Alice in Deadland Trilogy

by Mainak Dhar

  Li dove as the glass shattered in front of her, showering her with shards that tore into her face. Bloodied, she screamed in rage as she saw Alice run to the other side of the building, presumably to try and enter it through the side door. Li took out a grenade from her belt and threw it towards the door Alice was headed for. Alice saw the dark object land just feet in front of her and dove to her left as the grenade exploded. The wall she had dived behind took much of the impact of the explosion but she felt a tug at her leg. Looking down, everything below her knee was a mess of blood and skin. But it still moved normally, so she wasn’t out of action yet.

  Tso motioned for the two APCs behind him to stop. His squad had joined up with more than fifty Red Guards who had managed to fight their way into Wonderland and were now proceeding block by block. They had come across only two Biters whom they had shot with ease, but what had shocked them was the resistance they were facing from the human citizens. Tso had seen two conscripts walk up to wave to a woman in a window only to see her shoot them both before rockets fired by the other Red Guards had blown her apart. It seemed like every human in Wonderland was trying to fight them, and while many of them were clearly not trained fighters, in the congested city ruins Tso and his men were paying for every block they secured with blood. When he had asked for support, he had been told that an armored column was on its way, with more than a dozen APCs laden with Red Guards. The two APCs he saw behind him now were the only ones that had survived ambush after ambush with RPGs and grenades on the outskirts of Wonderland. He had been ordered to his current position to go to the help of a female Special Forces officer reportedly inside Wonderland, known by the code name of Red Queen.

  Arjun had been stalking the group of Red Guards for some time. He knew they had inflicted heavy losses on the Red Guards, but it was impossible to seal every entry route into the sprawling ruins. Also, with attack helicopters buzzing around in the skies, the defenders of Wonderland had also paid a steep price. Satish’s missile teams had inflicted heavy damage but the reality was that they had only a small stock of surface to air missiles and it was impossible for them to knock down every single helicopter when the first waves of air attacks came. In the brutal fighting that had raged for the last two hours, the helicopters had by and large disappeared, after their pilots discovered that in such congested areas, with every rooftop bristling with machine gun toting men, women and children, missiles were not the only things that could bring them down. Arjun had been in a particularly vicious firefight with a dozen Red Guards, and with years of practical training in urban warfare he had lured them into ambush after ambush, thinning their ranks until he cornered the last three and he and his men killed them in close combat. But the fighting had taken its toll on his men as well. He had started the last skirmish with three hardened fighters, all of whom were now dead, and two young boys he had using as runners and scouts. In the chaos of the last battle, he had lost track of both of them. So now it was just him, following this group of Red Guards and APCs. There was no way he could hope to cause more than nuisance value before they gunned him down, so instead of attacking he was on the radio with Danish, trying to coordinate reinforcements.

  ‘Looking Glass, where are White Rook and his pawns?’

  ‘No idea whatsoever. They are still mixing it up on the outskirts. I imagine White Rook has his hands full there since I haven’t heard from him in more than an hour.’

  Arjun grunted in frustration. He had known this would be ugly, but he had never really bargained for just how unprepared many people in Wonderland were from the months of sitting around and squabbling over domestic disputes and fawning over the toys the Central Committee had sent. Other than some of his and Satish’s men, and of course Alice, most of the other adults had not even fired a gun in the last year. The comforts of city living had made them forget that freedom was a fragile gift that they could be called upon to defend at any time.

  The Red Guards turned a corner up ahead and Arjun took a shortcut through two abandoned buildings, coming abreast them as they passed. Then, suddenly, the Red Guards stopped. Their officer seemed to be telling them to go slow. Arjun raised his scope to his eyes and saw what the Red Guard officer had seen.

  It was Alice, locked in a hand-to-hand struggle against a girl in a Red Guard uniform inside a nearby building. The Red Queen. One of the Red Guards near Arjun raised his rifle, trying to take a shot, and Arjun knew that terrible odds or not, he could not leave Alice to be attacked from behind like this. He took his last remaining grenade and was about to pull the pin when he saw dark shapes emerge from the buildings around the Red Guards. Next he heard screams from the Red Guards as they were pulled away.

