Alice in Deadland Trilogy (40 page)

There was no counting how many Biters had been destroyed in
the fighting that day but they kept coming. Many Army units had been overrun,
further adding to the ranks of the Biters, and finally Chen had received orders
to retreat, destroying all bridges and mining all approach roads along the way.
A row of tanks in the distance were heading out to meet the Biters, but he
doubted they would achieve much. He had already heard tales of tanks that had
destroyed hundreds of Biters, then run out of ammunition and gotten bogged
down. Heavy armor was of little use against a seemingly never-ending sea of
Biters. Once the tanks ran out of ammunition or got bogged down, the Biters
would just bypass them and carry on.

The Biters did not seem to feel tiredness, fear or pain.
They kept coming, and several more cities had fallen. Beijing, Shanghai and a
handful of other cities were still intact, but he had already heard that with
Beijing under greater threat, the government had been flown out to Shanghai.
His men were dead tired, and terrified. Many of them just wanted to get home to
their families, and Chen thought of his own wife. Yet he knew that he could not
allow them to leave their posts. One or two units further to the East had
scattered and Chen had heard about several desperate last stands by small
units. A dozen men could not hope to last long against the Biters.

Chen had managed to keep his men operating as a cohesive
unit, and other than four men who had died when one of their RPGs misfired, he
had suffered no other deaths. Most of his men were however dehydrated, and many
of them had swollen and bloodied fingers from the constant firing. More than a
dozen were wounded due to misfirings and weapons that had overheated, and in
more than one case, exploded. Chen had tended to some of the wounded himself,
and his uniform was soaked in blood.

For all that, Chen looked at his boys with pride. They had
not broken and run as had so many units. For all their misgivings about the
regime and their role in Tiananmen Square, they had done their duty to the
people of China. They had fought the battle of their lives, not for a flag, not
for politicians, but for the millions of ordinary people who counted on them.
So, despite every muscle in his body screaming in protest, Chen walked among
his men, whispering words of encouragement to each one.

When he was done, he sat down heavily and looked across the
river. The horizon was dark with Biters. It was a matter of hours before they
reached Beijing and he was not sure they would be able to hold them.

Chen drank some water and thought of how much the world had
changed in just one day. Much of the world was lying devastated. The Middle
East was largely gone, wiped out in a day of tit-for-tat nuclear exchanges.
India and Pakistan had traded their own nuclear blows and their major cities
had been hit. Biters had swept through much of the world, and it was unclear if
there was any organized government left. In all the chaos, the Great Firewall was
down, but as Chen looked at the laptop screen in front of him, he realized news
from around the world had not been updated for over six hours.

The latest updates chilled him. The US Government had
decided to use tactical nuclear weapons, air burst weapons, on cities that had
been totally overrun by Biters. Other nuclear powers – Britain, France, Russia
and India – had followed suit. It was a desperate last measure to deny the
Biters control over human cities. Chen wondered how many hundreds of millions had
died in one day around the world.

One of his men started sobbing and Chen looked up sharply,
planning to give the man a lecture. Instead, Chen just stared at the sight he
saw, and tears began to stream down his cheeks. Just over the horizon, four
giant mushroom clouds billowed over the earth.

***

‘There is someone here to see you.’

Chen sat upright, sweat pouring off his face, and his wife
placed a gentle hand on his chest, trying to calm him. There were a dozen
people sharing their apartment, and many of them looked on as Chen got up to
see who was at the door.

With the people that had streamed into the city, Beijing was
now home to more than thirty million people, and residents had opened their
homes to the newcomers. Three days had passed since Chen and his men had held
the line long enough for tactical nuclear weapons to be used to finally secure
Beijing. There was no telling whether more Biters would come. China had been
home to well over a billion people and only a hundred million were reckoned to
be safe. But for now, they had bought themselves some time. Enough time to
airdrop thousands of mines around the cities and to ring Beijing and Shanghai
with armored forces to hold any further attacks.

It was now a foregone conclusion that any further massed
attack by Biters would be met with nuclear strikes. There was no news from the
outside world. The Internet was now down, as were phone lines.

A man in a black uniform was waiting for him.

‘Sir, I am to get you to Shanghai immediately.’

A few hours later, Chen was waiting in front of a
nondescript office in Shanghai. He had put on his uniform, since he was meeting
someone at the very top of the government, but he was beyond caring about the
reek of sweat and dirt, the tears in a couple of places, or the dried blood all
over the front.

The door opened, and he was ushered in. Two old Chinese men
were seated at a table, and next to them, surprisingly enough, was a Caucasian
man. One of the Chinese men, an old man with ribbons across his chest, nodded
at Chen and asked him to sit down.

