Alice in Deadland Trilogy (29 page)

A fist shot out and grazed Satish
on the chin. He calmly grabbed the wrist and snapped it, hearing bones crack.
Another boy grabbed him by the hair but he kicked the feet out from under the
boy. Arjun had his finger on the trigger of his gun, but he knew that if he
fired there would be a bloodbath, and that was just the kind of chaos that the
Red Guards wanted to take advantage of.

Two more boys tried to grab Satish
and he lost his footing in the surge of the mob. Arjun had his rifle out now
and was about to fire in the air, but before he could, a series of shots rang
out. Everyone stopped and looked to see Alice standing there, rifle in hand.
Just behind her stood Bunny Ears and a second Biter. When people saw his
clothes and his bloodied face, there were gasps of horror and surprise.

‘Arun,’ someone whispered.

Alice walked towards the mob
surrounding Satish and they melted before her. She climbed the stairs leading
into the building and said in a loud, commanding voice, ‘I’m glad at least you
remember how to get angry and to fight. I had thought the people of Wonderland
had forgotten how to be angry about all that had been taken from us by the
Central Committee. But if you have to be angry, if you have to fight, do it
against the real enemy, not amongst ourselves.’

There was a stunned silence as
Arun stepped forward and the deception of the Central Committee became clear.
Arjun told everyone about the Biters the Red Guards had unleashed and how they
had divided the people of Wonderland.

Alice looked at the gathered
crowd. ‘I don’t have time to convince each and every one of you. The Red Guards
are right outside our borders and we will soon be surrounded. Who is with me?’

When Arjun and Satish stood beside
her, Bunny Ears shuffled along to join them. At first only a few of those in
the crowd moved – but then more and more hands lifted in the air, more and more
cries of support rose up.

Smiling, Alice walked away.

‘Get ready. Wonderland just
declared war on the Red Guards.’

***

NINE

‘The heroic Red Guards have fanned out across the Deadland
to ensure that our brethren in Wonderland can sleep secure in the knowledge
that in this time of need they are not alone.’

Someone spat on the ground, another shouted abuse, and Arjun
began to see a perceptible change in the mood of the gathered crowd. Many of
the younger folks still seemed skeptical, but Arun’s reappearance as a Biter
had given many of them reason to doubt what the Central Committee had been
telling them. Now seeing the news footage being streamed on the TV showing
aerial footage of Red Guard units being air-dropped across the Deadland was a
sobering dose of reality. A few of them still shouted out that perhaps the Red
Guards meant no imminent harm, but then the ominous announcement was repeated.

‘We repeat our request to the people of Wonderland. Our
intelligence indicates that hordes of Biters are about to attack. Please let
Red Guards inside the city center to help secure your homes and families and
please cooperate with them.’

It was the smartest invasion Arjun had ever seen. To take
away people’s liberty in the name of providing them security, to take away
freedom in the name of fighting terror, was not a new tactic. But the Central
Committee had pulled off a nearly flawless plan, the one weak link being the
fact that they had not bargained for Arun having survived the attack. They
still did not know Arun’s fate and that element of surprise was something Arjun
and the others hoped to capitalize on. Alice and Satish had already left to
start coordinating the defenses, but Arjun’s job was to ensure that they could
prepare for the house to house fighting that would be inevitable if the Red
Guards got inside the city limits. He did not harbor any delusions that
everyone would believe that the Central Committee had played them all as a
prelude to an invasion, but he got the feeling that he had managed to convince
enough of a critical mass. More importantly, it looked like at least the threat
of open civil war that had been plaguing Wonderland was finally something that
was no longer hanging over all their heads.

***

Chen saw three more helicopters take off, laden with
conscripts straight from the Mainland. Hundreds of Red Guards had been sent out
overnight on their supposed aid mission. That was what they had been told in
their camps in Shanghai and Beijing and he had not done anything to contradict
that. He knew he could not do that with Hu looking over his shoulder, but he
also knew that in not saying anything to these young men he had essentially
condemned many of them to a near certain death. He felt the sting of tears and
tried to blink them away. He had almost thrown away his career and his life by
surrendering a base instead of having all the men there massacred, but now he
had done nothing to stop the bloodshed that was about to follow. Sure, he could
rationalize that his dissent would count for little, since he would likely be
arrested and sent off to the Mainland, or perhaps even just be executed on the
spot for treason given his previous stint at a labor camp. But rationalizing
never compensated for not doing the right thing.

