by Dhar, Mainak
***
Alice stepped back, easily evading the bloodied nails that swept through the air in front of her. The Biter in front of her had been a young man, and still wore the torn remains of a leather jacket and jeans he had been wearing when he had been transformed. One of his eyes was missing, with a bloody gaping hole where it had once been. One side of his head seemed to have been burnt, and his hair was singed and now was little more than stubble on his head. His left hand hung uselessly by his side, yet he came at Alice with a ferocity that surprised her. Normally Biters at least paused, perhaps curious to see someone who was so like them, yet not fully one of them. This one, maddened by the air strikes and wanting to strike out at his tormentors, lunged at Alice again. She side-stepped him and swept his legs from under him, sending him sprawling to the ground.
Alice turned to see four more bloodied and battered Biters emerge from behind the trees. She gripped her handgun tightly, but then put it back in its holster on her belt. Instead, she reached for the old book that hung in a pouch at her side and she strode forward, hissing like a Biter.
The Biters stopped, unsure now of who or what they were dealing with. One of them advanced towards her, and Alice pushed him back, holding the book high above her head.
Cynthia reached the scene a few minutes later, and when she saw a crowd of more than twenty Biters surrounding Alice, she raised her rifle, ready to fire. That was when Alice called out to her.
‘Baker, no! Come here slowly.’
As Cynthia approached, still holding her weapon up, the Biters turned to face her. A couple of them hissed and spat, but not a single one made a move to attack her. As she came closer, she saw that Alice had a book open in her hands.
She was reading to the Biters.
As Cynthia scanned the Biters’ faces, she couldn’t be sure if they understood everything Alice was reading, but they seemed transfixed by this half-Biter girl who had come into their midst and the book she was holding. Finally, Alice closed the book and addressed the Biters.
‘Humans are not your enemy, but some evil men who have brought suffering to all of us—humans and Biters alike—are. We need to fight them together. Now go, and tell the others that your Queen is here.’
***
Sam was watching Brian plan the rest of the operation. He had a map of the area showing on a large monitor, and he was using the information from his helicopters and drones to pinpoint where Biters were concentrated and work on a plan to get his men to the bunker with the fewest possible casualties. Sam thought he was being too cautious, but with Alice out of the way, for all he cared, Brian could take all day poring over the map. Sam King was a hero, and he was no longer in a hurry. Of course, when all this was over, he would make sure he made an appropriate report on the fitness to command of Brian. With his newfound celebrity status in the Executive Committee, Sam was sure that Brian would get an up close and personal look at the inside of a FEMA camp.
He was distracted by such pleasant thoughts when Brian spoke into the radio. ‘Sector E12 is where we have the least reported Biter activity. The last drone pass showed no more than six on the thermal sensors. That’s just three klicks from the bunker. Get two transport choppers out of Canaveral there. We take out the Biters and then make a dash for the bunker. I want three Apaches to cover them, and also have another quick reaction force of a hundred men ready to launch. Once they get to the bunker, I want to make sure we can reinforce the area and hold it.’
Then he said something that made Sam smile.
‘When we get inside the bunker, I’ve got two large Chinooks coming in to lift the missiles out. It’ll take five sorties to get all the missiles out. Once our men and the missiles are safely out, I’ll request an air strike with napalm to burn this bloody forest and those Biters in it.’
Maybe Brian had not lost it entirely. Maybe Sam would just recommend a demotion for him and not a stint at a camp.
Sam got up to get something to eat when several voices began screaming out on the radio.
‘What’s going on?’
Brian answered in a hoarse whisper. ‘We just lost one of the transport choppers to a direct RPG hit.’
It took a few seconds for the implications of that to fully sink in, and Sam sputtered out.
‘RPG? What are you all talking about? Biters don’t…’
He grabbed the table near him to steady himself as he understood what was happening.
Alice was still alive.
***
TWELVE
Cynthia threw the rocket launcher to one side after firing the last of her two rockets. The two large transport helicopters hovering just above the treetops had just lowered the ropes the troopers would rappel down when Cynthia had fired. The first rocket had streaked up, accompanied by the roar of hundreds of Biters who had gathered around her and Alice. As the first helicopter was hit, it went into an uncontrollable spin and crashed among the trees below. The second helicopter aborted its drop and was about to fly to a higher altitude when the second rocket exploded a few meters from it. Trailing smoke from the near miss, the pilot tried to nurse the stricken chopper back to base, but only made it a few kilometers before he had to crash-land it.
No sooner had the first chopper crashed than Alice screamed to the Biters to follow her. Over the last half hour or so, Biters had been streaming in to their position from all over the forest, and while Alice wasn’t sure of how many there were, she reckoned there to be at least five hundred. As she jogged through the forest, with Cynthia just behind her, the Biters followed as fast as they could, an army of their own on the march. Alice heard a familiar roar to her right and turned to see Bunny Ears. He had brought his own army, several hundred Biters, and they joined the force that was now following Alice.
