by Mainak Dhar
Removing a flash bang grenade from her belt, Alice began her slow approach. They were now barely twenty meters away and in the darkness did not spot her coming. If anything, sitting so close to the bright flame and staring at it had ruined their night vision. It was this that Alice would use to her advantage.
Alice pulled the pin on her grenade and threw it in a looping arc towards the men. The grenade landed just feet away from them and exploded in a dull thump, momentarily flashing more brightly than the fire.
The first two died without knowing who had shot them as carefully aimed single shots took them in the head or throat. Another Red Guard fired a wild burst from his rifle but fell as another round hit him. The remaining three men were now firing blindly, trying to pin down their attackers while they got their bearings. Alice was firing on the run, and dropped one more. Then she was amongst the two remaining men. The first fell like a chopped tree when Alice smashed his jaw in with the butt of her rifle. The last man was now screaming in terror when Alice pivoted on one foot and kicked him, sending him down. Without waiting to see if there were other Red Guards in the area that would inevitably come to the scene after seeing and hearing the gunshots, Alice ran straight towards the nearest Biter tunnel entrance, removing the branches arranged against the old drainage pipe and diving in.
It was as if she had entered another world altogether. It had been months since Alice had been inside the tunnels, but whenever she entered one, she could never forget the day this had all begun. The day she had dived into a tunnel after a Biter wearing strange bunny ears; the day she had discovered a strange subterranean world where the Biters lived with their mysterious Queen; the day when Alice discovered that her path in life was to take her very far from her settlement in the Deadland.
It was dark inside the tunnel and she lit a signal flare, holding it in her right hand. With her left hand she took out the book and held it before her. She didn’t have to wait long. Within minutes of walking, a Biter appeared before her. She had been an old woman as a human, attacked and transformed in a hospital; even now she had the needle of an IV drip attached to her right arm. Her face was relatively unscathed other than a terrible bite mark to the neck, and when she saw Alice she screamed and opened her mouth to bite. Alice held the book in front of her face and screamed, ‘NO! I am the Queen and you will follow me!’
The Biter retreated, bowing her head down. Alice proceeded down the tunnel. She could now hear scurrying noises all around her in the tunnels. The word would have spread that the Queen was among the Biters. After a few more minutes of walking, she saw Bunny Ears sitting in a corner. Arun was beside him, absently chewing on his fingers. Alice would have loved to be able to tell Bunny Ears to show up with Arun where and when she wanted instead of having to take them with her, but she knew such level of thinking was beyond Biters. Then again, Biters did exactly as she wanted them to. They did not debate, they did not strategize, and they did not have personal political agendas. All things considered, there certainly were times when Alice enjoyed leading Biters more than humans.
Wonderland woke up to find itself ringed by Red Guard patrols. More than once, helicopters flew close to the city and then turned back.
‘Should I just have one of them shot down to make a point?’
Arjun sniggered at Satish’s suggestion. ‘I don’t doubt that time will come, but let’s wait till we deal with our young rebels.’
More than a hundred young boys had gathered in front of the Cabinet. One of them, wearing clothes fresh from a Red Guard shipment, stepped forward.
‘Arjun, why are you stopping us from joining the Red Guards?’
That morning another transmission had come in announcing an incoming message from the Central Committee. Commissar Hu had informed the people of Wonderland that the heroic Red Guards had stepped in, braving the harsh Deadland and wild Biters to provide security to their brethren in Wonderland. He had asked for a hundred volunteers to come out of Wonderland help in the patrols.
Arjun answered, ‘We do not take orders from the Central Committee and certainly we do not send our boys to work for them again. Obedience to tyrants is a habit that is hard to break once formed. Today in the name of security they ask for so-called volunteers. Tomorrow once again they will start taking our people to work on their farms or labor camps.’
Jeers went up from some members of the crowd.
The young man persisted. ‘Don’t you get it? Those bloody Biters have run amuck again and Arun’s dead. The Central Committee has done nothing but help us.’
Arjun stepped forward, bringing his face to within inches of the young man, who took a nervous step back.
‘They have done nothing to help us. They seek to buy our dependence and obedience – to conquer with their cheap clothes and shampoos what they could not with their armies. They want to make us sell our freedom by making us live in fear once more.’
Another boy shouted above the crowd, ‘What other option do we have? To trust our safety to criminals and smugglers?’
Suddenly, the crowd began surging forward and Satish and Arjun began backing up towards the building. There were thousands of others who had gathered to hear the morning transmission and most of them stood as mute onlookers. Yet it took only a few to start a mob.
Satish tried reasoning with the boys. ‘Look, we have all fought together and lived together like a family. We need to work together, not fight each other.’
A fist shot out and grazed Satish on the chin. He calmly grabbed the wrist and snapped it, hearing bones crack. Another boy grabbed him by the hair but he kicked the feet out from under the boy. Arjun had his finger on the trigger of his gun, but he knew that if he fired there would be a bloodbath, and that was just the kind of chaos that the Red Guards wanted to take advantage of.
