Phantoms of the North: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 6) (4 page)

It was a world without laws,
without the police, where the strongest and most ruthless survived. So Bilal
had thrived in the Deadland, once again a predator, but now hunting not for
money, but for survival.

Then had come the masked horsemen
from the North, with their demand for human slaves, and Bilal had found a new
calling. The fact that he enjoyed Dreamweed didn’t hurt, either. The only
downside was that now he was no longer a solitary predator, but needed to use
men like the ones arrayed before him. Men who had been illiterate peasants
before The Rising, crude men who knew nothing of the skill and finesse needed
to kill a man without making a god-awful mess. Bilal shifted on his good leg
and cursed the yellow-haired witch. He had been taken by surprise, and he would
not allow such a thing to happen again.

‘Men, stay sharp. The good news is
that our customers are okay with us supplying Biters, and a shortage of Biters
is something we haven’t ever had to complain about. Now go out there and find
me some stinking Biters.’

As the men dispersed, Bilal kept
two of his best men with him. He had walked for ten minutes when he caught the
stench of Biters. He signaled to his men to get down as two Biters walked into
the open a few meters from them. One of his men raised his rifle to fire and
Bilal swatted it away.

‘Idiot! We’re supposed to capture
them, not kill them.’

Bilal had made his men carry ropes
and handcuffs with them, but to be honest, he was not sure they were actually
up to capturing Biters and then transporting them across the mountains. Still,
they were desperate for their Dreamweed and he didn’t want the Phantoms coming
for him. So they had to try and this was as good an opportunity as any.

One of his men ran ahead, and as
the Biters turned towards him, another one flanked them and hit one of the
Biters on the back of the head with the butt of his rifle. As the Biter fell
down, the man handcuffed his hands behind his back and took out a strip of
cloth to tie around his mouth. The second Biter growled in fury but was swept
off his feet by a well-aimed kick and was similarly bound and gagged. Bilal
looked on, pleased at how his men had reacted.

‘Call the others and let’s load
these animals on a cart.’

That was when Bilal heard a low
growl and turned to see a tall Biter with strange bunny-shaped ears come into
sight. Behind him were more Biters, too many to count. Bilal raised his rifle
and shouted at his men to get ready. They never had a chance. One of his men
fell, hit by a shot to the head. Another went down as a round caught him in the
mid-section. For a split second, Bilal was dumbfounded. When did Biters learn
to shoot? Then he saw movement in the bushes—a flowing lock of golden hair. He
knew his game was up—the witch called Alice was supposed to be able to control
Biters, and now Bilal saw that in action as the Biters came at him and more of
his men fell to shots.

Bilal considered staying and
fighting but then his survival instinct took over. The old pickup truck they
used to ferry people over the border was parked a few hundred meters away, and
he ran as fast as his injured leg would carry him towards it. He ran into the
bushes and kept running, trying to blank out the sounds of his men screaming
behind him.

***

That week, Alice and her comrades
went on four sweeps through the wastelands, netting twenty bandits killed. The
word spread quickly—the area was no longer a safe haven for bandits and slave
traders. Totally outmatched by Alice and her friends in terms of firepower,
they melted away, many going North into the mountain passes and valleys of what
had been Kashmir.

For Alice, victory had not rested
in simply scattering the bandits, but in the more than twenty people they had
rescued. Many were in terrible shape from torture and malnutrition, and Norbert
and Doctor Edwards had their hands full in tending to them.

Sayoni was now on her feet, and
Alice quickly discovered that the young woman, for all the horrors she had been
through, was a real live wire. Alice always suppressed a smile whenever she saw
Aalok and Sayoni together—the quiet, shy man who loved nothing more than
tinkering with tools and gadgets, and the talkative, loud woman who loved being
around people. Aalok was popular for his ability to fix and create things, and
Sayoni soon became popular due to her sheer ability to make friends where she
went.

