by Dhar, Mainak
Deadland
Untold Stories of Alice in Deadland
By Mainak Dhar
Copyright © 2013 Mainak Dhar
All Rights Reserved.
www.mainakdhar.com
This is a work of fiction, and all characters and incidents depicted in it are purely the result of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely co-incidental.
Table of Contents
Greetings from the Deadland
Days of Sorrow
Size and Tears
No More Riddles
My Valentine
Alice in Deadland
About Mainak Dhar
Books in the Alice in Deadland series
Free excerpt from Chronicler of the Undead
Credits
As always, for Puja & Aaditya
GREETINGS FROM THE DEADLAND
In late November of 2011, I uploaded my novel Alice in Deadland to the Kindle store using Amazon’s KDP self-publishing program. I had first discovered the tremendous opportunity in reaching readers worldwide through the Kindle store in March, and after a modest beginning (I sold 118 ebooks in my first month), I was beginning to see some success, having sold some 20,000 ebooks by November. However, nothing had prepared me for the reception my story about a girl called Alice in a dystopian world called the Deadland got from readers. Alice in Deadland quickly became an Amazon.com bestseller and encouragement from readers like yourself led me to write the sequel, Through The Killing Glass, which was published in March 2012.
As of November 2012, the two Alice in Deadland novels had been downloaded by well over 100,000 readers on the Kindle store. This was the kind of reception most writers dream of, and certainly more than I had ever expected. I received more than two hundred reader emails and also started a Facebook group for Alice in Deadland fans (at http://www.facebook.com/groups/345795412099089/). The feedback I got was pretty unanimous—readers wanted to know more about the world that Alice found herself in. How had our civilization been reduced to the Deadland? What was the story behind some of the characters readers encountered such as the Queen and Bunny Ears?
That feedback motivated me to keep the story alive, and I wrote the prequel to the series, Off With Their Heads. As I interacted with readers, I was inspired to take the story further. Many of my readers asked me what would happen if Alice came back to the land her parents came from, the land where the architects of The Rising were still entrenched—the United States? That led to Hunting The Snark. A few readers asked me what had life been like for Alice when she was growing up in her settlement? What had she seen and endured that made her the girl we meet in the first Alice in Deadland novel? This collection of shorts takes us all back to those dark years, and together we will explore the experiences in her formative years that made Alice who she became later as she dove into the adventures depicted in the other books in the series.
I do hope you enjoy taking this trip back into the Deadland as much as I did writing it.
Mainak Dhar
When midnight mists are creeping,
And all the land is sleeping,
Around me tread the mighty dead,
And slowly pass away.
- Lewis Carroll, Dreamland
DAYS OF SORROW
'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 dragged 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.
'Bob, you okay?' His wife, Joanne, had come up behind him and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
'We still don't know who those choppers belong to or what they want. As if the Biters weren't bad enough, now we have to worry about them. Sometimes, I wish we could have given our kids a better life than one where we count surviving one more day as success.'
Jo faced him.
'We're all alive, and you've kept us all safe. That's what matters now.'
Jones, who had been a Marine at the US Embassy where Gladwell had worked as a diplomat before their world was torn apart by the series of events called The Rising, came up.
'Boss, who do you reckon those flyboys are?'
'I don't know. I took a look through field glasses last time, and they had no insignia. Let them show their hand first, and then we'll talk.'
'Hey, we're supposed to all meet in an hour's time. Should we go ahead or wait for the patrol to get back?'
Gladwell looked out over the short walls that ringed their settlement, hoping to get a glimpse of the four men who had left in the morning. 'I don't want us to meet again and have people panic over news of Biter hordes coming our way till we know more. Let Arvind and the boys get back with some more news and we can meet then.'
What was left unsaid was that, in the event of their patrol not coming back, they would know for sure that they faced imminent danger. Gladwell knew that there was no point in fretting over things he couldn't control, so he decided to focus on something which was under his control—making sure their little settlement was secure.
Their home for the last three years had been a small village just a few kilometers from an Indian army base where Gladwell and his family had taken refuge after The Rising, along with some staff and Marines from the US Embassy and a contingent of Indian Army soldiers and their families led by Gladwell's friend, Brigadier Randhawa. As Gladwell walked around the settlement, he couldn't but contrast the relative peace they now enjoyed to the chaos and bloodletting of the first year.
