Hunting The Snark: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 4) (7 page)

‘Fool! Listen to what I’m saying!’

She had the book raised in her hand, and as the Biter came
at her again, she snapped his head back with a kick and then swept his feet
from under him. As he fell to the ground, he did not get back up, and Alice
raised her voice.

‘I know you’re all watching out there! Come out and meet
us.’

As Vince and the others looked on dumbfounded, a dozen or
more Biters emerged from the bushes and then knelt before Alice.

***

‘This is not looking too good, is it?’

What Sam wanted to do was to tell the Baron to shut up, but
he was trying his best to contain the rising panic as the Baron continued.

‘I got your plan about starting the New World communication
campaign in the FEMA camps, and that’s fine. I also know you’re looking for
Bellman, and I hope for all our sakes that you succeed. But what in God’s name
are you doing about this Alice? Word is spreading about this girl who can
control the Biters and who is half-Biter. That drivel Konrath had written had
been debunked by us as propaganda but now people are whispering that this Alice
from the Deadland is not just real, but now among us, and you have been unable
to neutralize her.’

Sam let the Baron rave and rant, since he had no real
solutions to offer. The best he could hope to do was to buy himself more time.
The nightmare scenario for the Executive Committee was fast becoming real—with
food from the Deadland drying up and domestic unrest in the Homeland
threatening supply from the few farms still running.

He had signed up for all the wrong reasons—power, money, a
place of privilege in the new world that the Baron and others were trying to
create. So many years later, and with so much blood on his hands, he no longer
truly believed that he was doing any real good. However, ironically, his
reasons for doing so were perhaps the right ones—if he failed the Executive
Committee, his family would be thrown into a FEMA camp or worse. At times he
wondered if doing the wrong thing for the right reason could ever be justified,
but then those were the times when he most needed to turn to the bottle.

Sam was three drinks down when the phone buzzed. Hugh had
got some news. Bellman had been located. Sam got up, his mind suddenly clear.
There was a way out, after all. He called Aaron in and told him to get the
security detail ready. He would be flying out to the local Zeus office to
co-ordinate a mission.

Before he left, Sam sent one last message. It was a mail
without a subject heading or text in the body sent from a specially created
email address that only he and the recipient knew of. He hated dealing with the
man and his gang, but to get rid of Alice, he needed more than what firepower
Zeus could muster. As he pressed send, he hummed an old poem to himself.

Beware the
Jabberwock,

The jaws that
bite,

The claws that
catch.

For all her supposed powers, Alice would meet her match in
the Jabberwock.

***

‘Alice, you seem to have picked up quite a fan following.’

A couple of the others laughed, and Alice looked at Cynthia
to see what was so funny. Cynthia just shrugged.

‘Hey, a couple of days ago, these Biters would have been
trying to rip our throats out, and I’d gladly have drilled them in the head.
Now they’re following us like pets.’

Alice stopped. ‘These are people. They are different, they
are diseased, they are not like you, but they are people—and you know what, a
Biter will not stab a friend in the back, and a Biter will not betray his
comrades for personal gain. And by the way, Baker, they are not following us.
They are following me.’

The point made, Alice proceeded. They had ditched the Jeep
twenty minutes ago, and were progressing on foot. As they walked, more than
five hundred Biters had joined them. One or two of them had tried to attack,
but Bunny Ears would step in and flatten them with a blow. After a few met this
fate, the rest began to follow Alice and not molest the humans.

Alice looked at Vince to say something when she noticed a
red dot moving across his forehead.

‘Stop! Someone’s targeting us!’

Everyone stopped and Alice could now see another dot on her
chest. Tom had his sniper rifle up and was scanning the forests around them.

‘Can’t see anyone out there.’

Alice put her rifle down.

‘Guys, just put your weapons down.’

‘What if they’re not friendly?’

‘Butcher, if they wanted to kill us, we’d already be dead.’

Suitably chastened, Larry also laid his shotgun down as the
rest of them followed.

‘Bunny Ears, make sure the group does not panic.’

