by Dhar, Mainak
***
The moment Alice saw the men she faced, she knew that these were not ordinary Zeus troopers. The bulky body armor, the masks, and the way they moved as a cohesive unit despite just having been dropped into the middle of an unfamiliar and hostile combat zone told her that these men were far more dangerous adversaries. To her dismay, without her there to direct them, the Biters were lashing out at the nearest enemy without trying to take advantage of their weight in numbers. As a result, they walked in ones and twos and got slaughtered in ones and twos. Alice spoke into her headset.
‘Baker, hurry up. These guys know what they’re doing.’
Hoping that Cynthia would get to the bunker, Alice took aim at the man who seemed to be leading the troopers and fired. He went down, but then to Alice’s dismay, he got up and looked straight at her. The assault rifle she carried would have penetrated the body armor normally worn by Zeus troopers, but clearly these men were equipped with a very different kit. Alice ducked behind a tree as shotgun pellets flew through the air where she had been standing seconds before.
Think, Alice, think.
She needed to rally the Biters and make them attack with some sort of co-ordination. In the chaos of battle, with gunshots echoing all around her, she was not sure she would be able to get their attention, and certainly not for long before someone else took a potshot at her. She screamed out, hoping that she would be heard.
‘Bunny Ears! Go in together. Go in together.’
She dove for cover as someone fired at her, and then raised her rifle to return fire. She wasn’t sure if she hit anyone, but at least the troopers now knew that they faced someone who could shoot back. Some of the troopers now started to take cover, and that gave the Biters some more space to maneuver. Bunny Ears was growling and screaming, and as Alice watched with a grim smile, he slapped two or three Biters who were not getting with the program.
Alice moved behind cover. Two of the troopers were now just feet away from her. As one of then paused to reload his shotgun, Alice made her move. She fired her rifle on full automatic, hitting him in the legs below the knees. As he went down screaming, Alice smiled, hoping that the troopers now knew that two could play at that game. As the second man turned towards her, she fired another burst at him. The rounds caught him squarely in the chest and sent him doubling over in pain. Alice didn’t know if her rounds had penetrated the body armor, but to make sure, she ran towards him and put two rounds in his head from her handgun. Then she melted back behind the trees, waiting for another opportunity to strike.
This was going to be that kind of battle—no quarter given, no prisoners taken.
***
The Baron was listening to the reports from the choppers and watching the feed from the drones with scarcely contained rage. His best men had been caught up in a vicious battle in the forest, and had not yet been able to fight their way through to the bunker. He had no idea of how many insurgents were in there, mixed up with the Biters, and the longer they took, the more were the chances that Alice could get to the bunker before his men.
‘Can the gunships help out?’
Brian looked at the Baron and shook his head. ‘The foliage is too thick for them to identify targets. Also, your men are mixed up in close combat with the Biters. Maybe we should send in more reinforcements?’
The Baron stared straight ahead, weighing the decision before him. Finally, he asked the radio operator to relay an order back to Canaveral.
‘They have a jet there armed with napalm. Ask them to launch it as soon as they can.’
Brian had planned on using the napalm strike after they had recovered the missiles and secured the area.
‘Sir, your men are there, and there are still at least two hundred Zeus troopers around nearby. A napalm strike would…’
The Baron didn’t give him a chance to finish.
‘Just do it. Getting the Snarks is critical to the war effort, and if that means casualties, well, there are always casualties in any war.’
***
Alice saw a trooper go down, screaming and flailing, as three Biters dragged him down and bit into him. The troopers were still exacting a terrible toll, but now that the Biters had begun to attack in a more co-ordinated manner, and Alice was inflicting her own damage, they had become more cautious and were now effectively retreating, trading space for kills. Alice knew that if she tried to wipe them all out, the Biters would suffer horrendously, and she hoped that once their losses mounted, the troopers would give up and retreat to be extracted by air. But for now, she was happy that at least they were giving Cynthia enough time to get to the bunker.
Several shotgun pellets hit the tree next to her, showering her with splinters, many of which cut her face. As the blood dripped down her face, Alice fired back, hitting a trooper in the legs. She did not have to finish him, as two Biters dragged him into the trees. The man she had thought was their officer was still trying to rally his men, shouting instructions to them, and frantically speaking into his headset. Perhaps he was asking for an extraction, or perhaps reinforcements. Either way, the best bet Alice had of ending this was to kill him first.
