by Mainak Dhar
‘How’s she holding up?’
Jo looked tired and miserable but managed to smile.
‘Poor girl’s been through a lot. Lost her family and then the young man who got her to us. At least we still have each other.’
Gladwell hugged Jo and sat next to her on the floor. He was due for sentry duty in two hours’ time, so he wanted to get as much rest as he could. He ran his hand gently over Jo’s stomach.
‘How’s the little one doing?’
‘Still kicking and jumping around.’
‘Thought of a name?’
Truth be told, Gladwell was so drained that he no longer had the energy to debate names. He was happy to go with whatever Jo chose.
Jo thought of the bunny-eared young man who had got Neha to safety despite knowing that he was doomed and of the wish they had set out to fulfill. She had heard people start referring to the world outside as Deadland and the name had stuck. While she did not want her daughter to be born into such a world, she was not yet ready to give her hope. So she thought of a name that would pay homage to the brave man wearing bunny ears, a name that harked back to childhood tales of a more innocent time, a name that would hold out the promise of a land filled with wonder, not death.
She looked at Gladwell, her mind made up.
‘We’ll name her Alice.’
***
HUNTING THE SNARK: AN ALICE IN DEADLAND ADVENTURE
It has now been close to two years since Alice followed a bunny eared Biter down a hole, triggering off events that changed her life and that of everyone in the Deadland.
The Central Committee has been overthrown in Shanghai and the people of the Mainland freed from its tyranny. Red Guards no longer threaten Alice and the people of Wonderland and humans and Biters are beginning to learn to live with each other.
That short-lived sense of security is shattered when Shanghai is obliterated in a savage and sudden attack. When that same new danger threatens Wonderland, Alice must embark on a perilous journey to hunt down this threat.
This adventure takes her deep into the Homeland, a desolate land where her parents once came from; a land now torn apart by Zeus mercenaries, bandits and wild Biters; a once mighty and prosperous nation known as the United States of America.
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The one day of freedom the people of Shanghai enjoyed was exhilarating till it was ended by a mushroom cloud that reduced most of them to ashes.
Galvanized by news from returning veterans from the Indian Deadland about the true nature of the war on terror being waged there, discontent had been simmering in the Mainland for months. Then, one day, a young girl had appeared on TV screens, shocking at first due to her half human, half Biter nature. The words she had to say however were even more shocking than her appearance. Alice Gladwell's story laid bare the lies the Central Committee had been peddling for years and finally brought home to millions of Mainlanders what the war on terror had really been about. The Rising had occurred more than fifteen years ago, but now they knew that it had not been the sudden emergence of undead monsters called Biters that had brought it about. They now knew the very human machinations and politics that had led to the spread of the infection. They now knew that the war that was being waged in the name of providing them security was in fact nothing more than a war being waged to secure the interests of some members of the Central Committee and Zeus, the mercenary army that acted on its behalf.
The Central Committee had reacted as tyrants have throughout history when confronted with the prospect of those they had been ruling finally rising against them. They lashed out with overwhelming force. But again, as history teaches us, air power and artillery are never powerful enough to crush a people’s desire for freedom. Under the guidance of senior Red Guard officers who had defected to their cause, and their armory bolstered by missiles and heavy weapons defectors brought with them, the dissidents began to turn the tide. There was fierce fighting for four months, with heavy losses on both sides, and then suddenly the Zeus troopers began to leave. It was as if their unseen masters had seen that the Central Committee was now living on borrowed time, and they wanted to cut their losses. That finally turned the tide, and the Central Committee fell. As with most revolutions, the end was not pretty. Old men, who had clung onto power at the cost of thousands of lives, were executed in the streets, and in a particularly vicious form of justice, several Central Committee members were exiled out of the city, to try and survive in lands infested with Biters.
That morning, General Chen had been on the video link with Wonderland, relaying news of their final victory to his comrades there. It had been more than a month since he had seen Alice, the girl he had first tried to destroy, and then been inspired by, as he waged his own battle for liberation in the Mainland. Alice had told him that the people of Wonderland had used the last four months to gradually rebuild their city after the damage it had suffered in the assault by the Red Guards, spearheaded by the half-Biter Red Queen that the Central Committee had created in its labs to destroy Alice. Biters and humans were beginning to live together, and while trust was perhaps going to take time to build, at least coexistence was something that most people in Wonderland had come to accept. Hearing and seeing the progress in Wonderland gave Chen hope that his own nation would one day know such peace. If the barren wasteland that had come to be known as the Deadland could now be the home of such a flourishing and peaceful city, there was indeed hope that humanity, and human civilization, could be resurrected after more than fifteen years of war.
His time in the torture chambers of the Central Committee had left him with one ruined eye and a leg that didn’t quite work any more. However, his days of fighting were long over. Now as he watched civilians and Red Guards mingle in the battle scarred streets of Shanghai, he felt that perhaps there was indeed going to be a time of peace again in his homeland.
Soon after his call with Alice, he was called by one of his officers, the man’s wavering voice betraying his panic.