Two more boys tried to grab Satish and he lost his footing in the surge of the mob. Arjun had his rifle out now and was about to fire in the air, but before he could, a series of shots rang out. Everyone stopped and looked to see Alice standing there, rifle in hand. Just behind her stood Bunny Ears and a second Biter. When people saw his clothes and his bloodied face, there were gasps of horror and surprise.
‘Arun,’ someone whispered.
Alice walked towards the mob surrounding Satish and they melted before her. She climbed the stairs leading into the building and said in a loud, commanding voice, ‘I’m glad at least you remember how to get angry and to fight. I had thought the people of Wonderland had forgotten how to be angry about all that had been taken from us by the Central Committee. But if you have to be angry, if you have to fight, do it against the real enemy, not amongst ourselves.’
There was a stunned silence as Arun stepped forward and the deception of the Central Committee became clear. Arjun told everyone about the Biters the Red Guards had unleashed and how they had divided the people of Wonderland.
Alice looked at the gathered crowd. ‘I don’t have time to convince each and every one of you. The Red Guards are right outside our borders and we will soon be surrounded. Who is with me?’
When Arjun and Satish stood beside her, Bunny Ears shuffled along to join them. At first only a few of those in the crowd moved – but then more and more hands lifted in the air, more and more cries of support rose up.
Smiling, Alice walked away.
‘Get ready. Wonderland just declared war on the Red Guards.’
***
NINE
‘The heroic Red Guards have fanned out across the Deadland to ensure that our brethren in Wonderland can sleep secure in the knowledge that in this time of need they are not alone.’
Someone spat on the ground, another shouted abuse, and Arjun began to see a perceptible change in the mood of the gathered crowd. Many of the younger folks still seemed skeptical, but Arun’s reappearance as a Biter had given many of them reason to doubt what the Central Committee had been telling them. Now seeing the news footage being streamed on the TV showing aerial footage of Red Guard units being a
ir-dropped across the Deadland was a sobering dose of reality. A few of them still shouted out that perhaps the Red Guards meant no imminent harm, but then the ominous announcement was repeated.
‘We repeat our request to the people of Wonderland. Our intelligence indicates that hordes of Biters are about to attack. Please let Red Guards inside the city center to help secure your homes and families and please cooperate with them.’
It was the smartest invasion Arjun had ever seen. To take away people’s liberty in the name of providing them security, to take away freedom in the name of fighting terror, was not a new tactic. But the Central Committee had pulled off a nearly flawless plan, the one weak link being the fact that they had not bargained for Arun having survived the attack. They still did not know Arun’s fate and that element of surprise was something Arjun and the others hoped to capitalize on. Alice and Satish had already left to start coordinating the defenses, but Arjun’s job was to ensure that they could prepare for the house to house fighting that would be inevitable if the Red Guards got inside the city limits. He did not harbor any delusions that everyone would believe that the Central Committee had played them all as a prelude to an invasion, but he got the feeling that he had managed to convince enough of a critical mass. More importantly, it looked like at least the threat of open civil war that had been plaguing Wonderland was finally something that was no longer hanging over all their heads.
***
Chen saw three more helicopters take off, laden with conscripts straight from the Mainland. Hundreds of Red Guards had been sent out overnight on their supposed aid mission. That was what they had been told in their camps in Shanghai and Beijing and he had not done anything to contradict that. He knew he could not do that with Hu looking over his shoulder, but he also knew that in not saying anything to these young men he had essentially condemned many of them to a near certain death. He felt the sting of tears and tried to blink them away. He had almost thrown away his career and his life by surrendering a base instead of having all the men there massacred, but now he had done nothing to stop the bloodshed that was about to follow. Sure, he could rationalize that his dissent would count for little, since he would likely be arrested and sent off to the Mainland, or perhaps even just be executed on the spot for treason given his previous stint at a labor camp. But rationalizing never compensated for not doing the right thing.
Hu was right next to him, smiling.
‘See, Comrade General. Our plan is working like clockwork. We will get what we want without much bloodshed.’
Weighing his words carefully, Chen said, ‘Comrade Commissar, from my experience this Alice and her friends will not go down without a fight.’
Hu chuckled. ‘One mongrel girl and a handful of former mercenaries are all that is left of her army. How long will they last without popular support in Wonderland? If anything, once the next phase begins our boys will be welcomed as liberators.’
Li was looking at a photograph of her family. This was the last photograph that she retained of her entire family together- before her mother had fallen in The Rising, and her father and brother been shipped off to the Deadland. She wished she could cry, that she could shed a tear for what had been taken from her by the savages in the Deadland, but she had come to realize that tears were not for her anymore. Now all that mattered was carrying out her mission and avenging the deaths of her father and brother by shattering the terrorist regime of this so-called Wonderland. She had been keenly following the news reports and she knew that the people of Wonderland had cast away the yellow haired witch and her men. With her latest mission, Li would help bring the common people of Wonderland into the fold of the Central Committee, and then she would have a free hand in hunting down and killing the witch and her followers. She remembered her last encounter with the witch and reminded herself that she would not make the mistake of underestimating her again. Before Li had lashed out in haste in her quest for vengeance. This time she would operate with more deliberation and caution.
