Phantoms of the North: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 6) (11 page)

‘Where are you going?’

Alice had been trying to slip away
when Arjun stopped her.

‘You know I don’t like shows like
these.’

‘Hang around a bit. It’s just
harmless fun, and once the newcomers get to know you as a person, I’m sure they’ll
realize you’re not just a legend.’

‘Arjun, I don’t want to be a
legend. I just want to get on with my life and of those of everyone in
Wonderland.’

Arjun smiled.

‘Sometimes we don’t get to choose
what we become. Call it coincidence, dumb luck or destiny, who and what we
become is shaped by things beyond our control, and yes, by the choices we make.
You couldn’t control the circumstances you were placed in but the choices you
made make you more than just an ordinary person.’

‘So what am I?’

Arjun tapped the book at Alice’s
belt and walked away.

Alice watched on stage as three
make-believe Biters knelt before Teresa and she held up a book. Was that what
Alice had become—a symbol or a legend? What did a legend do when she tired of
it and just wanted a life as normal as possible? What did a warrior do when
there were no more battles to be fought? What did a liberator do when freedom
had been won?

Alice looked at the people around
her and wondered if they really needed her any more. She had helped win their
freedom and together they had created a new home. They would have their farms,
their factories, and would begin life anew, working their way back to what life
was like before The Rising—a life Alice had never known and had no particular
affinity for. On the other hand, her experience in the Homeland and with the
bandits had showed her that there were people still out there who did not enjoy
the same kind of freedom.

For the first time, Alice wondered
if she should move on from Wonderland. She wanted the rest of her life to mean
something more than to stay on as a symbol or legend for the people of
Wonderland. She wondered if there were people out there like Aalok and Sayoni,
still living in fear of bandits and tyrants, without the freedom that the
people of Wonderland had. Wouldn’t it be a better use of her life to help them?

That thought process was
interrupted when one of the barns on the farm erupted in a spectacular
fireball.

They had been storing some of
their reserves of fuel for the machines there and the resulting fireball sent
people scurrying for cover. A couple of bodies lay unmoving on the ground and
Alice wondered whether there had been an accident of some sort. People were now
running in a panic and Alice caught up with Arjun as he ran towards the fire.

‘Get the kids away and into the
main farm buildings. Get some water here and get someone to look at the
wounded!’

As Alice approached the burning
barn, her assumption was that it had been an accident and the imperative was to
tend to the wounded and to control the fire. She passed Patricia, who was
walking around dazed, bleeding from a cut to the forehead. Haroula poured water
on the blaze with a bucket and Teresa helped the younger kids get away to
safety. Arjun was there, pulling one of the wounded men away, and Sayoni was
screaming for Aalok and asking passersby whether they had seen him.

Alice picked up a bucket near the
water pump and went to the burning barn to help put out the fire. That was when
the unmistakable smoke trail of another RPG came snaking in towards the farm.

They were under attack.

***

SIX

‘Stop shooting! You’re wasting
your bullets. Get everyone to the far end of the farm while we get a plan.’

The crescendo of automatic weapon
fire that had erupted from the defenders at the farm died down as people
scrambled back on Alice’s orders. Alice had worked back the position of the
shooters from the smoke trail, and through her night vision scope, she had got
a glimpse of movement. The rangefinder on the scope told her that the shooters
were at least a kilometer out. That in itself told her three things. One, they
were using advanced RPG launchers, not dissimilar to the ones she had seen used
by the Red Guards; two, they had night vision optics since they were shooting
with reasonable accuracy at dusk; and finally, the rifles Alice and her people
had would not reach them at such a range. They needed sniper rifles, and they
didn’t have time to get back to the armory in the city, and Salil, who was
carrying one, was still out on patrol.

They had spotters out but they had
not counted on an enemy shooting rockets at them from more than a kilometer out
in the dark. Alice kicked herself for being lulled into a sense of complacency.
If these were the horsemen they had been waiting for, then they had better equipment
and tactics than any bandits out in the wasteland, and they were led by someone
who knew his stuff. Of course, admiration and appreciation of an adversary’s
capabilities is the first necessary step to figuring out how to kill him.

Another rocket came in, this time
with a parabolic trajectory, implying the shooter had angled the launcher up,
sacrificing accuracy for range. Alice watched as the rocket arced over her and
landed in the fields behind. Then another rocket came in, landing close by.
What were these guys thinking? They could lob rockets in all night, without
causing much damage or casualties, and sooner or later they would have to run
out of rockets and either close in to engage or retreat.

What kind of a strategy was that?

***

Shock and awe.

Those words had sounded great a
lifetime ago when The Khan had landed in Afghanistan to spearhead the War on
Terror as a rookie agent, with air strikes and cruise missiles battering the
enemy into submission. The end result of all that had been a quagmire, but the
strategy had been sound, it was the follow-through that had left much to be
desired.

The Khan did not have bombers or
cruise missiles, but he had his own version of shock and awe: a small number of
RPG-29 launchers, taken from Libyan Army stocks, passed through various Al
Qaeda subsidiaries and then into the tribal belts of Pakistan where he had been
holed up after The Rising. The region was miserable—little by way of
agriculture, grinding poverty, high crime, fundamentalist groups running rampant—but
the two things it was rich in were drugs and advanced weapons, coming in
through Afghanistan and various hellholes in the Middle East to arm the Taliban
affiliates there. The Khan had taken the RPGs from a group he had killed early
on, and he had insisted his men keep them in working order with constant
cleaning and maintenance. He knew he would need to use them one day, and that
day was now.

