Alice in Deadland Trilogy (18 page)

She walked towards Chen and motioned for him to stand up.

‘General, my men will be clearing out all your weapons and
communications equipment. We will leave enough food to last you a day and then
leave. I’m sure your reinforcements will be here soon enough.’

She came closer, and Chen found himself involuntarily
shrinking back.

‘When you get back, do one thing for me. Tell your masters
that the Deadland is now free, and we don’t want any Red Guards here. Not a
single settler will go to your camps and we will continue rebuilding society
the way we want.’

Chen saw a blur of movement from the corner of his eye, and
the girl saw his reaction, turning just in time to see Liang emerge from a
closet, carrying a pistol. He fired a shot at point blank range before two of
the black-clad men shredded him with shotgun blasts. Chen watched the girl
stagger to the ground and then gasped in horror as she got up, calmly picking
at a hole in her torso. There was barely a thin trickle of blood, and a shot
that should have killed her did not even seem to faze her. She turned to Chen,
pointing at what remained of Liang.

‘Tell your other men not to be so stupid. I don’t want any
unnecessary bloodshed.’

Chen stammered out the words that were paramount on his
mind. ‘What…what are you?’

The girl came closer and said in almost a whisper, ‘You
should remember me, General Chen, and you should have killed me when you had
the chance all those months ago.’

Then she removed her glasses and mask and Chen gasped as he
looked into her lifeless yellow eyes and skin that was peeling off in patches
from her face.

She said her last words to Chen and disappeared with her
men.

‘My name is Alice Gladwell. They call me the Queen of
Wonderland.’

***

THROUGH
THE KILLING GLASS:

ALICE IN DEADLAND
BOOK II

ONE

What Alice regretted the most
about not being fully human was the fact that she could no longer cry. cry.
More than a year had passed since Alice set in motion events that had changed
her life and that of everyone in the Deadland by following a Biter with bunny
ears down a hole in the ground. Events that had led to the creation of a new
settlement, a settlement unlike any the world had seen since The Rising. What
had followed had been the re-settlement of the city of Delhi by thousands of
humans who had streamed in from the Deadland to live together in a community. A
community that had laws, security and houses for people to live in. A community
where every night was not spent in dread of marauding Biters or raids by the
Red Guards. A community that was now known simply as Wonderland.

The cost of this victory had been
high. Thousands had perished in the Deadland during the struggle against the
Red Guards, and hundreds more in the air raids that had been unleashed when
Alice had been captured. Alice
’
s personal costs had been high,
too. She had lost her entire family, and her identity. No longer was she the
mercurial fifteen year-old girl her father had doted upon. She was now the
Queen of Wonderland, whom people looked at with awe and fear. But being part-Biter,
she could never taste food again; she now simply had no need for it. She could
never dream of her family again, for Biters could not dream, and while she
often thought back to all she had lost, she could not cry to lessen that pain,
for Biters shed no tears.

To her enemies, Alice was a
formidable adversary, with the training and battle-tested instincts of the most
elite human soldier, but also with the inexhaustible stamina and immunity to
all forms of damage short of a direct head shot that her Biter half gave her.
To her human followers, she was a messiah who had rescued them from the
Deadland to give them hope that they could live again like civilized people. To
the Biters who followed her, she was the leader of the pack, to be followed
with animal instinct and devotion.

But to herself, she was still
Alice Gladwell, daughter and sister to her murdered family. . She had taken her
vengeance against the Red Guards, and what had begun as a mission of personal
vendetta had led to something much bigger. Alice had never fashioned herself as
a leader, but now she knew more than ten thousand humans in Wonderland depended
on her. Whether or not she wanted this burden of leadership, it was now hers,
and she was determined not to let down those who counted on her.

Much of her own young life had
been spent forged in battle, and her education had consisted of little more
than learning to fight and to survive in the Deadland, but today Alice was
going to do something she had never done before. She was going to inaugurate
the first school in Wonderland.

