Deadland: Untold Stories of Alice in Deadland (Alice, No. 5)

by Dhar, Mainak

  Where was Junior?

  They found him a few hundred meters away. There were two Biters lying around him, their heads blown apart by Junior's handgun. Junior himself was sitting against a tree, and for a while Alice thought he would get up and greet them. That was when she saw the single hole on the side of his forehead and the blood trickling down. As they came closer, they saw that a large part of Junior's left arm had been bitten off and a pistol lay on his lap. He had been bitten before he had shot both Biters, and then he had taken his own life to prevent himself from becoming a Biter.

  Jones was sobbing like a child. He kept saying the same thing over and over again.

  'My poor brave boy.'

  Gladwell had his arms around Jones and was crying as well. Tears welled up in Alice's eyes. She wanted to scream at how unfair it all was—to be shown the promise of there being something to look forward to, of her naive belief that Valentine's Day would somehow magically bring some happiness into their lives. All to be shattered out in the Deadland, with the reminder that in the world she lived in, there was no time or space for love. There was only the certainty of killing or being killed. Alice was learning at a very young age that there is a thing worse than losing one's life—it is called losing hope.

  She glared at the fallen Biters, and felt a rage like she had never felt before. She would make these monsters pay for all they had taken from her and others like her. She stood there and kept crying as Jones gathered his son's body in his arms to carry him back to the settlement for burial.

  That was when Alice saw the bunch of flowers lying below Junior's body.

  Her valentine had been trying to bring flowers back for her.

  ***

  ALICE IN DEADLAND

  'We've got ourselves three Biters to the North, about a kilometer out. The scout who saw them says they're ambling in, but let's cut them off before they get close enough to create a ruckus that attracts other Biters.'

  The moment Alice heard those words shouted out in the community center, she needed no more encouragement. She ran to her home and grabbed her handgun and knife. Normally on short-range defensive sweeps like this, who went out was largely determined by who volunteered and was not occupied with other chores. For the longer-range recon patrols and offensive attacks, it was decided by the leaders of the settlement, including Alice's Dad. While Alice was repeatedly told that she was still too young to go out on those longer-range attacks, she more than compensated by going out on defensive patrols as often as she possibly could. She was joined at the gate by two men, one of whom looked at her and grinned.

  'You again?'

  Alice grinned back, but there was no humor in her eyes. Indeed, all that you could discern in her young eyes was a grim determination to take a few more Biters out, to continue to extract her own personal vengeance on the undead monsters who had caused her and her people so much loss and grief. Her earliest memories were of being terrified by Biters, and the havoc Biters could wreak had taken on a very personal edge when they had caused the loss of Junior four years earlier.

  That day had been a turning point for the settlement—Jones had never really recovered from the loss of his son, and some months later was found dead outside the settlement. He had been drinking heavily, and had gone out on a patrol alone and run into Biters. Before he died, he extracted a terrible vengeance, as was evident from the mangled bodies of nine Biters they found around him, but he was gone. Jane, who had begun to display some shadows of the young, spirited girl she had been before The Rising, had sunk ever deeper into her shell after the death of Ravi, the young man who had begun to woo her and show her the promise of a brighter future. Jane's father, recovering from the blow of the loss of Jones, who had been his right-hand man, and dealing with the stress of keeping his people safe from the full-fledged war that was now raging in the Deadland, had aged visibly in those four years. He still had that smile that endeared him to everyone and made him Alice's hero, but he smiled less often. He still had that confident, erect bearing that made everyone look to him for answers, but ever so often Alice would see him, sitting with his shoulders slouched, his head buried in his arms.

  Alice saw her father in the distance. A couple of years ago, he would have tried to dissuade her from going out so often. Now, he just nodded.

  She walked out the gate, with the two men beside her. They broke into a jog towards where the Biters had been sighted. As they went further into the Deadland, one of the men hissed under his breath.

  'Slow down, kid.'

  Alice grinned, but slowed down. Heading towards where Biters had been spotted was not a good time to show off how fast she was. She smelled them before she saw them.

  'They're close.'

  They slowed down and crouched behind some trees, and soon enough they saw the Biters. Alice had seen all sorts of Biters, big and small, thin and fat, bloodied and relatively clean, but these were among the most filthy specimens that Alice had seen. Their clothes were torn off and their bodies were covered in blood from several wounds and several patches of skin were turning black and peeling off.

  'Did someone shoot them?'

  One of the men answered Alice.

  'Bullets won't do that. Looks like Zeus lobbed grenades at them or maybe fired some rockets at them.'

  'For all their talk, they're pretty bad at taking out Biters.'

  With that, Alice came out of cover and ran towards the Biters at full tilt. The first Biter, a woman who had one eye missing, turned to look at her moments before Alice jumped and brought her knife into the Biter's head. As they both went down, Alice got up, kicked the Biter down and took her knife out of her head.

  She looked around to see the two other Biters converging on her. The closest to her was a Biter who had been an old man, and had one arm torn off, perhaps by the blast of a Zeus grenade. Alice kicked out, catching him below the knee. The Biter lost balance and went down on his knees. As he tried to get up, Alice put her knife through his head.