‘Comrade Chen, we thank you for your heroic actions in
helping to secure Beijing. Now only Beijing and Shanghai remain, but we will
make a new beginning, thanks to the bravery and sacrifice of men like you.’

Chen swallowed hard as the rumors he had heard were
confirmed. Only two cities remained intact in all of China. True, that meant
that perhaps a hundred million or more had survived, but what about the billion
more who were not inside the secure cities? How many billions had perished or
become Biters around the world?

The old man continued. ‘In the chaos, we suffered terribly.
The President and his cabinet perished in an air crash as they were being flown
to Shanghai, and so now we are trying to re-establish order. As you can see, we
are putting past differences aside and are joining hands with like-minded
American friends. Together we will usher in a New World and begin afresh. Our
nation, our civilization, is the only one left intact from all the nations of
old, and we will begin to spread civilization again through the world.
Unfortunate as the circumstances are, perhaps it is our destiny to be the ones
who reclaim our planet in the name of human civilization. But first, we must
secure our cities and feed the millions of civilians that depend on us. For
that we need men like you.’

‘Comrade, what could I do to help?’

The second Chinese man spoke.

‘We are bringing the old government and armed forces into
one single command structure, called the Central Committee. We need our Chinese
soldiers to keep order in our cities, but we will need other forces to seek out
survivors in other parts of the world and to secure resources and food for our
people. In that, we will be helped by the forces that our American friends have
at their disposal. A highly trained force called Zeus. We will bring their
forces and ours into one command, and we need capable men to lead them. Our
aerial reconnaissance indicates that there are two major areas where there may
still be land to grow food and where there may still be human survivors who
need our help – the Midwest of North America and the Northern plains of India.’

After all that he had seen over the last few days, Chen
replied without a second thought, ‘Comrade, where can I serve and who do I
report to?’

The old man chuckled.

‘You are everything I had read about you – a committed
soldier to the core. No, Comrade, your days of reporting to others are over. As
of today, you are a General.’

The man stepped forward and pinned a medal on Chen’s chest, and
a set of stripes on his shoulders. Chen was too stunned to say anything.

‘Comrade General Chen, welcome to the Red Guards.’

***

A BUNNY’S LAST
WISH

‘Of all the things anybody has ever done to impress a girl,
dressing up as a bunny must be the weirdest and stupidest plan. I do hope she’s
worth it.’

Neil smiled and playfully threw some water from the sink at
Jiten. ‘She is not just any girl. She is the one.’

Jiten shook his head. ‘Dude, I hear you and I’m sure she’s
special but please take a look at us. She’s rich, she’s good-looking and we
spend our spare time serving pizzas and washing dishes.’

Neil was not dissuaded. He had heard it all before, and it
did not bother him. He might not have had much, but one thing he did have was
boatloads of determination. He was only eighteen, but having grown up in an
orphanage had matured him much faster than others his age. He had quickly
learned that if he wanted to do something with his life, he would need two
things – education and money. So he had studied his butt off and got admission
into one of the best colleges in New Delhi, and he worked two part-time jobs to
pay the fees and save up for a professional degree. He did not know much about
what was expected or even whether he would be good at it, but his dream was to
get an MBA. For Neil, it was simple – he wanted a job. A job that made sure he
no longer had to worry about money; a job that helped him get rid of the label
of being a nobody that he had carried ever since he had been born; a job that
paid him enough and gave him enough respectability for someone like Neha.

But for now, he still had to get her to date him. The very
first time he had seen her, up on stage during a college function, he could
have sworn a voice whispered into his ears that she was the one. He had had his
share of crushes, but with Neha, it was different. He would hang around after
class, whiling away time over cups of tea so that he could see her finish her
class and get into her chauffeur-driven car. He signed up for an extra credit
in Philosophy and suffered through incomprehensible lectures on Kant and Plato
just so he could sit behind her. Of course, she had never noticed him. Neha was
one of the most popular people on campus, and he was an outsider. Most of the
kids came from privileged families, with cars, flashy phones and late-night
parties they attended together. He was the poor orphan from a different world.

With half the college queuing up to be Neha’s boyfriend, on
the face of it, Neil’s chances were slim. But he was not one to give up so
easily. So a few Google searches later, he had found out something that nobody
else knew. Neha was a volunteer for the Make-A-Wish foundation, and so Neil had
offered to volunteer there as well. Six months had passed, and then he had been
called up for his first wish – to accompany a five-year-old with leukemia to
meet her favorite movie star. The movie star had agreed and Neil and another
Wish Granter were to accompany the child and her family from their humble home
on the outskirts of Delhi to meet the star in a hotel.

