Alice in Deadland Trilogy (19 page)

‘
Satish, I
’
m sure you didn
’
t call me here at this time to
bitch about Arun.
’

Satish slapped himself on the
forehead in exaggerated apology.

‘
No, no, of course not. Come on,
we have some exciting news. For the first time, we actually may see something
of value though our Looking Glass.
’

Alice followed him to a console in
front of which an elderly man was sitting, hunched over a computer terminal and
with headphones around his ears.

‘
Danish, have you got anything
yet?
’

Danish raised one hand as he
focused on tuning the radio in front of him. Danish had been a Communications
Officer in the Indian Army before The Rising, and now he was in charge of
running the Looking Glass in their continuing endeavor to learn about what was
happening outside Wonderland, and also to try and make contact with others like
themselves.

‘
We
’
ve
finally made contact! Check this.
’

Alice peered over his shoulder to
see a single message displayed on the computer screen.

‘
We are your brothers in arms,
fighting for the independence of the United States of America. We have heard much
of you and your Queen. Listen for us in a day
’
s time.
’

Danish was visibly excited, his
old, wrinkled eyes twinkling as he spoke.

‘
They managed to get an old
server up and put up this page. This is the first Internet posting in sixteen
years, and looks like the Central Committee hasn
’
t seen
it yet.
’

Alice had been born after The
Rising, when people were more bothered about escaping from hordes of Biters
than surfing the Internet, but she had seen how powerful information could be
in their own struggle against the Central Committee. With tablets brought over
by defecting Zeus officers, they had managed to hack into the Central Committee
’
s Intranet. Since then they had been posting messages that
led to further defections among Zeus and also started creating discontent among
the masses in mainland China, who had begun to question the true nature of the
war they had been sold.

Before Alice could say anything,
Danish hushed her, putting on his headphones, and then passed them on to her.

‘
Alice, they want to talk to you.
’

Alice put on the headphones and
heard the crackle of static. Then there was the deep voice of a man.

‘
Alice, this is General Konrath
of the Free American Army based out of Forth Worth, Texas. We have been
fighting our own war against the same enemy you face, and we are all proud to
call you a fellow American.
’

Alice
’
s father had been with the American Embassy in New Delhi
before The Rising, but she had been born in a world where the countries of the old
world were little more than memories. Still, it was good to make contact with
people from outside the Deadland where she had been born. It made their
struggle feel less lonely.

‘
General, we have had a few
months of relative quiet in Wonderland, and the Red Guards don
’
t really come here anymore. How are things in the United
States?
’

There came a pause before the
general
’
s reply.

‘
Alice, we are facing brutal
house to house fighting against the Red Guards and the still loyal Zeus mercenaries.
Our bigger problem is that we
’
re fighting them and also
fighting against the damned Biters.
’

Another pause, before he added,
‘
You know what I mean, Alice.
’

‘
General, there
’
s no need to apologize. I lived in fear of Biters for the
first fifteen years of my life as well.
’

‘
Alice, I wish we had someone
like you to bring peace with the Biters. But for now, we need your help. Two of
our people have escaped from a labor camp of the Reds and are making their way
to the plains. They have nowhere else to go, so they are trying to escape to
your city. Help them if you can.
’

Static muffled the connection, and
then the line was terminated. Alice felt Satish exhale loudly beside her. She
knew that they were being asked to re-enter a fight that many in Wonderland
believed was over.

‘
Alice, what do you plan to do?
’

Alice answered without a pause.
‘
Satish, I lost my entire family so we could live free. I
will not allow others seeking their freedom to be hunted down when I can help
them.
’

Satish just sniggered.

‘
Satish, what are you thinking?
’

Satish grinned.
‘
I
’
m thinking that fat old Arun
will have a heart attack if he knows about this.
’

‘
He doesn
’
t have to know, does he? Well, we don
’
t even know that they
’
ll make it anywhere close to
Wonderland.
’

Danish coughed to get their
attention. He had one of his tactical radios held to his ear.

‘
Folks, something
’
s up. One of the advance recon parties saw a convoy of Red
Guards a hundred kilometers to the north east, on the old National Highway 8.
They report two trucks and some jeeps.
’

‘
Satish, I
’
m getting my kit. You get some men ready and join me.
’

Five minutes later, Alice was
outside near her bike. Her kit consisted of a handgun in a holster strapped to
her left thigh, a serrated combat knife on her right thigh, an extra handgun on
an ankle holster, and an assault rifle across her back. Satish was there with
three of his men, getting into their jeep.

‘
Alice, are you sure you want to
go along? This could be a trap for all we know.
’

‘
I
’
m all
dressed up for the party. I cannot back out now, can I?
’

As she started off on her bicycle,
Satish felt a lump in his throat. The thin girl he had first met in the
Deadland had become a true warrior queen, and while she looked fearsome, he
still remembered the crying girl he had met in the forests of the Deadland. A
girl who had just lost her family to the Red Guards. He had nearly lost her
once before, to a Red Guard trap. There was no way he was going to let her down
again. He checked his own assault rifle and shouted to the driver.