He had left three men and a
spotter outside the farm with eight rockets between them to attack the farm
from long range while he and the rest of his men went deeper inside the
so-called Wonderland. The bandits had served them well, and he and his men had
an intimate knowledge of the wastelands outside Wonderland and how to approach
it without being tracked. They had made full use of it, and the fact that so
many of the people of Wonderland were busy at the farm meant that they did not
have too many patrols out.

Disrupting command and control.
That had been another catchphrase of his earlier employers, and it had been put
to very good use in numerous conflicts. The Khan had every intention of doing
the same now. The intelligence from his scouts and from bandits had been clear
about where Alice and her people had their communications nerve center. The
brutes he employed certainly had not expressed it in so many words, but he had
told them what to look for, a building that had antennae on top or perhaps even
a satellite dish, and they had not disappointed him.

The Khan saw the glass-domed
building ahead in the fading light, and the three antennae and the mess of
cables outside. So, this was the Looking Glass, the nerve center through which
Alice and her people coordinated their activities across Wonderland and stayed
in touch with the outside world. The Khan had heard tales of how the country he
had once called home, a country he had shed his blood for, the United States of
America, was once more a free country. However, he felt nothing but hatred for
them. They had abandoned him, leaving him for dead. They had used him to carry
out their dirty work, and then when it was inconvenient to risk being exposed,
strung him out to dry. Their involvement only made his hatred for Wonderland
sharper.

‘Fall in and stay close. This is
not the time to go on a bloody solo charge for glory and Allah.’

The Khan imagined his words would
raise hackles, but he didn’t care. If any of his men still retained enough
allegiance to their gods of yore to challenge him, he welcomed the opportunity
to remind their beheaded corpses that in this new world they inhabited, he
stood above any tattered old holy books or imaginary gods.

As they rode closer to the
building, he spotted a group of a half dozen Biters. They shuffled into view
and one of them looked at him and bared his teeth.

The Khan rode towards the Biter in
silence and beheaded him with one sweep of the sword.

‘No shooting till we get closer.’

He struck out with his sword,
slicing another Biter’s face down the middle, and then kicked another Biter
down to have her head trampled under the horse’s hooves. Rashid was right
behind him and cut down another Biter with his machete.

‘My Khan, look ahead.’

The Khan’s teeth showed through
the slit in his mask. He had hoped to take out their communication center and
paralyze their reaction to their attack. Taking out a few of Alice’s friends
was an unexpected but welcome bonus. He increased speed and rode up to the
Looking Glass as two young men looked on in horror at the horsemen approaching
them.

Danish had stepped out for a walk
to stretch his legs before he fetched his bike. He had been called to the party
at the farm and was planning to ride his bicycle over, but first he had had a
request from two kids in Wonderland who had said they wanted to learn more
about how the Looking Glass worked. Danish had been happy to share his love of
computers with someone else, and honestly, he needed the help. He wasn’t
getting any younger and sitting there all day as the only person responsible
for communication with the outside world and also co-ordinating Wonderland’s
teams through their radios was increasingly leaving him fatigued. The kids had
been smart and curious, more than making up for the fact that they had been
born after The Rising and had never learned how to use computers, and Danish
had enjoyed himself so much that he had lost track of time.

He had been on his way back to the
Looking Glass when he saw the flash of light in the distance, from the
direction of the farm, followed by the boom of an explosion. He stood there,
wondering what it could have been—an accident perhaps? That was when he heard
the second explosion. He began to rush back to the Looking Glass to contact
Alice or the others there and to also call in reinforcements if needed from
Wonderland, where two recon teams were about to set out on their night patrols.
Then Danish saw the men on horseback and lay flat on the ground, hidden by some
bushes. He was unarmed, and could do nothing as he watched them slaughter the
Biters nearby and ride up to the Looking Glass.

That was when he spotted the two
kids coming out of the building. He was about to shout a warning but he was too
late. The two kids stayed rooted to the spot, paralyzed with fear and horror,
as the first horseman, a giant of a man, rode up to them and cut one of them
down with a sword.

The second tried to run, but was
cut down a second later. A few of the horsemen dismounted and entered the
Looking Glass and Danish heard the sounds of his equipment being trashed. When
they came out, the Looking Glass was on fire.

As the horsemen rode on towards
Wonderland, Danish lay there, tears in his eyes, angry at his own inability to
do anything, torn by the loss of the two kids, and despairing at the fact that
now there was no way he could warn Alice or the others in time about what was
coming their way.

***

Another rocket streaked in,
exploding near the main building. Nobody was hurt badly, but it shattered the
windows, sending shards flying. A couple of people stumbled towards cover,
bleeding from cuts to their arms and faces. That had been the sixth rocket.
Alice had no idea how many rockets their attackers had brought with them, but
after the surprise of the first barrage, their rockets were not really causing
much damage.

Someone slid onto the ground next
to her. It was Salil and he was bringing his sniper rifle up to his shoulder.

‘Where are they, Alice?’

‘Ten o’ clock. Just over a
kilometer out.’

Night vision or not, scoring a
kill at such range was going to be a touch-and-go affair, but at least being
shot at would make the enemy rethink their tactics.

‘Any news from Danish?’

‘I drove straight here when I saw
the explosions. I was hoping he’d be in touch on the radio.’

Alice shook her head. She had
tried to reach the Looking Glass several times on her radio but got nothing but
static. Without Danish co-ordinating the various teams and ensuring everyone
knew what was going on, they were essentially blind.