Phantoms of the North: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 6) (8 page)

Alice walked up to him and knelt
in front of him.

‘We are happy to let you be in the
wastelands, as long as you don’t bother our people. I know of some bandits who
have come in and joined us as well, and some of them helped us in our fight
against Zeus. We have no enmity with you, but when you try and attack us or
kidnap our people, we will destroy you. Isn’t that clear?’

The man was now crying even
harder, sobbing like a child. Salil stepped in and slapped him hard across the
face.

‘Stop crying. If you’re man enough
to go around looting settlements and killing unarmed civilians, you’re man
enough to face the consequences.’

One of the other men spoke, his
voice low and subdued.

‘We got the message when you set
up your Wonderland. Did we ever attack your city? We don’t have one leader, but
we keep in touch with the others, and we all agreed to leave the city alone.
Too much firepower, not worth it. Not because we cared about you and your
damned Biters, but because it was bad business to go after such a hard target.’

Alice looked at the man. There was
still defiance in his eyes. He had to be the leader of this gang.

‘So then why did you attack us?’

The man spat on the ground.

‘You were the ones who expanded.
Your new farms came into what was our territory and your people began clearing
us out.’

‘That still doesn’t explain why
you’re kidnapping people and Biters.’

The man looked up at Alice, and
she saw a hint of fear overshadow the defiance in his eyes.

‘It was business for us. That’s
all—as they used to say before The Rising, there was nothing personal, just
business. A few years ago, the Phantoms made contact and word spread—they had
Dreamweed and weapons, and they wanted people. It made no difference to us why
they wanted them. Zeus used to get people for their slave farms, so we figured
they wanted the same. This was back when there were still many small
settlements out here and Wonderland was not yet up and running, so it was easy
pickings for us. Watch a settlement, figure out when people went out to fetch
food or water and then grab them. We worked out areas so that we wouldn’t come
into conflict with other gangs, and it worked well for years. Till you showed
up.’

Now he was looking at Alice, and
she felt nothing but disgust towards the man.

‘You are wrong. It is never
business when you are playing with people’s lives, it’s always personal.’

She turned away to look at Salil.

‘Have the others had any luck?’

‘Arjun radioed in a few minutes
ago. They’ve got the trail of another gang and they’re going in after them.’

She then turned back to the bandit
leader.

‘So, what do you want to do now?’

The man spat at her and Alice
stepped back to avoid the spit.

‘You think you have things under
control. You have no idea what’s going on out here. You’re seriously pissing
off the Phantoms and if you put us out of business, sooner or later they will
come down themselves. Then you and your Wonderland will be finished.’

‘What is so special about these
Phantoms? We’ve fought Zeus and their armies, why should we be afraid of some
men on horseback?’

The man looked at Alice.

‘You’ll see when the time comes,
witch. Kill us now so we don’t come back to kill you.’

Alice got up and walked away to
confer with Salil and Brittany.

‘I’m afraid these men will not
give up their ways.’

Brittany had her finger on the
trigger of her rifle.

‘Should I finish them?’

‘No, we don’t kill people in cold
blood. But we could always use a few more helping hands. Bunny Ears?’

That was all she needed to say. As
Alice and the others walked back to the Jeep, Bunny Ears and two other Biters
stepped forward. The bandits screamed and pleaded as they were bitten, and then
minutes later, they all headed back, with three more Biters in their ranks.

***

‘Alice, I haven’t told you this,
but people used to grumble behind your back about how you made people still go
through drills and training even though the war was over. I think they all owe
you an apology.’

Alice looked at Aalok.

‘I don’t want or need an apology.
I just hope we never forget that what matters is not celebrating the war that’s
just ended, but being ready for the next one that may seek you out. How is
Sayoni doing?’

Aalok looked down, hesitating
before he answered.

‘She’s amazingly strong to be the
way she is after all we went through. But sometimes at night, she’ll wake up
screaming. She’ll say it was just a bad dream, but I can feel that she’ll take
a long time to get over it, if she ever does.’

‘It takes much more strength and
courage to keep smiling and living after you’ve been through hell than to pick
up a gun and shoot someone. You’re lucky to have her, and we’re lucky to have
her here.’

Aalok smiled and got back to his
work. Work on the factory had begun in earnest, and teams had fanned out into
the Ruins to look for the spare parts Aalok needed. As for the farm, they had
talked and decided that there was no sense in being defensive. Also, the
monsoon rains would start within a month or two and Haroula was insistent that
they needed to get the farms up and running, and seeds planted by then. The
bandits were on the run, and if the Phantoms were interested in picking a
fight, they might as well show them what they would be up against. So a large
force was guarding the farms at all times, and patrols were sweeping the
wastelands daily.

Salil had just come back from such
a patrol and stopped by the Looking Glass to check on Alice.

‘All quiet today as well?’

He sat down and took a long drink from
his water bottle. ‘We saw two bandits, but they ran the moment they spotted us.
I think word’s spread and at least for now, they fear us more than these
Phantoms of theirs. What about the one we captured? How’s he doing?’

Doctor Edwards was there, taking a
break from the clinic. What had begun as their communication center had become
a gathering place for Alice and her closest circle. ‘He’s good enough to be let
go. He’s been talking a lot for the last couple of days, ever since he finally
figured out that we weren’t going to torture him or kill him.’

‘What have we learned?’