‘Sir, there’s something wrong. The men at the airfield are picking up an incoming target on their radar.’
Chen got on the radio to the airfield, which had been won in a bitterly fought battle just a couple of weeks ago. Loyal Red Guards were now manning the radar and the few helicopters that had survived the battles. When the radar operator told him that the contact was moving in at over a thousand kilometers per hour, Chen began to worry. There were no fighter jets left in the Mainland and the handful of helicopters that had survived the fighting were now under the control of his forces. Perhaps fifteen years ago, a combat veteran like Chen would have instinctively thought of what the incoming threat could have been, but nobody had fired a cruise missile in more than fifteen years. Indeed, there were not supposed to be any such weapons left. A forward patrol then radioed in, saying that they had spotted a low-flying rocket flying towards Shanghai. Chen slammed his fist on the table in frustration. When the American Zeus officers had left, he had been puzzled as to why they had gone to such lengths to sabotage the few air defenses left around Shanghai. Now he began to suspect that their withdrawal had been part of a plan. Still, some of his men would have hand held surface to air missiles, and he began barking orders to have them moved to the likely path of the incoming rocket. Even as he started issuing his orders, he knew that in a city the size of Shanghai, he would never get enough men in position in time.
‘Sir, the rocket is now just a minute away from impact. Target seems to be the centre of the city.’
Chen put down his headset and went to the balcony of the hotel that had been serving as his makeshift headquarters. People were still celebrating outside and he saw a group of young soldiers flirting with a few women. He smiled sadly, knowing now that the battle was far from over. Someone had fired one missile at the city, and it would certainly not be the last. Part of his mind wondered where the rocket would have
come from. As the Central Committee had fallen and many of their archives and documents revealed, Chen had learned that the men who had seemingly ruled the Mainland had only been functionaries of hidden masters who lived in what had been the United States, forming what was called the Executive Committee. He had no idea about their identity, but he now knew that the Executive Committee had been calling the shots, and had worked with some Chinese generals and politicians to set up the Central Committee to run the Mainland on its behalf. Perhaps, the Executive Committee had retaliated for the loss of its dominions in China with the missile strike. There were no more functioning air raid warnings, so word was being passed around, largely through word of mouth or radios, warning people to take cover. Someone below shouted, pointing at the sky, and Chen looked up to see a small, dark shape diving in towards the city. He thought of going back to warn the radar operator to keep a watch for more missiles when the missile exploded.
Chen died a few seconds later, along with thousands of others caught in the fireball of the initial explosion. As the blast wave spread through the city, thousands more perished, and the few who survived perhaps counted themselves unlucky to have to live out the remainder of their lives with the pain and suffering of burns and radiation, and with no access to any medical facilities.
***
‘Come on, turn on the screen!’
Arjun had spoken the words, giving voice to what many of the hundreds gathered around the screen felt. As had been the routine over the last few months, the people of Wonderland had gathered around a giant TV screen which Danish had hooked up to his computer, projecting the latest news from around the world and also updates on what was happening at Wonderland. The small community that had started out in the ruins of what had once been the city of Delhi had almost been decimated by the attack launched by the Central Committee’s Red Guards and the force of Biters led by the half-Biter Red Queen. Everyone at Wonderland knew that they had enjoyed a very narrow escape, and the crowd around the screen at the abandoned stadium reflected that. Alice was there of course, and while she had decided not to seek any formal position of authority, it was an unspoken truth that this young girl was their leader. There were those who had started Wonderland with Alice, men like Arjun, the guerilla fighter who had once been a shoe salesman; Satish, the Zeus officer who had defected with many of his men and weapons and played a pivotal role in the battles that had followed; and then there were the Biters. Just six months ago, the Biters had been shunted off to a reservation on the outskirts of Wonderland, but now they were standing mingled among the human inhabitants of Wonderland. Part of that was due to the fact that Alice’s blood samples that Dr. Edwards had taken back to the United States with him had led to the development of a vaccine, which had over the last two months been administered to all the humans in Wonderland. At one stroke, knowing that they could no longer be transformed into Biters on being bitten made people far more comfortable with the idea of having Biters around. Also, it brought home the truth that the Biters were not some sort of supernatural undead, but were suffering from some sort of disease- a disease that could still not be cured, but at least could now be vaccinated against. However, part of that new-found acceptance of the Biters came from the knowledge that without Alice and her Biters, Wonderland would have been lost. Biters like Bunny Ears, now standing next to Alice, with one hand missing below the elbow and bloody scars over his body- testament to the many battles he had fought in defense of Wonderland.
Danish, who had become the eyes and ears of Wonderland, monitoring the world outside from the communications center called Looking Glass set up in an old temple, was now hooking up his computers to the screen. All morning, he had been in communication with his counterparts in Shanghai, and the people of Wonderland had been rejoicing in the news that the Central Committee had finally crumbled. What would follow was still unclear, but at least the destiny of the Mainland now lay in the hands of her people, not some men in the Central Committee who were looking out for only their own interests and pursuit of power. Danish was trying to hook up his computers to cameras set up in the middle of Shanghai where General Chen had told them they would formally announce victory and lay out the path ahead.
