Phantoms of the North: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 6) (5 page)

‘Bilal, do you come here to seek
my sympathy or condolences?’

Bilal felt a stab of fear and he
mumbled out his reply.

‘They have automatic weapons, and
this witch commands an army of Biters. No slaver can stand before her.’

The Khan stood up and jumped down
the ground, showing an agility that belied his size. He walked up to Bilal, who
involuntarily took a step back. He felt an iron grip on his arm as Rashid
stopped him. The Khan stopped when he was just a foot away, and Bilal looked up
at the monster before him. Bilal was himself hardly a small man, built like an
ox and standing just a couple inches short of six feet tall, but the Khan
dwarfed him.

‘Do you know why we ask men like
you to send people to us?’

Bilal stayed silent, and as he
tried to look away, the Khan pulled his chin up with a massive, callused hand.

‘Look at me, Bilal. It’s not polite
to look away when all we’re doing is having a chat, is it?’

Bilal just nodded, his body now
shaking in fear.

‘You see, we do need people to
help cultivate the Dreamweed. In that sense, God was indeed kind to us. When
all else around us went up in flames, we found refuge in this valley, and there
were poppy fields there. I was also lucky to have a couple of men with me who
were masters of this trade and helped grow it, which we then traded with men
like you. So we do need a handful of people to work those fields, but that’s a
relatively minor matter. Our biggest problem when we started was food. All the
cities of Pakistan and Indian Kashmir were obliterated by nuclear strikes and
so there was nothing to scavenge there. Out here in this valley, there were some
other survivors, but not plants, or food to be grown, and only a few animals
that we hunted soon, other than the horses you see around you. Those were
desperate days, and called for desperate measures.’

Bilal had no idea where the Khan
was headed with his, and he shifted his legs to relieve some of the pain where
Alice had shot him. The Khan looked at his wound and then continued.

‘We need healthy people, and those
are to be found only in the plains you call the Deadland. We don’t turn on our
own or our horses, that is punishable by death, and well, the other tribes and
villagers in the area didn’t last long once we set our minds to it. I chose the
strongest and the ones most willing to embrace my leadership to join me. And so
my humble empire was created. There are just a few dozen of us, but so many
strong men need food, and I cannot have my people go hungry, can I? I was
willing to settle for Biters, as distasteful as that is, because we have eaten
them before, and once you cook it well, a Biter isn’t that much different from
a healthy human.’

The words had been said so
casually that it took a second for them to sink in, and then Bilal began
sobbing and muttering prayers.

‘My men cannot go hungry. They
will have their meal and then we will seek out someone else who can supply our
needs. But you should have a look at me before we are to cook you. I think you
have earned at least that much.’

With those words, the Khan removed
the mask from his face, and Bilal began screaming.

***

THREE

‘Patricia, get those boys to work
again. If I see them goofing off once more, there’ll be hell to pay!’

Patricia Sanchez smiled as Haroula
passed her, up and about earlier than all the others as always. They had been
in the farmlands for less than two weeks, but Patricia was already in love with
the place.

Her life back in the Homeland had
been one of constant struggle and loss. She had lost her husband in The Rising
less than a year after they had been married, and it was the amazing strength
and resilience of Haroula that had kept them alive, including surviving two
years at a Zeus camp, till they were picked up by some of Konrath’s men after
an attack on the camp. By then, there was more or less open warfare between
Zeus and pockets of the resistance, and Patricia had enlisted with Konrath’s
forces, helping with intelligence or information where she could. In the
Homeland, the shadow of death constantly hung over you, from the threat of
bandits and Biters to Zeus mercenaries. Here, as she looked at the vast fields
in front of them, tractors working them, people from the Homeland and
Wonderland working side by side to grow food for their people, and yes, Biters
peacefully mingling with humans, it felt like she was in paradise.

‘Ma, I like this place. How ‘bout
you?’

Haroula turned to Patricia, and a
smile creased the old woman’s face. ‘You know what I like, kiddo? I like seeing
that smile back on your face.’

With that, Haroula got back to
telling off two kids whom she thought were not working hard enough.

A few hundred meters away, Alice
was standing with Brittany. ‘How are people settling in?’

‘Great! I think everyone’s in love
with this place and don’t be surprised if you get requests for more settlers to
come by.’

Alice had in fact already got that
request from Konrath. As more and more people from the Homeland had seen
firsthand the world Alice and her friends had created at Wonderland, word had
spread. Konrath had talked about sending engineers who would set up a factory
to make tinned and preserved food from what they grew, so that they could stock
it and feed their people for years. Aalok had been enthusiastic about the
project and had already identified an old factory in the city ruins which he
thought he could get back to working order if he had the right heavy machinery
and people to run it. There was a wave of optimism sweeping through Wonderland
and it was hard not to get caught up in it.

‘How are you guys doing for
security?’

‘Not a problem. We haven’t come
across a bandit even once.’

‘Just be careful, will you?’

‘Is there something you’re worried
about?’

Alice shook her head, but in her
short life, she had come to realize that moments of happiness were only too
brief and all too often ended suddenly by the brutal realities of the world
they lived in.

That afternoon, Alice sought out
Arjun.

‘Things are going perfectly. Looks
like we’ll have more than enough food for all of us, with a lot left over to
send over to the Homeland, and if this idea of a factory works out then things
will be better than any of us have seen since The Rising.’

‘Then why do I still feel so
anxious, Arjun? Why am I always worrying that something will go wrong? Why do I
always find myself reaching for the gun at my waist whenever I hear a sudden
sound?’