There was a hush among the
gathered thousands as she stepped onto the makeshift podium. Arjun, her
confidante and trusted advisor, had chosen the location with his usual sense of
humor. The school was to be located in what had once been the Delhi Zoo.

‘
People of Wonderland, thank you
for coming. I myself had little education beyond learning to survive in the
Deadland, but now our children will learn what people did before The Rising,
and one day they will revive our world the way it was.
’

There was thunderous applause, but
when Alice stepped off the podium, she felt a bit hollow inside. She knew
nothing of what life had been like before The Rising, and while she was proud
of what they had achieved together, she wondered if she was really needed in
Wonderland anymore. She knew nothing of managing a city, with its squabbles
over water and romantic affairs. She itched for the camaraderie she had known
in the settlement where everyone knew each other, not the anonymity of urban
life, where people huddled in their apartments in the center of what had once
been posh government colonies in Delhi.

She saw a young couple holding
hands, and she looked away. That was another experience she was never to have.
She was young enough and human enough to regret never being able to be loved,
but she was Biter enough to never feel such emotions. Besides, her appearance
did enough to seal that deal.

As she walked back to her room in
what had once been the Red Fort in the heart of Delhi, Arjun caught up with
her.

‘
Alice, we
’
ve sent out patrols north of Wonderland again this week,
but people are beginning to complain about the patrols. They say that we haven
’
t seen Red Guards for months.
’

Alice turned towards Arjun and she
noted with dismay how even he flinched at her sight. Her impish smile and
twinkling eyes were long gone, replaced by a vacant, yellowed gaze and skin
that seemed to be rotting, giving off a foul stench. She turned away, trying
not to see the expression on his face.

‘
Arjun, people grow fat and
happy. They forget that this safety was won with blood, and that the war still
rages outside of their apartments, and any day it may visit us again.
’

Arjun was with Alice
–
she knew that
–
but she also knew the pressure
he faced. It was no longer popular to talk about the war. After their crippling
losses in battle, the Red Guards had effectively ceded control of what had been
the Deadland in North India. Occasionally a jet would be spotted high in the
skies, but even they did not come lower, knowing that Wonderland
’
s defenses bristled with hand held Surface to Air missiles
wielded by experienced troopers who had once served Zeus, the mercenary arm
that had done the Central Committee
’
s bidding before they had
mutinied and the Red Guards had been called in from the mainland in China.

At times like this, Alice got on
her bicycle and rode alone, crossing the dried up Yamuna river to the forested
area that had now been reserved for Biters. Someone had said it was like an
animal reserve from before The Rising, and strangely Alice had felt herself
bristle at that comment. The Biters were kept confined in a wooded area ringed
by electrified fences with tunnels that allowed them to go out to the Deadland.
Was the Biter part of her so strong now that she identified herself more with
them than with humans? She drove with the wind blowing her flowing blond hair
behind her. That was the one part of her body that had not changed when she had
been transformed into the hybrid she had become.

By now, the sun was setting and
darkness settling over the forests, and she saw a couple of familiar shapes.
Closest to her was a Biter wearing bunny ears, with a shuffling gait and a left
hand that been taken off below the elbow by a Red Guard grenade. The second was
a hulking Biter wearing a hat. If Alice was the leader of the pack, then Bunny
Ears and Hatter were her enforcers. After being transformed, she realized that
while the Biters could not really communicate in any human language, they did
communicate like animals, and had a strong pack mentality. Bringing an end to
the war in the Deadland meant not just fighting the Red Guards to a bloody
standstill but also ensuring that Biters and humans could at least co-exist, if
not actively work together. Doing that had meant establishing herself as the
leader of the pack. Now she commanded an army of thousands of Biters who
emerged from the dark forest, kneeling before her.