Alice saw the people gathered around her, and she knew that finally, she was home. She had been born soon after The Rising, when the Biters emerged and the world’s powers tore themselves apart in an orgy of nuclear madness. She had grown up in the Deadland outside what had been Delhi, and her home had been a settlement whose security from bandits and Biters and freedom from the mercenary armies of the Central Committee had been zealously defended by her father and others like him. They had paid dearly for that freedom- Alice had lost her family in the fighting, and she had also lost her humanity. She was now half-Biter, and after all that she had gone through, she perhaps did not regret it any more. At sixteen, she was too young to think of things like destiny, but Arjun had once told her that perhaps this was what she was meant to do, and she was beginning to think he was right. Seeing the Biters and humans standing together, seeing children playing freely, seeing people laughing and joking together, without worrying about air raids or attacks by Red Guards, she felt that perhaps it had all been worth it. She was looking forward to seeing the people of the Mainland rejoice in their own hard-fought freedom. There is nothing sweeter than freedom, other than perhaps a freedom that has been won at the cost of your own blood, sweat and tears.
‘It’s coming online in a minute.’
At Danish’s declaration, a buzz of anticipation swept through the people gathered around the screen. Alice had been born in a time when young girls fought for their lives in the Deadland instead of surfing the Net, so she had very little understanding of the technology involved, or indeed of how they would soon see what was happening thousands of kilometers away. All she knew was that the machines man could make were not just meant for killing, and in the hands of men like Danish, could be put to very good use.
The screen flickered to life and when the black and white picture resolved itself, there was an audible gasp that swept through the crowd. Alice couldn't believe what she saw on the screen before her. In the morning's chat with Chen, she had caught glimpses of Shanghai- tall buildings with lights on, streets bustling with people- all things that had given her hope for what Wonderland could one day become. Now, she saw nothing but rubble. Most buildings that she saw were shattered, a cloud of dust seemed to hang over the city, and there was absolutely no sign of life.
Then Alice saw a solitary figure stumble into view. The man was covered in dust and seemed to be burnt badly. He staggered forward and fell to the ground, not to get up again. Alice looked on in horror, as everyone around her stared at the devastated ruins that had hours ago been Shanghai.
***
DEADLAND: UNTOLD STORIES OF ALICE IN DEADLAND
In the Amazon.com bestselling Alice in Deadland series, we meet a fifteen-year-old girl called Alice living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland ravaged by undead Biters. Alice follows a bunny-eared Biter down a hole, triggering an adventure that forever changes her life and that of everyone in the Deadland. The true conspiracy behind The Rising which destroyed human civilization is revealed, and Alice discovers her destiny in defeating the dark forces behind it.
But what was life like for Alice growing up in the Deadland? How did she first come face to face with Biters? How did she come to be such a skilled fighter? In a world full of violence and death, did she ever know friendship, and even love?
This collection of stories answers all those questions and reveals to you the hitherto untold story of Alice in Deadland.
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FREE EXCERPT FROM DEADLAND
'Daddy, I saw a hellocottor again.'
Robert Gladwell rushed out of his home, assault rifle in hand.
'Alice, get back here!'
He caught up with his four-year-old daughter near the gates of their settlement and dr
agged her back. Bewildered as to why the simple pleasure of seeing such a wonderful and strange flying machine had been interrupted so rudely, Alice began bawling. Gladwell took cover behind the wall of the old building that he and his family had made their home and watched skyward, looking anxiously for any signs of the black helicopter that had been circling over their area for the past few weeks. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw no more sign of it, and then turned to his little daughter. He knelt in front of her and wiped away her tears.
'Alice, sweetheart, you know I told you that when those things fly around, we must stay inside our houses, and you know it's not safe to go wandering about without a grown-up, don't you?'
She nodded, still choking back her tears. Gladwell sensed movement all around him as others in their settlement came out from behind cover. They had agreed that till it was clear who the men in the helicopters were and what they wanted, it was best to lie low. Four years of surviving in what had come to be known as the Deadland had taught them all to be naturally suspicious and cautious if they wanted to survive.
Jane, Alice's elder sister, came and fetched her.
'Alice, come on. I'll show you the puppy who wandered in last night.'
All her sorrows forgotten in an instant, Alice's face lit up in a smile.
'I'll name him Doggie. Can I please? Please, can I?'
Jane tousled Alice's hair and took her hand as she led her away. She was ten years older than Alice, and in the last four years, Gladwell sometimes thought his older daughter had aged four decades. Gone was the sometimes rebellious and always active girl who had been knocking on the doors of what promised to be a trouble-filled stint as a teenager. Jane seemed more mature, more composed, but in her eyes, Gladwell saw none of the old spark. The lifelessness of the land they lived in was reflected in his daughter's eyes.