Hordes of undead, which they now knew as Biters, had risen and swarmed over the cities, biting and scratching victims, turning them into ghouls like themselves. If that weren't bad enough, human go
vernments had gone mad, choosing to settle scores when all seemed lost, and much of the world had been ravaged by nuclear exchanges. Huddled in their base, Gladwell and his companions had faced innumerable attacks by Biters and human looters. They had fought them off, and earned in blood a reputation as a group not to be easily messed with. Part of that came from the fact that they had inherited a veritable arsenal of weapons in a land where private gun ownership was very low, part from the fact that they had had several trained soldiers in their midst, but also part from the fact that Gladwell and others like him had made sure that they stuck together. Randhawa had died soon after The Rising in an attack by looters, and Gladwell had become the de facto leader of their group of a hundred men, women and children.
In the distance, his daughters played with a little puppy that had fallen into the moat that had been dug around their settlement. When one of their sentries had called out the previous night, a dozen men had raced to the wall, guns at the ready. They had shared a laugh afterwards when they discovered that the intruder had not been a Biter on the rampage, but a small, dirty puppy.
As Alice stroked the puppy's head, a lump formed in Gladwell’s throat. Alice had been born in the middle of the worst carnage they had faced after The Rising, and the first year of her life had been a constant struggle for survival against Biters and humans alike. One day, their base had been breached by Biters and they had to abandon it and find a new refuge in this settlement that they now called home. When Alice had been born, Gladwell often wondered what kind of a world he was bringing his new baby into, a world where there was nothing but hatred, death and violence. Now, seeing her laugh and jump with joy, he was grateful that at least, in the middle of all that they had to endure, she was able to find something that gave her such happiness. It was much more than he had been able to offer his family over the last four years.
A commotion began at the gate and he ran towards it. It couldn't have been Biters, otherwise the sentries would have raised an alarm. When he reached the gate, Jones and Arvind, a former officer in the Indian Army, were pushing the gate open. Standing on raised platforms near the wall were three men armed with rifles, all aiming outside. The four men who had gone out on patrol had returned. From the look on their faces, he knew that something was very wrong.
The patrol leader, a man called Sunil, collapsed to the ground as he entered the settlement. Gladwell took the bottle of water at his hip and offered him a drink.
'Sunil, what happened?'
'We've been fighting a running battle for the last two hours. We're lucky to have gotten away alive.'
'What did you guys run into?'
Sunil's eyes had a haunted look in them as he answered.
'Biters. More of them than I've ever seen before and they're headed our way.'
***
'Doggie, where are your Mama and Daddy?'
The little puppy wagged his tail and snuggled in closer to Alice, who laughed as she stroked his head.
'You know what? I can be your Mama. I'll give you food, I'll give you a bath so you're not so stinky and we can have fun together. Do you like soup? All we get is soup, but I'll save a bowl for you, okay?'
The puppy turned over and Alice tickled his tummy as the two of them rolled on the ground.
'Alice.'
She turned to see Jane standing behind her. Jane was carrying a gun in her right hand, and Alice knew that when people started taking out the guns, bad things happened. Her Mama had explained to her that there were bad people out there, and they needed to protect themselves. Alice didn't know if the bad people were coming, but Jane looked scared.
'Alice, all the grown-ups are meeting now. I want to be there to see what's going on. Will you be a good girl and stay right here with the dog?'
Alice nodded. She would rather be nowhere else at that moment than playing with her Doggie, so Jane's request was an easy one to agree to.
Jane knelt down beside Alice and gripped her little sister's shoulders. 'Look, Dad asked me to take care of you, but I'm missing out on everything. Something big's going on, and I want to know. Please don't tell Mom or Dad I left you here and please don't wander off anywhere.'
Alice nodded and Jane went off to the school building that now served as their community center, where most of the adults had been called by Gladwell after he had debriefed with the patrol. Men ringed the wall, carrying rifles and speaking to each other in hushed tones. Once or twice, she thought she heard them say a word.
Biters.