  Alice’s Biters had come to the rescue.

  Tso had ordered his sniper to take out the Yellow Witch when his men started screaming. Biters were streaming out of the adjoining buildings and at such close quarters, his men were being massacred. He shouted for the APCs to open fire and a burst from one of their turret mounted guns mowed down several Biters, but then the Biters were too close for the APCs to fire with their heavy weapons. Tso saw a Biter with bunny ears bite into one of his men and throw the bloodied body aside. The Biter then faced Tso, looking at him with his lifeless eyes. Tso had his rifle ready, but when he saw a dozen more Biters emerge from the shadows, he knew that it would be suicide to make a stand. He shouted for his men to retreat and they clambered atop the APCs as they backed down the street, Tso firing at the hordes as they rolled away. The Red Queen would have to fend for herself for now. He radioed back and heard Commissar Hu himself at the control center. Where was General Chen? The Commissar had never seen combat and without Chen to guide them, the Red Guards were stumbling along, losing far more men than was necessary. The Commissar asked Tso to take another route, saying that the Yellow Witch had to be destroyed and also that another group of APCs was on the way.

  Danish was having a hard time making sense of the mass of confused radio transmissions. He had heard the term the fog of war, but had never truly appreciated it until now. The main armored forces had been stopped but at least two groups of APCs had entered Wonderland, and from the last reports the scouts had sent in, Alice was alone and right in the middle of where both armored groups were converging.

  ***

  Alice felt the knife tear through her right hand, taking with it a chunk of flesh near the elbow. Li brought the knife back for another strike, but Alice blocked it, trapping Li’s knife hand between the palms of both of her hands. Before Li could bring her left hand up to strike, Alice headbutted her, sending her staggering back against the wall.

  After a few minutes of stalking each other through the building, Alice and Li had finally come face to face at close quarters. Both their rifles were lying on the floor by their feet, their magazines empty, and now the two adversaries were grappling hand to hand. For a minute Alice had been without her knife, losing it in the scuffle, but as Li regained her balance she snatched it back up. The two circled each other, and Alice saw that while Li’s lifeless eyes betrayed no emotion, she was spitting and hissing. What had made her so angry? Li struck out again with her knife and Alice brought her left hand up, deflecting the blow, and as Li overextended, Alice turned on one foot, slamming her right elbow hard against the back of Li’s head. Li crashed against a window, shattering the glass. When she faced Alice again, her face was covered with several cuts and gashes.

  Alice knew that Li was a more formidable opponent than any human she could have faced. Like Alice, Li would not tire, would not feel pain, and would not stop unless Alice managed to put a knife or a bullet in her head. However, at such close quarters, Alice held the advantage. Li had been trained in the martial arts from an early age, but unlike Alice, she had not spent her youth fighting to survive every day in the Deadland.

  Li snarled and lunged, bringing her knife up in an arc. Alice blocked the blow, elbowed Li in the face with her left hand and then followed through with a knife strike to the throat. Li pulled
back, the knife still embedded. She felt no pain, but she wanted to scream at this witch, to tell her of all she had caused her to lose – but all she could manage was a sickening gurgle. Blood and spittle bubbled up at her mouth and she spat at Alice.

  Alice turned her face away as the bloody spittle hit her and that gave Li the opening she needed. She sliced at Alice’s left wrist, cutting through veins, and as blood spurted out the knife fell from Alice’s grasp. Li brought her knife up, aiming at Alice’s head, but Alice moved out of the way, backing up. As Li closed in, Alice pivoted on one foot and kicked, catching Li in the solar plexus. As Li staggered back, Alice rushed at her, pushing her like a battering ram straight through the window. Both of them landed on the street outside, covered in shattered and bloodied glass fragments, and as Li tried to get up, Alice smashed her head into the bridge of Li’s nose, shattering it. Alice reached down and pulled her knife out of Li’s neck, but before she could strike, Li managed to get her foot up and kick Alice off, and the two once again faced each other, knives in hand, circling each other.