They were standing near the old
airport, awaiting the first jet that would bring in machines and experts from
the Homeland. So far, they had been ferrying people back and forth with old
Dakotas, which had to make multiple stops to get to Wonderland. But after the
Executive Committee fell, Konrath’s people had found two C-5 Galaxy transport
aircraft in airworthy shape.

Alice’s jaw dropped open as the
giant aircraft came into view. She had never seen an aircraft as big as this
one, and everyone gathered on the ground had their eyes fixed on the monster as
it circled the airport. Over the next week, the plan was for the planes to make
six trips to Wonderland, laden with equipment and people to operate them.

‘I think I’d like to go to the US.
I went there as a kid with my family before The Rising.’

Aalok, who had studied Engineering
at a US university, smiled as he held Sayoni’s hand. After all the horrors they
had been through, things were finally looking like they might be returning to
normal. Traveling for tourism was still something nobody had contemplated, but
who knew, with the way things were going, Sayoni might just have her wish
fulfilled.

The Galaxy landed and taxied to a
stop and as the ramp opened up, the first person out was a young woman wearing
combat fatigues and carrying an assault rifle. Behind her were a half dozen
more armed Americans. The woman walked up to Alice and saluted.

‘Brittany Lee reporting, Ma’am. I
am in charge of the security detail for the experts coming in.’

Alice felt really awkward at all
the uniformed men and women saluting her and walked up to shake their hands.

‘Just call me Alice. What are your
names?’

‘Phoenix Stormwolf. You sure
kicked ass back in the Homeland, Alice. Glad to meet you.’

‘Kevin Gletus.’

‘Kris Hansen.’

As she met all of them, Brittany
guided Alice towards the plane.

‘We’ve got twenty crew to operate
the machines. They’re just ensuring the machines made it okay on the flight and
should be coming out any minute.’

As Alice came to the airplane,
people began trooping out. Leading them was an old woman with silver hair and a
grin on her face that instantly put Alice at ease.

‘My name is Haroula, and boy am I
glad to be here. All my life, I worked our farm till everything went to hell.
It’ll be good to get back to doing what I knew and help our people. Just tell
us where you want us.’

The others had now come closer and
the new arrivals were warmly greeted, and the large tractor and harvester that
rolled out off the ramp were met by huge cheers. Alice turned to Haroula.

‘I guess you want to rest for some
time before you and your team get to work. We can arrange for you to be driven
to the farmlands tomorrow. We’ve built some houses there but you may want to
change things. Do whatever you need to be comfortable.’

Haroula smiled with a twinkle in
her eyes that made her look much younger than she was. ‘I’m a farm girl and
there are people who need to be fed both here and in the US. So I don’t need
any rest. I’m happy to get there to see the fields right away and I’d want the
kids to work as soon as I can.’

A couple of the younger members of
Haroula’s team exchanged glances, but if any of them wanted rest and a slower
start, they were not going to admit it when Haroula was willing to get straight
to work at her age. Alice smiled as Haroula harangued her team into action.

‘Come on, kids. I’m old enough to
be your grandmother and I can move faster than you. We didn’t come here for a
siesta. There are hungry families back home depending on us. You, Patricia,
stick with me.’

A young woman with blonde hair
picked up her bags and followed Haroula as she continued, turning to Alice with
an outstretched hand.

‘Hi, I’m Patricia Sanchez, and
Haroula is my mother in law.’

‘She seems amazing.’

‘You can say that again. At her
age, she shot three Zeus troopers in the fighting for our hometown.’

As the new arrivals moved out of
the airport and into the waiting trucks, a sense of relief washed over Alice.
She had been worried about what it would mean to have outsiders from the
Homeland come in. In theory, it made perfect sense, but it would all come down
to the people involved, and with Haroula in charge, she was much more
comfortable with the arrangement.

As she passed them, she overheard
Arjun talking to Sayoni.

‘Sayoni, no, we didn’t have a party
on Valentine’s Day.’

