Alice in Deadland Trilogy

Alice in
Deadland

The Complete Trilogy

Copyright © 2012
Mainak Dhar

All Rights Reserved.

www.mainakdhar.com

This is a work of
fiction, and all characters and incidents depicted in it are purely the result
of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
real people or incidents is purely co-incidental.

Table of Contents

Greetings
from the Deadland

Alice
in Deadland

Through
The Killing Glass: Alice in Deadland Book II

Off
With Their Heads: The Prequel to Alice in Deadland

Free
Excerpt – Hunting the Snark (An Alice in Deadland Adventure)

Free
Excerpt – Deadland (Untold Stories of Alice in Deadland)

About
the Author

As always, for
Puja & Aadi

GREETINGS FROM THE DEADLAND

In late November of 2011, I uploaded my novel Alice in
Deadland to the Kindle store using Amazon’s KDP self-publishing program. I had
first discovered the tremendous opportunity in reaching readers worldwide
through the Kindle store in March, and after a modest beginning (I sold 118
ebooks in my first month), I was beginning to see some success, having sold
some 20,000 ebooks by November. However, nothing had prepared me for the
reception my story about a girl called Alice in a dystopian world called the Deadland
got from readers. Alice in Deadland quickly became an Amazon.com bestseller and
encouragement from readers like yourself led me to write the sequel, Through
The Killing Glass, which was published in March 2012.

As of May 2012, the two Alice in Deadland novels had been
downloaded by well over 100,000 readers on the Kindle store. This was the kind
of reception most writers dream of, and certainly more than I had ever
expected. I received more than two hundred reader emails and also started a
Facebook group for Alice in Deadland fans (at
http://www.facebook.com/groups/345795412099089/
).
The feedback I got was pretty unanimous- readers wanted to know more about the
world that Alice found herself in. How had our civilization been reduced to the
Deadland? What was the story behind some of the characters readers encountered
such as the Queen and Bunny Ears?

That feedback motivated me to write the third book in the
series, Off With Their Heads, which was created as a prequel to Alice in
Deadland, depicting the final days of The Rising through the eyes of some of
the pivotal characters in the series.

In this special Omnibus edition, you get all three titles
together to provide a complete immersion into the world of Alice. Hope you have
as much fun reading the books as I did while creating them.

Mainak Dhar

ALICE
IN DEADLAND

ONE

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her
sister on the hill, and of having no Biters to shoot. Once or twice she peeped
through her sniper rifle
’
s
scope, but could see no targets.
‘
What
is the use of an ambush,
’
thought Alice,
‘
without
any Biters to shoot in the head?
’

Alice was fifteen, and had been born just three months after
The Rising. Her older sister and parents sometimes talked of how the world had
been before. They talked of going to the movies, of watching TV, of taking long
drives in the countryside, of school. Alice could relate to none of that. The
only life she had known was one of hiding from the Biters. The only education
that she knew to be useful consisted of three simple lessons: if a Biter bites
you, you will become one of them; if a Biter bites someone you know, it doesn
’
t matter whether that
person was your best friend; they were now a Biter and would rip your throat
out in a heartbeat; and if you could take only one shot, aim for the head. Only
the head. Nothing else would put a Biter down for good.

So here she was, lying on a small hillock, her rifle at her
shoulder, waiting to pick off any stragglers who escaped the main force. The
first few years of her life had been one of hiding, and of surviving from one
day to another. But then the humans had begun to regroup and fight back, and
the world had been engulfed in a never-ending war between the living and the
undead. Alice
’
s
parents were part of the main assault force that was now sweeping through a
group of Biters that had been spotted near their settlement. She could hear the
occasional pop of guns firing, but so far no Biters had come their way. Her
sister was lying quietly, as always obedient and somber. Alice could not
imagine just lying here, getting bored when the action was elsewhere, so she
crawled away to the edge of the small hill they were on and peered through her
scope, trying to get a glimpse of the action.

That
’
s
when she saw him. The Biter was wearing pink bunny ears of all things. That in
itself did not strike Alice as strange. When someone was bitten and joined the
undead, they just continued to wear what they had been wearing when they were
turned. Perhaps this one had been at a party when he had been bitten. The first
Biter she had shot had been wearing a tattered Santa Claus suit. Unlike kids
before The Rising, she had not needed her parents to gently break the news that
Santa Claus was not real. What was truly peculiar about this Biter was that he
was not meandering about mindlessly but seemed to be looking for something. The
Biters were supposed to be mindless creatures, possessed of no intelligence
other than an overpowering hunger to bite the living. She braced herself,
centering the crosshairs of her scope on the Biter
’
s head. He was a good two hundred meters away
and moving fast, so it was hardly going to be an easy shot.

