Alice in Deadland Trilogy (38 page)

The last week had been one of unprecedented chaos. The Great
Firewall had been largely restored, but the damage had been done. Through much
of 2011 and 2012, people in smaller towns had been rising up against local
corruption and the fact that so many of them had been displaced to make way for
the shining symbols of the new China. Many of those had been put down with
brutal force. With the Great Firewall down, all those uncomfortable truths came
out, and bereaved friends and relatives found a new outlet for their rage and
anguish.

The President had made an appearance on live TV, vowing that
he would personally crush corruption. He claimed many of the excesses had been
committed by local officials without his knowledge. Chen did not doubt that,
since he knew how labyrinthine the Chinese bureaucracy could be, but these
assurances did not placate ordinary Chinese. Many local government offices had
already been sacked and officials beaten up, or worse, and while disturbances
were yet to spill over into the larger cities, Chen knew it would take but one
spark to set it all alight. A part of Chen’s mind also exhorted him to take a
stand and to demand justice for the death of his friend, but that voice was
quickly hushed by another reminding him that he had his wife and his parents
back in the province to think of.

One evening Chen had sat alone and gotten quite drunk. He
had told himself that ifIf he had been fifteen years younger, he would have
stormed off and demanded justice for what in his heart he knew to be the murder
of his friend. But he was almost forty and had a family to think of, so he
needed to weigh his actions. What Chen did not realize at the time was that
rationalizing one’s inaction was the first step in accepting tyranny. You
either stood up against tyranny or became a slave to it, there was nothing in
between.

That night, he had an unexpected visitor in his room near
the barracks. It was General Hong, the man who had trained him at the Academy
and who had been his mentor ever since.

‘Sir, you could have called me. I would have come.’

The old general waved Chen’s objections aside and sat down,
producing a bottle of rice wine and a handful of small packets labeled ‘05
Compressed Food’. Chen smiled as he saw the biscuit packets. These were the
battlefield rations of the Chinese infantry – hard, dry biscuits that packed
more than a thousand calories with the nourishment making up for the taste.

‘Are you going on a march?’

Chen had meant it as a joke, but there was no humor in
Hong’s eyes as he looked at his protégé. ‘We are already at war. We have been
sharing these biscuits to remind everyone that we should forget the comforts of
the last few years and learn to be soldiers again. Now share a drink with this
old man.’

They drank in silence for some minutes, and Chen was
increasingly anxious about what his mentor wanted of him. Finally, Hong looked
at him.

‘In two days’ time, officers loyal to me will seize control
of key government buildings. We will then announce that the government is
working with foreign powers to create the current instability. We will help
keep the peace while we can normalize the situation.’ The general poured
himself another drink, as if he were talking about the weather.

Chen was in turmoil. His long-time mentor was asking him to
take part in an armed coup. To disobey all the orders he had followed, to turn
against the same leaders he had sworn to defend.

‘Sir, you’re one of the most decorated officers in the whole
People’s Liberation Army. How can we turn against the government?’

Hong poured Chen a drink. There was a look of infinite
sadness in the old man’s eyes.

‘Chen, I am fiercely loyal to China and would die for my
nation. But I serve the people, not a few rich men and their backers. I believe
our President is an honest man and he has been trying to steer our nation towards
progress, but there are forces at play who have their own agenda. They are the
ones who have been discrediting him and the government. There are those in our
own Army and government who have benefitted much by being in power, and there
are whispers of outside powers working with them to lead us down a path to war
with the Americans.’

‘Why would anyone want that? If they drive us to war with
the Americans, what does anyone gain?’

Hong looked straight into Chen’s eyes, and Chen saw an
expression in the general’s eyes that he had never seen before – fear.

‘I don’t know, but that’s why we need to help restore some
stability and secure the President against the forces plotting against him.
Will you join us?’

Chen sat frozen in place. Joining Hong would be a huge leap
of faith. His mentor was persuasive as always, and Chen did not quite know how
to refuse a man who had been more than a father to him. However, joining Hong
would mean throwing away his career and placing his wife in tremendous danger.
He thought back to the photographs of Liang and his wife, and felt his resolve
slipping. Having been a combat soldier for much of his adult life, Chen did not
fear much for his own personal safety, but the thought of his wife lying on the
road after another such `accident’ almost paralyzed him with fear. Hong must
have sensed what was on his mind.

‘Chen, I have other officers to meet, so I will be on my
way. I know what I am asking of you, and I would never place you in such a
predicament unless our nation was facing extraordinary danger. You will know
when the action starts, and your men are one of the most battle-trained units
now in the capital. They will ask you to stop us, and I hope we don’t have to
meet on the battleground.’

With those words, Hong got up and left.

***

Hong’s plan never got off the ground. The next morning, a
Chinese destroyer attacked a Taiwanese frigate in open seas and sank it with a
volley of missiles. A dogfight broke out when Chinese fighter jets attacked two
Taiwanese planes that had flown to the scene. The Taiwanese government was
pleading for help from the United States, but with tensions escalating between
Israel and Iran, US forces were not in a position to intervene.

Chen got a sense of just how confused things were when he
realized that the actions of the destroyer and the jets had not been sanctioned
by the government. His friends in the government said the President was fuming
because the commanders involved had acted without orders to open fire. Perhaps
Hong had been right after all about renegade elements driving the nation
towards confrontation.

Chen had been ordered with his men to Tiananmen Square where
more than five thousand civilians had gathered, protesting human rights violations
and asking for criminal action against those who had killed the student
protestors at the square in late 2012. Chen had told his men to ensure that the
safety switches on their guns were on and to keep a safe distance from the
crowd. He did not want a nervous kid to get trigger-happy and start another
massacre. He kept hoping that the demonstrators would disperse when the
President came to address them, as had been promised.