‘Why not? We should have a big
party, shouldn’t we? We’ve got so much to celebrate, why not have a Valentine’s
Day-themed party?’

Aalok laughed and the others
around them cheered Sayoni’s idea. As Alice walked by, she felt that everything
that had happened over the past few weeks—Sayoni’s rescue, the routing of the
slave traders in the Wasteland and the finalization of the deal with
Konrath—had all been for the best.

She was soon going to be proven
very, very wrong.

***

The Khan lay back on his mat,
watching his men practice on the grounds below the ledge where his tent was
pitched. He made sure they rode every day and practiced their shooting. At
times, some of his men had grumbled about not having fought a battle for years,
and they were made such an example of that those questions were never raised
again. The Khan knew that their position, their continued survival, all
depended on their continued ability to strike fear into the hearts of those
they encountered beyond the valley where their camp lay.

One of his men rode by, wearing
the same cloth mask over his face with holes for the eyes, nose and mouth that
all the men wore. Over the years, the Khan had come to recognize them without
needing to see their faces.

‘Rashid, what news do you bring
from the pass?’

The man called Rashid dismounted
and bowed.

‘My Khan, I caught a man, one of
our suppliers. He said he was seeking us out with some news. He drove their
truck but there were no people and he was alone.’

That got the Khan’s attention.

‘Bring him to me.’

The two dozen riders stopped their
exercises as a man was marched into view, his hands bound in front of him and
his eyes blindfolded.

‘Take the blindfold off. Let me
look at his eyes as he tells me why he sought us out, and that too
empty-handed.’

Bilal squinted as the sudden light
assaulted his eyes, and then gave a gasp of horror as he saw the masked giant
sitting in front of him and the dozens of masked riders around him. He had seen
the masked riders only twice, when they had approached him with their deal,
where they would supply him Dreamweed and small arms for his people. He had
learnt how much power that gave him, and Bilal had become an eager party to the
deal. Every time, his men would leave the captives bound and blindfolded at the
drop-off point and pick up the weapons or drugs.

He had heard from other slavers
about the leader of these monsters, a man who called himself the Khan. Another
slaver, a man who had clearly been much more educated than Bilal before The
Rising, had called these monsters Phantoms, and the name had stuck. The
monsters seemed to like the name and they began using it as well. Now that he
was in the Khan’s lair, and in front of him, Bilal couldn’t stop himself from
shaking. The fear shamed him, but he could not control it.

‘What is your name?’

‘Bilal.’

He felt a stab of pain as Rashid
punched him in the kidneys. As he gasped for breath and doubled over, Rashid
hissed into his ears and as Bilal recovered and stood up, he repeated the
words.

‘Bilal, my Khan.’

‘Why do you want to meet us? Where
are the people you should have supplied to us? Have your men lost their love
for Dreamweed or do you no longer need the weapons we sent?’

Bilal weighed his words carefully.
The ancient Enfield rifles and ammunition he had got from the Phantoms were
great for terrorizing stragglers they caught in the Deadland, but useless
against Alice and her forces.

‘My Khan, we were attacked. This
Biter girl, Alice, seems to want control over our areas as well. My men are
dead or scattered.’

The Khan sat up, suddenly more
interested. He had heard of this Alice and how she was leading a fight against
Zeus and their masters. It had never been his concern, and he had avoided
drawing attention to himself or his men, hidden in the valley where they had
made their home. The last thing he had needed was for Zeus to come hunting him
from the air. His men were well fed, their horses were healthy, they had enough
fields to grow Dreamweed, and slowly, but surely, the Khan had been growing his
empire. One day, he would venture out into the plains and take what was there,
but he was very conscious of his and his men’s strengths and limitations. They
would fight when they could do so on their terms. With Zeus out of the picture,
he had begun to collect more intelligence about events on the plains, and men
like Bilal served a dual purpose—supplying people and also providing
information about the Deadland.