Hunting The Snark: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 4) (6 page)

There was a loud boom and men began screaming. John exulted
over the radio.

‘Gotcha! Unfortunately that was the only Claymore I had.’

‘White Knight here. We can’t get pinned down, otherwise
they’ll have reinforcements all over us. Let’s move out. Make sure the White
Queen gets out first.’

There was no way she was going to be herded out to safety
while the rest of her companions were engaged in battle. So she shrugged off
Cynthia when she tried to pull Alice back and then crept towards their
attackers. It had been a while since Alice had been in such a pitched battle.
Her entire childhood had been spent preparing her for moments like this—when she
would be locked in a life-and-death struggle against attackers—human and
undead. That training had been tested time and again in the battles against
Zeus and the Red Guards in the Deadland, and ever since she was transformed
into her current form, her abilities had taken on a whole new dimension. She
retained all her old training and instincts, but now she felt no pain, felt no
fatigue and could be killed only by a direct head shot.

Alice moved from cover to cover and was more than halfway to
the Zeus troopers when as she crawled to cover behind a fallen tree trunk, a
bullet grazed her foot. One of the Zeus troopers screamed in triumph.

‘I think I got her!’

Alice lay behind the tree, her foot in the open, watching
the Zeus troopers through a gap below the trunk. Her companions were doing
their best to cover her and she could hear them shouting into her headset.

‘White Queen, are you okay?’

‘White Queen, we’ll provide cover fire, please retreat!’

Alice just lay still, ignoring the calls streaming into her
headset, while the Zeus troopers moved closer. By now her eyes were accustomed
enough to the dark to not need her scope and she watched as three troopers
moved towards her as their comrades pinned Vince and the others down with heavy
fire. The lead trooper was less than four feet away when Alice sprang into
action. She had put her rifle on the ground and leaped over the trunk, her
pistol in her left hand and the knife in her right. The Zeus trooper was too
surprised to react before she fired three shots into him at point-blank range,
and he went down. The second trooper was about to bring his rifle up when she
threw her knife, which buried itself to the handle in his chest. As he grabbed
at the knife, Alice shot him twice. The third trooper fired, missing her narrowly
with a burst as she rolled to the ground and came up in a crouch, shooting him
dead.

It had all taken less than ten seconds, and three Zeus
troopers were lying dead around Alice. As quickly as she had attacked, she
leaped back over the trunk and behind cover and picked up her rifle. She aimed
for the nearest muzzle flash and fired and was rewarded by a shout of pain as
she hit a trooper. Tom’s sniper rifle rang out once more and another trooper
fell. Through her scope, she could see the other Zeus troopers retreat. One of
them was pulled back into the darkness and began to scream uncontrollably as
Bunny Ears bit into his shoulder and then snapped his neck before emitting an
angry growl audible even over the gunfire.

A squad of twenty Zeus commandos had come in, guided by a
drone flying overhead that had picked up the trail of Alice and her companions.
With the advantage of numbers and surprise on their side, they had thought this
would be a one-sided battle. Now more than half of them were dead, and they now
seemed to be under attack by Biters. The Squad Leader took stock of the
situation and decided to retreat. He called for his men to back up as another
was snatched by Bunny Ears and began screaming as he was mauled to death.

When the Zeus troopers had retreated, Alice shouted out to
Bunny Ears to stop since he was setting off in pursuit. They ran through the
forest for the next twenty minutes, only pausing when they were sure that there
were no more troopers following them. As everyone stopped to catch their
breath, Larry doubled over, wheezing.

‘Jesus, girl, you are crazy!’

‘Running away from a fight never helps. The fight will catch
up with you sooner or later.’

Tom had come up behind her.

‘A fighter and a philosopher. What now, Flyboy?’

Vince was looking at the tablet computer he was carrying. It
had been captured from Zeus stocks and the resistance had set up a primitive
network of its own where coded messages could be exchanged. He took a minute to
decode the message that had been posted on a message board.

‘Guys, the General is back in business, and he says there’s
a mission for us if we want to get to this Snark.’