Arjun motioned for her to sit
down. ‘We are all pretending that we will recreate human civilization the way
it once was. But I suspect that running water, electricity and canned food will
not bring back what we once were. What we lost in the Rising and the years that
have followed is more than just these conveniences. We’ve lost something that
we humans had gained over thousands of years of evolution—the ability to take
our day-to-day survival for granted. You were born into that world, and after
what you’ve been through, it’s no wonder you don’t take security for granted.
Perhaps that’s a good thing, Alice. After all, we’ve learned the hard way that
whenever we get complacent, we find that there is a new danger out there.’

Alice nodded, but kept thinking.
What Arjun said made a lot of sense, but it did not explain one thing. It wasn’t
just that she worried about dangers, but that some part of her, a part that she
would never openly acknowledge, looked forward to them. She felt most alive
when she was in the heat of battle. She felt like her life meant something when
she was defeating an enemy that threatened her or her loved ones. Other than
that, what else did she have to look forward to?

A fifteen-year-old girl called
Alice Gladwell had become the Queen of the Biters, the leader of Wonderland, the
beacon of hope for oppressed people from the Mainland in China to the Homeland
in the erstwhile United States. But through all of that, the little girl who
had begun that journey had been subsumed in this new identity. The Alice of old
would have marveled at running water, would have fought to be first in line for
a running shower, but the new Alice would spend her evenings cleaning her
weapons, would find herself totally out of place when people talked of
agricultural yields and while she could no longer sleep or dream, would spend
hours just sitting, wondering how different things would have been if she had
not followed Bunny Ears down a hole in the ground.

When every day had been a battle
for survival, when every idle moment brought with it the impending danger of a
Zeus air strike, there had been no time to ponder such things. However, now
Alice found herself thinking about how her actions had triggered events that
she had never ever anticipated. Yes, thousands of people across the Deadland,
Homeland and Mainland knew freedom, yes, the tyranny of the Executive Committee
and its minions had suffered a deathblow, but her whole family had perished.
Her father killed in a Zeus attack, her mother and sister killed in an air
strike. Countless others whom she had relied upon and who had looked onto her
as a beacon of hope, killed.

Had it all been worth it?

It was all too easy to talk of
sacrificing to fight tyranny till you were the one who was called upon to make
those sacrifices.

***

‘Come on, everyone’s going to
dance!’

It was hard not to get caught up
in Sayoni’s infectious energy. The center of Wonderland had been rigged up with
lights and Aalok had managed to get an old CD player he had found up and
running, and people had scavenged the ruins over the last two days, finding one
CD that still worked. It was an album of collected songs that someone had
compiled before The Rising, and a lot of the people who had seen life before
The Rising whooped in excitement as the song began playing.

You say it best when you say
nothing at all.

Couples got on to the dance floor
and held each other and began dancing. Alice pretended to have some work and
stayed on the sidelines. The party had been themed after Valentine’s Day; a day
when Sayoni had declared that everyone would take a break from their chores,
and it looked like the whole of Wonderland had taken her up on it. Haroula and
her team were also there and Alice smiled as she saw Patricia, Brittany and the
others laugh and dance together. Even old Doctor Edwards was there, dancing
with a glass in his hand. Norbert was sitting by the site, chatting with a
girl. Alice sat down in a corner, watching it all, thinking back to the first
Valentine’s Day she had been ready to celebrate, many years ago back in her
settlement in the Deadland. A day when a boy called Junior had promised to get
her flowers and kiss her. And he had kept his promise. He had indeed got the
flowers, which Alice had found under his body when he had shot himself in the
head after Biters had bitten him.

Why did every memory of hers
involve sorrow and bloodshed?

Arjun came down and sat beside
her. ‘Not joining the party?’

Alice shook her head and got up,
pretending to have some chore to attend to. As she passed a building, she
caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. She turned to look at the
freshly showered, clean, young people dancing together and then again at
herself. Her flowing, blonde hair was the only real remnant of the girl she had
once been. Her skin was stretched and dried, her eyes yellowed and lifeless,
her body crisscrossed with scars from battles. Who would dance with her? There
was fresh, steaming food arrayed on tables near the dance floor, but Alice
could not savor their taste. Alice watched a young couple kiss and turned away,
conscious that love was not something she would ever experience. Perhaps in a
way it was better to be at war—then she was sure what her purpose was, what she
was meant to do. Among humans enjoying peace, laughter and love, Alice knew she
would always be an outsider.

Alice began to walk away when she
saw Bunny Ears standing on the periphery of the crowd. He was nodding his head
in rough tune to the music. Alice smiled. She had seen Bunny Ears as many
things—a friend, a protector, a companion, but now for the first time, she
realized how she had more in common with him than the other humans in
Wonderland. He was also the outsider, standing far from the crowd, seemingly
understanding and perhaps even enjoying the music, yet not able to be an active
participant.

Alice walked up to him. The bunny
ears on top of his head moved as he nodded his head. One of his arms was
missing below the elbow, taken by a Zeus grenade, and the front of his clothes
was covered in dried blood from wounds suffered in countless battles, most
fought at Alice’s side.

‘Care for a dance, Bunny Ears?’

He looked at Alice, and while
there was no expression on his face, Alice wondered if he too was thinking how
out of place he would be among all the humans.

‘Come on, just the two of us freaks.’

She led him by his hand into the
middle of the group and a lot of people began to shout and clap. Arjun was
there, grinning from ear to ear. Sayoni patted Alice on the back and shouted at
Aalok to join her. Even Danish was there, despite his age and bad leg, moving
to the music. Aalok turned the music down and a groan went up, but then he
shouted to make himself heard.