She went straight for him, emptying her clip into a trooper who approached her from the right and then slamming the butt of her rifle into another trooper’s face. Both men were then snatched away by Biters. The commander had just shot the legs out from under a Biter and was turning to face her when she launched herself at him, firing from her handgun, sending three shots into his armor. As he staggered back from the impact, she landed near his feet, cutting at his hamstring with her knife.
The man stepped back and brought the shotgun around like a bat, hitting Alice in the shoulder. Being half-Biter meant that Alice did not feel the pain, but the impact unbalanced her and sent her to the ground. The commander discarded his shotgun and took out a handgun from his holster, but before he could fire, Alice plunged the knife deep into his foot, through the thick boot he was wearing. The commander fired, but in his pain, his shot went wide, hitting Alice in the shoulder and exiting out the back.
‘You Biter freak…’
Before he completed his sentence, Alice raised her left hand and shot him once in the head.
Many of the troopers were now hesitating, and one or two of them had begun to turn away from the battle. She shouted at the top of her voice.
‘Run and you may live. Fight and you will die.’
Many of the troopers turned and ran, but a handful of them stayed to finish what they had begun. It didn’t take too long to mop them up. After the last of them fell, Alice stood in the middle of the carnage, her face covered in blood. She had the commander’s tablet in her hands and was seeing maps of where the command center for the attack was. It was located just a few kilometers away, and if they moved fast, they could still maintain the advantage of surprise.
A dull boom came from her right. A thin pillar of smoke rose in the distance, from the direction of where the bunker was.
Baker had succeeded in her mission. Now Alice would finish this.
***
‘Sir, the jet is loaded now and ready for takeoff.’
The Baron had been infuriated at how long it had all taken, and Brian’s protestations that they had not really planned on a napalm strike while their men were engaged in close combat had fallen on deaf ears. Then had come the news from the ground that the stormtrooper commander had been killed, reportedly by Alice herself. Many of their men had retreated, and others had been massacred. Still chafing at the delay, the Baron glared at Brian.
‘At least your precious conscience will be satisfied now that there are none of our men alive down there.’
‘Sir, the drone reports smoke coming from the bunker location.’
The Baron looked at the footage being streamed in from the drone and ground his teeth in rage. The bastards had managed to beat him to the bunker, after all. Well, they would all now burn in hell. He hoped that the engineers would still be able to salvage something f
rom the rockets, but that was a problem he would worry about later. For now, he would enjoy watching the Biters and Alice burn.
‘I want both drones to focus on the impact zone. I want to watch this.’
‘Sir, there doesn’t seem to be anyone moving down there.’
The Baron leant over to take a closer look at the monitor.
‘Where the hell are they? Get the choppers…’
He hadn’t finished his sentence when gunfire and shouting broke out outside. Their command center was lightly guarded, with only about ten troopers on guard duty. After all, nobody had expected to fight a battle here. As the Baron asked what was going on, Brian looked at him, ashen-faced.
‘She’s here.’
The Baron heard more shooting outside, and then the distinctive growls and howls of what sounded like hundreds of Biters.
Then he heard the sound of men screaming.
The Baron looked at Brian, hoping the General could do something, but Brian just shrugged and handed the Baron a handgun.
Then Brian lifted the tent flap and shouted for his men to follow him.
‘Let’s try and make a run for it. We can catch a chopper later. No point in standing and dying.’
The Baron looked at the gun in his hand and realized that in an instant, Brian had condemned him to death. The Baron had overseen businesses worth tens of billions and manipulated markets and governments around the world. He had sat at the table of the world’s most powerful men and women, toppled regimes, started wars and created whole new nations. Through it all, he and his friends had profited and prospered. Then had come their boldest plan ever, one in the making for years, to truly reshape the world, to remove the perils of overpopulation, scarcity and disease once and for all. To create a new world order where those most deserving, those most equipped to lead, would inherit the earth. Things had gone horribly wrong with the virus mutating and the Biters emerging, yet the Baron had kept his hopes alive that his dream would come true one day.
For a man like him to die in a hellhole like this seemed so unfair, such a waste. He was alone in the tent now and he began to raise the gun as the flap opened and a hooded figure swept in, carrying an assault rifle. The Baron tried to fire, but in his panic, had not switched the safety off. The figure turned towards him, the hood flying back, and the last thing the Baron saw was something out of his worst nightmares—a young girl with blonde hair, but a Biter’s decayed and yellowed face with blood running all over it.
***
EPILOGUE
‘Alice, I know words are not enough to do justice to what you have done for all of us, but do accept my gratitude on behalf of all the people of the United States.’
