father had been called up on duty in the Deadland and her mother killed by Biters in the chaos following The Rising. The Central Committe had identified gifted children and trained them from an early age, hoping to create the vanguard of a new China when things stabilized. As the war raged on, the graduates of the Academy became the elite officers of the Red Guards. With her impressionable young mind filled with tales of brutal hordes of Biters and of terrorists threatening the Mainland, Li had grown up with the certain knowledge that one day she too would serve her nation in this war.

  Then as the war continued to rage in the Deadland and more and more Red Guard officers were rushed into frontline combat as Zeus units began to mutiny, her father and brother were sent to the Deadland to combat the menace posed by the terrorists led by some Yellow Witch. Rumors in the Academy spoke of a half-Biter monster who could not be killed. Then came the news that both Li’s father and brother had perished in the fighting. At that time she had not yet graduated, but based on her skills had already been assigned to a Special Forces unit. She sent a petition to the Central Committee, pleading to be sent to the Deadland, hoping she would have a chance to avenge her father and brother. When Commissar Hu himself visited her and told her that she was to be part of a special unit to be inserted in the Deadland, she was ecstatic. When she learnt what she would have to endure, she began to have second thoughts. Then she was shown photos of the Yellow Witch, who it was said had been personally responsible for the death of her brother. She talked to combat veterans who told her about how her brother had been about to surrender, but had been killed in cold blood by the Witch. She was shown photographs of her brother’s mutilated body. She had nobody or nothing to live for and she wanted to get revenge, so she signed up for the special program.

  And now she finally had her chance at vengeance.

  She was screaming at Alice to attack, but Alice held back, waiting for Li to commit to another strike. Alice knew that her only chance at a decisive blow was to the head and she would just wait for Li to make another mistake. Li had had years of the very best training. Alice had nowhere near that, but she had learned from years of living and surviving in the Deadland.

  Li reached into her belt and hurled another shuriken at Alice. Alice ducked, the star whizzing past her. However that gave Li the time to rush forward with her sword, slicing deep into Alice’s side. The sharp samurai sword cut into Alice’s flanks where her belt was. Alice looked down and saw that it had sliced through the book she carried tied there at all times. The sword strike would not have finished her, but she would have had a pretty hard time trying to fight with her guts spilling out, and that would have slowed her down enough for Li to finish her off. Alice backed off, thanking the storybook named after a girl called Alice for having saved her. As Li screamed in frustration and lunged at her again, Alice went down on a knee, striking up with both hands as her knife penetrated Li’s defenses and took her in the chest. As Li stopped, Alice jumped up, her elbow hitting Li’s nose hard. A front kick sent Li staggering to the ground.

  Seeing their leader in trouble, two of Li’s Biters rushed to attack Alice, who turned to face this new threat. The first Biter was just a couple of feet away when his head disappeared in a mist of blood. The second followed an instant later. Alice turned to see Vince and Satish approaching, firing their assault rifles. The bodies of dozens of Biters lay scattered around her. While Bunny Ears and the remaining Biters were still outnumbered, with Vince and Satish there they would thin the odds pretty fast.

  Li saw the new threat and knew that she would have to abort the mission. Tempting as it was to try and gain her vengeance this day, she knew that her Biters would not last against the combined force of Biters and the trained soldiers who seemed to have appeared on the scene. She screamed at her Biters to retreat and ran towards the nearest helicopter. A handful of Biters made it with her, but the others were picked off by Vince, Satish and Alice. Li looked down with rage as her helicopter took off and flew off towards Ladakh. The remaining helicopter was about to take off when Vince took aim and fired at the cockpit, killing the pilot.

  Alice stood there, observing the carnage around her. They had prevented another attack on Wonderland, but at a terrible cost. She saw Bunny Ears and several of her Biters standing around Hatter’s fallen body. She had been told that Biters had no emotions, and certainly they could not cry, but there was no doubting that Bunny Ears and the others had felt something at the passing of their comrades.

  Edwards ventured from cover.

  ‘Now I know what they were after with their experiments. They wanted to make another like you, and looks like they succeeded.’

  Alice saw Vince grinning. She raised her eyebrows; what could he possibly find funny in the middle of all this bloodshed? He saw her expression and while his grin instantly disappeared, there was no mistaking the excitement in his eyes. He pointed to the helicopter the attackers had left behind.

  ‘Look at the bright side. Now we have our own air force.’

