Alice in Deadland Trilogy (4 page)

Just then, the convoy in front of her stopped in its tracks,
many of the adults looking up at the skies. Several of children began howling,
their inhuman cries making Alice's hair stand up on end. She didn't know what
had suddenly brought about the change in their behavior, but within a few
seconds the group transformed from an orderly convoy to a totally
panic-stricken mob. The Biters were now screaming and running in such a panic
that she saw more than one run into trees and fall down. Bunny Ears had now
emerged and was howling, an ear-splitting noise that was taken up by the others
who had been hiding in the trees with him. It almost looked like he and the
others had been sent by the Queen to shepherd the group to safety through the
woods, but now there was no more semblance of order. The Biters were running
around, screaming like wild animals that have caught a scent of hunters, and
one of them, a woman with a bloodied and mangled child in her arms, came within
a few feet of Alice. She glared at Alice with hate-filled eyes, and baring
bloodied teeth, seemed ready to pounce when Bunny Ears knocked her off her feet
with a blow to the back of her head.

Alice still didn't know what had caused such bedlam when she
heard a familiar sound. The whirring rotors of approaching helicopters. She
looked up to see several black helicopters approach the clearing. Zeus had
arrived.

***

The female Biter who had been knocked over by Bunny Ears was
getting up unsteadily on one knee when her head exploded in a spray of blood.
Alice screamed and dove for cover behind a tree as more snipers aboard the
oncoming helicopters opened fire. She watch three more Biters caught in the
open fall, their heads split open by high-powered sniper rifles, before the
others scattered among the trees. The child the Biter had been carrying was now
feet away from Alice, and looking at its hideous form, with its mangled face
and bloody skin, it was hard to feel any emotion the way one felt towards human
children. Alice was about to crawl away under the bushes nearby and try and
escape, but something held her back. She looked back at the child again, and
this time his eyes met hers. There was no innocence, no love: just the blank,
hate-filled expression that was characteristic of Biters, and while he could
not even walk, he began to crawl towards her, baring a handful of half-formed
teeth. The rational part of Alice's mind told her to run, but she was
transfixed at the sight of this little child who would no doubt bite Alice and
transform her into a Biter like him given half a chance, yet who was little
more than a child. A helpless child.

Just then, a huge Biter easily standing more than six and a
half feet tall ran over in front of her. He was wearing a floppy hat and much
of the left side of his face was missing. He picked up the child and ran
towards the nearby trees as Alice heard a fresh burst of firing. This time it
was not the distinctive pops of sniper rifles, but the staccato bursts of
automatic weapon fire. That could mean only one thing: Zeus troopers were now
on the ground.

Alice looked to her left and saw something was which no less
than a miracle: her backpack, which Bunny Ears must have dropped there in the
chaos. She remembered the signal flare that had been there and crawled towards
the backpack, grabbing it before she again retreated behind cover. She unzipped
it and breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the signal flare was still there.
She looked around and saw that Bunny Ears was nowhere to be seen. Now was her
chance. She popped the flare and soon a red light shot up in the sky. She
watched it sail above the treeline and hoped that it would get the attention of
the Zeus troopers and someone would come to get her.

She did succeed in attracting attention all right, but of
entirely the unwanted variety when she saw two Biters homing in on her. They
were screaming and coming at her with their teeth bared. Alice realized with a
shudder that one of them must have claimed a victim in the fighting now going
on all around her since his mouth was covered with fresh blood that was
dripping onto his muddy and torn shirt. There was no time and no place to run,
so Alice got ready to face her attackers. The first to reach her was the man
with the bloody face, a thin man who was missing his left arm below the elbow
and seemed to have half his hair burnt off. As he screamed and leapt towards
Alice, she went down on a knee, sweeping him off his feet. She had no weapons
with her, but she brought her foot down on the Biter's windpipe in a crushing
kick. It would have killed a grown man, but the Biter screamed and began to get
up again. The second Biter, a tall man wearing a blood stained vest and shorts,
was now almost upon her. Alice ran towards him, dodging his outstretched arms,
and then turned around on her heels to kick his foot from under him behind his
knee. It shattered his leg, but as Alice well knew, that would hardly be enough
to stop a Biter on the rampage. He got up unsteadily on one leg, as Alice tried
to run only to come straight in the path of the first Biter, whose neck now hung
at an awkward angle, but his mouth was open and he lunged at her.

