Alice in Deadland Trilogy (24 page)

Alice reached one of the nearby tunnel openings that she
knew the Biters used and threw a flare down. She hoped it would be noticed in
time. She was about to reach their patrol area when she felt Edwards grip her
shoulder tightly.

'I can see them coming.'

***

FIVE

Alice watched the two transport helicopters come in low and fast.
She had not heard them until they were merely a few hundred meters away, but
Edwards had seen them in the fading light. The moment she saw the helicopters,
she ditched the bike and she and Edwards took cover behind a sand dune.

'I've never seen a helicopter as silent as these. No wonder
they managed to come in for their attacks without us realizing it.'

Edwards peered around the dune’s edge. 'Stealth, or maybe
it’s some sort of noise suppressant technology. The United States, China and
some other countries had such technology before The Rising. Clearly they've
been saving these for whatever they have in mind.'

Both helicopters landed as Alice kept watching in impotent
rage. With her assault rifle and pistol, she would be able to do precious
little against them. Edwards had been given a pistol, but it transpired that
he’d never fired a gun before, so he would be of dubious utility in a fight.
Even with Satish and Vince here they’d be hopelessly outnumbered.

The rear doors swung open on the large helicopters and Alice
saw several figures walk out. From their shuffling gait it was obvious they
were Biters. Alice raised her rifle scope to her eyes to take a closer look and
saw what she had noticed before in Wonderland: these Biters were all wearing
clean clothes and did not seem to have the many wounds and mutilations that
Biters in the Deadland would almost inevitably have.

'Doctor, they seem to have produced their Biters, but one
thing makes no sense to me. Biters would never follow a human being this way. How
did they manage it?'

Edwards had no answer but kept watching as a total of more
than fifty Biters filed out and stood there, as if awaiting orders. Alice
gasped almost audibly as a woman in a Red Guard uniform walked out and the
Biters knelt before her. The woman was wearing dark glasses and had her mouth
covered in a mask, presumably to keep out the stench of the Biters.

'That's impossible! I've never seen Biters take orders from
a human.'

Edwards’ mind reeled, grappling with the science. 'I know
they managed to inject healthy, loyal Chinese citizens to transform them into
Biters. Perhaps they were able to create variations in the virus.'

Alice stayed focused on the assembled Biters. Their origin
was unimportant; the main concern now was preventing them from reaching
Wonderland. She did not fully understand what the Red Guards' plan was, but
with the two Biter attacks they had effectively stripped Wonderland of much of
its defenses. Alice and Satish, two of the most experienced in combat, were
essentially outlaws; the Biters who had provided Alice's forces with much of
its strength of numbers could no longer be counted on to defend Wonderland; and
now the deep recon teams who served as their eyes and ears in the Deadland had
been withdrawn to the city.

As Alice watched, the Biters began walking behind the Red
Guard officer. It was less than a thirty-minute walk to the borders of
Wonderland and once inside, Alice knew the kind of havoc they could wreak. The
two helicopters stayed where they were, and other than the pilots there did not
seem to any other Red Guards on board. That was at least one saving grace; that
meant there would not be anyone to man the Gatling guns mounted on the
helicopters.

Alice heard a double click on her tactical radio. That meant
Satish and Vince were almost there, but she could not afford to wait. She had
to do something to delay the Biters. The Red Guard officer was now striding
past them, with the Biters following her, and as Alice watched the Biters began
to disperse. If she didn’t take them out as they were bunched up, it would be
almost impossible to track them all down.

Alice took out a grenade from her belt and pulled the pin.
She took a deep breath and then hurled it at the passing group. To her dismay,
the Red Guard officer either had great instincts or was just very lucky. She
looked up to see the dark projectile coming through the air and screamed and
dove to her right. The Biters could not react with such speed and agility and
as the grenade exploded, Alice saw at least three of them go down. It might not
have killed them, but at least they would not move any further. The officer was
now shouting orders and the Biters began to converge on her position. Edwards
had his gun out and was firing, but all he managed to do was to distract them
for a second before they again closed in on them. Alice now had her rifle out
and was firing on single-shot mode. She took out two Biters before pulling
Edwards back with her, climbing a short hill. Her only hope was to hold out
until reinforcements came and to trade space for kills. She saw the Red Guard
officer screaming orders and five of the Biters detached from the main group
and came around from the left. Biters who could follow combat tactics on a
human's orders and flank enemy positions was something Alice had never seen,
but clearly this officer had some such control over them. She knelt and fired
again, felling one more Biter before retreating further up the hill.