  The men with her had now reached and taken out the third Biter. Alice stood there, cleaning her bloody knife before inserting it into her belt.

  As she walked back to the settlement, the men whispered to each other. They thought she couldn't hear them, but she did catch a few words.

  'I pity any Biter who gets close to this kid.'

  ***

  Alice was having lunch when Jane came down and sat beside her. Jane never spoke much to anyone, so Alice was surprised when she initiated the conversation.

  'I heard what happened out there today, You need to be more careful. With Zeus going after Biters the way they are and Biters going crazy, you can't just run out into battle alone. You need to work with the others, because they can watch your back just as you watch theirs.'

  'I don't need you babysitting me.'

  Jane gave a sigh of exasperation and nearly shouted, 'Stop thinking only of yourself, Alice.'

  Before Alice could say anything, Jane got up and left. Gladwell came and joined her a minute later.

  'You okay?'

  'Yeah, Dad. I'm fine. What's with Jane?'

  Gladwell poked at his soup, considering his reply.

  'We've lost two people in the last week to Biters. The Deadland was always dangerous, but I've never seen it so bad since the early days after The Rising. Jane's just worried about you, as I am.'

  Alice stopped eating and looked at her dad. She could shrug off what Jane said, but when her dad said something, she had to pay attention.

  'Dad, I can take care of myself.'

  'Yes, Alice, I know you can. And I'm proud of how brave and skilled you've become, but being a true leader is not just about taking care of yourself, but about taking care of others who depend on you.'

  'I'm just a kid. Who depends on me?'

  Gladwell smiled.

  'We all do, Alice. We all depend on each other, old or young. With the world outside as crazy as it is, we are all that we have and can count on.'

  With that, Gladwel
l finished his meal in silence and went to the community center for a meeting. Several people were there, including Rajiv and Sunil.

  'Bob, Zeus is looking for something or someone. I don't know who or what, but the way they're acting means they aren't just randomly seeking out Biters to whack.'

  Gladwell looked at Sunil. He had heard the theory once earlier in the week and it still didn't make sense to him. 'Maybe they just want to expand their bases or safe zones and so are clearing out Biters.'

  'That could still be the case, but then they'd just come in with overwhelming firepower. They're sending in recon patrols in beforehand, scouting locations, and we've stumbled upon a Zeus patrol that was reporting back to base saying that the target was not there.'

  Rajiv had his own concerns.

  'The security aside, so much fighting outside means that our supply runs are severely disrupted. Just getting water means mounting a major operation and we lost a man last week when Biters showed up. The funny thing is that the Biters seem totally disoriented. A dozen have just stumbled onto us and been slaughtered and didn't even seem to register our presence.'

  'Shell-shocked is the term I'd use if they were people.'

  Gladwell looked at the map on the wall. There were markers all over it indicating areas where Zeus had launched major ground offensives and air strikes and also where large Biter forces had been seen. There was a war raging out there, and his settlement was right in the middle of it.

  'Guys, we don't want to get in Zeus' way, whatever they are looking for. So the instructions stay the same—if we spot troopers on a mission, we keep our distance, These guys are shooting first and asking questions later, and increasingly using air power. The last thing I want is for some trigger-happy pilot to hit our people. As for the Biters, we stay reactive. If they threaten us or come too close, we take them out, but we don't seek them out. I'd use the time to deepen the moat and get the folks drilled on defensive measures.'

  That night, Gladwell came back to his home and lay down on his bed with a tired sigh. Joanne was sleeping and stirred at the sound.

  'Good night, sweetheart.'

  Gladwell kissed his wife on her head and lay on his back. He would not show it openly to anyone, but he was very worried about what was happening out in the Deadland. The Biters had been there for years and were an ever-present danger, but with Zeus going on the warpath, the Biters seemed to be retaliating by going on a rampage against all humans. He had heard of a settlement that had been wiped out by Biters the week earlier and pitched battles between humans and Biters were reported from all over the Deadland. He was doing his best to keep his people safe and out of harm's way, and part of that was not taking an aggressive posture and trying to lie low.

  The problem was that he wasn't sure what they would do if trouble sought them out.

  ***

  Alice was awakened in the middle of night by the sound of her mother shouting.

  'Bob, wake up!'

  Alice rushed to her parents' room and saw both of them awake, her father reaching for his gun.

  'What's up, Mom?'

  Joanne Gladwell had always been a light sleeper, and it was a running joke in the family that she would inevitably find someone to blame her lack of sleep on for snoring or moving too much in their sleep. Tonight, she had heard something much more ominous.

  'I thought I heard choppers flying by. Lots of them.'

  They all came out, and Alice saw that her Mom hadn't been alone. A handful of other settlers had come out and as they saw Gladwell, they came over.

  'Bob, any idea what's going on? They don't fly so many out at night.'

  Gladwell looked up at the sky, and shook his head. The sounds of the choppers were now more apparent, and more people had started coming out of their homes.

  'Ranjit, I have no idea, but Zeus being close can never be good news. Spread the word—get everyone armed and ready with the defences.'