‘He was a low-level guy. A petty
criminal before The Rising, into stealing credit cards and such. He got swept
up into a gang while in prison. When The Rising happened, they broke out, stole
weapons from the police station and stuck together. They made hay in the first
few years, preying on people out in the Deadland and their numbers and weapons
helped them survive the Biters. When we began setting up, they stayed away. He
says word had spread about you and our fighting with Zeus, and they decided
wisely enough not to mess with us. Then the Phantoms showed up a few years ago,
and they started on a new line of business. It began with them trading food or
fruits for Dreamweed, and soon many of them were addicted. Then came the real
offer—Dreamweed and guns for people.’

‘Does he know anything more about
these Phantoms?’

Edwards shook his head.

‘He’s seen them only twice and
that too from a distance when they went to drop off their human cargo at the
designated pickup point. Same thing we heard during the attack on the farm—big
men on horses, carrying automatic weapons and fully covered by cloaks and a
mask.’

Alice turned to Danish, who had
been soundlessly typing away on the keyboard in front of his computer terminal.

‘Did you manage to learn anything?’

Over the last couple of years, the
Internet had been restored slowly but surely, starting with using the servers
captured from the Central Committee and increasingly by putting online old servers.
The days of recreational surfing were long gone, but at least people could now
communicate using message boards, mail and even video chats. That had been the
lifeline between Alice’s forces and Konrath in the US Homeland. It was what had
allowed them to get advance warning of the danger posed by the Snark missile
the Executive Committee had unleashed on Shanghai, and now they were counting
on it to get some information on what they were up against.

‘Unfortunately not much. What was
Pakistan was pretty much wasted in The Rising. After they nuked some Indian
bases, they were pretty much wiped out. Nobody knows much about these so-called
Phantoms. As we’ve talked before, it’s perfectly possible some tribe survived
but I still don’t get what they want with people.’

Alice stepped out to get some
fresh air and found Bunny Ears there, standing in wait.

‘Spotted anything unusual, Bunny
Ears?’

He growled, a low-pitched sound
that Alice had come to recognize as a no. Bunny Ears and his Biters had been
out in force for much of the day, but as Alice had guessed, once news spread of
what had happened to the three bandits they had encountered, bandits had been
very shy when it came to confronting patrols from Wonderland. Alice thought
about the moment she had ordered the men to be bitten. At one time she had
believed, like all other settlers in the Deadland, that being turned into a
Biter was a fate worse than death.

Better dead than undead.

Now she knew better. The Biters
were diseased, aggressive and did not always act in line with what people might
consider rational behavior, but they were not supernatural monsters. They were
people infected with a virus or disease that could be vaccinated against, and
perhaps one day cured. Still, being bitten would have been as harrowing for the
men as being shot in cold blood. Alice had done it in the heat of the moment,
angered by the nonchalance of their leader, by the fact that killing and raping
innocents for loot and plunder did not weigh at all on his conscience. Now, in the
cold, sober light of day, she wondered if she should have let them go or
brought them in.

And then what? Wonderland didn’t
have a penal system. Arjun had taken an old building and made it a makeshift
jail. The rules had been simple when they started out—steal or fight, and you
spent a couple of days in the ‘jail’. Serious assault, rape or murder and you
were cast out into the Deadland, which in the early days had been as good as a
death sentence. Now, with thousands of inhabitants and the borders of Wonderland
spreading fast, they would need to rethink how they thought about crime and
punishment. It was precisely at moments like these when Alice regretted not
having her Dad along. He would have figured it all out. He would have managed
to make everyone agree on one course of action. All with a smile on his face.

Feeding thousands of people,
resolving daily disputes that were inevitable when you had thousands of people
living in close proximity, arranging work schedules—all were things that Alice
was sure she was no good at. Yet people looked to her for answers. She had
never set out to lead anyone. She had set out to avenge her fallen family, a
personal vendetta that had transformed into a bigger struggle for freedom. A
fifteen-year-old girl had been swept up by circumstances and destiny and
transformed into something and somebody that she was not sure she wanted to be.

But all that didn’t matter—as her
Dad had once told her, he wasn’t leading anybody because he wanted to. He had
people counting on him, and he would do what was needed to take care of them.
He had said that leadership did not lie in big, formal titles, but in doing the
very best for whoever depended on you. As Alice looked around at Wonderland,
with people bustling around, Biters freely walking on the roads, children
playing in the open, she realized she had a lot to defend and fight for.

Bunny Ears shuffled off and Alice
followed. It was that time of evening, when the Biters would gather and she
would read from the old book she carried with her.

***

‘So, what did you do before The
Rising?’

‘I was like seven years old, so I
guess I didn’t do much other than bug my older sister.’

Salil had been trying to make
polite conversation, but Brittany was proving to have no such intent. Truth be
told, he was trying to be more than just polite. If he was going to spend hours
out in the sun in the wasteland with an attractive woman, he might as well get
to know her a bit better.

‘I was ten. I remember going to
school, I remember the Internet, I remember listening to songs on my iPod. I
remember watching zombie movies. Who would have guessed what would happen to
all that?’

Brittany grinned as she answered.

‘At least we know the zombie
movies got it wrong.’

‘You watched zombie movies when
you were seven?’

Brittany grinned again.

‘My sis had all of the Walking
Dead series on DVD and I’d pop them in when nobody was around.’

They kept walking together, now
just a kilometer away from where they had parked their Jeep, and a ten-minute
drive back to the farm.