Hunting The Snark: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 4) (16 page)

‘Men, as we talked about, go in two-man teams. The first man
aims for the legs and takes the bastards down. The second man finishes the job
with a headshot. Let’s show these freaks who owns this forest.’

With clinical precision, he and his men hunted down the
Biters all around them. There were no more than a hundred of the stormtroopers,
and well over a thousand Biters in the forest around them, but the Biters were
coming at them in small groups, and they were shredding them with their
shotguns one after the other. As a large group of ten or more Biters came
towards them, the commander took out a fragmentation grenade from his belt and
pulled the pin, throwing it at the Biters. The grenade exploded, scattering
limbs and body parts as half the Biters were torn apart.

He heard a loud roar behind him and saw a tall, thin Biter
wearing rabbit ears on his head trying to rally the Biters.

‘The last thing I need is a bloody Biter who thinks he’s
going to play commander.’

As he raised his shotgun to fire at Bunny Ears, a blow to
his midriff knocked the wind out of him and threw him to the ground. He felt at
his bulletproof vest and was relieved to see that the bullet had not penetrated
his body armor. He would probably sport an ugly bruise for days, but at least
he would live. As he knelt, he spotted movement in the trees ahead. Biters did
not shoot, so this would mean that Alice or one of her buddies in the
resistance had joined the fight. He grinned as he got up and grabbed his
shotgun. It would be fun to kill someone who could shoot back for a change.

***

The moment Alice saw the men she faced, she knew that these
were not ordinary Zeus troopers. The bulky body armor, the masks, and the way
they moved as a cohesive unit despite just having been dropped into the middle
of an unfamiliar and hostile combat zone told her that these men were far more
dangerous adversaries. To her dismay, without her there to direct them, the
Biters were lashing out at the nearest enemy without trying to take advantage
of their weight in numbers. As a result, they walked in ones and twos and got
slaughtered in ones and twos. Alice spoke into her headset.

‘Baker, hurry up. These guys know what they’re doing.’

Hoping that Cynthia would get to the bunker, Alice took aim
at the man who seemed to be leading the troopers and fired. He went down, but
then to Alice’s dismay, he got up and looked straight at her. The assault rifle
she carried would have penetrated the body armor normally worn by Zeus
troopers, but clearly these men were equipped with a very different kit. Alice
ducked behind a tree as shotgun pellets flew through the air where she had been
standing seconds before.

Think, Alice, think.

She needed to rally the Biters and make them attack with
some sort of co-ordination. In the chaos of battle, with gunshots echoing all
around her, she was not sure she would be able to get their attention, and
certainly not for long before someone else took a potshot at her. She screamed out,
hoping that she would be heard.

‘Bunny Ears! Go in together. Go in together.’

She dove for cover as someone fired at her, and then raised
her rifle to return fire. She wasn’t sure if she hit anyone, but at least the
troopers now knew that they faced someone who could shoot back. Some of the
troopers now started to take cover, and that gave the Biters some more space to
maneuver. Bunny Ears was growling and screaming, and as Alice watched with a
grim smile, he slapped two or three Biters who were not getting with the
program.

Alice moved behind cover. Two of the troopers were now just
feet away from her. As one of then paused to reload his shotgun, Alice made her
move. She fired her rifle on full automatic, hitting him in the legs below the
knees. As he went down screaming, Alice smiled, hoping that the troopers now
knew that two could play at that game. As the second man turned towards her,
she fired another burst at him. The rounds caught him squarely in the chest and
sent him doubling over in pain. Alice didn’t know if her rounds had penetrated
the body armor, but to make sure, she ran towards him and put two rounds in his
head from her handgun. Then she melted back behind the trees, waiting for
another opportunity to strike.

This was going to be that kind of battle—no quarter given,
no prisoners taken.

