Phantoms of the North: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 6) (16 page)

Four men were less than ten meters
away from them, firing away at Alice, and Bunny Ears had spotted them as well.
Bunny Ears looked at Aalok and nodded. No words were needed. It was clear what
they had to do.

‘Come on, Bunny Ears. Time for the
geek and the Biter to play hero.’

Bunny Ears needed no
encouragement. He rushed towards the four men, who were preoccupied in tracking
Alice and had no idea of what was coming behind them. Another man fired at
Bunny Ears and Aalok saw him stagger as a bullet grazed his leg, but he roared
and bore down on the four men. Aalok ran after him, armed with the knife he had
taken from one of the men in the cage. As he came closer Bunny Ears sank his
teeth into one of the men, who screamed and went down. The other three men
whirled to face this new threat and one of them raised his rifle at Bunny Ears.
Aalok dove at him, plunging his knife into the man’s stomach. Both of them went
down in a clumsy heap, grappling with each other.

***

‘Smart move, Bunny Ears.’

Alice had seen him bite into one
of the Phantoms, who would in a few minutes rise as a Biter and turn on his
comrades. Aalok was grappling with one of them on the ground and Bunny Ears had
taken down another man. The fourth man behind the rock was about to fire at
Bunny Ears when Alice sent a bullet into his head.

She looked to her right and saw
the big man, whom she had assumed by now to be their leader, bark orders to his
men. Three of them moved from cover to cover, trying to flank her. Alice picked
a flashbang grenade from her belt and flung it, followed a split second later
by a fragmentation grenade aimed a few feet to the left.

The Khan thought he had a clear
shot at Alice and was about to fire when he was blinded by a flash of light. He
looked away, trying to clear his vision. A part of his mind knew what had
happened, and training from years ago kicked in. He kept blinking his eyes in
quick succession, but his men had received no such training and had never
fought an adversary like Alice. Three of them stumbled into the path of the
blast zone of the second grenade and were shredded by its explosion. The Khan
screamed in frustration and rage and got up. Alice had taken cover but her
beloved Biter was there, just a few feet away from him, biting deep into the
arm of one of his men. Another of his men had already turned into a mindless Biter
and was shuffling towards him. The Khan took aim and sent a bullet into his
head and then shot the man who was being bitten.

Bunny Ears looked at the giant of
a man who had shot his prey and bared his teeth, but Aalok pushed him aside and
behind the cover of some rocks.

‘Bunny Ears, we need to take
cover!’

As The Khan advanced on them,
Aalok picked up the handgun lying on the ground where it had been dropped by a
Phantom before Bunny Ears had grabbed him. He pointed it over the rock and
fired, squeezing the trigger again and again.

The Khan, taken by surprise, dove
behind a rock as bullets whizzed past him and got ready to advance again when
Alice jumped down into the camp. She had discarded her rifle and was now
running straight in, handgun in one hand, knife in the other. Two Phantoms were
in her path, and without breaking stride, she shot one of them. As he fell, she
slid along the ground, sweeping the other man off his feet, plunging her knife
into his neck as she got up and took cover. Another man got a shot off at her
and she ducked and shot at him, seeing him go down. By now, she had lost count
of how many Phantoms were there, or indeed if there were other reinforcements
on the way. Her mission had not been to wipe them out, and indeed she harbored
no hopes that she would be able to do so alone. Her goal, and her best bet, was
to get Aalok and Bunny Ears out of harm’s way and ideally kill the leader of
the Phantoms before she too escaped.

The Khan had seen Alice and he
smiled. Now she was in his lair and it was clear that she was all alone. She
had been brave to come alone to rescue her friends, but that same bravery would
be the cause of her death.

‘Aalok, get over here!’

Aalok pulled Bunny Ears along as
he got to the rock behind which Alice had taken cover.

‘I’ll cover you. Make a break for
that gap you see there. The sentries are down and once we’re out there in the
open we have a chance.’

‘But…’

Alice shook her head. ‘Aalok,
listen to me. Get out now. There are still too many of them, and we can’t hold
out forever in here. We’re trapped in by the hills on three sides.’

Aalok began to run and Alice
rolled her remaining flashbang grenade along the ground. Several Phantoms got
up from behind cover to fire at Aalok but then the grenade exploded, blinding
them as Aalok continued to sprint. Alice watched him go, willing him on, hoping
he made it beyond the gap.

Then she saw him fall from a
direct hit.

***

The Khan had aimed low, firing two
bursts at the running man. His shots had kicked up the dust around Aalok’s feet
and one or two had finally struck home. The Khan didn’t wait to see how badly
the man was wounded, though he was clearly alive and moaning in agony. He was
hardly of much consequence in the larger scheme of things.

The Khan had shot the man to buy
himself some time, counting on the one weakness Alice exhibited—compassion. She
might be a skilled warrior, but she seemed to care about her comrades, and he
was proven right when she sprinted to the fallen man, pulling him back behind
cover with one arm while firing at The Khan’s men with the handgun she held in
her other hand. By then the Khan was already inside the tunnel that led to his
armory. His men would hold Alice, and perhaps a lucky shot would kill her, but
there was little chance of her escaping now. She did not have the numbers or
the firepower to fight her way through, and certainly not with a wounded
comrade she had come all this way to rescue and would not likely abandon.

