Hunting The Snark: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 4) (10 page)

***

‘So this Snark is a missile?’

Alice had just come out of a debriefing with Bellman, who
was still half delirious and slipping in and out of consciousness, but was at
least able to talk after an IV drip and some antibiotics. The doctor who had
attended to her was not very clear what infection she had picked up, but
malnutrition and torture had not helped. However, what little she had been able
to say had suddenly made things clearer.

Konrath had joined up with Alice and her companions at a
safehouse just outside what remained of the city of Topeka. While Alice had
been fighting her way out of the camp, Konrath had making his own perilous
journey through forests infested with Biters and bandits, with Zeus troopers on
his heels. He had suffered two wounds from bullets and shrapnel, but neither
was life-threatening. However, he looked pale and weak and Bellman’s news had
not helped matters.

Alice sat down next to him. She barely comprehended the
technology behind it all, but knowing that the Executive Committee had more
rockets that could obliterate a large city in one strike terrified her. What
Bellman had told them made it clear that they had a very narrow window of
opportunity, but they risked running out of time.

Vince, with his military background, weighed in.

‘It’s amazing just how much lack of information handicaps
us. Fifteen years ago, we could have gone on the Net and found out a lot more
with far less trouble. Now a simple Google search is replaced by getting into
and fighting our way out of a bloody FEMA camp.’

Alice had no idea who or what Google was, so she just
motioned for Vince to get on with explaining what this Snark was.

‘From what Bellman is able to tell us, the Snark is an old
nuclear missile that the US had used way back in the 1960s. It wasn’t very fast
or accurate, but didn’t use fancy computers or satellites to fly it to its
target, instead using celestial navigation—in other words its path was
calibrated to the stars. In today’s age with limited satellite coverage, it’s
the one weapon they could hope to use to hit targets so far away with a nuclear
payload. They got some working nukes, but they couldn’t use them. However, then
they found Bellman, who was a missile scientist before The Rising. She helped
the Executive Committee work on salvaging a few Snark missiles found at Cape
Canaveral, thinking she was doing it to help fight the Biters. When she
realized that the plan was to use the missile against the heavily populated
city of Shanghai, she tried to sabotage it. She only partially succeeded in
burying some of the missiles in a bunker outside the base in an area overrun by
Biters but barely escaped alive as Zeus closed in on her.’

‘What is this Boojum?’

Vince’s face took on an even more grim expression.

‘The Boojum was an upgraded version of the Snark, much
faster and more accurate. The bad news is that the remaining missiles in the
bunker are all Boojums. With those, the Executive Committee could wipe out
Wonderland, and have enough to spare to destroy the resistance here.’

Konrath stood up.

‘They wouldn’t use nukes on our own soil!’

Vince put a hand on Konrath’s shoulder. ‘General, Bellman
says that the Exec Committee people see some areas as rebel-held areas and will
ask you to surrender otherwise they will nuke them.’

Konrath took a deep breath and slammed his fist on the table
next to him. Alice’s mind was racing. They had very little time, and if they
had any chance to getting there, she would have to take the lead.

‘Vince, can you fly us to this place where the missiles are
kept?’

‘I can get a chopper fueled and ready at one of our
airstrips near Oklahoma City tomorrow, but we won’t have the numbers or
firepower needed to get through.’

‘You’re thinking like a human!’

At that comment, everyone paused to look at Alice, and a
couple of them laughed.

‘That place is full of Biters. Zeus will have to organize a
large force to fight their way through. We don’t need numbers—I can try and
control those Biters and get in there. Zeus will likely show up with a much
larger force than anything we can pull together, but we can move with much
greater speed.’

***

Aaron was sweating despite the chill in the air. This was
the first time in all his years of operating behind enemy lines that he was
going to break the strict operational protocols they had followed so far.

