Hunting The Snark: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 4) (2 page)

‘It’s coming online in a minute.’

At Danish’s declaration, a buzz of
anticipation swept through the people gathered around the screen. Alice had
been born in a time when young girls fought for their lives in the Deadland
instead of surfing the Net, so she had very little understanding of the
technology involved, or how they would see what was happening thousands of
kilometers away. All she knew was that the machines man could make were not
just meant for killing, and in the hands of men like Danish, could be put to
very good use.

The screen flickered to life and
when the black and white picture resolved itself, there was an audible gasp
that swept through the crowd. Alice couldn’t believe what she saw on the screen
before her. In the morning’s chat with Chen, she had caught glimpses of
Shanghai—tall buildings with lights on, streets bustling with people—all things
that had given her hope for Wonderland. Now, she saw nothing but rubble. Most
buildings were shattered, a cloud of dust hung over the city, and there was
absolutely no sign of life.

Then a solitary figure stumbled
into view. The man was covered in dust and seemed to be burnt badly. He
staggered forward and fell to the ground, not to get up again. Alice looked on
in horror as everyone around her stared at the devastated ruins that had hours
ago been Shanghai.

***

‘General Konrath, the folks from
Wonderland are asking again if we know anything more?’

Jake Konrath shook his head and
sent the radio operator away. He had been awakened an hour ago by the young
radio operator chattering away about Shanghai having been destroyed. Konrath
had put it down to an overactive imagination but now with the reports coming in
from Wonderland, he was beginning to have his doubts.

Konrath had never served in the
military and his title had been earned in the brutal house-to-house fighting
that had erupted after the Rising in the United States. Many like him had taken
up arms to protect their families against the Biters and resist the rule of
Zeus. He had been a writer in the world before the Rising and had recently been
hoping to get down to writing a new novel after more than fifteen years. Peace
would not be an accurate descriptor of the times he now lived in, but certainly
life was more secure than he had known for years. With the events in the
Deadland, and the blood samples that Doctor Edwards had brought back, many in
what had been the United States had now been vaccinated, and people had begun
to lose their irrational fear of the Biters. Instead, they had started to
realize the truth that the people of the Indian Deadland had come to appreciate
under Alice’s leadership—that the true threat came not from the Biters but from
the men who had engineered the Rising in the first place.

Changing fifteen years of hatred
and mistrust would take time, but Konrath and others like him were seeking to
emulate what Alice had achieved in the Deadland. He had repeatedly requested
Alice to come over, but she had so far been hesitant. Seeing videos of her was
one thing, but having her here in person would finally unite free humans and
Biters against Zeus and its masters.

Konrath got up and went to the
computer screens set up in the next room. The building he was using as his
headquarters had once been the office of some company, and a few faded mission
statements still decorated the walls. Having worked as a manager for some time
before taking the plunge into writing full-time, Konrath had a healthy distaste
for such empty symbols of motivation, but he just didn’t have the time or
energy to paint over the walls. They had been too busy trying to stay alive for
the three months they had occupied this building outside Mason, Ohio.

Once the Central Committee had
begun to fall, Zeus had focused all its resources on ensuring that the Homeland
did not follow in the steps of the Indian Deadland and the Chinese Mainland.
Without a unifying force like Alice, the resistance efforts in the Homeland had
been scattered—small bands of guerillas trying to fight their own wars, and
often fighting over turf. Zeus had been ruthless in exploiting that and its
superior air power over the last few months. With a few servers now operational
and the Internet back in at least a rudimentary fashion, Konrath had been doing
his best to spread the news from Wonderland and Alice’s story, but if there was
one thing at which Zeus’ masters in the Executive Committee excelled, it was
propaganda.

The fear of anarchy and the
supernatural terror the Biters represented had led thousands of human survivors
to FEMA camps. The agency had long ceased to exist, but the Executive Committee
knew well the power of symbols. So these camps were patrolled by Zeus goons in
military uniforms, calling themselves Marines. That harkening back to long-dead
symbols of authority would make many people obey without question despite being
little more than slave labor, working in farms to feed the elite who lived
under the Executive Committee’s protection.

When Konrath reached the screen,
he saw Alice at the other end of the video link. He had met her only once
before, when he had flown to Wonderland six months ago, and he had secretly
chided himself for having flinched at her appearance. What should have been a
healthy, blonde sixteen-year old girl now had the dull, dead eyes and the yellowing
skin of a Biter. But he knew that what made Alice special was much more than
her unique status as a half-Biter—a living symbol of how humans and Biters
could co-exist. Her remarkable story and sacrifice had been at the cornerstone
of how a small band of people in the Deadland had fought to gain their freedom
from the Central Committee. If the Executive Committee had its symbols that
helped it retain control over the people of the Homeland, then Alice was the
most powerful symbol to rally the resistance around.

While Alice’s eyes no longer
betrayed any emotion, Arjun was behind her, and he looked to be on the verge of
panic.

‘Alice, what’s wrong?’

‘General, Shanghai is gone! We
just sent you some of the photos that Danish copied from the camera feed before
we lost it.’

One of Konrath’s men came up to
him with a printout, and when he saw the photo it took him a second to realize
that he was looking at what remained of a once-bustling city.

‘What the hell happened?’

The man who had handed Konrath the
sheet had served in the US Air Force and he looked at the paper and said,
disbelief clear in his voice, ‘Looks like someone nuked Shanghai.’

The words sent a shiver down
Konrath’s spine. They could fight against Zeus’ troopers and even its
helicopters, but what hope did they have against an enemy that had somehow
managed to get an operational nuclear weapon, and hadn’t hesitated to wipe out
millions of lives?