  Several bullets hit the wall around Alice and she felt at least one tear through her shoulder as she dove to the ground. A full squad of Red Guards was approaching now, guns trained on her. Li roared in frustration. She wanted to finish the Yellow Witch herself, but she was unable to speak, her vocal cords severed. So she raised her hand, signaling for the Red Guards to cease fire.

  Tso ordered his men to pause. He had left the APCs behind and come through the buildings, fighting a running battle with Biters and human defenders, trying to get to the Special Forces officer he had been ordered to aid. Now he was finally close enough to look at her through his scope and he stopped in horror. She looked like a Biter. Both of them did: the Yellow Witch they had been tasked to kill and this mysterious Special Forces officer called the Red Queen. What was going on?

  Alice took advantage of the momentary lull in the fighting to take cover behind a wall. There were at least a dozen fully armed Red Guards and the damn Red Queen. Armed with only a knife, Alice knew she would not last long. She tried to move to the open area to her right but a volley of fire from one of the Red Guards pinned her down.

  Several of Tso’s men had seen what he had and one of them asked, ‘Sir, that Red Queen is a Biter. I thought our mission was to save people here from Biters.’ Tso had no answer to that, but he did have a mission to accomplish. He ordered his men to fan out. They had the Yellow Witch trapped behind the wall and he would finish her. He saw the Red Queen approaching, and he felt himself pull back at the stench and recoil at her blood-covered appearance. What was a monster like this doing in a Red Guard uniform? Li held out her hand and grabbed an assault rifle from one of the men and then she started walking towards the position where Alice was trapped.

  Glass crunched underfoot as Li approached. So this is how it all had to end; surrounded, outnumbered, trapped. Alice felt no regret or sorrow. She had no real life to look forward to anyways and the way she figured it, she had already died thrice. First when she had looked on as her father and his friends were massacred at their settlement; second when she had looked upon the charred remains of her mother and sister, killed in an air strike; and finally that day when she had ceased to be Alice Gladwell and become the Queen of Wonderland. She closed her eyes, thinking back to everything she had gone through. If it all had to mean something, to be worth anything, then she could not let Wonderland be taken without one last fight. If she was going down, she would take as many of her adversaries down with her. Growing up in the Deadland, she had been taught from an early age that there was nothing worse than becoming one of the undead. Better dead than undead. That had been the motto drilled into her during combat training. But in the past few years, she had learnt that there was something worse than that: losing one’s freedom.

  Better undead than unfree. She wondered what her teachers would have said to that as she stepped out, knife in hand, ready for the inevitable.

  ***

  Tso heard the helicopter fly in, and looked up to see its sleek, black shape. He grinned at his men. Finally, they were going to get reinforcements, and hopefully a helicopter ride out of this hellhole. He waved to the helicopter and as the chopper came lower, the side door slid open.

  Something was wrong. The man handling the Gatling gun was not wearing a Red Guard uniform. Tso screamed at his men to take cover as the gun opened fire, spitting death at the Red Guards below. More than half of Tso’s men were cut to ribbons in the first burst and as the rest tried to take cover, Biters appeared from the alleys behind them. Tso knelt and shot one in the head, but there were too many of them. Tso ordered his men to retreat into the buildings and as they ran across the street, another burst from the helicopter’s gun killed two more of his men.

  Alice did not know where the helicopter had come from but Li had been distracted enough by its sudden appearance to give her a window of opportunity. Alice ran towards Li as fast as she could. Growing up, that had been Alice’s claim to fame: the fact that she could outrun anyone in her settlement. Li tried to bring her rifle up, but she was too late. Alice held on to the rifle with both hands and slammed it back into Li’s face, the butt impacting against Li’s already shattered nose and pushing broken bone fragments back into Li’s brain.

  The last thing Li saw was the Yellow Witch looking at her.

