Alice in Deadland Trilogy (13 page)

'Alice, we have heard so much about you. My name is Arjun,
and we would like to join your group.'

For a minute Alice was too surprised to reply. She had never
really consciously thought that she was leading anyone or anything. They had
just been so focused on staying alive for the last few days that she had not
had much time to think of anything beyond immediate survival. Arjun coughed
softly, which snapped her back to reality. To her surprise, he seemed to be
almost pleading.

'Look, we may not seem like much, but we can all fight. Give
us a chance.'

They all walked in and sat around the lobby, with the
newcomers looking at the armed Zeus troopers with some initial suspicion.
Satish broke the ice by offering his hand to Arjun.

'Arjun, we're all local boys and all on the same team. We've
been trying to escape the Red Guards for the last one week and finally decided
the Ruins may be a better bet than the Deadland, or what's left of it.'

Arjun sighed and sat back. 'I know; we've been tracking you
since you entered the Ruins.'

Alice spoke up, the surprise in her voice evident. 'Tracking
us? But we...'

Arjun smiled, his eyes creased with years of worry, and
making him look much older than his forty years.

'When The Rising happened, we decided to stay and protect
our homes instead of escaping out of the city as many did. The first few years
we lived like rats; then we began to fight back, against human looters and the
Biters alike. You never saw us, but we saw you.'

He turned to Satish. 'Zeus never came in here much. It's
easier to pick off targets from the air but that's of no use in a built up area
like this. We'd meet and trade with folks in the Deadland but when we learnt
how Zeus was taking over, we decided to stay here and remain free.'

Alice had always taken for granted that only Biters remained
in the ruins of the old city, but as she was learning, there was much more to
the world than she had ever imagined.

She asked the question that had been on her mind ever since
Arjun's group had shown up. 'How did you know about me?'

Now it was Arjun's turn to be surprised.

'Everyone knows about you! Many more troopers like Satish
and his friends have been through the Deadland and the Ruins. They all have
stories from what they read and heard, and some of them passed these papers
out. Word spreads fast. We all lost everything in The Rising, and now that we
know who was behind all the misery we faced, we want to help fight back.'

Alice saw the paper in Arjun's hand and saw that it had
Dewan's last email printed on it. Even in death, the Colonel had more than done
his duty.

***

'It's going to blow!'

Alice hid her head in her hands as the Improvised Explosive
Device went off with an ear-splitting boom. When she peered back around the
corner, she saw the results of the first ever IED she had rigged. Half of the
target building was blown off and smoke and dust covered the whole area.

'Amazing what you can accomplish with a humble gas cylinder,
isn't it?'

She turned to see Arjun standing there, grinning. Over the
last two weeks, more human survivors in the Ruins had sought them out as well
as close to a hundred more Zeus deserters. While Alice had naively believed
they would all stay together, Arjun had told her to scatter them across the
Ruins, to be kept in touch via a system of messengers. Satish and the other
Zeus troopers were heavily armed, and Alice was skilled well beyond her years
when it came to combat, but when it came to fighting in a congested, built-up
environment like the Ruins, Arjun was the resident expert. His people called
him General, but he had once sheepishly admitted to Alice that he had no
military experience, but had been a salesman before The Rising. When he lost
his young family in the chaos, he fought to survive and there his mastery of
his former sales routes served him well.

With more than three hundred people now in her force, Alice
had asked aloud how they should plan their campaign. Bitter at all she had
lost, she had been tempted to lash out, but Satish and Arjun had convinced her
otherwise.

'Alice, the Red Guards will smash us if we challenge them in
the open. We need to lure them into the Ruins and bleed them.'

The Queen had been quiet and withdrawn for much of this
time, and Alice wondered if it were because she had been so used to being among
Biters that she found it hard to adjust to human company.

That night, the Queen came to Alice as she was about to go
to sleep.

'Alice, I want you to keep something.'

She thrust the red vial that contained the vaccine into
Alice's palms. When Alice protested, the Queen insisted she keep it.

'Alice, I had foolishly thought that we could find some
honest men in power who would help us. It looks like we are condemned to a life
of war now, but I don't want to give up hope. Keep it with you and if there is
someone we can trust, hand it over.'

Alice woke the next morning to find the Queen gone. Nobody
had seen her slip out during the night, and when Alice mentioned it to Arjun,
his face darkened.

'Are you sure you can trust her?'