Alice closed her eyes, bracing herself for the attack that
never came. She heard a loud pop and when she opened her eyes she saw the
Biter's headless body lying just a couple of feet from her. The second Biter,
now limping towards her, met a similar fate as another round slammed into his
head.

She looked into the trees ahead and saw a black clad man
kneeling, a rifle at his shoulder. He wore the black battle dress of the Zeus
troopers, but unlike the others she had seen, he had no helmet to cover his
close-cropped black hair, which was covered with flecks of grey. He saw her and
grinned and began to run towards her.

Alice took a step towards him, her heart racing in
anticipation of her coming rescue, when three Biters jumped out of the trees
and in the path of the Zeus trooper who was less than a hundred meters from
her. He shot one in the head at point blank range before another Biter knocked
the rifle out of his hand. Alice had been trained to fight since she was a
child, but she had never seen anyone fight like the Zeus trooper in front of
her. Unfazed by the loss of his gun, he unsheathed a large knife at his belt
and jumped up, bringing it down into the skull of the nearest Biter, who screamed
and went down, not to get up again. The third Biter was now almost upon him,
and he rolled out of the way, taking out his handgun, and put three shots into
the Biter's head.

Two more Zeus troopers now appeared, and judging by their
salutes and the deference they showed the grey haired man, it seemed that he
was an officer of some sort. He pointed to her and the two of them began to jog
towards her. That was when the large Biter with the hat came crashing out of
the trees. He grabbed the nearest trooper and snapped his neck, the sickening
crunching sound carrying to Alice. The second trooper tried to bring his rifle
to bear, but the Biter bit him on the neck, and he went down spurting blood.
Alice knew what would come next. The trooper spasmed and went rigid, and when
he got up again, Alice saw that his eyes were the vacant, lifeless eyes of the
undead. His head exploded as the grey haired officer fired, preferring to kill
his own man versus having him turn into one of the undead, as the Biter with the
hat reared up to his full height and screamed. More than a dozen Biters now
emerged into the clearing and the Zeus officer retreated into the trees,
looking at Alice once. As their eyes met, he cocked his arm back and threw
something at her before he disappeared into the trees, pursued by the Biters.

The object he had thrown landed a couple of feet away from
Alice, and she ran to pick up what he had thrown just as Bunny Ears reappeared
with three other Biters. He grabbed her arm to pull her away but before he
yanked her off, she looked at the small blinking object in her hand. It was a
radio beacon that would give away her position as long as she carried it. There
was to be no escape today, but as she slipped the beacon into her pockets, she
felt a new surge of hope.

Help would be on the way soon.

***

'So, what did you learn from your trip?'

The question had been asked as if the Queen were enquiring
about a field trip to a museum instead of her having just been in the middle of
a life and death struggle, so Alice wasn't quite sure what the Queen had in
mind. That became clear when the giant Biter with the hat appeared and uttered
a series of guttural growls.

'Hatter here tells me that you caused a fair bit of
inconvenience, but if anything is to be learnt from today's experience, do
learn that we are not fools. We did not send you out to offer you an easy and
convenient escape route.'

'So why did you send me out there? I've seen enough battles
and there's nothing I saw that I haven't seen before.'

The Queen turned on Alice with a fury, baring her teeth, and
for a second Alice was truly fearful that she would attack her. But then the
Queen seemed to control herself with a conscious effort of will, and answered
in a soft voice, 'You just used your usual prejudices to filter out what you
didn't want to see. I wanted you to see us as we are: a society, a group of
sentient beings. Different from humans, but no less deserving of the right to
exist. Not animals to be hunted down and exterminated.'