The Khan went deeper into the
cave, looking for the box he knew he wanted. A long green box with stenciled
initials on the side proclaiming it to be the property of the US Army. He and
his men had picked up several such weapons abandoned by US forces in their
hasty withdrawal from their bases. He opened the box and took out the M249
machine gun with a grenade launcher mounted underneath. In the initial
skirmishes in the valley against rival groups, this had been his favored
weapon, providing firepower that was unmatched by the assault rifles the tribes
used. The ace in the pack was of course the attached grenade launcher. He still
had four grenades left, and he picked up the gun and began to walk back to the
mouth of the cave. There was still shooting going on, the longer, more intense
bursts of the rifles of his men, punctuated by the single shots from Alice’s
handgun. It was now just a matter of time before he blew her and her friends to
pieces and ended this. He aimed just behind the rock where Alice and her
friends were sheltered and fired the first grenade.

***

NINE

Alice saw the black object arcing
over her and all the years of training and near-constant combat meant that her
eyes relayed the message to her brain almost instantaneously.

A grenade.

‘Get down!’

Aalok was mumbling something
incoherent, still in shock and pain from the gunshot wounds to his leg, and
Alice threw herself on top of him seconds before the grenade landed ten meters
behind them and exploded. Fragments of the grenade sliced through her back and
arms. She felt no pain, but she was going to be a bloody mess. She looked up to
see that Bunny Ears had fared a bit better, partially shielded by the curvature
of the large rock they were behind, and was bleeding from only a couple of
wounds to the legs. She turned Aalok over and saw that he had not suffered any
new wounds.

‘Aalok, I need you to do
something. Listen to me, if we are to get out alive, I need you to do
something.’

He looked at her, his face
contorted in pain, but he nodded. She handed him her last fragmentation
grenade.

‘When I call out, pull this pin
and throw it to the left, where the firing is coming from.’

He nodded, and she was gone,
running at full tilt to the next rock, diving behind it as bullets slammed into
its face from the Phantoms who had been tracking her. A bullet hit her shoulder
and passed clean through, but that would not stop her.

The Khan watched Alice seek out a
new cover with interest. Her back was covered with blood and he could have
sworn he saw a puff of blood where a bullet hit her. Still, she kept going. A
few of the bandits had said she could not be killed, others claimed she was
like a Biter, in that only a direct shot to the head could put her down. At the
time, The Khan had not known whether to believe them. Now he knew they had been
right. Still, it was now just a matter of time before he finished her. He
screamed to his men to flank her, and noticed with some disgust that there were
only a dozen or so left. Some had fallen in the battle, but he suspected
several more had abandoned the camp. He would deal with those cowards later.

Alice saw four Phantoms moving out
from behind cover and run to their right, trying to get behind her.

‘Aalok. Now!’

Aalok’s hand was shaking and his
right leg felt like it was on fire and it took all his strength to pull the pin
and then throw the grenade. It was a weak throw, but it did enough. The grenade
bounced off a rock and landed a few feet in front of the four Phantoms. They
stopped as they realized what lay ahead of them. The lead man looked back,
wondering if he could jump to safety behind his comrades. He began to move, and
then the grenade exploded.

The Khan saw his men go down and
smiled. Alice still had some tricks up her sleeve, but time was on his side. He
fired another grenade, this time aiming between the two rocks where she and her
friends were sheltered. Even before the grenade landed, he was running, firing
on full auto from the gun.

Alice heard the thump of the
grenade being fired and leaned out to take a shot at The Khan but jerked her
head back as dozens of bullets raked the rock, sending several shards slicing
through her face. The Khan was now just a few meters away, smiling at the
prospect of the imminent kill. His men to his left were in position and were
pouring fire in from Alice’s flank. She was trapped, and now he would finish
her.

***

Arjun climbed onto the hill,
moving as fast as he could. Ever since they had entered the pass the bandit had
indicated, he had been hearing the sounds of a pitched battle. Alice was there,
and she was in trouble. He had come with twenty fighters, but he didn’t wait
for the others—he ran on, closely followed by three men who had been in the
lead Jeep with him. The others were following a few minutes behind.

A part of him had held on to the
hope that Alice would have been scouting the enemy camp and that they would
have the opportunity to attack in force, with the rocket launchers and heavy
machine guns that the men following behind him were carrying. As he got his
first glimpse of the camp from the hill he was perched on, he saw a nightmare
scenario. Bunny Ears and Aalok sheltered behind a rock, pinned down by heavy
fire from at least two positions, and Alice herself lay with her back to him,
covered in blood. He sensed movement to his right and looked down to see three
cloaked men climbing up. They were running away from the fight instead of
joining it. Arjun shot the first man dead from less than ten feet away. The two
others turned to see this unexpected threat and were shot down by the men with
Arjun.

‘Come on! Let’s get down and help
out. You two cover Alice and the others come with me.’

As they scrambled down the rock
face, Arjun was blown off his feet by a sudden explosion. He hit his head on a
rock and came up, dazed, to see two of his men lying dead a few feet behind
him. He was himself bleeding from shrapnel wounds to his left arm.

The Khan had spotted some movement
to his left and had looked up to see three deserters. He had had half a mind of
shooting them when he saw them gunned down by men who had just arrived on the
scene. So, Alice had brought some reinforcements along, after all. He fired a
grenade and smiled as he saw the men scatter, before turning his attention back
to Alice.

Alice looked to her left and saw
Aalok lying there, looking at her, his eyes glazing over. She motioned for him
to stay where he was and ran to her left as bullets from the Phantoms’ guns
kicked up dust all around her feet. She dove behind another rock, coming up in
a crouch. There was a Phantom hiding there, and he stumbled back, almost as
surprised to see Alice as she was to find him there. She shot him once in the
head and picked up his assault rifle, whirling to face The Khan.

She had seen him fire into the
hills and caught the movement of men either falling from the impact or diving
for cover. None of those men had been wearing a cloak like the Phantoms. Arjun
and his men were probably here, and Alice wanted to make the most of the
temporary element of surprise they provided.