When Neil had first seen the little girl with her hair all
gone to multiple sessions of chemotherapy, something in him changed. He
realized that while he had started this all as a ruse to get closer to Neha, he
wanted passionately to help these kids – to give them the joy that came with
fulfilling their wishes, to bring some hope into their lives, if even for a
day. Joy and hope that nobody had brought into his when he was growing up in
the orphanage. Every time one of the kids smiled, it felt like in some way he
was making up for all the nights he had cried himself to sleep at the
orphanage. So he had dived into his volunteer work with a vengeance and in the
New Year’s party, he was given an award for being the most active and
enthusiastic Wish Granter in all of Delhi.

That day, Neil learned another lesson – that sometimes just
doing what was right eventually got you more reward than any amount of scheming
and planning. He sat at the same table as Neha that night, and they immediately
hit it off. She saw not another boy from college wanting to get into her pants,
but a gentle, sincere boy who gave so much of his time for a cause she so
dearly loved. Neil learned that Neha had lost her mother to cancer, which had
made her embrace the work of the Make-A-Wish foundation with such fervor. They
stayed in touch, and within days, Neil got the news that for the next wish, he
was to partner with Neha. In some secret corner of his mind, he wished that
Neha had requested specifically for him to be her partner. The more prosaic
truth was the Wish Granter paired with her had fallen sick and they had picked
Neil at random, but that did not bother Neil; he saw this as a sign from God
that the wheels were finally turning in his favor.

Of course, that also meant that he had to go dressed as a
giant bunny. It seemed that the little girl they were to help that day was a
huge fan of the book Alice in Wonderland, and wanted Wonderland to be enacted
for her. She was to be dressed as Alice, Neha was to be the Queen, and of
course, Neil was to play the part of the role of the rabbit who led Alice down
the hole. Neil knew he looked silly in the oversized bunny ears. He was tall
and lanky to the point of looking gaunt, and the large, floppy ears only made
him look even taller and thinner. But it would make a sick little girl smile,
and yes, it would allow him to spend time with Neha. After the wish, he had
planned on asking her out for a coffee, and pleasant thoughts of their first
date occupied him as he rode his bike to the girl’s home, where he and Neha
were to prepare a Wonderland-themed birthday party for the girl and her
friends.

***

Neil had been riding his bike for almost thirty minutes when
he first got a sense that something was wrong. Normally, in the middle of a
Saturday afternoon, traffic should not have been so bad, but now cars were
backed up as far as he could see. The girl’s home was in a compound of low-rise
apartments just a few kilometers away from where he was now, near the Delhi zoo,
but with the state of traffic that he saw around him, there was no way he was
going to make it in time.

Loud music sounded to his right and an auto-rickshaw pulled
up. The driver was smiling and singing along, and when he saw Neil stare at
him, he turned the music down. ‘Don’t look so serious, young man. We’ll be
stuck here for quite some time.’

‘Why, is there an accident or something up ahead?’

The auto-rickshaw driver looked at Neil as if he were an
idiot. ‘Don’t you watch the news? The demons are loose now. I hear they think
the bloody Delhi Police will stop them. All they know is how to take bribes.’

Neil leaned closer to see what the man was talking about,
and caught a whiff of country liquor. There was a half-empty bottle nestled
against the man’s legs. No wonder he was babbling about demons. The man saw
Neil’s expression and pointed to the bottle. ‘My friend, you also go and get a
good drink before the demons come.’

One of the cars inched forward, and Neil maneuvered his bike
through the gap. He managed in this fashion for a few minutes, moving perhaps a
few hundred meters, when he saw that the road ahead was blocked by a police
jeep. Three nervous-looking constables were standing in the middle of the road,
diverting traffic. Not able to move further on his bike, Neil got off his bike
and walked towards them.

‘What’s happening? Why are you blocking the traffic?’

One of the policemen, a kind-looking old man who looked like
he had been pulled out of retirement, stepped forward.

‘Son, we’re just following orders. It seems there’s trouble
up ahead near the Taj hotel. Officially they haven’t told us what’s going on
yet, but if I were you I would go and spend this time with your family.’

Neil thought back to what had happened in Mumbai a few years
earlier when terrorists had attacked a number of hotels and other targets. His
heart sank since he knew that Neha’s home was close to the Taj.

‘Is there a terror attack going on?’

The policeman shook his head.

‘No, son, it’s worse. Have you been following the news about
the strange disease that showed up in China?’

Neil got most of his information from the Internet, and
sure, he had heard about how a new virus was supposedly taking hold, and how
some people were spooked about it. But then, that was the media’s job, right?
To make everything seem like the end of the bloody world was in sight. He still
remembered how they had drummed up SARS, mad cow, bird flu and God knew how
many other epidemics that were supposedly going to kill millions, and of
course, nothing happened. Plus, the news from the US was just a day or two old
– surely no virus could spread so fast? And even if it did, why would the cops
be so paranoid?

