Hunting The Snark: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 4) (12 page)

As Jabber strode into the undergrowth, his men exchanged
glances. The grim expression on their leader’s face told them that he would not
rest till his blade had tasted blood.

***

‘I think I see one of the sons of bitches. There to the
East.’

Alice followed Josh’s cue and took a look through her scope.
She saw a solitary man with an RPG launcher slung across his back and a rifle
in his hands about five hundred meters away. As she thought of how Tom, John
and Satish had died, her finger unconsciously began to press down on the
trigger. With some effort, she forced herself to not open fire. Killing this
one man might help her avenge her fallen comrades to some extent, but it would
also mean exposing themselves to a frontal assault from an enemy that
outnumbered and outgunned them.

Vince crouched beside her. ‘Maybe they’ll think we got away
and move on. Don’t worry, we will have plenty of opportunities to take revenge.’

For all of Alice’s misgivings about their hiding place,
Cynthia had chosen well. There were five or six small hillocks in the area, and
the cave they were nestled in was hardly visible from the ground, a fact that
Josh had confirmed by going down after they had all climbed up. Vince had
established contact with a local resistance cell, only to be told that they
would send vehicles once the Zeus air patrols ceased. Zeus drones were
unusually active over the area. Alice did not think that a coincidence.

Cynthia pointed to another man who was walking into view,
and muttered under her breath.

‘Go on, go on…’

Alice did not think their attackers would give up so easily.
As she looked at the small cave where they were lodged, she also realized that
they could not afford to hide indefinitely. While they hid here, Zeus forces
were no doubt on their way to recover the Snarks based on Bellman’s map.

***

‘Sir, it looks like they may have moved on.’

Jabber raised a finger to his lips, motioning for the man to
shut up. He then sniffed the air.

‘Rasul, what we cannot see, we will smell.’

Rasul had no idea what his leader meant, and thought that
perhaps Jabber was losing his mind as he walked forward, sniffing as he went.
Jabber then turned towards him.

‘My friend, did you not see? They have a Biter among them,
and this witch herself is half Biter. Have you forgotten how Biters smell?
Follow the stench and we will find them soon enough.’

***

‘Go away, go away…’

Cynthia was muttering non-stop and finally Josh had to tell
her to shut up. Alice was lying near the mouth of the cave, her eyes glued to
the scope of her rifle. Their attackers had now all converged on the area, at
least ten of them, fanning out around the hills. Their leader was a giant of a
man, and as she saw his heavily bearded and scarred face through her scope, for
a moment she thought he was looking right back at her. But that moment passed,
and he continued rallying his men, searching through the bushes.

It was now almost eight at night, and the men below often
paused to look through the night vision scopes on their rifles, searching for
their quarry.

‘There goes my hope of having an advantage in the dark.’

Alice turned to Josh, who was lying next to her. A small
flag was attached to the cap he was wearing. It was the flag that the
resistance used as its calling card. Alice had seen it on some of her father’s
papers. It was the flag of the nation that had once been the United States of
America.

‘Beaver, these are not just bandits. They are working for
Zeus and they seem to have first-rate kit. You do realize that if they discover
us, we are sitting ducks up here? They can just shoot rocket after rocket and
fry us.’

Josh considered the situation as he watched the men below.

‘Our best bet is still concealment, either till they move on
or till our own reinforcements come and we can fight on more equal terms. But
you’re right, if they do discover us, we cannot just sit here and fight.’

‘So what do you think we should do?’

Josh looked through his scope again, seeing the men now
closing on towards their hill. Their leader was hollering some orders to them,
saying that they should take their RPG launchers out.

‘If they find us, then our only hope is to make the first
salvo count. There are four of us—even if we take out four or five of them in
our first attack, we even the odds a lot. Then we get down and mix it up.’

That suited Alice just fine. Being down there among the
enemy and fighting her way out was much more preferable than being cooped up
here in the darkness.

One of the men below the hill knelt and raised his RPG
launcher to his shoulder. Alice tensed as he fired and Josh whispered to
everyone.