Alice was shocked at his reaction. She had been genuinely
worried about the Queen being on her own in the Ruins.

'Alice, there are still bands of Biters in the Ruins, and
there are areas we never go into. She seemed sane enough and I know that she
and her followers helped you, but the Biters in the Ruins are crazed and would
rip our throats out any chance they got.'

'She is not going to betray us.'

Alice said those words and walked away, hoping that her
faith in the Queen was well placed. They did not get much of a chance to talk
about it further because they soon got busy in planning their first operation.

As Alice watched the men and women move about their drills,
she saw just how far they had come. Now it was impossible to tell apart someone
who had been a Zeus trooper living in the relative luxury of their barracks and
someone who had spent years hiding and fighting as a `Ruins Rat', as they had
come to be called. The troopers had swapped their uniforms for civilian
clothes, and as Alice noted, if nothing else they all smelt alike, since
bathing was a luxury to be enjoyed once in a few days in the Ruins.

'Where do you want the first squad to go?'

Arjun, Satish, a woman called Sheila who led one of the
groups of Rats, and Alice were huddled around a hand-drawn map showing the
Ruins, the Deadland and a Forward Base just ten kilometers from the city center
where a large detachment of Red Guards had set up. It took a second for Alice
to realize that the question had been directed to her. She struggled to answer
and then Arjun gently nudged her along.

'Maybe we could do it as you said last night. Okay?'

When the others had dispersed, Alice called Arjun aside.

'Arjun, I don't know much about leading so many people. I
don't know what to do.'

Arjun smiled. 'Alice, whether you like it or not, everyone
here expects you to lead them. They've all heard the stories and read the
posts. Most of those are probably exaggerated, but there you have it.'

Alice started to protest. 'Look, all I want is to fight back
for what happened to my own. That's all. If others want to join me, then we can
work together, but I'm not so sure I like leading so many people and being
responsible for them.'

Arjun looked at her, and perhaps realizing that he was
talking to someone who would be not much older than the daughter he had lost in
The Rising, softened his voice.

'Alice, you are more than just a leader for them. These
people, me, all of us, have spent the last few years without any hope, just
scratching for survival from one day to the next. You've given them something
they had lost. Hope.'

Alice started to say something, but Arjun interrupted her.
'You're the one who lived among the Biters and uncovered their truth. You're
the one who fought Red Guards all alone to save your people. You're the one who
convinced a Zeus officer to change sides. You're the one who led hundreds of
troopers to desert. And yes, you're the cause of the Deadland being firebombed.
So you are already responsible for a lot, whether you like it or not.'

Alice sat down as it all sank in. How many thousands had
died because of her one silly decision to jump into the hole after the Biter
that had triggered all of this? She wished she could just undo everything. Life
had never been easy, but it had been a damn sight better than what she had to
deal with now, and as she looked at the dozens of men and women gathered around
their camp, she wondered whether she was just going to lead all of them to
their deaths as well.

She closed her eyes and her father's face flashed before her
and she remembered his last words to her. He had somehow believed she could
bear this burden of leading others. He had believed that she was more than just
another young girl whose fate was in others
’
hands. If nothing else, she had to prove him right, to make his sacrifice mean
something. He had given his life so that she could live, and had believed that
by living, she could make a difference and make things better. She turned to
Arjun, a new determination in her eyes.

'Without heavy weapons we have no hope of getting through
their base defenses, so we need to get them out of their base.'

`Why would they come out of their base?'

'They want me. I will offer myself up as bait.'

Three days later, two vans sped out of the Ruins towards the
Red Guards
’
Forward
Base, which housed several dozen Red Guards who had been placed there as a
forward patrol and were supplied daily by helicopter. What made it less than an
easy target were the two remotely controlled Gatling guns mounted on its walls.
Alice was in the second van, and just thirty minutes earlier, Satish had sent a
message on his tablet saying that he and his men wanted to rejoin Zeus. They
had managed to capture Alice and wanted a trade: Alice for their guaranteed
safety. It was a gamble. There was always a chance that Appleseed and his
masters would just kill Alice when they had the chance, but Alice knew that
even more than her life, they craved the secrets she knew about the Biters
’
hidden bases, and also
the Queen and her vaccine.