Alice giggled as she tried to say the word aloud herself. Her parents had told her that the Biters were very dangerous and she should never, ever go out of the settlement unless one of the adults took her along. Truth be told, Alice had been outside the settlement only a couple of times, and she had loved it. There were tall trees, insects to be seen in the grass, all kinds of colorful fruits and leaves, and birds to chase and play with. Much more interesting than the mud huts and buildings that dotted their settlement. But she knew better than to disobey her Daddy.
It wasn't that she was scared of him, but because she could sense that he was afraid of the Biters, and if something could scare her Daddy, then she was going to stay away from it. After all, her Daddy was the bravest and strongest person in the whole world, wasn't he? Alice remembered all the times she had been bundled into a hut with her sister while her Mommy, Daddy and the other grown-ups grabbed their guns to fight the Biters that had come to attack their settlement. Alice had heard the sound of gunfire so many times that it no longer frightened her. Indeed, while children before The Rising had gone to sleep listening to lullabies, Alice had slipped into fitful slumber on countless nights listening to the sound of automatic weapons and the moans and screeches of Biters as they were destroyed.
After ten minutes, Alice grew restless and decided that she and Doggie needed a new game. Jane had showed her a game that she had found quite amusing, so she grabbed a little rock near her and threw it with all the strength in her little arms.
'Fetch! Doggie, fetch!'
The puppy, with the instinctive desire to play and to please that all puppies have, chased after the rock and grabbed it before bringing it back to his new master. Alice petted him.
'Good boy, Doggie. Now, fetch again!'
Alice threw the rock again, and once more Doggie ran after it, retrieving it for her.
By now, the sun had begun to set and a few small kerosene lamps had started being lit around the settlement. Perhaps it was getting dark, or perhaps she was so caught up in the thrill of the game that Alice didn't notice several things.
First, she was now almost at the front gate, and had come quite far from where she had assured her sister she would stay put. Second, the two men at the wall near the gate were now hurrying to the right. A sentry there had seen something through his binoculars and had called for reinforcements. For a crucial few seconds, there was nobody watching the front gate, and that was when Alice threw the stone one last time.
'Oh, no!'
Alice cried out in disappointment as the rock sailed over a wall and outside the settlement. She would now have to find another rock to resume their game. However, the puppy wasn't going to give up so easily. He had sensed his master's disappointment, and he rushed towards the gate, determined to get the rock, to make her smile again.
The walls surrounding the settlement were short, no higher than an average man, built on purpose that way so that most defenders could just lean over and fire if needed, or if they wanted a farther look, then stand on a few platforms that ringed the wall. An intruder getting over the wall wasn't much of a concern—the moat surrounding the walls meant that no Biter would get through, and the human looters in the area had long learnt that this settlement had too much firepower to be worth the trouble.
The door was solid wood, salvaged from the old temple in the village and reinforced with layers of metal and wood. There was a single path that led out the door, a narrow path over the moat that was usually watched by arme
d men, where people could only come in single file, creating a killing field for any attacking looters or Biters. The door had a small hole at the bottom, one Gladwell had ordered put in, so that snipers could aim at the feet of attackers, while others poured fire from the top of the walls. It was a small hole, certainly not one big enough for a Biter to get through.
But it was big enough for a small, malnourished puppy, and big enough for a small, slightly underweight four-year-old child. Alice cried out in anguish as her beloved Doggie ran out the hole, and without thinking, she went after him, crawling on all fours to get out the hole.
For the first time in her short life, Alice was now alone outside the settlement. Alone in the Deadland.
***
'What do we do, Sir?'
Gladwell looked at Jones, a slight smile breaking through his worried expression. After four years of living in the Deadland, where none of the titles or ranks of the past mattered, Jones still insisted on calling him 'Sir'. Gladwell had tried telling him to call him Bob like everyone else, but the old Marine hadn't been able to kick the habit.
The men and women around Gladwell all looked to him for answers. They had survived many tough times, had fought off many attackers, and for someone who had once thought his life would be spent writing papers and chairing meetings as a diplomat, Gladwell had become their leader, tested in battle time and again. That same hope was reflected in Jo's face. He felt a stab of guilt, as if sure he was going to break that faith and let them all down. He cleared his throat and spoke.
'Folks, you've heard Sunil. This is different from what we've seen before. Earlier we'd have a few Biters stumble our way, and we'd deal with them, but this time it seems like they are moving in a massive horde, almost as if they are migrating.'