Phantoms of the North: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 6) (13 page)

Rashid admired how fast the girl
had moved to get behind cover, but it would not be enough to stop her. He
picked up speed, headed straight for the bin behind which Alice was hidden. It
was about three feet tall, and he guided his horse straight towards it, firing
all the while. Alice peeked out the corner and pulled her head back just in
time as a bullet slammed into the can. The rider was headed straight for her
and firing continuously. He would have to stop at some point, or take cover and
fire. Otherwise, there was no way he could get a clean shot at her. Of course,
Alice had never seen horses used in battle and had little idea what they were
capable of in the hands of an experienced rider.

Rashid pulled back on the reins
and his horse cleanly vaulted over the bin. As he jumped over the bin, Rashid
looked down and caught a glimpse of yellow hair. He slashed down with his sword
arm and then he was over the bin. He rode on for a few feet, carried forward by
the momentum before he began to turn back for the kill.

Alice jerked her head to the right
as the blade scythed down towards her. That saved her life as the sword sliced
through her left shoulder, cutting a couple of inches deep. The rider turned
around to come at her again, and he had half finished his turn when she brought
her right arm up and threw the knife at him with all her strength.

Rashid was bringing up his gun to
fire when he felt a jarring impact against his right shoulder. He looked down
to see a knife, buried to the hilt in his shoulder. He screamed in frustration
and pain when he tried to raise his arm. The gun fell uselessly to the ground.
Fine, he would behead the witch. Maybe this was how it had to end. He raised
his sword and rode towards her.

Alice stood her ground, legs
slightly bent and well spaced, gun held firmly in both hands. The man was brave
to come at an enemy holding a gun armed with a sword, but courage was not the
only thing that won battles. She aimed and sent a single bullet through Rashid’s
head.

***

The Khan caught up with his men
after a few minutes. A few of them looked back, searching for Rashid, but The
Khan just motioned for them to ride on. Explanations would come later. Right
now, he had to get far away before Alice and her people mounted a
counterattack.

He was happy with how his men had
performed, but that had largely been due to the element of surprise and the
tactics he had made them follow. In open battle, vastly outnumbered by what
Wonderland could bring to bear against them, they would be slaughtered. He was
gambling that their raid would make Alice think that their capabilities and
numbers were far higher than they actually were. He did not have the numbers
yet to ride on Wonderland in frontal battle, but he would bleed them with raid
after raid like this, striking terror into them, robbing them of the safety and
security they had come to take for granted. He would burn their crops, kill
their workers and then let the bandits rise up and join his forces in taking
their own revenge on Alice and her people, confident that The Khan was the new
force to reckon with in the Deadland.

He had left his message for Alice,
but he had no hope that she would actually agree to those terms. Instead, he
planned on it further sowing panic in their midst.

Then they would take Wonderland
down.

As he rode, he saw two figures
hurrying into the shadows. One was a thin man and the other moved with the
unmistakable gait of a Biter. A Biter with strange, pointed ears. The Biter who
was supposed to be Alice’s special companion. The Khan looked on for a second
and then made up his mind.

‘Grab those two. The thin one can
be our dinner and that Biter will get Alice thinking twice about taking us on.’

***

SEVEN

Each of the eight bodies was
covered by a sheet, and a sudden gust of wind lifted one of the sheets and sent
it fluttering away, revealing the bloodied body it concealed. Someone cried,
someone else called out for the sheet to be put back and kids rushed in with
rocks to hold the sheets in place. Alice just stood there, watching the
lifeless bodies of those who moments ago had been friends, brothers, sisters,
fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. People took on many responsibilities and
titles that went with them in life, but in death, every single person took on
only one title—a body.

Alice was no stranger to death,
but that did not make confronting it any easier, especially when these were
people she was sworn to protect. She walked away, trying to collect her
thoughts.

The enemies they were up against
were not just well equipped, but displayed a level of tactical thinking that
Alice had not encountered before. The Red Guards had been so complacent that
the resistance had taken them completely by surprise and they had spent the
rest of the war on the back foot. But these enemies were taking the initiative,
and in creating a distraction at the farm and then destroying the Looking Glass
and attacking the heart of Wonderland, they had totally taken Alice by
surprise.

She saw that shaken confidence all
around her. The people of Wonderland had begun to assume that they were secure,
that they no longer had to live in daily fear of attack. Now, that illusion had
been shattered. Also, they were now cut off from the outside world. Danish had
said that he could get the Looking Glass up and running again, but it would
take him several days. However, from a stage where they had taken for granted
the ability to stay in touch with the Homeland, this was a huge setback. What
made the level of anxiety and fear even higher were the rumors swirling about
the nature of their attackers. Alice and Arjun had made sure that the bodies of
their attackers had been carried off to a sealed room in their clinic so Doctor
Edwards could have a closer look before they were cremated, but the word had
gotten out.

Their attackers did not look
human.

Alice had heard the whispered
suggestions—that they were really monsters, or ghosts; that the tag of Phantoms
that they had acquired among the bandits was well deserved. Arjun had snapped
at a couple of youngsters saying that these were not ghosts, they bled and died
like any men, but Alice needed to know what they were up against. She walked to
the clinic and found Edwards and Norbert outside. Edwards pulled her inside,
and further adding to Alice’s anxiety, his face was creased with worry.

‘Come and have a look.’

He pulled the sheet off one of the
bodies and Alice now saw it in much more detail than she had in the darkness
outside the farm. Edwards had cut off the cloak to reveal a muscled form
covered in boils and warts of some sort. The face was swollen beyond
recognition and the eyes were puffed up, surrounded by boils, reducing them to
mere slits.