Suddenly she heard a loud roar and saw dark shapes emerge
from a hole about a hundred meters to her left. Her Biters had got the message
and come to her assistance. Hatter was the first out, followed by Bunny Ears
and twenty more Biters. When Hatter saw the danger Alice was in, he screamed
and the Biters following him tore into the attackers. Alice watched as Hatter
caught one of the Biters by the neck and nearly tore his head off. Bunny Ears
had only one good arm, but he and another Biter wrestled a six-foot giant down.
All around Alice, Biters were locked in hand-to-hand combat, clawing and biting
each other to shreds. What was clear was that Hatter and his Biters were both
outnumbered and outmatched. The Biters who followed Alice had been transformed
years ago, and their bodies had all the damage and wear and tear that came with
being a Biter in the Deadland. The Red Guard Biters, meanwhile, were healthy by
comparison, young and fit.

They were now too mixed up together for Alice to use her
assault rifle, so she handed it to Edwards and took out her favored combination
for close combat: knife in one hand and handgun in the other. She ran towards
the melee and saw a Biter come at her from her left. A shot to the kneecap sent
him stumbling down and another to the head took him out as she ran past him,
barely breaking her stride. Another Biter came at her and lashed out at her.
Alice was momentarily knocked off balance, but she recovered in a second, going
down on one knee to avoid the next blow and stabbing up with her knife,
severing the Biter’s hamstring. As the Biter stumbled, she put a bullet in his
head. Alice's mind was a mask of concentration, filtering out everything other
than the immediate threat in front of her, and her hands and legs moved as if
by their own volition, driven by years of training and combat experience.

Another Biter went down before her and then she saw the Red
Guard officer. Alice saw the officer was armed with a short sword and as Alice
watched, she swung it in a deadly arc, decapitating one of Alice's Biters.

Hatter was now behind the officer and Alice saw him grab the
officer's arm and bite into it. Before Alice could see what happened next, a
Biter came in front of her. His teeth were dripping blood and his face was torn
in several places. He lunged to bite, but Alice swiped with her knife first,
catching him in the throat. Before he could recover, she shot him in the face.

She paused for a second to get her bearings. It seemed that
Hatter had succeeded in taking out the Red Guard officer; and without someone
to control and co-ordinate them it would be easier to pick off the remaining
Biters.

Alice heard a scream and looked up, and for a second her
mind refused to believe what her eyes were seeing. The Red Guard officer had a
large chunk of flesh torn out of her left arm but she was hardly out of the
fight. No human could have been bitten by Hatter and not been affected. The
officer pivoted on one leg and kicked, making solid contact with Hatter's face,
stopping him in his tracks. In one fluid movement, she turned and brought her
sword up and cut through Hatter's stomach, slicing upwards as she cut through
his chest. The move would have killed any human, but Hatter was oblivious to
pain, and the unexpected resistance only enraged him further. He tried to claw
the officer's face and she swerved out of the way in the nick of time, losing
her glasses and mask in the process. Before Hatter could attack again, she had
cut him off at the right knee with her sword. Hatter collapsed on the ground
and she brought her sword down on his head.

'No!'

Alice ran – but it was too late. Hearing her scream, the Red
Guard officer stood up to face her. Now Alice was close enough to see her
features and she stopped, her mind trying to reconcile to the impossibility of
what she saw before her. The Red Guard smiled.

'This is an unexpected bonus. I had not hoped to meet you so
soon. Now die at the hands of the Red Queen!'

***

Alice brought up her gun to fire, but Li’s hand shot out at
blinding speed, and the gun flew from Alice’s grip. She looked down to see a
metallic star embedded in her right palm. Even before Alice had fully pulled it
out, Li was upon her, screaming with her sword raised above her head with both
hands. Alice brought up her knife to parry the blow and barely succeeded, the
razor sharp edge of the sword slicing through part of her left arm. Alice might
have felt no pain, but she realized that she was up against a formidable enemy,
so she rolled out of the way to gain some space and time to think.