That
’
s
when the Biter with the bunny ears dropped straight into the ground.

Alice looked on, transfixed, and then without thinking of
what she was getting into, ran towards the point where the Biter had seemingly
been swallowed up by the ground. Her heart was pounding as she came closer. For
months there had been rumors that the Biters had created huge underground bases
where they hid and from which they emerged to wreak havoc. There were stories
of entire human armies being destroyed by Biters who suddenly materialized out
from the ground and then disappeared. However, nobody had yet found such a base
and these stories were largely dismissed as being little more than fanciful
fairy tales. Had Alice managed to find such a base?

Her excitement got the better of her caution, and she ran on
alone. She should have alerted her sister, she should have called for
reinforcements, she should have done a lot of things. But at that moment, all
she remembered was where the Biter had dropped into the ground and of what
would happen if she had truly found an underground Biter base. She was an
excellent shot, far better than most of the adults in the settlement, and she
was fast. If there was one thing she had been told by all her teachers since
she started training, it was that she was a born fighter. She could put a man
twice her size on the mat in the wink of an eye, and she had shown her mettle
in numerous skirmishes against the Biters. Yet, she was not allowed to lead
raids far from the settlement. That had always grated, but with her father
being one of the leaders of the settlement, she was unable to do anything to
change that. He claimed that her excellent shooting and scouting skills were
better used in defensive roles close to their settlement, and had promised her
that when she was older he would reconsider, but she knew that was a nervous
father speaking, not the leader of their settlement.

This could change all that.

Suddenly she felt the ground give way under her and she felt
herself falling. She managed to hold onto her rifle, but found herself sliding
down a smooth, steep and curving slope. There seemed to be no handholds or
footholds for her to slow her descent or to try and climb back up. She looked
up to see the hole through which light was streaming in disappear as the tunnel
she was falling down curved and twisted.

Alice screamed as she continued falling in utter darkness.

***

It took Alice a few minutes to get her bearings, as she was
totally disoriented in the dark and also winded by her fall. She saw that her
fall had been broken by a thick cushioning of branches and leaves. She had
heard whispers that the Biters were not the mindless drones that many adults
dismissed them to be, but those accounts had been dismissed by most people as
fanciful tales. She wondered if there was some truth to those rumors after all.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness she saw a sliver of light to her right and
crawled towards it. As she went deeper into the tunnel, while she still could
not see much, the smell was unmistakable. The rotten stench that she knew came
from only one possible source: the decayed bodies of the undead. Even though
she had seen the aftermath of many a skirmish with the Biters and was no stranger
to the stench, she found herself gagging. As she came closer to the light, she
saw that the tunnel opened into a small room that was lit by crudely fashioned
torches hung on the walls.

She could hear some voices and as she peeped around the
corner, she saw that the rabbit-eared Biter she had followed down was in
animated conversation with two others. One of them was, or rather had been in
life, perhaps a striking young woman. Now her skin was yellowing and decayed
and hung in loose patches on her face. Her clothes were tattered and bloodied.
The other Biter with her was a plump, short man who seemed to have the better
part of his left side torn off, perhaps by a mine or a grenade. Alice had been
around weapons for as long as she could remember, and while all humans now
needed to be able to defend themselves, Alice had shown a special talent for
fighting, perhaps one her mother did not always approve of. Her mother had
wanted Alice to do as the other young people did and stand on guard duty close
to the settlements, but Alice had always wanted to be in the forefront, to feel
the thrill that came with it. Now, Alice thought, she had perhaps got more
thrills than she had ever bargained for. She was trapped in an underground
Biter base, with no apparent way out.

The Biters were talking in a mixture of growls and moans,
but they seemed to be communicating with each other. Now that she got a closer
look at the rabbit-eared Biter she had followed in, she realized that he had
been in life not much older than her. Perhaps he had been on his way to a
costume party when he had been bitten. As he turned his head, Alice saw what
may have once been a smile now replaced by a feral grin that revealed bloodied
teeth.

Alice's heart stopped as Bunny Ears looked straight at her.
For a second she hoped that he had not seen her, but he bared his teeth and
emitted a screeching howl that sent a shiver up her spine. As all three Biters
turned to look at her, she exploded into action.