***

The Baron was listening to the reports from the choppers and
watching the feed from the drones with scarcely contained rage. His best men
had been caught up in a vicious battle in the forest, and had not yet been able
to fight their way through to the bunker. He had no idea of how many insurgents
were in there, mixed up with the Biters, and the longer they took, the more
were the chances that Alice could get to the bunker before his men.

‘Can the gunships help out?’

Brian looked at the Baron and shook his head. ‘The foliage
is too thick for them to identify targets. Also, your men are mixed up in close
combat with the Biters. Maybe we should send in more reinforcements?’

The Baron stared straight ahead, weighing the decision
before him. Finally, he asked the radio operator to relay an order back to
Canaveral.

‘They have a jet there armed with napalm. Ask them to launch
it as soon as they can.’

Brian had planned on using the napalm strike
after
they
had recovered the missiles and secured the area.

‘Sir, your men are there, and there are still at least two
hundred Zeus troopers around nearby. A napalm strike would…’

The Baron didn’t give him a chance to finish.

‘Just do it. Getting the Snarks is critical to the war
effort, and if that means casualties, well, there are always casualties in any
war.’

***

Alice saw a trooper go down, screaming and flailing, as
three Biters dragged him down and bit into him. The troopers were still
exacting a terrible toll, but now that the Biters had begun to attack in a more
co-ordinated manner, and Alice was inflicting her own damage, they had become
more cautious and were now effectively retreating, trading space for kills.
Alice knew that if she tried to wipe them all out, the Biters would suffer
horrendously, and she hoped that once their losses mounted, the troopers would
give up and retreat to be extracted by air. But for now, she was happy that at
least they were giving Cynthia enough time to get to the bunker.

Several shotgun pellets hit the tree next to her, showering
her with splinters, many of which cut her face. As the blood dripped down her
face, Alice fired back, hitting a trooper in the legs. She did not have to
finish him, as two Biters dragged him into the trees. The man she had thought
was their officer was still trying to rally his men, shouting instructions to
them, and frantically speaking into his headset. Perhaps he was asking for an
extraction, or perhaps reinforcements. Either way, the best bet Alice had of
ending this was to kill him first.

She went straight for him, emptying her clip into a trooper
who approached her from the right and then slamming the butt of her rifle into
another trooper’s face. Both men were then snatched away by Biters. The commander
had just shot the legs out from under a Biter and was turning to face her when
she launched herself at him, firing from her handgun, sending three shots into
his armor. As he staggered back from the impact, she landed near his feet,
cutting at his hamstring with her knife.

The man stepped back and brought the shotgun around like a
bat, hitting Alice in the shoulder. Being half-Biter meant that Alice did not
feel the pain, but the impact unbalanced her and sent her to the ground. The
commander discarded his shotgun and took out a handgun from his holster, but
before he could fire, Alice plunged the knife deep into his foot, through the
thick boot he was wearing. The commander fired, but in his pain, his shot went
wide, hitting Alice in the shoulder and exiting out the back.

‘You Biter freak…’

Before he completed his sentence, Alice raised her left hand
and shot him once in the head.

Many of the troopers were now hesitating, and one or two of
them had begun to turn away from the battle. She shouted at the top of her
voice.

‘Run and you may live. Fight and you will die.’

Many of the troopers turned and ran, but a handful of them
stayed to finish what they had begun. It didn’t take too long to mop them up.
After the last of them fell, Alice stood in the middle of the carnage, her face
covered in blood. She had the commander’s tablet in her hands and was seeing
maps of where the command center for the attack was. It was located just a few
kilometers away, and if they moved fast, they could still maintain the advantage
of surprise.

A dull boom came from her right. A thin pillar of smoke rose
in the distance, from the direction of where the bunker was.

Baker had succeeded in her mission. Now Alice would finish
this.

***

‘Sir, the jet is loaded now and ready for takeoff.’