  ***

  Chen cringed as he heard the sounds of the neighboring office being trashed. When only one helicopter had come back, he had known something was wrong, and Li had rushed into the office in a rage. He looked at Hu.

  ‘Comrade Commissar, she seems like a spoilt young girl, not your elite super soldier.’

  He noted with some satisfaction the twitch of irritation on Hu’s face, but the Commissar quickly recovered his composure.

  ‘Give her some time. In the meantime we will go and sit in your office.’

  They passed the time with chess. Chen thought he had the Commissar on the ropes when he managed to trap the Queen, but then Hu surprised him by checkmating him within two moves. The normally humorless Hu allowed himself a smile as he spoke.

  ‘Comrade Gene
ral, sometimes one must turn defeat into victory. Did you see the piece I used to distract you?’

  ‘Yes, Comrade Commissar, you made me think you had left your White King vulnerable.’

  Hu got up and walked to the window, watching the building at the far end of the base, where Li was probably still taking out her anger on the office furniture.

  ‘Comrade General, I did not anticipate that they would intercept this mission, but perhaps there is yet something we can salvage from this. These is one other possibility; a White King I have been using for small moves. Perhaps now his role can become more decisive.’

  ***

  Danish was in front of his console in the Looking Glass. He had got word of the battle and while Alice had not told him the full story, since their communications were most likely intercepted by the Red Guards, the mention of a Red Queen and her Biters had him worried no end. If the Red Guards had been behind the Biter attacks, they had at one stroke found a way of driving a wedge between the humans and Biters in Wonderland and depriving Wonderland of some of its most experienced fighters.

  Arjun came up behind him.

  ‘Danish, I have a Cabinet meeting with Arun in the evening, so I thought I’d check if you needed anything from town.’

  Danish asked Arjun to sit down.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it. You must not just have been a salesman, but a bloody Oscar winning actor before The Rising. You actually have Arun convinced that you’re going to side with him.’

  Danish had spoken in jest, but Arjun’s reply was dead serious.

  ‘When the time comes. Till then, I can’t have all of us desert Wonderland. Any news from the Americans?’

  The question brought a smile to Danish’s face.

  ‘Oh yes! They’ve got several servers up, and while the Red Guards are trying to block them, they are now communicating a lot with each other and with us over the Net. The news is that they’ve re-captured a couple of old airbases. After so many years, I have no idea if they can get those planes flying and combat ready, but if they do, then the battle for the American Deadland will be really interesting.’

  Arjun asked him what he was planning for lunch, and Danish replied, patting his ample belly, ‘I haven’t had breakfast, so let’s get to town and grab a bite at McDonald’s.’

  McDonald’s was the name given to the first and so far only restaurant in Wonderland. It had been opened in the burned out shell of an old restaurant from before The Rising, but the large yellow ‘M’ had survived and while the food served consisted of soups, rice, vegetables and the occasional burger when hunting parties got lucky, it made everyone feel better that they had the option to eat in a restaurant again. It was one small step on the long and winding road towards normality.

  A jeep pulled up outside and they saw Arun walking in.

  ‘Hey, Arun. I’m stepping out for lunch. The Looking Glass is all yours.’

  Arun sat down and fiddled with the radio in front of him. He had never anticipated that this hobby of his from before The Rising would prove so handy now. He had been a member of parliament, one of the rising young stars of Indian politics, when The Rising took place. People had said that he would one day have a shot at being Prime Minister, that he was destined for great things. The Rising had changed all that. At one stroke, he had gone from a man of considerable power and influence to one who was nothing. After The Rising, the only people who really counted were those who were strong enough or ruthless enough to survive the chaos that followed. Arun had gone into hiding in the Ruins with his family, and seen two children be taken by the Biters. They had stumbled into a settlement in the Deadland where they had lived the lives of scavengers, sending a few young boys and girls every month with Zeus troopers to serve in labor camps or farms for a modicum of security. He had been happy when Alice had emerged, leading her rebellion against the Central Commitee. He and his family had walked into Wonderland just over a year ago, but quickly his relief at returning to a more stable, safe existence had given way to mixed emotions. How could he tolerate the fact that they were supposed to now live in peace with Biters, the same monsters who had taken his children? How could he look at Alice every day, and follow the half-Biter monster she had become? Not having any alternatives, he had been content to serve for some time, and his skills with the ham radio were well appreciated, but one day he got a transmission that told him that he perhaps had a chance after all to realize the future he once believed he was destined to achieve. He tuned into the right frequency and awaited his instructions.