As Bunny Ears passed on Alice’s instructions to the Biters
though a series of grunts and growls, Alice walked towards the forest in front
of her. Satish and Vince were right behind her, and Satish was muttering.

‘I don’t like the look of this.’

Suddenly, a female voice spoke.

‘Why it’s our pilot friend. Vince, we were expecting you and
a small group, not every Biter in all of Nebraska. What the hell are you doing
bringing so many Biters into our territory?’

Vince stepped ahead of Alice. ‘Is that you, Kayla Hudson?
You should stop aiming guns at us. Accidents happen, you know? And I wouldn’t
like to shoot my kid sister.’

The girl laughed. ‘Come on in. Just ask the Biters to stay
where they are.’

Alice spoke up. ‘Kayla, the Biters are with me.’

The bushes parted and a young woman came out. She was
carrying a rifle and had her blonde hair in a ponytail. She looked at Alice
closely.

‘So, you’re real after all. The Exec Committee would have
everyone believe that you’re some fictional character the General dreamed up. I
never thought those stories of Biters following you were true, but looks like I
learned something new today.’

‘Who are you? Are you the Night Witches?’

Kayla laughed. ‘Oh, that’s such a silly name. We’re just a bunch
of girls hanging out together.’ Then she got a hard glint in her eyes. ‘Of
course, if you’re a bandit trying to get at us we’ll cut your balls out, if
you’re a Zeus trooper we’ll shoot you dead, and if you’re a Biter, well, we
know how to aim for the head pretty well by now.’

‘Doesn’t sound like you have too many friends.’

Kayla smiled. ‘When you’re a bunch of schoolgirls caught in
The Rising, you kind of learn that you don’t have too many friends. Come on
in.’

Kayla whistled and the bushes parted and several more armed
women came out and ushered them deeper into the forest.

A few minutes later, the humans were eating and Bunny Ears
kept the Biters to one side in a clearing as Alice got to meet their hosts.
They were all young women—perhaps the same age as Alice’s older sister, Jane,
who would have been in her mid-twenties had she still been alive. All of them
were armed to the teeth, with assault rifles, handguns, and Alice spotted a
couple of portable rocket launchers lying near the small collection of tents
that seemed to be their base.

They all shook hands as they introduced themselves.

‘Kristina David.’

‘Alexis Campbell.’

‘Alexandra Mitchell.’

‘Heather Harper.’

Kayla sat down in front of Alice and her companions. ‘There
are a few more on patrol duty, but I did have a message from the General. He
said that you need to find someone called Bellman to get to the Snark, whatever
that means.’

‘Where is this Bellman?’

Alexis laughed. ‘You get straight to business, don’t you? We
don’t know, and our job was just to relay the message, but Vince, I heard you
were going to get us an extra shipment of captured Zeus ammo, weren’t you?’

Vince nodded, and Alice began to understand some of the
layers that defined the relationship between the resistance and the Night Witches.

‘That’s good, because we’ve got our people asking around,
and we should be hearing back tonight. Till then, you’re all welcome to rest
here.’

As they settled down, Alice asked Kayla if she was really
Vince’s sister.

‘Oh no, we just share the same family name, and it’s become
kind of a running joke between us. Vince flies his chopper on recce missions or
supply drops almost every week, and he started stopping by, giving us weapons
and picking up info once in a while.’

They sat and chatted for the next hour, and the Night
Witches were all very interested in Alice’s story. They had read about her, and
were keen to know details of what she had been through. Finally, Alice asked
them why they didn’t join the resistance. Alexis spoke up.

‘We don’t want to take orders from anyone. Sure, we hate
Zeus and the Exec Committee, but what we want most is to be free. If helping
the resistance once in a while helps us, we’re cool with it, but that’s all.’

Alexandra chipped in. ‘We were all young kids when The
Rising took place. We were far from home in our boarding school, and all we had
was ourselves. You have no idea how tough it was in those days for a bunch of
young girls to survive—and believe me, Biters were not the worst danger we
faced. So we had to learn to look out for ourselves.’