Alice held an old, charred book in
her left hand. It was the last book left in the Deadland and she had first
encountered it in the underground base of the Biters in the possession of the
Biter Queen. Its title was Alice in Wonderland. The Queen had believed that the
book held a prophecy for healing the world, and that Alice was destined to
carry out the prophecy it contained. Now that Alice had brushed up on her
reading skills, she understood the coincidences leading to the Queen
’
s belief in the
‘
prophecy
’
and Alice
’
s part in it. Alice did not know
if there was any truth to the supposed prophecy, but she did know two things.
One, until someone actually sat down and wrote another book, this was indeed
perhaps the last book in the Deadland, and that in itself made it a precious
thing to protect, and second, that the Biters held it in an almost religious awe.
That was the reason why she carried it with her every time she came to them.

Alice had come to realize that
loyalty from Biters was never a given, since they were as impulsive and as
aggressive as rabid animals, and when one or two of the newcomers shuffled
towards her, Hatter stepped in front of them and swatted them away. Before,
Alice had been disgusted by their fetid smell of rot. Now it barely bothered
her.

She sat down by a tree, looking at
the night sky. But now more than stars illuminated what had once been the
Deadland: lights from several apartments flickered in the dark.

‘
They grow complacent. They light
up the settlement to be the easiest target for miles.
’

She had just whispered to herself
but Bunny Ears came and sat down next to her, awaiting her orders. While the
Biters communicated in grunts and screeches, they seemed to understand human
language to some extent. Perhaps some part of their brains still functioned
despite the virus that had reduced them to this condition.

‘
Don
’
t worry, Bunny Ears. Nothing I can
’
t handle.
’

She waved him away when the
tactical radio strapped to her side came to life.

‘
White Queen, this is White Rook.
Please come to the Looking Glass immediately.
’

Alice got up and sped away towards
the nearby temple that served as their communication center, their only real
window to what was happening in the outside world. Satish
–
or White Rook
–
had named this place Looking
Glass. Before he defected, Satish had been a Zeus warrior, and over time he had
effectively become the head of the armed forces of Wonderland.

For months they had tried to get
in touch with the ongoing resistance in what had been the United States, but
without much success. Other than that, they used captured computers and
handheld tablets to monitor what the Central Committee and its minions were up
to. There was no news other than what the Central Committee allowed to be
transmitted, but at least it gave them some idea of what was happening outside
their settlement. Looking Glass had been initially located in the heart of the
city, but then people had asked for it to be moved to the outskirts, since they
did not really want to hear the bad news from the outside world. That was
another sign that people had grown complacent, and forgotten the struggle that
had won them this peace.

Alice wondered what Satish had
learnt that required her to be in the Looking Glass at this time of night.

***

‘
The fools want to create
political parties and have an election.
’

Alice could sense the disdain in
Satish
’
s voice. She knew that with relative peace, people in
Wonderland had been quick to lapse into the jockeying for power that was
perhaps inherent to man. It was a shame that it required something like The
Rising and being hunted by Biters for men to realize that petty tokens of power
and prestige were not what really mattered.

‘
That bastard Arun is riling
everyone up, telling them we need true democracy and that they no longer need
you.
’

Alice tried not to get involved in
the politics of men like Arun, who had been a politician before The Rising. She
had continued to run Wonderland the way it had been, by a small committee of
elders, and with every big decision being put to a vote.

‘
Satish, they will talk because
they have nothing better to do. I don
’
t think it means anything.
’

Satish turned towards Alice. With
all they had been through together, he saw beyond the decayed skin and yellow
eyes. He still saw the incredibly brave yet naïve young girl who had done so
much for everyone in the Deadland.

‘
Alice, you don
’
t know how men like them work. They are no better than the
leeches in the Central Committee in Shanghai. Give them half a chance and they
will become tyrants in their own right.
’

It was an old argument. Both Arjun
and Satish hated how all they had fought for was being lost, and people were
lapsing into petty politicking. A few months of security, one which they and
their friends had shed blood to win, had led men like Arun to proclaim that
they no longer had a war to fight, and they needed to create a more peaceful,
democratic society. One where people like Alice and Satish did not need to have
such a prominent role, and of course one where, conveniently enough,
politicians occupied the highest rungs of the ladder.