He took out his phone to call Neha to check what was going
on. There were several unread notifications on his Facebook and Twitter icons.
As he watched, the count seemed to increase steadily. With slightly shaking
hands, he opened up Facebook and scrolled through the status updates of his
friends.

‘What the hell is going on in Delhi? Isn’t traffic bad
enough on normal days?’

‘They say it’s a virus? I think the only virus has affected
the traffic lights.’

‘Maybe the cops just want some bribes to let us through.
Recession must be hard on them as well. ☺’

But then the messages started getting more somber.

‘My bro came home and says he saw something on the road near
his school. He won’t stop crying and he’s scared stiff. WTF is going on,
please?’

‘I stepped out to buy some Coke and the cops are now telling
everyone to stay in their houses and lock their doors. Are there terrorists
around?’

‘Stay safe, guys. The government has declared a state of
emergency. How can they do that without even telling us what’s going on?’

‘One of the news channels got an interview with a guest at
the Taj. He was babbling about monsters.’

At that point, Neil stopped, a knot forming in his stomach.
He had dismissed the auto-rickshaw driver’s comments as the rants of a drunk,
but what was really going on? What was this talk of monsters?

Then he saw the status update that galvanized him into
action. It was from Neha.

‘I’m scared. I can see these… things… walking outside. There
are some cops firing at them. I’m alone and my dad’s at work. Don’t know what
to do.’

Neha was alone, and in danger. Monsters or no monsters, Neil
was not going to leave her alone at a time like this. He responded to her
update with a simple comment.

‘I’m coming for you.’

He revved his bike and tore through the police barrier. One
of the cops grabbed at the bag that contained his props and in the struggle,
managed to snatch the bag away, leaving just the large bunny ears in Neil’s
hands. Needing both hands free to control his bike, Neil put the ears on top of
his head and rode off towards Neha’s home as fast as he could.

A thin boy wearing pink bunny ears was hardly the sort of
one-man army movies or novels would portray, but today Neil George was angry
enough to go to war with anyone who was threatening Neha.

***

Neil didn’t have to go far before he saw the first signs of
trouble. He needed to take a right turn near the Old Fort to get to Neha’s
home, but the road was blocked by people running across the road from the
government colonies to the left. Many of them were well-dressed and perhaps the
families of the officials who stayed in the apartments, but there were also
some pavement dwellers and even some policemen. One of the policemen took one
look at Neil and shouted, ‘Have you lost your mind? Don’t go any further.’

Neil didn’t have time to ask anyone what was happening, since
the crowd seemed to be seized with a wild panic. While he waited for them to
pass, he took a quick look at his phone. There was a new update on Neha’s
Facebook page: ‘Neil, don’t come here. They are all around.’

Neil started his bike and rode straight past the fleeing
crowd. Neha was clearly in great danger and he was not going to leave her.

Neil had progressed only a half-kilometer further when he
first saw them.

An elderly man staggered to the side of the road, blood all
over his clothes. His white hair was covered in red and his face was barely
visible behind a mask of blood. The man was moving slowly, as if in immense
pain, and before he could consciously think about it, Neil had stopped the bike
near the old man.

‘Do you need help?’

The man’s head snapped up and Neil realized that something
was terribly wrong. The man’s eyes were yellow and vacant and his lips were
drawn back, making him look more like a snarling dog than a human being. Neil
noticed the foul smell, like that of dead rats, and he wondered what was wrong
with the old man. That was when the man growled and lunged at Neil, trying to
bite him.

‘Holy shit!’ Neil almost fell off his bike in terror but
recovered his wits in time to start his bike and speed away. Now other bloodied
figures emerged from the colony. They were all shuffling along in a slow gait
and as Neil caught a glimpse at one or two of their faces, he saw the same lack
of expression. They snapped and clawed at him with their teeth or clawing in
the air as he passed.

Neil was more scared than he had ever been in his life. What
the auto-rickshaw driver had said came back to him and he wondered if these
were actually demons. A couple of the Facebook posts had said that someone in
the government had announced that this was the result of the virus that
everyone had heard about sweeping through the US, but Neil wondered how a virus
could possibly turn people into the inhuman wraiths he saw all around him.

He swerved his bike to the right just in time to avoid three
of them coming at him and rode down a side street. An overweight man ran onto
the streets and right into the path of the three Neil had dodged. One of them
clawed at the fat man’s face, drawing blood. As the man clutched his bloodied
face, another one bit into his shoulder. Blood spurted out in a fountain and
the man went to his knees, as another one of his attackers bit him.