A bullet cracked through the air near Alice’s hand and she dove for cover behind a tree to see where this new threat came from. A group of four Zeus troopers huddled behind a tree a hundred meters away. Cynthia took cover and returned fire, but it was an impasse that they could not wait to shoot their way out of, since there was no doubt that once they knew that Alice was alive and in the forest, Zeus would be trying to reach the bunker where the Snarks were kept.
She ran forward, shouting for Cynthia to cover her, and flattened her back against another tree some five meters ahead, bullets raking the ground around her. She waited for a lull in the firing, and then screamed, ‘Run or die, it’s your choice.’
One of the troopers laughed, and then she shouted for the Biters to advance.
One or two of the troopers fired, but then they stopped, gaping at the mass of Biters descending upon them through the trees. In all their previous encounters, the Biters had come at them like rabid animals, ferocious and dangerous all right, but lacking any co-ordination. Now, they seemed to be moving like an army on the march, and as the Zeus troopers took a step back, Alice moved out of cover and shouted again at them.
‘Tell your friends that this forest and this land is no longer for your masters to exploit. Tell them that Alice is here.’
Three of the troopers turned and ran, but one man remained standing. He looked at Alice, defiance in his eyes as the Biters continued to walk towards him, but as he contemplated the odds facing him, he too turned and retreated.
‘I could swear they wet their pants.’
Cynthia smiled, but there was no humor in her voice as she replied. She was holding a tablet one of the escaping troopers had dropped in his haste to get away. There were several messages on the screen, and Alice saw that many were from a General and someone calling himself the President of Homeland Operations. Whoever or whatever they were, they were important men in the Executive Committee, and from the way they seemed to be micro-managing the operations, they seemed to be very close by. Indeed, one message indicated that they had overflown the combat zone not too long ago. Then Alice found a map that showed their location.
‘Some of them will run, but some will fight. Now that they know we’re here, th
ey will throw everything at us. This battle is not yet over.’
***
Sam King was sitting in a corner of the command tent. He had been avoiding calls from the Baron for the last fifteen minutes, saying only that he needed some time to work on a contingency plan. In reality, he was paralyzed with fear for what would happen to him and his family. The celebratory glasses of Scotch he had drunk when he thought that Alice had been killed certainly were not helping.
Brian had approached him for orders twice, and then seeing that he was incapable of providing any leadership or direction, had decided to do what seemed to be the only sensible thing to do—get his men out without all of them being slaughtered in the forest. He was rallying his men over the radio, telling them to fall back to pre-determined extraction zones where helicopters would pick them up. Just then, one of his men called out.
‘Sir, we have three choppers arriving from Canaveral.’
Brian looked at the approaching helicopters with a growing sense of dread. For helicopters to arrive in a combat zone without so much as informing him could only mean one thing. The Executive Committee had decided to step in.
The three large Black Hawks landed in a clearing near the command post and fifty black-clad, masked men jumped out, all wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles and rocket launchers slung across their backs. The men wore no symbols or insignias, not even the Zeus logo, but as they fanned out and took position, Brian saw that each man had a small pyramid with an all-seeing eye on top of it emblazoned on his right shoulder. Brian had seen such men only a handful of times—these were the stormtroopers of the Executive Committee, kept in reserve to protect members of the Executive Committee.
One of the Zeus troopers raised his rifle, but Brian told him to lower it. There was no point in adding injury to insult and making what would be at the very least a career-threatening moment into a massacre.
At last, a man wearing an expensive-looking suit stepped out of the helicopter. His grey hair was slicked back and he wore thick glasses. In his right hand, he carried a slim metal briefcase and he walked towards Brian with the confidence, indeed nonchalance, of a man used to getting his way.
Brian had seen the face on video screens a few times, but this was the first time he had seen the Baron in person. Heir to one of the world’s most prominent banking dynasties, billionaire businessman and now one of the leading members of the Executive Committee, it was long rumored that the Baron had been one of the driving forces behind the formation of the new world order. If one believed conspiracy theories, then it was the Baron and others like him who had engineered it all in the first place. The Baron walked up straight to Brian, and spoke to him, his thick Germanic accent still apparent despite the many years he had lived in the United States before the Rising.
‘So, it seems that killing a young girl is beyond the capabilities of your men. I thought I would drop by and offer assistance with my stormtroopers.’
Brian bit his tongue as he fought the urge to reply. Dozens of his men had died in the forest, fighting against thousands of Biters, and Alice was anything but a helpless little girl. She had already demonstrated that many times over. However, Brian knew the Baron’s reputation for ruthlessness and just looked down.