Hu was right next to him, smiling.

‘See, Comrade General. Our plan is working like clockwork.
We will get what we want without much bloodshed.’

Weighing his words carefully, Chen said, ‘Comrade Commissar,
from my experience this Alice and her friends will not go down without a
fight.’

Hu chuckled. ‘One mongrel girl and a handful of former
mercenaries are all that is left of her army. How long will they last without
popular support in Wonderland? If anything, once the next phase begins our boys
will be welcomed as liberators.’

Li was looking at a photograph of her family. This was the
last photograph that she retained of her entire family together- before her
mother had fallen in The Rising, and her father and brother been shipped off to
the Deadland. She wished she could cry, that she could shed a tear for what had
been taken from her by the savages in the Deadland, but she had come to realize
that tears were not for her anymore. Now all that mattered was carrying out her
mission and avenging the deaths of her father and brother by shattering the
terrorist regime of this so-called Wonderland. She had been keenly following
the news reports and she knew that the people of Wonderland had cast away the
yellow haired witch and her men. With her latest mission, Li would help bring
the common people of Wonderland into the fold of the Central Committee, and
then she would have a free hand in hunting down and killing the witch and her
followers. She remembered her last encounter with the witch and reminded
herself that she would not make the mistake of underestimating her again.
Before Li had lashed out in haste in her quest for vengeance. This time she
would operate with more deliberation and caution.

To the Biters kneeling before her, she shouted, ‘Come on,
glory awaits us.’

***

Danish was sitting in the Looking Glass, going through all
the Central Committee transmissions. With all that had happened in the previous
few days, he had begun to see patterns in what their propaganda meant for
actions on the ground. In the last hour, the talk had shifted to one of
reported imminent Biter threats to Wonderland and how the hapless and
leaderless citizens were at the mercy of this new terror. He knew it was
largely aimed at the masses back in the Mainland, preparing them for inevitable
casualties, but it also told him the nature of the attack that was to unfold.
Satish had argued that they should focus on the anti-air and RPG teams since
the edge the Red Guards would have lay in their air support and their armored
vehicles. Danish was no military strategist but months of studying the Central
Committee broadcasts had given him some insight into how their minds worked. He
knew that popular support for any military action in the Deadland was wafer
thin and there had been growing unrest in Mainland cities. So any outright
invasion was going to be a very risky move. Yet the Central Committee badly
needed the farms in the plains and labor to work them, otherwise the discontent
caused by food shortages and by having to work long hours in farms was going to
push the masses in the Mainland over the edge. The Central Committee needed to
control the Deadland again, but the political cost of a full-scale invasion was
going to be prohibitive.

Given those constraints, Danish had to grudgingly admire the
plan the Central Committee had put in place. If Arun had not been found the way
he was, it was very likely that, at this very moment, Wonderland would have
been on the verge of civil war. Then the Red Guards could have just stepped in,
welcomed into the people’s arms. If Danish’s reading were correct, the Central
Committee would not ideally want the bloodshed associated with a frontal
assault. They still seemed to think that Arun was dead and that the people of
Wonderland had marginalized Alice and Satish. All the talk of impending Biter
attacks could mean only one thing.

***

Alice was lying down on the ground, hidden behind some bushes.
There were two of Satish’s men just behind her. They had ventured out more than
two kilometers from the borders of Wonderland to cut off the Biter attacks that
were likely on the way. There was really no way to anticipate exactly where the
attacks would come from, but one thing was certain: the Biters and their Red
Queen would have to be travelling together. There was no way Red Guards would
be transporting a helicopter full of Biters into battle without her around to
control them. That meant that there would have to be only one landing spot.
Three deep recon teams had gone further ahead to warn of incoming helicopters.
The Deadland around them was crawling with Red Guards and Alice and her group
had already eliminated a squad of Red Guards who had stumbled upon them. Satish
was with another team a kilometer to the west.

Alice’s radio buzzed to life.

It was from a recon team to the east. ‘White Queen, I think
I see birds in the sky.’

Just then, another team called in approaching helicopters to
the west.

She called Satish. ‘White Rook, the birds to the west are
yours. I’ll watch the ones coming my way.’