That did ring a bell with Alice. True, she had never
imagined that Biters could be organized in some sort of social unit, and
certainly had never bargained for the fact that she would see babies and what
appeared to be their parents together. Still, that did not change the fundamental
equation. The anger at all the cruelty she had seen Biters visit upon humans in
her life came back to her as she answered the Queen with a bitter tinge in her
voice.

'I have seen enough innocent humans slaughtered by Biters. I
have seen babies bitten by Biters. I have seen good, decent people turn into
bloodthirsty Biters after being bitten. So it's not as if your precious Biters
are innocent, helpless victims.'

The Queen hissed, though Alice sensed more regret than rage
in her reaction.

'I had hoped you would begin to change your mind and embrace
your destiny, but it looks like your mind is still too closed. Oh well, I hope
you can reflect on it over the next few days.'

With that, the giant Biter referred to as Hatter gripped her
arm and pushed her roughly out of the room. She was led to a small, dark room
and the door slammed shut once she went in. Alice huddled alone in a corner of
the cold, dark room, and took out the beacon from her pocket. She watched the
small blinking red light till exhaustion overtook her and she fell into an
uneasy slumber. She dreamt of a Biter baby having its head shot off, and she
woke up covered in sweat. There was no more sleep to be had that night.

***

FOUR

If the Queen's intent had been to torture Alice into submission,
Alice thought she was doing a pretty good job of it. For the next two days, she
got nothing to eat or drink other than a single glass of dirty water that was
shoved into her room once a day. The room was totally dark all the time and
Alice soon lost track of time. She screamed her rage out for the first few
hours but then just sat in silence against the wall. She may have been trained
as a warrior from an early age, but nobody had ever trained her on what to do
if she were captured. It had never occurred to anyone that someone could be
taken prisoner by the Biters.

Finally, hungry, thirsty and disoriented, she was on the
verge of asking for the Queen and agreeing to whatever crazy prophecy she
seemed to believe in. Anything to get out of the room. Anything to get a bite
to eat or a drink of clean water. That was when Bunny Ears opened the door and
pulled her out, leading her to the Queen's room. Alice found the Queen sitting
at her desk, chewing ganja leaves and holding the charred book that seemed so
important to her. When Alice entered the room, she called out loudly for food,
and Hatter came in, holding a hunk of nearly stale bread. As disgusting as it
looked, it was the first food Alice had seen in almost three days, and she
hungrily wolfed it down.

The Queen waited for her to finish and then sat down in
front of Alice, the book on her lap.

'Alice, I was wrong. In my anger, I thought that frightening
and intimidating you would bring you to my side, but if you are to fulfill the
prophecy, it cannot be through fear. It has to be because you believe in our
cause.'

Alice, bitter and angry after what she had endured over the
last two days, blurted out, 'Yeah, and locking me in a dark room and starving
me will make me believe in your prophecy. Or will it be the bloody ganja leaves
you gulp down?'

Alice saw the muscles on the Queen's face tighten, and once
again she saw a glimpse of the rage she was capable of, but she controlled
herself as she responded to Alice.

'No. You remember the old quote about the truth setting us
free.'

Alice had never heard the quote, but listened as the Queen
continued.

'Tell me, what do you know about what you humans call The
Rising?'

Growing up, Alice had heard the story many times from her
parents, and then it had been amplified and embellished by countless
conversations with other kids, so the answer to her was obvious.

'Everyone knows about it. One day, something happened, and
the dead started coming to life. Before anyone could do anything, they started
attacking others, and those bitten turned into...Biters, I guess. They couldn't
be killed other than through a shot through the head, and they soon overran
most cities. Then the governments got desperate and bombed the cities after
evacuating as many people as possible....'

She couldn't finish because the Queen had got up and
screamed, an inhuman howl that shocked Alice so much that she got up from her
chair, which clattered to the ground behind her. The Queen was now speaking
fast and with such anger that spittle was flying from her mouth.

'It did not just happen. We made it happen.'

Alice wasn't sure what she was referring to and asked what
she meant.

