Deadland: Untold Stories of Alice in Deadland (Alice, No. 5) (7 page)

Alice listened, fascinated, as Jones put the kids through
their paces. She longed to go out there, to tell him that while she might not
be as strong as the older kids, she was faster and had great eyesight. She
would make a great scout, if only he would agree to train her and send her out
on patrols.

Movement came from her left and she turned and almost
screamed in surprise. There was a Biter coming towards her.

He must have been a very old man when he had turned, for he
had little wisps of grey on his largely bald head and very wrinkled skin, which
had started yellowing. He was limping slightly, as he was missing a large part
of his right calf which seemed to have been chewed off, leaving a mess of dried
blood and gore. That was probably where he had been bitten when he turned.

Alice's hand went to the knife at her belt, and she realized
it was useless. The only way to put a Biter down was a blow to the head, and
she wasn't tall enough or strong enough to try it on her own. The Biter had not
yet spotted her and was coming along at a leisurely pace, dragging his damaged
leg along.

Alice peeked around the corner and saw that Jones had
deployed the kids facing all the potential approaches. Unfortunately, Junior
was the one assigned to her side, and he was sitting on the ground, facing away
from her, eating some fruit he had brought with him. Jones was in a far corner,
saying something to another kid, and he had no idea that his worthless son was
not exactly doing a stellar job at the guard duties assigned to him.

Part of her was tempted to slink away and let the Biter
feast on Junior, but she knew that wouldn't be right. The Biter swung his head
towards her and she saw a gleam in his eyes. Not the gleam of any intelligence
that you would expect from a human, but more like the look of a predator that
has spotted its prey. The Biter emitted a low-pitched moan and began to close
in on Alice. If she chose to run, there was no way the Biter would be able to catch
up with her, but that would mean leaving Junior and the others exposed. She
closed her eyes and decided on what to do, and then turned the corner.

'Junior!'

The boy whirled to face her, shock in his eyes.

'What the hell are you doing here?'

Alice ran to him, grabbing his hand and pulling him up.

'There's a Biter coming this way, just a few feet away. Stop
daydreaming and do something!'

Jones had heard their voices and turned towards them. His
eyes were blazing with anger as he strode towards Alice.

'Don't tell me you were stupid and bull-headed enough to
follow us out here alone!'

Alice shrank back, as if she had been physically struck, and
managed to blurt out.

'There's a Biter there.'

Jones now turned to Junior, who also looked away, not
willing to face his father's fury.

'I thought I had put you on guard duty. Alice snuck up on
you, and a Biter's on its way and you're cluelessly sitting there having a
snack. Looks like my training has been of no use.'

Without saying a word more, Jones took out the curved knife
from his belt and walked around the hut. Alice peeked out to see him take down
and kill the Biter in a second. When he came back, he was wiping the blood off
his blade with a leaf.

'Come on, kids. We've picked up a passenger we don't want to
carry around and as much as I don't like it, our mission is now over. I don't
want to risk a little kid, even though she's too clever for her own good. Let's
get back to the settlement.'

Junior hissed at Alice, whose face was burning red with
embarrassment.

'You jerk! You made me look bad on purpose.'

Alice shot back.

'You don't need any help to look bad. You're plenty ugly to
begin with.'

They had just begun their trip back, Jones holding onto
Alice's hand tight, when the first bullet slammed into the wall inches from his
head.

***

'Take cover!'

Everyone scrambled behind the huts on Jones' command as more
bullets poured in towards them. A bullet hit the wall above Junior's head,
sending pieces of brick flying in all directions. Two of the kids were cut on
their arms and faces, and they began howling in pain.

'Shh...'

Jones was trying to calm them as he unslung his rifle and
tried to get a bearing on their attackers, but this was the first time the kids
had come under fire, and several of them looked to be on the verge of tears.
Jones crawled towards the treeline and peered through his scope. He muttered
some bad words that Alice’s Mom would have given her a good spanking for if she
had said them in front of her. All she picked up was the word 'Zeus'.