Chen waited a few more hours as the crowd swelled. He noted
with dismay that some were carrying pipes and bottles. The youngsters had
started taunting the policemen and troops. Chen intervened quickly, but the
situation was volatile and he was afraid that it could explode at any minute.

He had tried calling Hong several times that morning, but
had not been able to get through. The local police who were to be the first
line of defense seemed terrified and Chen doubted they would hold their lines
if there was trouble. If anything, some of the younger policemen showed
sympathy towards the protestors.

***

Edward finished his coffee at the café near Tiananmen
Square. He looked at the growing crowd and shook his head sadly. He would much
rather his mission be achieved with the minimum collateral damage. The Chinese
troops were there, just as his bosses had anticipated, and the poorly trained
police would bolt at the first sight of trouble. That would leave heavily armed
infantry brought in straight from a hostile international border facing
agitated civilians. Combat infantry was trained to kill, not detain or disarm
civilians. Edward wondered just how well-connected his bosses were; to
manipulate things to this extent would require access to the Chinese
government. As he climbed up the fire escape behind the café, he knew that he would
never know the full story, and he knew better than to ask questions. Curiosity
might or might not kill the cat, but it would certainly lead to a short and
exciting life.

Once he was on the roof, Edward opened the briefcase he had
been carrying. To anyone looking at the contents, his briefcase contained
nothing that would have been out of place for an executive on a business trip.
Edward moved the files and papers a bit and snapped open a hidden compartment.
He took only five minutes to assemble the sniper rifle.

***

Chen’s phone rang and he picked it up, relieved to finally
hear from Hong.

‘Sir, thanks for calling. I’ve been trying to call you all
morning. We are in an impossible situation here and I have no idea why they
ordered my men here, but if anything goes wrong, my boys are not trained to
handle civil disturbance. I’ve been thinking of what you said and I wanted to
talk to you.’

To Chen’s shock, Hong’s voice betrayed panic. ‘They are on
to us. Someone in our group betrayed us, and they are hunting us down. I don’t
have much time. Take care, my son.’

With those last words, Hong disconnected the line. Chen
would have tried calling him back had one of his men not shouted in alarm.

‘Sir, someone’s shooting the protestors!’

Three protestors lay in expanding pools of blood. Chen
looked on in horror as another one fell, a mist of blood spraying from his
head. Chen’s trained eyes knew immediately that someone from an elevated area
to the right was shooting at the protestors, and that they were using a silenced
weapon. Chen scanned the buildings with his assault rifle ready in his hands.

There! He saw a glint of light from what could have been a
sniper scope. Another protestor fell. Chen turned to his men.

‘Make sure none of you fire. If the crowd stirs up, try and
hold them back with minimum force. I’m going after that bastard who’s
shooting.’

Chen began to run towards the building where he had spotted
the shooter, but he was too late. Some of the youth in the crowd recovered from
their shock and gave vent to their fury.

‘Those swine shot us in cold blood. Get them!’

Bricks and bottles began raining down on the police and soon
a group of young men charged the policemen. The policemen tried to rally but two
of the police fell, victims to the unseen sniper he was racing towards. A
policeman thought someone in the crowd had shot his comrade and opened fire
with his pistol, shooting two civilians.

After that, nobody could do anything to stop the unfolding
bloodbath at Tiananmen Square.

***

Chen was sitting alone, his clothes drenched in sweat and
blood and his body bleeding from at least a dozen cuts and scrapes. He had
tried to hold his men back, but once the police fired, a few protestors had
snatched guns from them and started firing at the troops. The square was
littered with bodies. The sniper who had started it all was gone. Chen’s wife
had been calling him all day to check if he was okay, and he just grunted once
in reply and then did not answer any more calls. Hong was nowhere to be found,
and many officers loyal to Hong were missing. The massacre at Tiananmen Square
had been a smokescreen for a wholesale purge of officers in the Army who were
likely to oppose whoever was orchestrating the events overtaking China.

A TV was on in the corner and Chen saw that the entire world
was being engulfed by a catastrophe of the likes that had never been seen
before. Regional wars were flaring up, and the disease that he had heard of in
Mongolia was spreading like wildfire. There were rumors that it transformed
people into undead monsters who preyed on human flesh. Chen had dismissed those
stories as the product of an overactive imagination, but now he was no longer
so sure. The images of mobs of men and women hunting down others and biting
them to death would have been horrible enough, but what made it even more
terrifying was that the victims came back to life as monsters themselves.
Several cities had been overrun by the contagion and Chen wondered if Hong had
been right after all, and if there were indeed forces orchestrating such global
chaos.

‘Comrade, we need to talk.’

Chen looked up to see a young officer, whom he had not met
before.

‘Comrade Chen, General Hong told me to come to you if his
plans were compromised. He is gone, as are most of the officers, but the men
are ready, and they just need a leader to follow.’

‘Why don’t you lead them?’

The man smiled.

‘My friend, I am an accountant who has never been in battle,
which is why nobody suspects me of being a part of the plan. We need a warrior,
not a bean counter, to lead the troops. You surely know now the kind of
ruthless men we are up against, and unless we act fast, all will be lost. I
don’t know what their plan is and what they ultimately want, but they clearly
are in the highest reaches of the government and the Army. We must act fast
before more innocent lives are lost.’

Chen thought back to the hundreds of lives lost in the
square earlier in the day and he looked up at the officer.

‘What do I need to do?’

***

While Chen was sitting in his barracks planning his next
move, Edward was at the airport, waiting to catch a flight out to Hong Kong. He
had an onward journey booked to New York, where he would dispose of his current
identity and take a well-deserved two-month vacation.