They were sure that the Red Guards already had drones
overhead, so they did not risk going too much into the open but stopped on the
outskirts of the Ruins, roughly in the area where once a sprawling high-end
complex had stood, housing guests and athletes for the Commonwealth Games held
in Delhi some years before The Rising. The dried up Yamuna river was nearby,
and on Alice's instructions and unseen by any drones, more than three dozen
fighters had crept through underground passages once used by the Queen's
Biters.

They had timed it so that the Red Guards would not have time
to bring in too many reinforcements, but they could never be sure, so Alice
felt her hands shake a bit as she got out of the van. She felt totally exposed
as Satish and his men walked her into the open. They had all put on their Zeus
uniforms and were fully armed while she had her hands loosely bound behind her.
She could just about make out the Red Guards
’
base, which had been set up inside what had once been a large temple. She could
see the two round turrets on top of the walls and she struggled to control her
panic as she saw a black helicopter rise from within the complex and fly
towards them. The helicopter came to a hover some distance away and she could
see the large red star painted on its side. The door slid open and she saw
several Red Guards inside with their rifles pointed downwards.

A voice called out over a loudspeaker, 'Send the girl
forward alone and lay down your weapons. Other Red Guards are on their way to
take you to our base. You have nothing to fear.'

Alice was pushed forward and she walked, her face downcast,
towards the waiting helicopter, wondering if the bullet that would kill her was
on the way.

***

TWELVE

Alice saw the helicopter come lower till it was only a few
dozen feet above the ground. The rotor wash was so strong it felt like it would
blow her away and she had to keep her eyes half closed since she could not
bring her hands up to shield them against the swirling wind and dust. She heard
a dull roar in the distance and looked to her right to see two armored
personnel carriers emerge from the Red Guards
’
base and speed towards her location. The helicopter came even lower and landed
on the road only a few meters away from Alice. She watched three Red Guards
disembark, their rifles pointed at the Zeus troopers behind her. As she turned,
she saw that Satish and the others had put their hands behind their heads and
their rifles were on the ground in front of them. Apparently satisfied that
they posed no immediate threat, a Red Guard officer emerged from the helicopter
and pointed towards Alice.

'Come here!'

Alice walked slowly towards the helicopter, wondering if she
would survive long enough to get a shot at the revenge she so badly wanted. As
she saw the smirk on the Chinese officer's face, she had to struggle to contain
the fury she felt inside. So many thousands of innocent men, women and children
had been killed so that men like this could retain the power they so craved.

The officer turned to Satish and shouted, 'We'll take her
with us. My men are on the way in the APCs to take you in.'

Alice was sure that if the APCs did get close enough, their
orders were to slaughter the Zeus deserters, but her whole plan hinged on them
never getting close enough in the first place. They had not really planned on
there being a helicopter at the scene, but now as Alice walked closer, she
smiled. It was unplanned, but it could be a bonus. They had planned on
bloodying the nose of the Red Guards enough to provoke them to try and enter
the Ruins. But if they managed to take a helicopter and an officer, it would
certainly add more insult to the injury. Of course, to do any of that Alice had
to improvise a bit and hope that she stayed alive long enough to cause any
damage.

She was now just five feet or so away from the helicopter
and she stopped, as if weighing her decision. The Red Guard officer was now
cajoling her to come closer, an absurd gesture since Alice wondered why he'd
think anyone would willingly step towards torture and near certain death. When
she did not budge, he began to lose his patience and asked one of his men to go
get her. The Red Guard started walking towards her and Alice looked right,
hoping that Arjun and his Rats would not let her down. She watched the two APCs
now barely five hundred meters away and closing in fast, when the first APC was
obscured by a giant cloud of smoke. A split second later, she heard the blast
of the IED. She knew Arjun had triggered it prematurely since he wanted to
create a distraction and give her a chance at getting away. He and his Rats
were in tunnels around the road and even before the smoke from the explosion
had cleared, she heard the sound of rifles firing as they attacked the APCs.

The Red Guard was now just a couple of feet from her and he
had stopped to look at the explosion. He jerked his head around to look at
Alice, but he was too late. Alice had slipped her hands out of the loose ropes
binding them behind her, and now had a knife in her right hand and a pistol in
her left. She jumped high and brought her knife down on the Red Guard's neck.
As he went down, she didn't try and dislodge her knife, but left it there,
rolling on the ground and coming up in a crouch, the handgun in both hands. She
fired four or five rounds at the two Red Guards outside the helicopter and saw
at least one fall, before she saw the officer bring up his own sidearm. She
rolled under the helicopter as one of the Red Guards fired, the bullets kicking
up the dust around her. She felt something hit her shoulder but kept going as
the officer screamed.