She nodded to the two men with her, one of who was carrying
an RPG launcher. She had considered bringing along teams equipped with SAMs,
but carrying the heavy surface to air missiles would have meant losing much of
the stealth they needed to get around the Red Guards teeming around them. She
felt a keen sense of anticipation at the prospect of meeting the Red Queen
again. She knew that the only possible outcome when the two of them met was a
fight to the death, but at the same time she felt curious about whom this girl
had been. What had made her hate Alice and the people of Wonderland so much?
Alice closed her eyes and remembered the young Chinese girl, virtually a mirror
image of her. As far as Alice knew, this Red Queen was the only other person in
the entire world like her. In a different life, Alice might have liked to have
the chance to sit and talk to her, to understand how she was coping with all the
dilemmas and heartbreaks that came with being a young girl who could never be
fully human again. Unfortunately, the only thing that they could share in this
life was the moment when one of them died at the other’s hand.

She heard the approaching helicopter before she saw it. She
noted with some disappointment that it was not one of the black stealthy
helicopters that seemed to carry the Red Queen.

The battle for Wonderland was about to begin.

***

‘The latest news is that terrorist forces are attacking Red
Guard units in the Deadland. Intelligence indicates that terrorist factions led
by disgraced Zeus mercenaries and the self-proclaimed Queen of Wonderland are
trying to take advantage of the power vacuum in Wonderland. Our Red Guards are
rushing to the aid of our brethren in Wonderland in fighting back these
terrorists.’

The statement posted on the Central Committee Intranet was
clear enough. Fighting had begun. Chen closed his eyes, thinking of the young
conscripts whom he had sent to their deaths. Most of them were little more than
scared boys rustled up from the Mainland with minimal military training, fed on
a diet of horror stories about Biters and the terrible savage humans who lived
in the Deadland. They had known no better than to trust a senior officer like
Chen, and he had failed them all by sending them into the meat grinder that the
campaign to win over the Deadland had become.

It was a truism in most wars that young soldiers paid with
their lives to uphold the lies told by old politicians, but that did not make
it any easier for Chen. He saw Hu at the control center, gloating in what he
thought was to be his moment of triumph.

‘Comrade General, the Supreme Leader of the Central
Committee has been expressing a desire to retire and dedicate the rest of his
life to serving the people. If I succeed in the conquest of Wonderland, I may
be offered the job, and I will reward your loyalty handsomely. How would you
like to be Commissar in my place?’

Chen’s smile was enough for Hu, and he returned to monitoring
broadcasts. Chen found himself imagining what it would feel like to take his
gun and put a bullet in Hu’s head. It would take no more than a couple of
seconds to end this madness. With immense willpower, he was able to control
himself. But in that fleeting moment, something changed within Chen. He knew
that the next time he was ordered by men like Hu to send boys to their deaths,
he would not be able to go through with it.

Alice watched the smoke trail of the rocket snake out from
her right, heading towards the helicopter that had just landed a couple of
hundred meters away. Another recon group had already encountered a Red Guard
landing and was engaged in a vicious firefight. Part of Alice wanted to wait
for the occupants of the helicopter to disembark so that she could see whether
the Red Queen was one of them, but she didn’t want to lose any of the advantage
of surprise she had. The rocket hit the cockpit, enveloping the front of the
helicopter in a bloom of smoke and dust. The pilots were killed outright and
several injured, bleeding Red Guards stumbled out of the passenger compartment.
A few of the uninjured Red Guards had their weapons ready, searching for an
enemy they could not see. Alice centered her scope on an officer who seemed to
be in charge and was trying to rally his men. This was not the helicopter that
would bring the Red Queen and her Biters, but the fate of the men who had just
landed in it had already been sealed. Alice exhaled slightly and pulled the
trigger.

***

Arjun was dealing with chaos of a sort he had never handled
before. He had spent years living in the Ruins, leading his motley crew of
`Ruin Rats’ in running battles against Biters and the occasional Zeus patrol.
So fighting in built up urban areas was nothing new for him or for many of the
others who had joined him in their months of warfare against the Red Guards.
Now, however, there was a subtle but important difference. People were no
longer preparing to hide and fight in ruins that belonged to nobody other than
perhaps the ghosts of their previous owners. Now they were preparing to fight
for buildings they had come to consider home. All morning the TV had been
carrying news reports of battles between the Red Guards and ‘terrorists’ and
intelligence reports of impending Biter attacks. Regardless of where their
trust lay, every single person in Wonderland knew a few things for certain now.
The Central Committee was lying. Arun was not dead. Alice and her supporters
were not trying to take over power by force. And finally, whatever the Central
Committee said, people were not sure they wanted the Red Guards so close to
their homes.