Alice couldn’t disagree, but she did add that fighting for
one’s own safety was of course important, but it was when people began to fight
for each other that change truly came about.

Just then Heather called out excitedly.

‘Guys, we’ve got some intel on where this Bellman is.’

***

SIX

Alice took one look at the high walls of the camp, ringed
with watch towers and automated gun turrets, and knew that short of a
full-scale frontal attack with heavy weapons and many more troops, they would
have no hope of breaching the camp. Of course, even then they would likely
destroy much of the camp, which was not the point of their mission at all.

She put down her binoculars and spoke into her headset.

‘Beaver, any ideas?’

‘None at all. I’ve seen several FEMA camps, but this one is
more heavily defended than the usual. With our numbers and weapons, we have no
hope of getting in.’

Alice slammed the binoculars down on the ground in
frustration. They had come so far, only to run up against an impassable
barrier. Bellman was supposed to have taken refuge in this camp, located just a
few kilometers east of what had once been the city of Omaha, and this Bellman
supposedly held the key to getting to the Snark.

They retreated back into the forests and regrouped, trying
to think of what else they could do, but they drew a blank. Bunny Ears looked
at her, as if asking whether he should get the other Biters, but Alice told him
to wait. The Biters, whose numbers had now swelled to many hundreds, had been
left behind a few kilometers away.

Alexis and Kayla had accompanied Alice and her companions to
the camp, and Kayla sat down next to Alice.

‘What’s so important about this Bellman anyway?’

‘It’s not Bellman, but the fact that he or she can lead us
to the Snark.’

Alice told them about the short-lived freedom the people of
Shanghai had enjoyed, the nuclear attack, and the threat to the people of
Deadland.

‘So you came all the way over here? Why don’t you just move
someplace else?’

‘Because that is our home. We have all bled and lost loved
ones to gain the freedom we enjoy, and we cannot just give it up.’

Kayla said that they were also free, but they were not tied
to any town or city.

‘Kayla, true freedom lies not just in not having to obey
someone but in knowing that you can create a world for your children where they
can grow up in safety and freedom long after you’re gone. That is what my
father taught me, and what he was trying to create in our settlement. I will
never have children of my own, but you may one day, and perhaps you should
think of what you will leave behind.’

As Alice got up to talk to Vince and Satish, Kayla thought
about what Alice had said. After a few minutes, she got up and approached her.

‘Look, I can perhaps help you get in, but once you’re in,
you’ll be on your own.’

An hour later, two men came up to meet them. Alice was
instantly on guard. These men were wearing tattered clothes, smelt as if they
had not bathed in days and were carrying a mishmash of weapons—axes hanging
from belts, shotguns and large hunting knives. All in all, they looked more
like bandits than members of the resistance. One of them, a lean man with a
long cut down the side of his face that had been patched up with crude stitches
came forward.

‘Bonjour. I am Max Zaoui, though you may call me the
Frenchman. This is my associate, Mauricio Vindell, you can just call him El
Muto.’ He laughed, though Alice could not see what was so funny. That was till
his friend opened his mouth to reveal the fact that he had no tongue, just a
black stump. ‘Zeus bastards caught him on a gun run and tortured him. Look,
we’ll get you in the camp but I need some rockets. Can you get me some?’

Vince intervened. ‘Max, I can get you four rocket launchers
with ten spare rockets. Just get us into the damn camp!’

Alice pulled Vince and Kayla aside. Satish joined them and
Alice could see that he had much the same doubts she had.

‘Can we trust them? They look like bandits themselves?’

Kayla looked Alice straight in the eye. ‘You of all people
should know better than to judge people by their appearances.’

Alice was about to retort when Vince stepped in.

‘Max and Mauricio are smugglers. They obey nobody and live
wild, but they are a critical lifeline for the resistance. They get us weapons
and they also supply other resistance cells who don’t work for General Konrath.
Also, they know the guards at most of the FEMA camps since they smuggle in
things like bootleg liquor. They may not look like much, but I’d trust them
with my life. In fact, I already do. If they wanted to sell us out to Zeus,
we’d all be dead already.’