‘What mission is that?’

‘That part of the message wouldn’t be posted on a board
where Zeus could intercept it. Most of our secrets are traded the old-fashioned
way with runners carrying paper messages. The General says we’re to meet up
with a group that has more information on our mission.’

‘Who’re they?’

‘The Night Witches.’

When Alice looked at Vince, wondering what he was talking about,
Josh cut in.

‘They’re bad news, very bad news.’

***

FIVE

‘This place is what people call the Biters’ Backside. It’s
so infested with Biters and bandits that Zeus has pretty much written it off.
We captured a map from a Zeus officer once and it showed that the Executive
Committee doesn’t even consider this as part of the Homeland that it
administers.’

Alice took a look around her as Vince spoke and as far as
she could see, there was nothing but the broken husks of buildings. She had
seen more than her share of destruction and death, but there was something to
this place that was different. It was as if death hung over it. Skeletons lay
in the streets and every once in a while, she caught a glimpse of Biters in the
shadows between the buildings. They had resumed their journey in a Jeep waiting
for them in the resistance safehouse and had been driving for close to two
hours.

John spoke up, a bitter twinge to his voice.

‘My home was a few miles from here. When The Rising
happened, I was in New York meeting a client.’

‘What the hell happened here? I’ve seen the Ruins of Delhi,
but this place somehow looks much worse.’

Tom had been silent so far, and he sighed as he answered
Satish.

‘What you’re looking at used to be Lincoln, the capital of
Nebraska. Home to close to three hundred thousand souls. In the days before The
Rising, there was a meltdown at the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant just north of
Omaha to the North East. Omaha was devastated by the fallout and refugees
streamed towards Lincoln. Then The Rising happened, and you had close to a
million people caught in a death trap.’

Alice was sure that the accident at the nuclear plant had
been no accident at all.

‘John, your family…’

John averted his gaze. She knew what it was like to lose
loved ones, and anyone who was still alive so many years after The Rising had
likely lost someone, so she did not press her question.

They drove in silence, looking at the devastation and
desolation that stretched all around them. As they passed a tall, glass-covered
building, Bunny Ears growled and Alice spoke what was on his mind.

‘There are Biters in that building watching us.’

Cynthia had her rifle at her shoulder, scanning the
building.

‘This place will be crawling with Biters soon. We need to
get to the Night Witches before it gets dark.’

‘These Night Witches, are they also a part of your group?’

Vince laughed.

‘Not quite, Satish. These ladies are fiercely independent,
and they don’t want to take orders from anyone. The story is that they were in
a boarding school together when The Rising happened, and they’ve stuck together
ever since. They’ve carved out a territory for themselves where they’ve
declared independence from the Executive Committee. They’re a bit crazy if you
ask me, but they can fight, and they hate Zeus and its masters even more than
us. So, at times, we help each other out.’

‘How far is their base?’

‘They don’t really have a base, as far as I know. They live
pretty much in the wild, but we have an hour or so to go before we get into
their territory.’

As they drove, Alice clenched her rifle tight. Once again,
strung up on the roadside, were burnt bodies of Biters. Konrath and Vince had
told her about how some bandits tortured and burned Biters, out of blind hatred
and sometimes for sport. That further enraged the Biters. Alice had learned
that while they were very territorial and aggressive, they attacked humans when
they felt threatened, perhaps no different from any animal. Their rage could be
channeled, if they could be given a symbol and a leader to follow. That was
what Protima, the Queen of the Biters in the Deadland, had managed to do, and
that was what Alice had been doing since she herself was transformed. Since she
had come to see the Biters as more than monsters, the death she saw around her
seemed unnecessary and cruel. For all she had gone through and experienced,
Alice still could not understand man’s desire for violence.

But she knew well how to deal with it. She saw some movement
out of the corner of her eyes and asked Josh to stop the Jeep.

‘What’s up, Alice?’

Bunny Ears had also seen the group and was now growling.
Alice put a hand on his shoulder and asked him to be quiet. Josh looked through
his binoculars and brought them down, a look of disgust on his face.