'Us. Human governments, or at least some elements in our
governments. The US government had been experimenting with chemical and
biological agents that would transform our troops into super-soldiers, into
berserkers immune to pain. At the same time, there was research on modifying
these to create agents that would drive enemy troops insane, a rage virus which
would transform them into wild animals who would kill each other. We
experimented with rats, with monkeys and...with humans.'

Alice found that hard to believe and gasped aloud.

'No, dear. We did all that. In secret facilities in
Afghanistan and other places. We were drunk with our power, imagining what
would happen if we could drop one single canister of this agent in the middle
of an enemy army division. It would tear itself to pieces without us firing a
shot. Then it all came apart.'

'What happened?'

'The Chinese found out what we were up to, and they knew
that if we perfected this, we would be invincible. They infiltrated our
program, and destroyed our key research lab in the US. We couldn't prove
anything; it looked like an explosion caused by a gas cylinder, but we knew who
was behind it. The American economy was in deep recession, China was on the
ascendant, and this was our last hope in keeping them in check. We had extra
stores of the agent the Chinese did not know about, and we decided to teach
them a lesson, to show them that we were still the superpower. A covert mission
was authorized and we dropped the agent into a village in Mongolia. It was the
first time it had been used on humans outside controlled conditions, and nobody
knew what to expect. I had pleaded against the decision, so many of us had, but
we were overruled. Thousands fell, then tens of thousands as it spread.'

Alice knew only vaguely of the politics between countries of
the Old Days, since national boundaries and the old countries now hardly
mattered, but she found it hard to believe that people could have done this to
themselves.

'What happened then? If you were in America then how did it
spread there?'

The Queen sat down again.

'Hundreds of people were injured in the blast at the lab and
were exposed to all the toxins and agents we were working on. The next day,
they started transforming and biting all those around them.'

A chill went up Alice's spine, yet her mind refused to
believe what she was hearing.

'Why should I believe you?'

The Queen went to her desk and fished out an identification
card and some papers. Alice struggled to read what was on them, but the emblem
of what she knew to be the United States Government was there.

'I was one of the head researchers on this project. I was
born here in India but did my Doctorate in the US and joined the Department of
Defense. I thought it was exciting, to be able to come up with new ways of
treating our wounded, to make the world safer. But then we all got a bit drunk
with our own power, and we started meddling with things we should have left
alone. We tried to play God, and we were not ready for what we unleashed. When
the decision to attack China was made, I quit and came back to India, but by
then, nowhere was safe any more. At first, after being bitten, people changed
after a few hours, so you had many cases of people being attacked in airport
terminals and boarding their flights after what they thought were minor cuts.
In days, all air travel was banned, but when you have tens of millions
traveling by air every day, it spread like wildfire.'

Alice still refused to believe what she was hearing, so it
was only harder for her to believe what came next.

'And the Great Fires, that too was of our making, of our
petty jockeying for power. It began with the US and China using tactical nukes
on each other. It had nothing to do with making the world secure from the
so-called Biters. It was man destroying the world when it looked like all that
mattered to us then
–
power, money, oil
–
were now going to be worthless. It was as if all the old rules and taboos were
broken. Then Pakistan joined the party, and India retaliated. Iran and Israel
nuked it out. Between the attacks and the spreading of the virus, the world
became what it is, and nobody bothered to do the one thing that could have
stopped it all.'

'And what was that?'

The Queen looked straight at Alice.

'We had a vaccine, Alice. We could have cured them all if we
had chosen to co-operate and not turn on each other.'

***

Alice barely slept that night, despite being placed in a
much more comfortable room with a mattress and a table with clean water on it.
She didn't want to believe the Queen: she didn't want to believe that humans
could have been so savage. All her life, the Biters had been the boogeymen, the
monsters of our nightmares that had emerged from the dead to turn on humans.
Her mind found it impossible to process the possibility that humans had been
responsible for starting it all.

Unable to contain her curiosity, she went back to the
Queen's chambers and found her sitting on her chair, reading the charred book
that she held so dear. Did Biters never sleep? She looked up as Alice walked
in.

'So, Alice, as the story in this fine book goes, have you
become curiouser and curiouser?'

Alice had no idea what she was talking about so she got to
the point.