‘Where is Sam King? Why is he not here directing the operation? Why is he silent after all his proclamations of victory? Why are you not pressing the attack home?’
Brian didn’t know how to answer all those questions without seriously incriminating Sam. Sam King was a corporate leech who had thought that combat was no more difficult that moving rows of numbers on a spreadsheet, and was now overwhelmed by the reality of what he saw unfolding before him. Still, Brian had no particular desire to have Sam’s death on his conscience, so he kept silent.
The Baron looked around and asked another man. ‘Where is Sam King?’
The young trooper nervously glanced at the command tent, and without a further word, the Baron strode towards the tent. As he entered, the Baron reached into his coat and took out a handgun.
Brian began to take a step towards the tent but four of the Baron’s stormtroopers raised their guns. Brian stood his ground. There had been a time when honor mattered above all else, when as a Marine officer he would have waded into a fight to protect a comrade no matter what the odds. But all that was in the past. Now it was just a matter of survival, and he had enough blood on his hands to know that he was hardly on the side of the angels. He had been approached by the resistance a year ago with an offer to defect to their side, since among all the Zeus commanders, he was known to be humane to civilians. He had turned them down, and now it was just too late. Now he had no choice but to see things through.
He closed his eyes as a single gunshot rang out, and then the Baron stepped out of the tent. He looked at Brian, his eyes betraying no emotion at the murder he had just committed.
‘So, now the chain of command has been simplified, let’s show this little freak girl who’s boss.’
***
Alice heard the sounds of the approaching helicopters and looked up to see three dark shapes visible through the foliage. They had no more rockets so this battle would have to be fought and won on the ground once the troopers had landed. She spoke into her radio.
‘Baker, we’ve got company. I’ll set Bunny Ears up here to delay them and we’ll try and keep going.’
Alice walked up to Bunny Ears.
‘There are troopers coming to stop us. We have to get to those missiles otherwise all we’ve created is gone. Can you help slow those troopers down while Cynthia and I try and get to the bunker?’
Bunny Ears looked down at Alice and grunted. He looked like something out of someone’s nightmare, with an arm missing, yellowed skin covered with scars and blood and three recent gashes where shrapnel had caught him, leaving bloody trails across his torso. Yet there was something in his eyes that made Alice realize that he understood her. By asking him to stand his ground against the Zeus reinforcements, she was once again asking him to risk his life, but she knew that, perhaps more than humans, Biters understood loyalty.
Bunny Ears stood there, and his lips moved, as if he were trying to form some words, to say something. Finally, he lowered his head in frustration with a growl, but as Alice began to turn away, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Bunny Ears patted her shoulder once, and then he turned away to the Biters around them.
Alice smiled as she turned and continued running towards the bunker, Cynthia closely following her. Gunfire broke out behind her as the troopers landed, but she had no time to stop and see what was happening. According to Bellman’s map, they were now just a kilometer from the bunker, and Alice wanted to get there well before the troopers did. There was no question of her securing or transporting the heavy missiles anywhere. Instead, her plan was to destroy them with the explosives that Cynthia carried in her backpack.
As she ran, a new thought came to her. They might well succeed in destroying these missiles, but the men who had killed so many thousands in their pursuit of power would not stop. They would find another Bellman. Given enough time, they would repair other missiles or perhaps make new ones. No, this had to be stopped now, when she was in the belly of the beast. Victory was not just living to fight another day. Alice now knew that the enemies she faced were so ruthless and so determined that victory today would just postpone the final reckoning, not do away with the danger the people of Wonderland faced.
She stopped, and as Cynthia looked at her curiously, she told Cynthia to go ahead to the bunker and finish the job. Alice would make sure that she and the Biters could hold the troopers long enough for Cynthia to destroy the missiles, then she would go on her final mission.
***
The commander of the stormtroopers hit the ground first, always leading from the front. As soon as he landed, he saw three Biters coming towards him. He rolled to his right, coming up in a crouch, and opened fire with his shotgun. For close-in combat against Biters, he had all his men ar
med with shotguns. Yes, a Biter could only be put down for good with a head shot, but a shotgun shredded legs and limbs, and slowed them down for them to be finished at leisure. He fired, taking both legs off the first Biter, a man with a horrible gash running down his face. The next shot took a leg off a Biter who had once been a young woman, and still wore the remains of what must at one time have been a shimmery party dress. She howled as her right leg was taken off at the knee and she fell to the ground. The commander calmly pumped fresh rounds in, and fired again, blasting a hole through the torso of the third Biter. Another of his men was now down the rope and he finished the job with a blast from his shotgun that took off both the Biter’s legs. The commander watched as more of his men rappelled down and he spoke into his radio headset.
‘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.