The Baron had been infuriated at how long it had all taken,
and Brian’s protestations that they had not really planned on a napalm strike
while their men were engaged in close combat had fallen on deaf ears. Then had
come the news from the ground that the stormtrooper commander had been killed,
reportedly by Alice herself. Many of their men had retreated, and others had
been massacred. Still chafing at the delay, the Baron glared at Brian.

‘At least your precious conscience will be satisfied now
that there are none of our men alive down there.’

‘Sir, the drone reports smoke coming from the bunker
location.’

The Baron looked at the footage being streamed in from the
drone and ground his teeth in rage. The bastards had managed to beat him to the
bunker, after all. Well, they would all now burn in hell. He hoped that the
engineers would still be able to salvage something from the rockets, but that
was a problem he would worry about later. For now, he would enjoy watching the
Biters and Alice burn.

‘I want both drones to focus on the impact zone. I want to
watch this.’

‘Sir, there doesn’t seem to be anyone moving down there.’

The Baron leant over to take a closer look at the monitor.

‘Where the hell are they? Get the choppers…’

He hadn’t finished his sentence when gunfire and shouting
broke out outside. Their command center was lightly guarded, with only about
ten troopers on guard duty. After all, nobody had expected to fight a battle
here. As the Baron asked what was going on, Brian looked at him, ashen-faced.

‘She’s here.’

The Baron heard more shooting outside, and then the
distinctive growls and howls of what sounded like hundreds of Biters.

Then he heard the sound of men screaming.

The Baron looked at Brian, hoping the General could do
something, but Brian just shrugged and handed the Baron a handgun.

Then Brian lifted the tent flap and shouted for his men to
follow him.

‘Let’s try and make a run for it. We can catch a chopper
later. No point in standing and dying.’

The Baron looked at the gun in his hand and realized that in
an instant, Brian had condemned him to death. The Baron had overseen businesses
worth tens of billions and manipulated markets and governments around the
world. He had sat at the table of the world’s most powerful men and women,
toppled regimes, started wars and created whole new nations. Through it all, he
and his friends had profited and prospered. Then had come their boldest plan
ever, one in the making for years, to truly reshape the world, to remove the
perils of overpopulation, scarcity and disease once and for all. To create a
new world order where those most deserving, those most equipped to lead, would
inherit the earth. Things had gone horribly wrong with the virus mutating and
the Biters emerging, yet the Baron had kept his hopes alive that his dream
would come true one day.

For a man like him to die in a hellhole like this seemed so
unfair, such a waste. He was alone in the tent now and he began to raise the
gun as the flap opened and a hooded figure swept in, carrying an assault rifle.
The Baron tried to fire, but in his panic, had not switched the safety off. The
figure turned towards him, the hood flying back, and the last thing the Baron
saw was something out of his worst nightmares—a young girl with blonde hair, but
a Biter’s decayed and yellowed face with blood running all over it.

***

EPILOGUE

‘Alice, I know words are not enough to do justice to what
you have done for all of us, but do accept my gratitude on behalf of all the
people of the United States.’

Alice felt awkward standing on a stage in front of a large
crowd, accepting flowers from General Konrath. Her journey had begun as one of
personal vendetta, and had morphed along the way into a struggle being waged on
behalf of the people of Wonderland. Reward was not something that had ever
crossed her mind. As she looked at General Konrath closely, she realized that
he had more in common with the men who had brought about The Rising than he
would ever admit. They all believed that people had a price, and power was a
commodity to be traded.

As she walked off the stage and began to prepare for her
journey home, she saw Cynthia in the corner of the room. The fighter known as
Baker smiled at her, but she was not really looking her in the eye. After what
had happened in the forest, Alice could not blame her.

While Alice and the Biters had been fighting and bleeding in
the forest, and then launched their raid into the heart of the enemy’s command
center, Cynthia had made it to the bunker and blown her way in with explosives.
She had also sabotaged some of the missiles, but on General Konrath’s orders,
she had left two missiles intact. Alice had never known that was to be part of
the plan.