Li’s red eyes were glowering and she hissed in rage.

‘I have heard much about you, Yellow Witch. Now I will
avenge all you have done by cutting your head off and taking it with me.’

Alice had her knife ready, but she knew that her enemy would
have a big reach advantage with her sword. She seemed to be perhaps only a few
years older than Alice, and like the other enemy Biters she had seen, her face
and skin seemed relatively unmarked. She came in again, thrusting with the
sword, and Alice side-stepped her, twisting the knife into her stomach as she
passed. As Alice regained her balance, she saw Li spit in contempt.

‘You cannot gut me like a mere human, witch!’

This woman was unlike any enemy she had ever faced. Biters
were simple to deal with; they knew nothing of tactics nor skill. Human
adversaries, no matter how skilled or strong, were at a disadvantage versus her
because they would tire, fall victim to wounds – she would not. However, for
the first time she was facing someone like her, and she would have to rethink
how she fought.

Li struck again and Alice again weaved out of the way, this
time sweeping Li’s leg under her as she passed. Li hit the ground hard as Alice
turned to face the next attack. She did not know where this half-Biter had come
from or where she fit into the Central Committee’s plans, but one thing was
clear. She was making an elementary mistake: she was fighting angry.

Li swung her sword again and grunted in despair as she
missed and overshot and once again Alice stabbed her in the back before rolling
away.

Li and her elder brother had been brought up in a Red Guard
Academy since she had been five years old when her father had been called up on
duty in the Deadland and her mother killed by Biters in the chaos following The
Rising. The Central Committe had identified gifted children and trained them
from an early age, hoping to create the vanguard of a new China when things
stabilized. As the war raged on, the graduates of the Academy became the elite
officers of the Red Guards. With her impressionable young mind filled with
tales of brutal hordes of Biters and of terrorists threatening the Mainland, Li
had grown up with the certain knowledge that one day she too would serve her
nation in this war.

Then as the war continued to rage in the Deadland and more
and more Red Guard officers were rushed into frontline combat as Zeus units
began to mutiny, her father and brother were sent to the Deadland to combat the
menace posed by the terrorists led by some Yellow Witch. Rumors in the Academy
spoke of a half-Biter monster who could not be killed. Then came the news that
both Li’s father and brother had perished in the fighting. At that time she had
not yet graduated, but based on her skills had already been assigned to a
Special Forces unit. She sent a petition to the Central Committee, pleading to
be sent to the Deadland, hoping she would have a chance to avenge her father
and brother. When Commissar Hu himself visited her and told her that she was to
be part of a special unit to be inserted in the Deadland, she was ecstatic.
When she learnt what she would have to endure, she began to have second
thoughts. Then she was shown photos of the Yellow Witch, who it was said had
been personally responsible for the death of her brother. She talked to combat
veterans who told her about how her brother had been about to surrender, but
had been killed in cold blood by the Witch. She was shown photographs of her
brother’s mutilated body. She had nobody or nothing to live for and she wanted
to get revenge, so she signed up for the special program.

And now she finally had her chance at vengeance.

She was screaming at Alice to attack, but Alice held back,
waiting for Li to commit to another strike. Alice knew that her only chance at
a decisive blow was to the head and she would just wait for Li to make another
mistake. Li had had years of the very best training. Alice had nowhere near
that, but she had learned from years of living and surviving in the Deadland.

Li reached into her belt and hurled another shuriken at
Alice. Alice ducked, the star whizzing past her. However that gave Li the time
to rush forward with her sword, slicing deep into Alice’s side. The sharp
samurai sword cut into Alice’s flanks where her belt was. Alice looked down and
saw that it had sliced through the book she carried tied there at all times.
The sword strike would not have finished her, but she would have had a pretty
hard time trying to fight with her guts spilling out, and that would have
slowed her down enough for Li to finish her off. Alice backed off, thanking the
storybook named after a girl called Alice for having saved her. As Li screamed
in frustration and lunged at her again, Alice went down on a knee, striking up
with both hands as her knife penetrated Li’s defenses and took her in the
chest. As Li stopped, Alice jumped up, her elbow hitting Li’s nose hard. A
front kick sent Li staggering to the ground.