  The helicopter landed in the middle of the road and Satish and six of his men jumped out, training RPGs at the building where the Red Guard officer and his men had taken refuge. The Biters were now streaming towards the building, and Alice took out the book from her belt, holding it above her head.

  ‘Stop!’

  The Biters stopped where they were, and Bunny Ears emerged from the crowd. Alice looked at the building and called out to the Red Guards, ‘Surrender now or we will kill you.’

  One of Tso’s men, a conscript barely out of his teens, was crying like a baby, and the other remaining soldier looked to be in shock. Tso knew he was finished, and while he might have been tempted to try and make a last stand, he did not want to be responsible for the deaths of these two boys. There had been quite enough bloodshed today, and for a cause that he was no longer sure of. Looking at the shattered body of the Red Queen, he realized that they had been fighting a war that had been based on lies. He stepped out of the building, his hands above his head, and walked towards Alice.

  ‘I am the officer here. If you want, take me, but let my men go.’

  Studying the man’s nametag for an instant, Alice said, ‘Captain Tso, nobody else needs to die today. We will see you to the outskirts tomorrow, but please don’t come back to Wonderland and remember to tell your masters that we are free and will fight to preserve that freedom.’

  As Satish’s men took Tso and his men into custody, Alice walked up to the helicopter. The cockpit window was open and she looked in to see Vince, grinning at her.

  ‘The White Knight had to come to the rescue of the Queen today, I guess.’

  ***

  ‘Looking Glass, sector 9 is clear.’

  It was now early morning, and Danish had barely slept a single minute, hearing reports as one sector after another was cleared by Satish, Arjun or their men. Much of the previous day had been consumed by fighting, street by street, house by house. The tide had finally turned when Bunny Ears and his Biters had joined the battle. Their initial arrival in the middle of Wonderland had caused many defenders to be alarmed, and indeed a few Biters had been shot down by Wonderland’s panicked residents. Remarkably, however, Bunny Ears and his band had not attacked a single citizen of Wonderland, instead focusing on fighting the Red Guards and the Biters the Red Queen had brought with her. With Vince joining the defense, they had managed to get some air support, both to attack Red Guard units and also to provide advance warning of incoming units.

  By five in the evening, the battle had become one of attrition, and finally Red Guard units had begun to collapse and surrender en masse. Alice had struck a goldmine by
capturing a young officer named Tso. During his debriefing with Arjun and Satish, he had confessed that the rank and file of the Red Guards had no idea about the Red Queen and her Biters. He had felt betrayed and was bitter about the loss of so many of his men for a mission that had turned out to be a lie. Tso’s testimony had been broadcast on the Red Guard radio frequency and while Commissar Hu was quick to call it a fabrication, Danish had no doubts that it helped convince many of the Red Guard units in the city to give up and pull back.

  The night had been one of securing the borders, mopping up any last resistance, and of taking stock of the terrible losses they had suffered.

  Finally, Satish, Arjun, Vince and Alice arrived at the Looking Glass. All the men were dead tired, and both Satish and Arjun had several bandages to cover wounds from shrapnel or flying glass. The most fearsome sight of all, however, was Alice. Her hands and feet were a bloody mess and she seemed to be cut in a dozen places.

  ‘Alice, are you ok?’

  Hearing the concern in Danish’s voice, Alice managed a smile. ‘I’m ok. Being half undead has a few advantages.’

  As they sat down, Vince told them about his journey. He had reached Calcutta, and within a day a Dakota had landed as the Americans had promised. While he had sent Edwards back to America, he had decided to come back after refueling from stocks left at the old airport.

  ‘What made you come back? You could have gone home, Vince.’

  Vince looked at Satish. ‘I was a United States Marine. I saw action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we all thought that if we ever died in combat, it would at least be while serving our nation. Instead my mates were butchered by hired guns after we were betrayed by one of our own once we refused to fly for the Red Guards. I was carted off to a labor camp, where I lived the life of a slave. So I would never give up the chance to finally fly in combat again and be what I once was. Besides, the general wanted me to come back with something for you guys.’