'Kids, keep your heads down. I don't think they can get us
from there. Perhaps they just wanted to mess around and will go away.'

Alice was hardly reassured.

'Uncle Jones, what if they come here to kill us?'

The look on Jones' face told her that he already regarded that
as more than a mere possibility.

'I can see only two men. Now, there are more of us and we
have more guns, but none of you has ever been in a firefight, and these are
trained killers with automatic rifles. If they come in towards us, I need you
kids to distract them a bit. That'll allow me to take them down. Can you do
that?'

There was stony silence, and Jones turned specifically
towards Junior.

'Junior, you're the most experienced one here. Can you
handle this?'

He nodded towards his father, but his face was deathly pale
and Alice could see his hands shaking. Another bullet whizzed overhead and
Junior flinched. Jones held the boy's shoulder.

'All you need to do is hide behind this hut with the others
and if those guys come towards us, then unload on them. Just shoot away—don't
worry about whether you hit anything or not. I just need them to be distracted
and I'll come at them from that other hut on the far side. Got it? Look at me,
son. I need to know you can do this.'

Junior nodded again and gripped his handgun tight, his
knuckles turning white as he did so. Jones ran over to the other side of the
small collection of huts and took cover behind another hut as several bullets
slammed into the wall. Alice heard a voice in the distance.

'Not so tough now, are we?'

That was followed by laughter from the other man. The
slurred voices told her that the men had been drinking something funny, like
some of the men on the settlement when they were unwinding after a battle. Her Dad
never touched the stuff and told her that it just made your thinking foggy, and
she certainly hoped that was the case with their attackers.

The other kids were flattened against the wall, and two of
them were now crying openly. Junior was putting on a brave face, but his hands
were shaking badly. Alice's own heart was hammering so fast and so loudly that
it nearly drowned out the sound of gunfire. Their attackers were now firing
single shots—seemingly more for sport than with the hope of actually hitting
anyone. The problem was that they seemed to be getting closer. She looked over
at Jones, and he was crouched on the ground, his rifle at his shoulder,
scanning for targets and the opportunity to fire. Their attackers would be
coming through the thin clump of trees that lay between them, and Alice was now
also scanning the trees, trying to catch a glimpse of the men.

She saw a movement behind some branches. At first she
thought it was just the leaves blowing in the wind, but soon it was clear that
it was a man's arm, holding an assault rifle.

'Junior. Look there!'

Junior also saw the man but he was in no shape to act. He
was breathing heavily and seemed to have frozen. The man now came into view,
holding his rifle up to his shoulder. Alice looked across. Jones was fixated on
another target, tracking it with his rifle. Their two attackers had split up,
and while Jones had one of them covered, the other one was now almost upon
them.

'Do something!'

Alice's whispered plea galvanized Junior into action, and he
thumbed the safety off on his handgun and brought it up, holding it in a
two-handed grip as he aimed at the man. But before he could fire the man pulled
the trigger, sending a three-round burst at him. The bullets missed Junior by
just a few inches and he froze, unable or unwilling to shoot back.

Alice was focused on the man coming at them, now no more
than twenty meters away. She heard automatic fire coming from her right, and
the sound of a man screaming. It did not sound like Jones, so perhaps he had
got his target. However, she had no idea if he would be able to come to their
rescue on time.

A second burst stitched the wall above Junior's head and he
screamed, dropping his gun to the ground. The man was now moving closer, in the
open, confident that he was up against kids who could not fight back or hurt
him. Now Alice saw that he was indeed a Zeus trooper, and was the man who had
passed the comment about Jane back at the settlement.

Alice looked to her right as Jones doubled back from among
the trees. He had seen their predicament, but did not have a clean shot at
their attacker, as there were several trees between them.

'Junior, shoot, shoot, shoot...'