‘He’s not aiming at us. They’re firing at the next hill,
trying to see if we’re hiding here and hoping to make us lose our nerve. Just
stay still.’

The rocket hit the next hill and exploded and Vince started
singing softly as another man fired a rocket at another hill some twenty meters
away.

‘And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.’

Josh and Cynthia took up the song.

‘Gave proof through the night that our flag was still
there.’

As they sang together and prepared for battle, Alice felt
that Biters were not the only ones who could be united by a symbol like the
book she carried. Humans could also be brought together by simple things like a
song and flag, and for all that might have been wrong with the Old World,
wasn’t it better to bring people together than to rule them with fear as the
Central Committee had tried? Perhaps that was where dictators like them failed—they
did not see that humans could be terrorized for a short period of time, but the
only way to really rule them was by finding something that they wanted to follow.
Perhaps humans and Biters were not so different at all.

A rocket impacted their hill just a few feet below them,
showering them with rocks. Bunny Ears roared in anger, and they knew that there
was no point in hiding any more. Alice aimed at a man who was raising his RPG
launcher and prepared to fire. Josh had picked his own target, as had Cynthia
and Vince. As she pulled the trigger, Josh sang one last line before he too
fired.

‘O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.’

***

TEN

Jabber dove for cover as one of his men just in front of him
fell, his head exploding from a direct hit.

‘Fire back! They’re in that cave!’

Jabber smiled as Malik began to take charge and rally the
troops. One of them fired an RPG that exploded just below the cave, but in the
illumination provided by the brief explosion, Jabber could see that their
quarry had flown the coop. He caught a glimpse of a man jumping off the side of
the hill from about ten feet up and fired, but could not be sure he hit anyone.

They had lost three men in the first salvo. That still left
eight of them, and all of these men were hardened veterans. Malik took three
men and circled around to the left, and he himself went around the right. If
their intelligence was to be believed, there were no more than four enemies,
and Jabber was confident that he and his men could take them on. The mistake
would be to stay bunched up and present an easy target. Two of his men followed
him as Jabber lobbed a grenade. He had no idea if anybody was there, but
stirring the pot would perhaps make the enemy reveal themselves.

The grenade exploded just meters away from Cynthia and she
flattened herself, burying her head in her hands as the shock wave passed
overhead. Josh came on the radio.

‘Beaver’s circling around. Don’t shoot me!’

Josh, his SEAL combat training and experience acting on overdrive,
had decided to go on the offensive. He had jumped off the side of the hill and
raced into the darkness. He was now behind the enemy, a group of four ahead of
him. He stayed low and moved slowly, wondering who these enemies were. When
they had got a closer look at them through their scopes, they had been
surprised to see that all their attackers seemed to be dressed in loose robes
and turbans, and all seemed to be heavily bearded. One of the men who had
fallen to their first salvo had shouted one phrase aloud before he fell.

Allah-u-Akbar.

Josh had served in Afghanistan and had battled Jihadists and
Taliban, but had never dreamed that one day he would be battling them again in
a desperate life-or-death struggle in the night, in the middle of the United
States.

He aimed at one of the men through his scope and fired,
seeing a burst of dark blood in the otherwise ghostly green picture of the
night vision optics as the man went down. His comrades turned to meet this
unexpected threat and Josh fired another burst before rolling away.

Alice was crouching in the undergrowth. At such close
quarters, she had long learnt that it was better to discard her rifle. With a
pistol in one hand and her knife in the other, she watched as a turbaned man
walked past her. Josh’s unexpected assault from the rear had thrown them into
some confusion, and now in the brutal battle unfolding in the darkness, it was
no longer clear who was the hunter and who was the hunted. Alice leaped out
towards the man, putting two bullets in him. As he staggered to the ground, she
stabbed him once in the neck for good measure. As she regained her footing, she
found herself facing another man. The fool had an RPG launcher in his hand and
fumbled for his rifle. Alice ran towards him, shooting him in the stomach. As
he doubled over, she fired once more as she ran past him. The man had been
clumsy, but the line that separated those who died in battle and those who
lived to tell the tale often was slender.