'You have no proof for anything you've said. Maybe you did
work in the Government, but everything else could be a story. I don't know why
you think I have anything to do with this, or why your finding that book makes
it a prophecy, but there's no reason for me to believe you.'

The Queen got up and went to her desk and brought out a
small vial with a red cap that had a syringe in it. She held out the vial in
front of Alice.

'Here is the vaccine. The last and only dose I know of. When
the outbreak started, one of my colleagues in the US sent me a couple of
vaccines. The Government had limited stocks and was starting to vaccinate key
leaders, so it was a really big deal for her to try and save me.'

'If there is a vaccine, why didn't they save others?'

The Queen stopped, looking at the vial.

'Good question. Many of us believed that they did not want
to.'

'Why would they do that?'

'There were always rumors
–
but nothing more than rumors
–
about how some powerful groups were actively manipulating events to create a
New World Order. They believed the world was getting overpopulated and wanted
to start over, with a select group of elites in charge. Powerful people, in
Government, in the Military, in banks, engineering all this behind the scenes.
The times before The Rising were one of chaos: many economies were in deep
decline, and common people were starting to rise against the elite who seemed
to get richer even as common folks lost their jobs and got poorer. The rumors
said that these elites were seeing their grasp on power slip away and so they
had a long-term plan to wipe out much of the population and start afresh.
That's where people like Zeus come in. They could not rely on the Military to
do all their dirty work, and that's why in the last few years before The
Rising, Private Military Contractors were getting so prominent and powerful.'

For Alice, this was all too incredible to believe. Secret
private armies, human elites trying to re-engineer the world and so on. What
she had grown up knowing was so much simpler, and it was tempting to believe
the simpler version than even consider such a possibility.

'If that was their plan, they succeeded, right?'

The Queen looked and Alice saw the hint of a smile on the
corners of her lips.

'We came in the way. They had never bargained for just
how...contagious this turned out to be, or indeed the fact that so many of us
survived by going underground into sewers and bomb shelters. They thought we
would be mindless animals who would wander around and get nuked, but I led so
many of us underground and then we emerged.'

Alice now asked the question that had been on her mind from
the beginning. 'Excuse me, but what happened to you?'

'As things unraveled, and I found out more about the
possible conspiracy behind all this, I got very disillusioned and angry and
started reaching out to people. One of my sources told me that there were
elites in the Unites States who were colluding with elements in the Chinese
government to orchestrate all this. They tried to kill me twice with the Zeus
thugs and I went into hiding. But when the chaos took Delhi, I was attacked and
bitten. I had two doses of the vaccine on me, and I injected myself seconds
after being bitten. I was unconscious for several hours and I woke up the way I
am. I don't understand it entirely but perhaps the combination of being bitten
and than taking the vaccine within seconds left me this way. Many aspects of me
were transformed, but I could still think like a human, and I was furious at
what we had done to ourselves, and what we had allowed to happen.'

'What about the other Bit
—
'

'I saw them for who they really are. Yes, they are very
unlike the people they were as humans. What the virus does, especially as it
mutates over time, is activate the most primitive parts of the brain
–
so you get no sensation
of pain, hyper aggressiveness, and an almost reflexive desire to reproduce. In
this case, bite others to increase their numbers.'

Alice refused to think of the Biters as just innocent
victims.

'Wait a minute, I have seen so many innocent settlements and
groups massacred by the Biters. They aren't just scared innocent animals.'

The Queen sighed, a gesture that made her suddenly seem much
more human.

'We are all animals. We all experience fear, and when
scared, we lash out. That's what you and the other human survivors have been
doing. I can't make them understand everything I know since their brains have
regressed a lot, but they are in awe of me because I am like them yet I can
speak and can think more rationally. I helped save thousands of them by
bringing them into these underground shelters.'

'What about this prophecy of yours?'

The Queen now had the book in her hands again.

'Oh, that is very real. I found the book when I had lost all
hope, and in that fevered dream, I saw you. I saw us finally reclaiming the
world from the evil men who made this happen. I saw us and humans stop fighting
each other.'