  ***

  Edwards was holding the charred and torn book in his hands with an almost reverential air. Alice had seen Dr. Protima behave that way, but that had been because she had believed that the book contained a prophecy Alice was destined to fulfil. For Edwards, there were different emotions at work.

  ‘Alice, when people talk of starting off on civilization again, they look at buildings, at electricity, at running water. All of those are important, but what they forget is that perhaps the most important thing to start over may be now in my hands.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Our minds react to things as we see them, and usually with our basest instincts of fear, hatred and self-preservation. But a book captures the best of what people can be. A book reminds us of what is possible when we put those baser instincts aside. The ability to create something that will last beyond us, and carry our ideas to the next generation. When you get back to Wonderland, you must get them to start making books again.’

  Alice played with the grass at her feet.

  ‘I don’t know when and how we’ll ever get back to Wonderland. I had thought that with peace we would get a chance to create a better future.’

  Edwards smiled. ‘It is easy to make peace with an enemy, but difficult for ambitious men to make peace with their own greed and hunger for power. From what you’ve told me, that is what led to The Rising in the first place. It looks like man hasn’t really learnt any lessons from it.’

  Ever since the battle, Alice’s mind had been on litle else other than the unexpected adversary she had just faced.

  ‘Doctor, do you think that you can really create a vaccine that works?’

  ‘Science can always be used for good or evil. The Central Committee is perhaps keen on creating an army of hybrids, but that same science can be used to not just create a vaccine to prevent infections among humans, but perhaps cure Biters as well.’

  That made Alice straighten. ‘Do you think the Biters can be cured?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but looking at their behavior closely, I can say that they are more than just brutes. Yes, there must be some brain damage, but at the very least if we can curb their aggressive instincts, it would make co-existance much easier.’

  Alice remembered what she had heard from Danish about what has happening in the American Deadland.

  ‘Have people always reacted with so much hatred to those different from them?’

  Before Edwards could reply they saw the helicopter come back for a landing. Vince had been like an excited child when he saw the prospect of flying again, and he and Satish had taken off in the captured helicopter for a quick reconaissance flight. As the helicopter landed, and Satish slipped out and ran toward them.

  ‘Alice, Arun doesn’t know how big a mistake he made by having our recon teams pull back. We barely flew out a hundred kilomteres and I could see more than a dozen Red Guard APCs on the roads. This is the first time in months they’ve come out in such numbers..’

  Vince was soon with them as well. His eyes danced with excitement.

  ‘I thought I would never be able to fly again. When I was up there, it felt like I could once again make a difference, that I could once again be worth something.’

  Satish slapped him on the shoulder, and Alice could tell that the earlier frostiness between the men had gone. Though she was still young, she knew that there was little that bonded two people more than being in combat together.

>   ‘Alice, the Red Guards will slowly but surely start taking control over the outlying areas. If they do, you know how easy it will be for them to form a chokehold over Wonderland. Thousands died so we could have this freedom, and now we risk losing all that to petty politics.’

  At that, Edwards scoffed. ‘It’s an old truth. In any war, the soldiers and common people bleed, and the politicians rule over the rubble that remains.’

  A few minutes later, Satish came running to Alice.

  ‘It’s Danish on the radio. He says that Arun and his so-called Cabinet have voted and they want us to return. He says that Arun wants to talk to us and has a proposal he wants to put before us.’

  Alice exhaled deeply in relief.

  ‘Thank whichever god anyone still cares to believe in that Arun has some sense after all. Let’s get back to Wonderland. Once we get the doctor and Vince in front of them they will have to believe our story about the Biters being sent in by the Red Guards.’

  Satish was not so easily reassured. ‘Alice, I don’t trust Arun one bit. This could just be a trap. For all you know, he’s calling us back to arrest us and put us up in front of some court where he acts as judge, jury and executioner. I want to call my remaining recon boys in so they can go with us.’

  Vince tapped Alice on the shoulder. ‘We will ride in at a place and time of our choosing. And if there’s trouble, we can always fly away.’

  Within an hour they were joined by eight of Satish’s men who were still patrolling the Deadland and the captured helicopter took off, its destination the old airport on the outskirts of Wonderland.

  ***

  SIX

  Alice noted with some disappointment that the old airport did not have any guards posted near it. The runway was still functional and with stealthy helicopters like these, the Red Guards could have landed a few hundred men there without Arun and his politician friends even knowing about it.