Vince had sprained his leg in a fall from the hill and was
crouched in a corner of the next hill, exchanging fire with an attacker. Vince
looked through his scope and saw a dark form materialize behind the man. A form
with rabbit-shaped ears. As the man rose again to fire, Bunny Ears hoisted him
off his feet and bit deeply into his neck. The man screamed, a loud, keening
noise that drowned out even the incessant gunfire that was being traded all
around them. Vince tried to get up, but sat down with a groan at the pain that
shot through his leg. He thought he saw Alice moving in the moonlight, but he
could not be sure. However, a second later he saw a large figure moving towards
her. He called out.

‘Alice, watch out!’

Alice turned on hearing Vince’s shout and saw a huge man just
behind her. She caught a glimpse of a large blade glinting in the moonlight and
rolled to her left as the man fired. She brought her gun up and fired twice,
but the man moved with surprising agility that belied his size and dove towards
the ground, coming up in a crouch. They were now barely a few feet away, and
the man growled, ‘Witch, your head is mine.’

Alice gritted her teeth. The man was making her angry, and
anger was good. Anger focused her, and made her take all the rage she felt at
this man and channel it into action.

The man also had a handgun out and fired, but with the dense
undergrowth and the darkness, his shots went wide. Alice rolled towards him and
brought her knife up, but the man moved back and her blow went wide. He kicked
at her and connected with a glancing blow that sent Alice rocking back, and
sent her handgun to the ground. He was very strong, but there were advantages
to not feeling any pain.

As the man brought his gun up to fire again, Alice threw her
knife, burying it to the hilt in the man’s thigh. He roared in pain and his
shot went wide, grazing Alice’s shoulder. She leaped up and caught the man’s
right hand in a lock and snapped it back, and his gun fell to the ground. She
pirouetted out of the way as Jabber’s left hand came around for a knife strike.
She would stand a much better chance if she used her speed to her advantage
instead of getting into a wrestling match with this monster. In the darkness,
there was no time for her to try and locate her gun, so now it was just the two
of them, fighting with knives and bare hands. Gunshots cracked nearby, and
while a part of her mind told her that the bigger battle was still raging, all
her attention was focused on the man in front of her.

Jabber lunged forward and Alice moved away, evading his blow
easily. As she moved out of the way of a second strike, she thought that her
opponent might well be strong and seemed to have a lot of experience at close
in fighting, but his arrogance or perhaps vanity would do him in. With his
rings and chains reflecting the moonlight, he was telegraphing his every move.

When Jabber closed in again, Alice let him come in, and his
eyes widened in surprise as she let him stab her. The large knife penetrated
the vest she was wearing under her clothes and cut deep into her stomach. As
Jabber tried to pry the knife loose, Alice reached down and pulled her own
knife free of his thigh.

Jabber looked into the eyes of the witch he had been
hunting, and for the first time in many, many years, he felt fear. He had
thought that killing a freak Biter would be easy, but had not bargained for
what Alice had turned out to be. As he pulled furiously on his knife and it
came loose, Alice brought her own knife up and across his throat.

Jabber grabbed at his throat and staggered back, falling
down to his knees. Alice kicked him to the ground and picked up his handgun
that was lying next to him. She fired a single shot.

‘Goodbye, Jabberwock.’

***

Sam King was sitting in the tent that had been set up as his
command post some five kilometers from the action. He would normally not have
come into an operational area, but the Baron had called him the day before,
reminding him that failure was not an option. If he had any doubts about what
he should do, the news that the Jabberwock had been killed in action dispelled
them. Intelligence had reported that Alice and some members of the resistance
were trying to get to the Snarks based on what they could decipher of radio
intercepts. But there was no way to tell how and when they would arrive. Sam
looked at the latest email from the Executive Committee on his tablet. Revolts
had broken out at two more FEMA camps, and the resistance had mounted a series
of co-ordinated attacks on Zeus forces. Sam had no doubt that these were meant
to tie up forces and distract them from hunting Alice.