General Konrath knew that the electronic warfare and
communications capabilities of Zeus far surpassed those of the resistance, so
he had insisted on Aaron passing on intelligence the old-fashioned way. Aaron
had begun his career in a CIA that relied heavily, and almost exclusively, on
electronic surveillance and intelligence, but after the attacks of 9/11, a more
concerted approach towards human intelligence had begun, and as someone on the
frontline of fighting Islamist terror as a young officer, Aaron had honed the
skills that he had used so successfully now to pass on intelligence to Konrath.

Every week, he would go to a pre-designated ‘dead drop’,
where he would find a small metal tube with a paper inside containing
instructions and locations of the next drop. He would destroy the paper on
reading it and insert a paper of his own containing whatever information he
wanted relayed back to the resistance. Everything was in code, breakable only
by a cipher that Aaron had in a small diary back in his room. It was all very
low-tech, but he left no electronic signature that could betray him. Today, he
was going to break that rule.

He had done his homework and asked around among his sources
and when he learned the danger Alice was going to be in, he knew he could not
wait for the next designated drop. He logged into a message board that the
resistance used under a fictional ID, and began typing. The message would
likely be traced back to his tablet and he would be compromised, but he could
not wait.

If Aaron had not been so hasty, he would have realized that
he might be compromised not only by his electronic signature, but also the fact
that he had reached out so widely to his informants. He was still typing when
the lights went out. He cursed loudly and got up to check the generator, but
stopped when he heard what sounded like the jingling of jewelry.

What the hell was going on? A guttural voice laughed in the
darkness, and he felt at his belt for his gun. He cursed as he realized that he
had left his gun on the desk. Aaron sensed movement in front of him. He had
been discovered. He had not succeeded in his mission, but Aaron Campbell would
not go down without a fight.

He steadied himself as the shadow came closer. Light glinted
as a large hunting knife swung up towards him. Aaron stumbled back and fell to
the ground. Then came a low growl.

‘Come to the Jabberwock.’

***

Two days after he had killed Aaron, Jabber Ali Hasan rode
his Harley down the highway, followed by ten of his handpicked men. Each man
had an RPG launcher and an AK-47 slung across their backs. Jabber himself had
an AK, but he always preferred to do his work up close, with his knife.

As he passed the ruins of some American city, he spat at it.
How the infidels had fallen! Jabber knew that his own homeland in Saudi Arabia
was nothing more than radioactive ruins, but all that sacrifice and loss was
surely worth it to see the Americans reduced to this. And in the middle of all
this devastation, Jabber and his men had seeded what he knew would one day
destroy Sam King and the others who thought they were using Jabber, and achieve
the dream that Jabber’s mentors in Al Qaeda had once seen.

Before The Rising, Jabber had been a young warrior who had
been blooded in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. Then came the
betrayal by a local informant and capture by the Americans. He had spent two
years at Guantánamo, where the Americans broke his body, but never his spirit.
He and a dozen others had been brought to New York to stand trial in a military
tribunal when The Rising took place.

The world that emerged after The Rising afforded unique
opportunities for someone of Jabber’s talents. He and his men had killed and
looted at will, laying waste to the infidels around them, and within a few
years, Jabber had an army of several hundred and a large swathe of land. With
their air power, Zeus could destroy him, but with his expertise in guerrilla
warfare, he could make them pay dearly. As the resistance emerged under Konrath,
Sam King had reached out to him to make an accommodation. Jabber would be left
unmolested, but in return he and his men would occasionally be called upon to
do special missions for Sam. Missions like this one.

Resistance or Zeus, Jabber took equal pleasure in killing
them all, and his power and reputation would grow once he killed this Biter
witch held in such awe by the Americans. Trust the weak infidels to raise a
freak girl to such a pedestal. Then would come the day when Jabber would make
his move. He had watched Zeus and the resistance fight it out, weakening
themselves, and his men had also procured anti-aircraft missiles from arms
smugglers who seemed to thrive in any conflict. Soon, very soon, Jabber Ali
Hasan would raise the black flag of Al Qaeda in the heart of the enemy.

He spat again as he recalled the name that Sam King had
given him.