  All around them, people grabbed guns, rushed to the walls, and pulled into place the giant spotlights they had recovered from an old film studio. They killed all the lights, so as not to attract any attention to themselves. The few night vision scopes they had were all fully charged by a generator, and if there was danger coming their way, men with these scopes would be posted along all four walls to give warning.

  Gladwell watched everyone move with practiced precision and felt his chest swell with pride. From a ragtag group of strangers thrown together by The Rising, they had become not just a settlement of people living together, but family. From bureaucrats, diplomats, soldiers, farmers, accountants and housewives, they had forged a fighting force which would be a formidable opponent for anyone.

  However, Gladwell knew that there was no way they could survive if Zeus really came after them with all the firepower they had at their disposal. For years, he had kept Zeus away with a combination of diplomacy and stubbornness. He had counted on the fact that Zeus would not want to take unnecessary casualties in coercing them to fall in line when there were many more settlements out there willing to trade their weapons and freedom for the security Zeus promised. Also, he had heard that Zeus was actually happy letting their settlement exist as a tripwire against Biters. They were by far the best armed and most battle-hardened settlement in the Deadland, and with Zeus on the warpath against Biters, it didn't hurt to have other armed humans out there to thin the Biters' numbers.

  Gladwell just hoped that nothing had changed in that calculus to cause Zeus to come after them.

  The choppers came closer and passed directly overhead. He guessed there were at least a half dozen choppers, and he held his breath as they passed. When they were cleanly past their settlement, he heaved a sigh of relief.

  'Dad, what are they doing?'

  Alice's question was soon answered when they saw flashes of light on the horizon, followed quickly by the dull thuds of explosions. Streaks of lights reached out from the sky towards the ground as more explosions rocked the Deadland.

  Alice was watching in fascination. Even for someone who had grown up around guns and violence, this display of firepower was overwhelming.

  'Wow, are they hunting Biters?'

  'Sweetheart, they sure are hunting someone but I'm not sure who that is.'

  ***

  The next morning brought with it wave upon wave of Biters. Many seemed charred by the air strikes of the previous night and as Alice looked at them streaming past the settlement in the distance through her scope, they didn't seem interested in attacking anyone, only in getting away.

  When the Biters kept appearing in the distance in large numbers, Gladwell called a meeting. Everyone was armed, and nerves were on edge after the overnight air strikes and the large number of Biter sightings. Everyone expected Gladwell to have a plan, but more than that, he just wanted to settle nerves and tell people to calm down.

  'Folks, the first thing I wanted to tell you is that we don't need Zeus or Biters to kill us, I suspect some of you will shoot yourselves by the end of the day.'

  There was nervous laughter as Gladwell continued.

  'I know you're worried and many of you didn't get much sleep last night, but that's no reason to forget basic discipline. Don't walk around with loaded rifles and I personally caught three kids with handguns that had their safeties off. So, before we do anything else, let's sort those issues out.'

  Sunil and three other men walked in, having just returned from a recon mission.

  'Bob, the Biters aren't coming towards us, but there are so many running amok out there that a few might stumble onto us. There's a particularly large group to the East that looks like it's headed our way.'

  Gladwell took in the latest information and considered it for a while.

  'I don't want to be besieged by Biters. As is, our supply runs are disrupted and we can't afford to be sitting here waiting for the Biters to come to us. Let's get a force organized that takes care of this Biter horde. Sunil can debrief us on their numbers and the shape they're in and we
can plan accordingly. I also want smaller defensive groups near the settlement armed with sniper rifles to pick out any Biters that come our way while we engage the big horde.'

  What followed was a frenzy of activity as everyone got armed and readied themselves for the upcoming mission.

  Alice caught up with her dad just as he was about to come out of their home, his rifle and kit in his hand. Her mom was right behind him, carrying a handgun.

  'Dad, do you think the Biters are trying to escape to their underground bases?'

  Gladwell smiled.

  'Nobody has actually seen one of these bases, so I doubt they even exist. I think they've been scattered by the Zeus attacks and are just trying to get the hell out of the area.'

  'Can I come with you guys today?'

  Gladwell stopped to look at her, and his expression said that he had anticipated this question.

  'I need you to act as a scout to pick off any stragglers and any Biters who get on our flanks. I'll be dividing the scouts into two-man teams, or in your case, a two-woman team, as you'll be paired up with Jane.'

  Alice screwed up her face to show precisely what she thought of the plan, not just because she was going to left out of the main assault force, but also because she'd probably have to spend several hours with Jane. The Jane who never smiled, the Jane who was always full of gloomy predictions, and the Jane who would be sure to tell on Alice for anything she did to deviate from the script.

  Of course, Gladwell knew all that, and that was precisely the reason he had paired his daughters together for this mission. He knew how skilled Alice was, but he also knew that her maturity had not yet caught up with her skills. Some in the settlement called her wild, others called her battle-crazed. As a father, Gladwell could never bring himself to look upon his little girl in those terms, but he knew that Alice could be a loose cannon, and it was better for her to have Jane looking over her shoulder.