'Stop, you idiot! You'll hit the helicopter.'

She came up on the other side of the helicopter and saw the
officer turn to face her. He was way too late. She fired through the open
helicopter cabin and put two rounds in his chest and clambered into the
helicopter as she saw Satish and his men firing and the Red Guard outside fall
to the ground. She peered into the cockpit and saw the pilot reaching for a
pistol at his side.

'Not a good idea.'

He put his hands up and she dragged him outside, where his
hands were tied by Satish's men. Alice saw that a fierce firefight was still
raging on the road. The first APC was in flames, but the second one seemed
undamaged and was backing away towards the base as rifle rounds pinged off it.

'Let's get out of here as soon as we can!'

Alice knew that when news spread that a helicopter had been
lost, the Red Guards would be back in force. She looked at Satish.

'Any of you guys know how to fly this thing?'

Satish shook his head and smiled. It was a tempting thought,
but even if none of them could fly the helicopter, it still was a treasure
trove for them. Within fifteen minutes, they crawled back through the tunnels,
bringing with them the Red Guard pilot, weapons and communication equipment
taken from the fallen Red Guards, and most exciting for all of them, two RPG
launchers they found in the helicopter, together with eight rockets.

Not only had they dealt a serious blow to the Red Guards'
pride, but they had in one stroke suddenly exponentially increased the
firepower of their arsenal.

That night was one of open celebration, and one of slightly
more hidden anxiety. Many of the men and women were drinking and singing, and
Alice wondered where all the alcohol had materialized from. Arjun was sitting
next to her, looking quite grim.

'Don't ask. People still scavenge and find stuff and some of
the more adventurous ones make their own hooch. I wouldn't drink it if I wanted
to be sure I'd still be walking the next day. Alice, they have tasted their
first real victory so they are celebrating, but we need to think ahead.'

Alice had considered how the Red Guards would retaliate and
she was well aware of the devastation they had wreaked in the Deadland, so she
looked at Arjun. 'Will they just bomb the Ruins like they did the Deadland?'

Satish had come up to join them and he replied, 'No; it
’
s not as easy to bomb
targets in an urban environment like this. Delhi was a huge city and even if
most buildings are no longer standing, there are just too many places to hide
for them to be sure they'll hit anything or anyone with an air strike.'

Arjun was still looking worried so Satish asked him what was
on his mind.

'You and Alice are both too young to remember what happened
after The Rising. I saw the Great Fires and what nuclear weapons did to our
world. Why wouldn't the Red Guards just drop a nuke on the Ruins and finish us
all?'

A chill went up Alice's spine. She had only heard stories of
what those terrible weapons had done to whole cities in the madness that had
followed The Rising. Having seen what supposedly `ordinary' bombs had done to
the Deadland, she wondered what horrors nuclear weapons could unleash if they
were indeed used. She noticed that Satish had a broad smile, something she could
not fathom given the grim conversation they were having.

'Satish, what's got you in such a good mood?'

'Alice, our Chinese friend there is talking, and he has a
lot to say about the way the world is now and what's on the Central Committee's
mind. There's one big reason they won't risk nuking us, and it's the same big
reason they're still trying to get human settlements under their control.'

When Alice looked at him with a raised eyebrow, he simply
replied, 'Food.'

***

The Red Guard pilot was in a darkened basement and when
Arjun stepped in with the torch in his hand, the pilot shielded his eyes. Alice
and Satish followed and sat down around the pilot. He was still in uniform and
Alice could see that he was bleeding from a cut on his lip. She spun towards
Arjun.

'Who hit him?'

He put his hands up defensively.

'One of the guys got overenthusiastic and I reminded them
gently how you wanted prisoners treated.'

Alice grinned. Arjun's gentle persuasion would likely have
included a solid blow to the gut. Satish was talking to the pilot in a foreign
language and turned to Alice to explain.

'We all had to learn a bit of Mandarin to be able to
communicate with Red Guard officers, but he can speak passable English.'

The pilot now took a closer look at Alice and flinched.

'The Yellow Haired Witch.'

Alice was shocked. She was aware that the Red Guards knew of
her and were hunting her, but she had never imagined that they would have such
a name for her.