Jabberwock.

He would make sure Sam regretted mocking his name, right
before he cut off his head. Jabber tried to put those pleasant thoughts out of
his mind. He needed to focus on the coming battle. Thanks to one of the
faithful whom his men had reached out to, they would have the advantage of
surprise. Jabber would make the most of that, and then this witch called Alice
would get closely acquainted with Jabber’s blade.

***

Larry had lived, but only barely, and was still unconscious
when Alice and the others set out. Vince had radioed ahead to confirm that
their helicopter was fueled and ready at a resistance airstrip near Oklahoma
City. They were now in two Jeeps speeding towards the airstrip. The first Jeep
had four resistance fighters and a driver, Jamal, a local used as a messenger
by the resistance who had promised them a short cut. The second Jeep was driven
by Josh, with Alice and Bunny Ears sitting in the front with him. In the back
were packed Vince, Satish, Cynthia, John and Tom, along with three large duffel
bags containing extra ammunition and supplies.

Alice had told them that she did not want them all to risk
their lives on this mission and that she, Bunny Ears and Satish could go ahead
with Vince. Cynthia had spoken for all her comrades. ‘Girl, whether you like it
or not, this is now our battle as well. We can’t sit back while they prepare
nukes against your people and ours. So, you’ll have the Baker, Broker and
Barrister for company.’

It had been an uneventful hour of driving when Alice thought
she heard something. Unlike the Americans who had lived in a world where cars
and bikes were still common, Alice had grown up in the Deadland where the only
vehicles were armored cars or helicopters operated by Zeus.

Satish saw her sit up straight in the seat. ‘What’s up?’

Alice sat back. Perhaps her mind was just playing tricks on
her. Perhaps heading into what might well be the most crucial battle of her
life was making her edgy.

‘Maybe it’s nothing. I thought I heard many engines in the
distance. They didn’t sound like cars.’

Vince chipped in.

‘I doubt Zeus would send a patrol out so far into territory
it does not control. If it’s a bunch of bandits we can more than handle them.’

Perhaps Vince was right. After all, he knew more about what
was happening in his land than Alice did, so she tried to focus on the mission
ahead. If the forests around the bunker held thousands of Biters, Zeus would
need to bring in heavy weapons and many troops to fight their way through.
While Alice thought she could control Biters, doing so in the middle of a
battle zone would be difficult. As she thought that, she unconsciously tapped
the book at her side. Their only real hope was to get there before Zeus did,
and she had no idea if they would make it in time.

Her thoughts were brought back to the present when Josh
slammed on the brakes.

‘What’s going on?’

The Jeep in front of them had stopped and the driver, Jamal,
had got out and was walking to the side of the road. Cynthia shouted out from
the back.

‘Hell of a time for him to take a leak.’

Alice felt something. Call it instinct, call it paranoia.
She tugged at Josh’s arm.

‘Back up! Something’s not…’

She didn’t have time to complete her sentence before two
rockets slammed into the Jeep in front of them, exploding it in a fireball.

‘RPGs!’

Vince’s scream was cut short as bullets pinged into the side
of the Jeep and he ducked for cover. Josh backed the Jeep up at high speed as
another RPG narrowly missed them. Alice had no idea how many attackers they
were up against, but remaining in the vehicle made them sitting ducks for
whoever was out there firing rockets at them. Josh was still backing up when
Satish shouted from the back.

‘They’ve blocked the road with a truck. We can’t go back.’

Josh slammed the brakes, and in that instant, Alice knew
what she had to do. She grabbed her rifle and pushed the door open.

‘Get out! We fight on foot.’

Bunny Ears was looking at her, perhaps wondering what was
going on, and she certainly didn’t have time to explain it all, so she pushed
him out and jumped out of the Jeep. She had barely made it a few feet when
another rocket exploded on the road just in front of the Jeep, showering Alice
with shrapnel. Something sliced through her shoulder and she was thrown forward
by the impact of the blast.