Alice's grasp of the alphabet may have been tenuous despite
her mother's many failed attempts to teach her the languages of yore. But after
The Rising, Alice saw no use for them; there were no books to read, and no time
to read them even if they had remained. But what Alice excelled in school at,
and could do almost without conscious thought, was how to thumb the safety off
her handgun and bring it up to a two handed hold within three seconds. The
first shot took the fat Biter squarely in the forehead and he went down with an
unceremonious flop. As the two others bore down on her in the slight loping,
lumbering gait the Biters were known for, she fired again and again, the shots
from her gun echoing in the underground cavern. She hit the female Biter at
least twice in the chest and then knocked her flat with a head shot. Bunny Ears
was now barely a few feet away when Alice's handgun clicked empty. She cursed
under her breath at her horrible aim, realizing just how much easier it was to
shoot at targets in practice or snipe from hundreds of meters away compared to
being so close to Biters out for her blood, and with her heart hammering so
fast she could barely keep her hands straight, let alone aim.

Alice heard footsteps and howls behind her, and realized
with a stab of panic that she was now well and truly trapped between Bunny Ears
and others who may have come behind her down the hole.

She looked around frantically and saw a small opening in the
wall to her right. She ran towards Bunny Ears, diving down at the last minute
beneath his outstretched fingers, which were crusted over with dried blood.
Alice stood only about five feet tall, and was lean, but she had been top of
her class in unarmed combat. She swept her legs under the Biter, coming up in
one seamless motion as Bunny Ears fell down in a heap. She ran towards the hole
in the wall and turned around to see at least four more Biters coming behind
her.

Alice fumbled at her belt and took the lone flash bang
grenade she had slung there. As she ran into the hole she pulled the pin and
rolled it on the ground behind her, and then continued to run at full speed
into the darkness of the hole. She heard the thump of the grenade a few seconds
later, hoping that the intense flash of light it emitted would slow down her
pursuers for a few seconds and buy her some time.

With that hope came a sobering thought. Time to do what? She
was stuck deep inside what seemed to be a Biter base, and was running ever
deeper into its recesses. She was well and truly trapped.

***

Alice ran till she was out of breath and stopped, going down
on her knees, more tired and scared than she had ever been. The darkness and
narrowness of the passage she was in did not help, as it made her feel
disoriented and claustrophobic. At least she could no longer hear footsteps
behind her. That did not surprise her. While the flash bang would not stop the
Biters, she knew they hated very bright light, and it would certainly have
slowed them down. Also, she was a very fit young girl who could outrun most of
the people in their settlement, whereas the Biters pursuing her, while feared
for their feral violence, moved with their characteristic stiff, loping gait,
which meant she would be able to outrun them in any flat out race. The problem
was that she was trapped in their base, and all they had to do was to tire her
out.

When she thought she heard distant footsteps behind her, her
fear gave her a second wind and she started running again, clutching her side,
which had begun to hurt from the exertion. She ran into a wall, and fell hard
on her back, realizing that the tunnel turned ahead of her. As she looked past
the turning, she saw what appeared to be a door framed by light coming from
behind it. She ran towards it, and as she came closer, she was stunned to see a
familiar figure drawn on the door. It was a seal showing an eagle framed by
letters that were barely visible in the light coming from behind it. She
started trying to read the letters and got past the U, N and I before she
realized she did not need to tax her limited reading skills to understand what
it showed. She had seen a similar seal in old papers her father kept locked
away in a dusty box. Once he had told her something about him having worked in
the United States Embassy in New Delhi before The Rising. She had understood
little of what he had meant, though other kids around the settlement had told
her that her father had been some sort of important man in the governments of
the Old World. They had told her that she and her family had come from another
land called America, which was why her blond hair and fair skin looked so
different from her brown friends. But none of that mattered much to Alice, or
to anyone else anymore. The old governments and countries were long gone. Now
all people, irrespective of their old countries, religions or politics were
bound together in but one overriding compact: the need to survive in the face
of the Biter hordes. She had heard tales of how human nations had waged wars
against each other, driven by the gods they worshipped, or the desire to grab
oil. Alice remembered laughing when her teacher at the makeshift school in the
settlement had told her class about those days. She had thought her teacher was
telling them some tall tales. What was it the old folks called them? The ones
who had read the books before the undead rose and the world burned?

Yes, fairy tales.

When Alice heard footsteps behind her, she was snapped back
to reality, and she struggled with the door in front of her, trying desperately
to open it. She found a handle and pulled it with all her strength, and finally
found the door budging. The door was made of heavy metal, and it sapped all her
strength to open it enough for her to slip through. She looked back through the
open door and heard the roars before she saw shadows appear in the tunnel. She pulled
the door shut, hoping that what she had heard about Biters being stupid was
right. That old joke about how many Biters it took to open a door.