***

TWO

Alice did not need sleep—something she had finally managed
to reconcile herself to months after she had been turned into her current self.
She spent most nights sitting in her room, closing her eyes and thinking of her
family and pretending she was having a dream. It was the only way to cling to
the family she had lost.

Tonight, however, she was out in the streets of Wonderland,
fully armed. Seeing the destruction of Shanghai had rattled everyone in
Wonderland, and for Alice it had brought home the realization that their
enemies were not yet totally defeated. A couple of the older people had seen the
footage from Shanghai and said that such devastation could only be the result
of nuclear weapons. That in itself had created a ripple of panic—they had
fought for years against the Central Committee and its mercenaries, but against
nuclear weapons, there was no defense.

Alice sought out Satish, relieved to see that he too was
awake. Satish had been a young officer in the Indian Army at the time of The
Rising, and Alice hoped that he would have some answers. She realized he was in
shock.

‘What I can’t figure out is how this could have happened.’

Alice laid her rifle on the ground beside her. Carrying a
rifle might have seemed superfluous under a nuclear threat, but it reassured
Alice. ‘The old countries had these nuclear weapons. Maybe someone just got one
of the bombs.’

Satish shook his head.

‘It isn’t that simple. The nuclear stockpiles that were not
very secure were in places like the Middle East, Pakistan or North Korea. All
those regions were destroyed in the nuclear wars that accompanied The Rising. In
the other major powers, places like the US, Russia or China, nuclear weapons
were heavily secured and their release required codes and authorization from
the very top ranks in the governments. General Chen told me many of the weapons
were knowingly sabotaged when it became clear that Zeus and its masters were
serving their own agenda.’

Surely some of those weapons survived, and someone could
have got hold of them?’

‘Yes, but someone did not just get a nuclear bomb, they put
it on a long-range missile and fired it into Shanghai. The Marines guarding the
airport at Kolkata saw the missile on their radar, and it seemed to have been
fired from the East. You remember Chen telling us about how all the American
Zeus men were leaving?’

Alice nodded.

‘My guess is that they were pulled back to the United
States, and clearly they have been using the last few months preparing.’

‘If they have more nuclear weapons, then we have no way of
defending ourselves, do we?’

‘I doubt they will nuke us. After all, they went through so
much trouble to keep the farms working here. They need the food to feed their
people, and the Indian heartland was one of the few wheat and rice-producing
areas left in the world. That was why they were so desperate to keep us under
their control.’

‘So, why did they attack Shanghai?’

To that question, Satish had no satisfactory reply, but they
did not have to wait too long before they got their answer.

Early the next morning, Danish called them to the Looking
Glass over the handheld radios they carried. Arjun, Satish and Alice were there
within minutes. Danish didn’t say anything but just pointed to the screen in
front of him. It showed a letter adorned by a familiar symbol—an eagle Alice
knew had once been the official seal of the government of the United States—a
government her father had served for many years as a diplomat. For the first
time, the Executive Committee had reached out directly to Wonderland.

The letter was as brief as it was chilling. It asked the
people of Wonderland to reach an accommodation with the Executive Committee and
once again restore the supply of food and labor to its camps. Otherwise, it
reminded, Wonderland could easily share the fate that had befallen the
‘terrorists’ in Shanghai.

Thousands of kilometers away, Konrath watched the TV set in
front of him. The Executive Committee had allowed only one channel to function
and it was full of inane entertainment—old soap operas and cartoons. Watching
The
Bold and the Beautiful
at a time when tens of thousands of people were
living as slaves in FEMA camps seemed perverse, but it was yet another way in
which they tried to portray a semblance of normalcy.

The news came on and the newscaster, a pretty blonde, was
reading from a piece of paper in front of her.

‘The Executive Committee launched a pre-emptive strike earlier
this week when it was clear that terrorists who had removed the legitimate
government of the Chinese Mainland were about to gain control of Weapons of
Mass Destruction to use against the Homeland. The Chairman of the Executive
Committee reassures the people of the Homeland that this should serve as
warning to all the terrorists and anarchists who hate us for our way of life.
In other news, the Executive Committee has unanimously passed a resolution
condemning the rulers of the so-called Wonderland for their continued
suppression of human rights and for colluding with Biters.’

Konrath was old enough to have lived through many of the
wars waged in the name of freedom and democracy before The Rising, and some
things had not changed. As the news cut away to a ‘documentary’ about how
humans in the Indian Deadland were being tortured and suppressed by their
rulers and the demonic Biters, he realized that the sudden focus on Wonderland
could not be without a reason. He needed to talk to Alice and warn her—but
before he could do that, his communications officer was at the door, telling
him that Alice was on the video link and she had important news to share.

***

Aaron Campbell tried to suppress his excitement from his
co-workers, but despite all his training, he was afraid he would give himself
away. The message from General Konrath had come in like a bolt from the blue,
and finally, after years of lying low, he had a chance to contribute to the war
effort.

Aaron had spent more than a dozen years in the CIA as a
Field Officer before The Rising, and was in Mexico chasing down intelligence of
linkages between Al-Qaeda affiliates and drug cartels when reports first came
in of the outbreak and the Biters. His training had helped him get back home to
New Jersey, but the journey took him ten days. By that time, the whole world
had changed. Nuclear exchanges, marauding Biters and looting had destroyed
millions of lives and in the place of the old world he knew, a dangerous new
world was emerging.

The Biters were bad enough, but what really surprised Aaron
was how quickly the old government was cast away, and a new Executive Committee
claimed power in its place, its writ enforced by the mercenary army of Zeus.
Many soldiers and airmen died trying to preserve the United States they had
served, trying to fight this new tyranny, but the Executive Committee was so
all-pervasive and so all-powerful that resistance seemed futile.