To the Biters kneeling before her, she shouted, ‘Come on, glory awaits us.’
***
Danish was sitting in the Looking Glass, going through all the Central Committee transmissions. With all that had happened in the previous few days, he had begun to see patterns in what their propaganda meant for actions on the ground. In the last hour, the talk had shifted to one of reported imminent Biter threats to Wonderland and how the hapless and leaderless citizens were at the mercy of this new terror. He knew it was largely aimed at the masses back in the Mainland, preparing them for inevitable casualties, but it also told him the nature of the attack that was to unfold. Satish had argued that they should focus on the anti-air and RPG teams since the edge the Red Guards would have lay in their air support and their armored vehicles. Danish was no military strategist but months of studying the Central Committee broadcasts had given him some insight into how their minds worked. He knew that popular support for any military action in the Deadland was wafer thin and there had been growing unrest in Mainland cities. So any outright invasion was going to be a very risky move. Yet the Central Committee badly needed the farms in the plains and labor to work them, otherwise the discontent caused by food shortages and by having to work long hours in farms was going to push the masses in the Mainland over the edge. The Central Committee needed to control the Deadland again, but the political cost of a full-scale invasion was going to be prohibitive.
Given those constraints, Danish had to grudgingly admire the plan the Central Committee had put in place. If Arun had not been found the way he was, it was very likely that, at this very moment, Wonderland would have been on the verge of civil war. Then the Red Guards could have just stepped in, welcomed into the people’s arms. If Danish’s reading were correct, the Central Committee would not ideally want the bloodshed associated with a frontal assault. They still seemed to think that Arun was dead and that the people of Wonderland had marginalized Alice and Satish. All the talk of impending Biter attacks could mean only one thing.
***
Alice was lying down on the ground, hidden behind some bushes. There were two of Satish’s men just behind her. They had ventured out more than two kilometers from the borders of Wonderland to cut off the Biter attacks that were likely on the way. There was really no way to anticipate exactly where the attacks would come from, but one thing was certain: the Biters and their Red Queen would have to be travelling together. There was no way Red Guards would be transporting a helicopter full of Biters into battle without her around to control them. That meant that there would have to be only one landing spot. Three deep recon teams had gone further ahead to warn of incoming helicopters. The Deadland around them was crawling with Red Guards and Alice and her group had already eliminated a squad of Red Guards who had stumbled upon them. Satish was with another team a kilometer to the west.
Alice’s radio buzzed to life.
It was from a recon team to the east. ‘White Queen, I think I see birds in the sky.’
Just then, another team called in approaching helicopters to the west.
She called Satish. ‘White Rook, the birds to the west are yours. I’ll watch the ones coming my way.’
She nodded to the two men with her, one of who was carrying an RPG launcher. She had considered bringing along teams equipped with SAMs, but carrying the heavy surface to air missiles would have meant losing much of the stealth they needed to get around the Red Guards teeming around them. She felt a keen sense of anticipation at the prospect of meeting the Red Queen again. She knew that the only possible outcome when the two of them met was a fight to the death, but at the same time she felt curious about whom this girl had been. What had made her hate Alice and the people of Wonderland so much? Alice closed her eyes and remembered the young Chinese girl, virtually a mirror image of her. As far as Alice knew, this Red Queen was the only other person in the entire world like her. In a different life, Alice might have liked to have the chance to sit and talk to her, to understand ho
w she was coping with all the dilemmas and heartbreaks that came with being a young girl who could never be fully human again. Unfortunately, the only thing that they could share in this life was the moment when one of them died at the other’s hand.
She heard the approaching helicopter before she saw it. She noted with some disappointment that it was not one of the black stealthy helicopters that seemed to carry the Red Queen.
The battle for Wonderland was about to begin.
***
‘The latest news is that terrorist forces are attacking Red Guard units in the Deadland. Intelligence indicates that terrorist factions led by disgraced Zeus mercenaries and the self-proclaimed Queen of Wonderland are trying to take advantage of the power vacuum in Wonderland. Our Red Guards are rushing to the aid of our brethren in Wonderland in fighting back these terrorists.’
The statement posted on the Central Committee Intranet was clear enough. Fighting had begun. Chen closed his eyes, thinking of the young conscripts whom he had sent to their deaths. Most of them were little more than scared boys rustled up from the Mainland with minimal military training, fed on a diet of horror stories about Biters and the terrible savage humans who lived in the Deadland. They had known no better than to trust a senior officer like Chen, and he had failed them all by sending them into the meat grinder that the campaign to win over the Deadland had become.
It was a truism in most wars that young soldiers paid with their lives to uphold the lies told by old politicians, but that did not make it any easier for Chen. He saw Hu at the control center, gloating in what he thought was to be his moment of triumph.