‘Bastards are in the middle of stringing up Biters.’

Alice began to open the door when Cynthia stopped her.

‘This is not our fight. We never get involved, because if
the bandits don’t get us, the Biters will. There’s nothing to be gained by
getting involved.’

Alice looked at Cynthia, her usually lifeless eyes blazing
with anger.

‘Cynthia, the reason humans lost their freedom is because
everyone pretended it was someone else’s fight. If we are ever to reclaim this
world, then we need to join the fight, all of us, and we need to stop thinking
of Biters as the enemy. Join me if you want, otherwise I can do this myself.’

Alice got out of the Jeep and before anyone could stop her,
she pulled her hood around her face and slipped to the grassy knoll that led to
the spot where they had spotted the bandits. As she crept closer, she could
smell burning.

One Biter was already on fire and shrieking as he kicked out
in the air. Five bandits stood below him, and one of them took out a pistol
from his belt and shot the burning Biter in the head. There were three more
Biters on the ground, their hands and legs tied with rope. One of them was a
child who could not have been more than ten years old, and they were all
whimpering and keening as the bandits laughed, passing around a bottle between
them.

At that moment, Alice’s mind was a red mist of rage, and she
stepped out into the open.

‘Let them go and you may yet live.’

One of the bandits looked at her with disbelief and then
laughed as he took a swig from his bottle.

‘Guys, we have a little girl who needs us to take care of
her. If there’s anything more fun than a Biter barbeque it’s meeting up with
young ladies like this one. I’m first, you guys get leftovers today.’

As the man walked towards Alice, she caught the strong whiff
of liquor on his breath. He dwarfed her, and was no doubt much stronger than
her. But then, Alice was hardly the helpless little girl he thought she was.
And of course, she was not alone. She heard Tom over her earpiece.

‘Broker here, I’ve got the bastard to the right covered.
Baker and Butcher are coming in.’

The bandit was a foot away from Alice when she pulled her
hood back and glared at him. The man’s shock at seeing her face was equaled
only by the pain he felt as Alice’s hand struck out at lightning speed,
stabbing him in the gut with her knife. He staggered back, roaring to his
friends.

‘What are you looking at? Kill the bitch!’

That was when the man to Alice’s right fell back, his head
exploding from a direct hit from Tom’s sniper rifle. Cynthia ran onto to the
road, her rifle firing on full automatic, and another bandit fell. As another
bandit tried to aim his rifle at Alice, he was blown off his feet by a blast
from Larry’s shotgun. The man Alice had stabbed was now reaching for the gun at
his waist and shouting at Alice. Bunny Ears came up behind him and grabbed his
hand and twisted it till it snapped. The bandit screamed and fell to the ground.
Alice walked up to him calmly and pulled her knife out of his stomach and shot
him once in the head. The last bandit was now in a state of panic, and began
pleading for his life. Alice held up his head, and he began bawling at her to
not kill him.

‘Go and spread the word. Anyone who strings up a Biter will
get a visit from me and I may decide to feed him to my friend with the rabbit
ears.’

Alice approached the three Biters on the ground, who were
now hissing at her. She knelt beside them, speaking in a soothing voice.

‘Shh… I know you’ve been through a lot, but your pain is at
an end. Follow me and stop attacking the humans. They are not your enemy, they
are only scared of you, just as you’re scared of them. We can end this cycle of
fear and unite against our common enemies.’

One of the Biters, a large man with most of his face gouged
out and a bloodied torso, spat at her and tried to bite her. Alice could hear
her companions bring up their weapons behind her, and she raised an arm to stop
them. She took out the book from the pouch at her waist and looked at the
Biter.

‘This book is the symbol that unites us, the symbol that
tells us that we are all victims of a common enemy, and I hold the book. My
name is Alice Gladwell, and I am now your Queen.’

When the Biter tried to bite her again, she asked Bunny Ears
to untie them. As soon as the ropes binding him were loosened, the Biter
shrugged off Bunny Ears’ grip and came at Alice. She sidestepped him and sent
him crashing to the ground with a kick to the back of his knee.