Alice was prodding him but he seemed to be paralyzed and was
shaking. The trooper had a smirk on his face and was bringing his rifle up, when
almost without conscious thought, Alice picked up Junior's gun, held it in
front of her just as she had seen Jones teach kids in his classes and fired.

Her first shot went wide, well to the trooper's right, but
the shock of realizing that one of the kids was firing back made him hesitate
and look for cover. Alice's second shot landed a couple of feet away from his
right leg, kicking up dust and grass, and the third bullet was even closer. The
trooper dove behind a tree and fired as Alice lay flat on the ground and
bullets raked the dust around her. Even without looking, she kept pulling the
trigger again and again till the gun clicked empty.

None of her bullets hit the trooper, but two hit the tree he
was hiding behind, and the next time he ducked behind the tree for cover, he
never came back up. Jones had crept up behind him and finished him with a
bullet to the head.

Alice and the others came out of cover and watched as Jones
stripped both men of their weapons and ammunition. When he walked over to them,
he was looking straight at Alice. She was afraid he'd be mad at her and shrank
back as he reached out towards her.

'I'll take the gun, Alice.'

As she handed the gun to him, Alice saw that her hands, and
indeed her whole body, were shaking. She was ashamed that Jones would think her
a coward, but he just smiled at her.

'Kids, we have a ride back to the settlement in the fine
vehicle these gentlemen have left for us.'

The terror of the last few minutes gradually dissipated as
the kids grinned and ran towards the black Jeep the troopers had come in. Jones
tapped Alice on the shoulder.

'You did good. Real good.'

***

Word spread fast at the settlement as the kids shared what
had happened. There was much relief and celebration at the narrow escape they
had, but there was no such celebration or welcome for Alice. Her mother marched
her back to their home.

'Alice, what in God's name were you thinking?'

Alice just kept her head down, not sure of what to say, only
sure that whatever she said would probably get her into even more trouble.

'No, the problem is that you weren't thinking. You were only
thinking of having a little fun, not of the danger you were putting yourself or
others into. Stop thinking only of yourself, and start getting some sense of
responsibility.'

Alice wanted to clarify what exactly a sense of
responsibility was, but she figured this was a wrong time to be asking, so she
just kept shut and looked down as her mother continued.

'It's hard enough trying to keep ourselves safe, and you
have to go and seek out trouble, don't you? Alice, when will you learn? When
will you learn?'

Alice looked up at her mother.

'Mom, I'm sorry.'

Jo knelt down in front of her little girl. 'Saying sorry
doesn't fix everything. What if something had happened to you out there?'

Just then there was a knock on the door. It was Mrs. Jones,
along with three other mothers of the kids who had been out on patrol.

'Joanne, I just wanted to thank Alice. She saved all our
kids out there.'

Jo didn't know what to say or do. The last thing she needed
was for anyone to further encourage her daughter's wild streak, but Mrs. Jones
came in and gave Alice a big hug.

'Thank you, sweetheart. I hear you were really brave out
there. If you hadn't done what you did, our kids might not have come back to
us.'

As Alice walked out, she began to smile. It felt good to be
appreciated; it felt good to not get into trouble for a change; it felt good to
be more than another little kid who nobody took seriously. As she walked,
several people in the settlement pointed at her, and a couple of them patted
her head. Junior was standing in a corner with a friend, and when she passed,
she half-expected him to say something nasty. Instead, he just looked at her
and nodded.

As Alice rounded the corner, she saw her Dad talking with
Jones. She overheard some of their conversation.

'The Zeus commander will probably say these were two rogue
troopers who were drunk.'

'Sir, you know these guys are up to no good. We've all heard
about so-called accidents and bandit attacks at other settlements to convince
them of how unsafe life is without Zeus protection.'

'I know, but what option do we have? We're in no condition
to fight Zeus, and can only hope that they learn to leave us alone.'

Just then he saw Alice and called her, grabbing her in a big
hug, lifting her off the ground.