‘
What are you waiting for? Let
’
s go!
’

By the time they started, Alice
was well on her way, blond hair billowing behind her. Just a couple of years
ago she would have felt fear at the prospect of such imminent danger. Now she
welcomed it like an old friend. Far from the petty politicking of Wonderland,
now it would be the way it had been, the way she had always liked it.

***

Alice saw that there were at least
two dozen Red Guards, all wearing night vision goggles and armed with assault
rifles. Their trucks were parked on the road behind them. She had left her bike
a kilometer behind, tracking them the rest of the way on foot. They may have
had night vision goggles and the latest equipment, but with the frontline ranks
thinned by months of vicious combat, she knew from the Central Committee
’
s Intranet that young men with no combat experience were
being drafted and sent on combat missions. In contrast, she had spent her
entire life training and fighting in circumstances like this. Also, one added
benefit of her current state was that like Biters, she felt no fatigue. She
could keep running and fighting all night long if she needed to.

Satish and his men were nearby,
but for now she was alone. She saw the Red Guard officer raise his hand and
shout a command in Mandarin. The Red Guards started to get back in their
trucks. It seemed that they had achieved whatever they had set out to do. Alice
wasn
’
t sure what they had been up to, but she did not like it
one bit. It certainly wasn
’
t recon; they wouldn
’
t need two large trucks and so many men for that. There was
only one way to find out, and also to send a message to their masters that the
Red Guards were not welcome here any more.

She raised her assault rifle to
her shoulder and aimed at the officer through the night vision scope. The
crosshairs were on his forehead when she shouted her warning.

‘
Red Guards! You are in our
territory. Lay down your weapons and surrender and we will send you back
unharmed.
’

The Red Guards froze. Some of them
muttered something she knew very well:
‘
Nu wu.
’

‘
Witch
’
in Mandarin. Alice had come to be known among the Red
Guards as the Yellow Witch, and she hoped that the fear her reputation
generated would lead them to surrender. She certainly had no wish to slaughter
green conscripts.

But that was not to be the case
tonight. Whether driven by fear or perhaps to act brave in front of his men,
the officer took out his handgun and fired in Alice
’
s direction. That was the last mistake he made before a
single round shattered his head. The Red Guards scattered, several of them
firing wildly despite the fact that they were wearing night vision goggles.
Alice had her rifle on single-shot mode and was now moving in an arc around the
Red Guards, picking them off one by one. Several other rifles barked and she
saw three Red Guards spin and fall.

Satish and his men had joined the
battle.

Sandwiched between Alice and
Satish
’
s men, the remaining Red Guards gave into wild panic and
rushed towards her. Alice put her rifle down and rose to meet them, handgun in
one hand and knife in the other. The first Red Guard was but feet away when she
put him down with two shots. The one behind him was about to bring his rifle up
to fire when Alice dove towards him, rolling on the ground and coming up in a
crouch near his feet. She fired thrice, feeling more then seeing him fall as
she pivoted to meet the next threat. The Red Guard she faced was terrified out
of his mind and screaming incoherently, but with a rifle in his hands he was
still a threat to be dealt with.

Realizing he could never get a
shot off in time, he swung the rifle like a club at Alice
’
s head. She rolled under the blow and passed the man,
stabbing him twice in quick succession, getting up behind him as he fell to the
ground. Another Red Guard was behind her and stabbed her with a knife in the
chest. But Alice felt little more than a prick, and the man staggered back in
horror as she calmly extracted the knife.

He stammered in broken English,
‘
Yellow Witch! Please let me go.
’

Alice tossed the knife aside as
she heard Satish and his men mop up the remaining resistance. The Red Guard in
front of her was little more than a boy, perhaps not much older than herself.
She drew closer to him and saw that he was shaking in fear.

‘
Go back and tell your officers
that Red Guards are no longer welcome in our land.
’

The man ran without hesitation and
never looked back.

Satish and his men were gathering
the captured weapons and equipment. So many night vision goggles and extra
ammunition were always welcome but Alice had her eyes on something else.

‘
Satish, those trucks would make
for nice school buses.
’

He smiled and then stopped on
seeing the wound in Alice
’
s chest. She caught his gaze.
The wound was a couple of inches wide and there was some blood on its edges.
Alice shrugged.

‘
It looks far worse than it
feels. I
’
m more worried about ruining a perfectly good shirt.
’

Satish grinned and continued as
Alice went back to gather her rifle. Short of a direct shot to the head, Alice
could not die, and she had taken more than her share of gunshots and knife
wounds in the months of fierce fighting that had followed her transformation.
As a result her body was crisscrossed with bloody wounds. While ordinary Biters
were oblivious to these and walked about with their wounds plainly visible,
Alice still retained enough of her old self to not want to be seen as she
really was. So she insisted on wearing black turtleneck sweatshirts, jeans,
gloves and boots at all times. It had become a trademark of hers, but nobody
really knew the solitary pain behind the look.