'The name is Alice, Colonel Li. Now tell me what you know.'

An hour later, Arjun, Satish and Alice were sitting outside.
For some minutes, none of them spoke as they were all digesting what they had
learnt. It turned out that the pilot they had captured was much more valuable
than they had imagined. Commander Jiang Li was not only a highly decorated Red
Guard pilot, but was the son of Comrade Jemin Li, one of the most senior
members of the Central Committee in Shanghai. As a Red Guard pilot of his rank,
he would probably not have had much information beyond immediate tactical
information on bases and weapons, which Alice would have taken to be very
valuable in and of themselves. But being the son of such an important person
meant that Commander Li was a treasure trove of information about what was
happening in the outside world.

It turned out that most of the world had been utterly
devastated by The Rising and the chaos that followed. What had been China's
larger cities remained largely intact as many of those in bigger cities had
been put in hardened shelters, but the countryside and smaller towns had been
ravaged both by The Rising and retaliatory American strikes. It had been a
desperate plan, one which Commander Li's father had been privy to, but with
deep worldwide recession, China's economy tottering behind the US defaulting on
debt, two years of famines, and growing calls for reform and democracy in
China, some of those in power had taken a last gamble. What the planners behind
the whole operation had never bargained for was the way the virus mutated and
the way the Biters spread out of control. That together with the smaller tit
for tat nuclear exchanges in Asia and the Middle East meant that while the
Central Committee in China was the one relatively organized political force to
remain standing, it ruled over a planet that was little more than a pile of
ashes.

And also it now had more than two hundred million mouths to
feed in China. In the first few years, they had been content to follow the
Central Committee unquestioningly, driven by their terror at what lay beyond
the iron grip of the Committee and its Red Guards. However, over time, as food
shortages set in, the Central Committee had to seek out remaining fertile lands
and people to work those fields. Only two major food baskets of the world
remained: what had been the heartlands of the US and India. The Americans never
gave up, and ever since the first Red Guards landed, had been waging a terrible
guerilla war that was bleeding the Red Guards dry. Then they turned to the
Deadland of North India, subcontracting Zeus to bring human settlements under
their control as a source of labor for farms in India and China.

Alice had grown up seeing little beyond the immediate
concerns of her family and settlement and being worried about little more than
her immediate survival. It was a bit hard at first for her to grasp the true
scale of the struggle they were a part of. But a life spent surviving meant
that her instincts were razor sharp and she looked at both Satish and Arjun.

'First, if this Li is the son of such an important man, they
will not hit us from the air. They will try and negotiate or come on the
ground. We need to be ready.'

Arjun nodded, a slight smile on his face as he realized that
the young girl everyone saw as their leader was taking charge.

'Second, if food and people to work the farms is what is so
critical to them, we need to hit them where it hurts. No food will mean their
own people will start turning against the Central Committee.'

She saw Satish hesitate, so she continued, 'Yes, I know it's
harsh and some people may starve, but we cannot be soft. Finally, we need to
find some way of coordinating with the Americans if we can.'

She had not told any of the others about the vial of the
vaccine she carried, but while much of India had been reduced to the Deadland,
she hoped that the Americans might still have people and facilities available
where they could put the vaccine to some use. She had no idea of how they could
contact the Americans or how they could be of any use to each other from half
way across the world, but the knowledge that other people were waging the same
war against the same enemy gave her hope and made her own effort feel less
lonely.

Just two days later, the first strike in Alice's plan was
put into motion.

'Queen of Hearts, I am at the dinner table.'

Alice clicked her mike once by way of acknowledgement and
then looking at the airfield spread out in front of her.

'King of Hearts, is the Knave in position?'

She heard a click from Arjun affirming that Satish and his
men were also ready. Once Arjun had heard of the book that the Queen carried
with her and the prophecy associated with it, he had suggested the code names.
That had brought about much laughter among the older folks there, though Alice,
never having read the book, really didn't know where the names came from.

They were about fifty kilometers from their base in the
Ruins, near what had once been the international airport at Delhi. It was now a
small, barely serviceable airfield, but it was the key lifeline through which
local settlers were sent to farms in China, and also produce grown in farms
around the region were sent to storage depots the Central Committee controlled.
Alice could see three large transport aircraft and two helicopters there
through her binoculars. There were several guard towers, at least two of which
had remotely controlled gun turrets, and she could see many armed Red Guards
walking along the airfield perimeter.