Alice felt awkward standing on a stage in front of a large crowd, accepting flowers from General Konrath. Her journey had begun as one of personal vendetta, and had morphed along the way into a struggle being waged on behalf of the people of Wonderland. Reward was not something that had ever crossed her mind. As she looked at General Konrath closely, she realized that he had more in common with the men who had brought about The Rising than he would ever admit. They all believed that people had a price, and power was a commodity to be traded.
As she walked off the stage and began to prepare for her journey home, she saw Cynthia in the corner of the room. The fighter known as Baker smiled at her, but she was not really looking her in the eye. After what had happened in the forest, Alice could not blame her.
While Alice and the Biters had been fighting and bleeding in the forest, and then launched their raid into the heart of the enemy’s command center, Cynthia had made it to the bunker and blown her way in with explosives. She had also sabotaged some of the missiles, but on General Konrath’s orders, she had left two missiles intact. Alice had never known that was to be part of the plan.
When she confronted Konrath, he had explained that it was insurance. The Executive Committee was still holed up in its nuclear-proof bunkers in the Cheyenne Mountains, and Zeus was still a formidable armed force. Possessing nuclear-tipped missiles gave the resistance a chance to negotiate a peace from a position of strength, and indeed the Executive Committee had opened up direct channels of communications with Konrath. Bellman had now largely recovered, and Konrath had enlisted her help to maintain and to fire the missiles if necessary.
Alice wasn’t interested in the details, as the whole affair didn’t really make sense to her. Why would you shed so much blood, make so many sacrifices to fight against an enemy only to pretend to have a peaceful settlement later? Was such a perverted peace ever one that lasted? Konrath assured her that it would, but when Alice looked at where similar political wrangling had led the world before The Rising, she had her doubts.
Cynthia made her way towards her as Alice headed for the door.
‘No way you’d consider staying? General Konrath is going to be the first President of the United States in over fifteen years, and we are going to really start afresh.’
Alice looked at her, a smile on her face.
‘This is now a place for politicians, not for the likes of me. Anyways, I need to get home. I’ve been away too long.’
Alice walked out to the runway, where Bunny Ears was waiting for her. He had suffered more wounds in the battle and his face was now covered in scars. Alice didn’t look much better herself, but she was well beyond the point where she cared about how she looked. One more of the many things that had changed in her since she began this adventure as a fifteen-year-old girl in the Deadland.
As she walked towards the waiting plane, she felt ever more keenly all the friends she had lost. Vince and Satish, who had accompanied her from Wonderland, had perished, joining hundreds of others she had known and fought side by side with, only to lose them in battle. A normal girl of her age would not think of such things, but with all she had been through, Alice keenly felt her own mortality. Soon, any day, it would be her turn to join her parents and her friends. All it would take was one lucky shot or one placed bullet. What happened then? Her parents had once told her about how humans went to Heaven when they died. What happened to Biters and indeed, what happened to her, who was neither fully human nor Biter?
She sat in the plane and the pilot waved to her. Konrath and the others stood by the runway. Konrath seemed like he had good intentions, but Alice had learnt that the moment one man or a group of people got so much power, the temptation to misuse it was strong. Indeed, the biggest danger came not from Biters, or distant tyrants, but from the evil that lay coiled in the heart of every man. She hoped that Konrath would have the wisdom to use his newly found power for good and to keep that evil contained.
She closed her eyes as the plane taxied down the runway. For now she would go back to being just Alice, living with her friends in Wonderland, away from the bloodshed and loss that had accompanied her for so many years of her young life. She would see Wonderland grow, and its people continue to rebuild their lives and human society. She would go back to repairing the chasm between humans and Biters and keep in touch with Konrath’s scientists to see if the virus that turned people into Biters could be reversed. For now, Alice would live a life of peace. For now, she would put aside her gun and knife.
For now.
***
CREDITS
Coming up with the idea for a novel and writing it is often a solitary exercise, but bringing it to readers as a finished book is always a team effort. I’d like to thank the following for their help in producing the book you now hold in your hands. They, and others like them, make independent publishing much more enriching and rewarding for both authors and readers.
Cover design by Joseph Simmons
(http://www.jsimmonsillustration.com)
Editing by R.J.Locksley
(http://www.rjlocksley.blogspot.com)
eBook and Print formatting by Rebecca
(http://www.indiemobi.wordpress.com)
and Adventure (Alice, No. 4)