‘What the hell are they?’

Edwards pulled the sheet back over
the body.

‘For sure, they are not monsters
or ghosts. They are very much men.’

‘Why do they look the way they do?’

Edwards had a thoughtful look on
his face. ‘I wish I had more equipment to give you a conclusive answer, but I
do have a hypothesis.’

‘What?’

‘I think these men were exposed to
very high doses of radiation, which caused the tumors and mutations. I suspect
many of them would have died of cancer over the years, and the ones who remain
may also have a limited lifespan, but that could explain the tumors.’

Alice looked at the covered body.

‘What happened to them that didn’t
happen here?’

‘Alice, if they have come from the
hills across the old border, then they came from a land that was subject to the
worst nuclear catastrophe in human history. During The Rising, Pakistan
launched missiles at India and India retaliated with overwhelming force. From
what I gather, when it looked like some Pakistani nukes were getting into the
wrong hands, the US also struck. Their cities were vaporized and these men must
have escaped to the hills, though clearly they did not totally escape the
effects of radiation. I’ll open one of them for an autopsy. You don’t need to
see that. Rest and I’ll get back to you.’

Alice stepped out of the clinic,
wondering just what other monstrosities man’s hunger for power had unleashed.

Arjun rushed up to her holding
something familiar in his hand. As Alice took a closer look, she saw it was the
old certificate Aalok had shown her, the one that he thought might have some
links to Bunny Ears’ past. The frame had been shattered, it was torn down the
middle and had a few drops of blood on it. Alice looked at Arjun, and as if
reading the question implicit in her look, he answered by shaking his head.

‘We cannot find either Bunny Ears
or Aalok. I’ve had patrols out for the last thirty minutes scouring every inch
of Wonderland, and there’s no sign of them.’

Alice thought of the gentle Aalok,
always more comfortable tinkering with his machines than in the company of
others. She thought of Bunny Ears, the one constant companion she had over the
last few years, always by her side, always willing to put himself in harm’s way
to protect her. Then she thought of them at the mercy of the bloodthirsty
monsters who had attacked them.

Just then, Edwards came out,
ashen-faced and seemingly in shock.

‘What’s wrong?’

Edwards wiped the edge of his
mouth. He had thrown up after opening up one of the bodies for his autopsy and
discovering what lay half digested in their stomachs. He struggled to compose
himself as he answered Alice.

‘They….they eat people and Biters.’

***

Aalok struggled to see through the
blood that had covered his eyes from the wound to his head, unable to clear it
away with his hands tied behind his back. He had been taken totally by surprise
when he and Bunny Ears had stumbled into the path of the horsemen. He had been
put down by a single blow to the head, and before he fell unconscious with the
next blow, he had caught a glimpse of Bunny Ears, surrounded by cloaked men on
horses. He had woken up in the back of a cart, being pulled by two horses with
a cloaked man at the reins. Bunny Ears was lying in a corner of the cart, hands
and legs bound, bleeding from several cuts to his chest and arms. He was
missing the ears that had given him his name, and Aalok saw an unruly mop of
curly hair.

‘Bunny Ears.’

His head turned towards Aalok and
he growled, not a growl of anger, but a low-pitched noise. Somehow, Aalok
thought he understand what Bunny Ears was trying to say. Perhaps he had spent
so much time with him, but he now had begun to develop an intuitive
understanding of what Bunny Ears was trying to say through his tone and sounds.

‘I’m okay, Bunny Ears. It looks
worse than it probably is. The question is what do these guys want with us?’

Bunny Ears shook his head and lay
back on the cart. Aalok raised his head over the edge of the cart, using his
shoulders to try and clear some of the blood away so he could see where they
were.

They had long passed Wonderland
and seemed to be in a mountainous area. In the distance, Aalok could see
snow-covered peaks. As a young child before The Rising, he had gone on a
holiday with his family to Ladakh, and he thought that was where they were, or
perhaps close to it, but he couldn’t be sure. The riders were supposed to have
come from an area across the old border and Aalok tried to do the maths in his
head, though his throbbing headache didn’t help him think clearly. They might
be half a day or so away from their destination, and had probably ridden for
the best part of a day, no doubt slowed down by the cart. He tried to think of
how he could get away. Even if he managed to free his hands, what could he do?
He would likely be run down by the horses before he got too far.

A rider came close and tapped the
side of the cart with a rifle. Aalok found himself looking up at a giant of a
man, who was now pointing the rifle straight at Aalok. To Aalok’s surprise, the
man spoke flawless English.

‘My men are tired after the raid,
and we have some hard riding to do before we get home. With both of you in it,
the cart’s too heavy and we’re making slow progress. You will ride behind me.
Let me warn you though. If you try any stunts, I will slit your throat and
drink your blood while you’re still alive.’

Aalok was picked up two men and
put on the giant’s horse, tied to him with a rope. Any thoughts of resistance
or a heroic escape had disappeared from his mind, replaced by a kind of
mind-numbing fear that he had never felt before.

***

Alice was sitting with Doctor
Edwards and Danish in the gutted and blackened ruins of the Looking Glass.
Danish had worked all night trying to recover what he could, and his eyes were
bloodshot and tired. Doctor Edwards was silent, and they were all trying to
come to grips with what they had learned about their attackers. Alice had seen
and fought all kinds of evil, but this was an evil of a sort she had never
encountered. What would make people eat other people?

‘Doctor, these are not men. They
are monsters, and they must be destroyed.’