by Dhar, Mainak
Alice had far superior equipment and was perhaps better trained, but at four-to-one odds, a fight would be difficult at best, and she did not want to lose Bunny Ears. All four men were carrying assault rifles and if a fight broke out, Bunny Ears would rush to protect her.
There was only one thing to do when a fight looked inevitable and you were outnumbered and outgunned.
Hit first and hit hard.
The spray of blood looked black in her night vision scope as the first man went down. The second was down even before he could bring up his rifle. The two remaining men dove for the ground and returned fire, but none of their shots came anywhere near Alice. Alice had put a suppressor on her rifle so they saw no muzzle blast and they heard only a soft pop as another of them tumbled to a bullet that pierced his neck. The last man got up and tried to run but fell to a bullet to the back. From the time she had first pressed the trigger till the time the last man fell dead, no more than fifteen seconds had passed.
Zohar was now up, panicked at the sudden sounds of the men shouting as they fell but Alice pushed him back and put a finger to her lips. She waited for a good hour to make sure there were no more attackers and then they left, moving as fast as they could.
Zohar was a fast runner, and at first he was well ahead of Alice, but of course he tired like all humans did, unlike Alice, who like Biters felt no fatigue. Soon he was pleading with her to wait up for him or stop. She did stop, but only after an hour of moving through the darkness, when she found an area that looked like a good defensible position, a small bluff on top of a gentle hill. Zohar lay on his back panting while Bunny Ears crept down to recon the area and warn Alice of any unwanted company.
'That was cool. You really busted them.'
The grin disappeared when Zohar saw Alice's glare.
'That was a massacre, and it had to be done, but there's nothing cool about killing someone in cold blood. Now, what do you have that they want?'
The boy tried to look away, but Alice grabbed his hand, perhaps harder than she had intended, and he winced in pain.
'Kid, I heard them talking. They didn't just come back for revenge, they came for you. Now why would someone like you be so important to them?'
Zohar looked down, unwilling to meet Alice's gaze.
'I did something really bad. I stole one of their bags. I thought I could use it to pay people off to get my way home. I really had no idea what was in it….'
Alice grabbed the small bag that was hanging from Zohar's shoulder and opened it, seeing some bread and four small glass vials inside, each filled with a clear liquid.
'What is this stuff?'
Zohar shrugged.
'They guarded it even more than they guarded their weapons or water so I figured it was valuable.'
Alice took out one of the vials.
'What is this?'
Zohar looked at it, but then shook his head again.
'I don't know but I heard them talk about it once in a while. They were terrified of someone they had to return these to, and it looked like other than looting what they could find, they were supposed to gather some things for this person.'
Alice looked at the clear liquid, wondering what value it could hold.
'Did they ever say what was in these bottles?'
'They just called it the Crocodile.'
***
TWO
'Stop, please stop.'
If Zohar was expecting any sympathy, there was none to be found. Alice kept going without even looking back at him. As he knelt on the ground, wheezing in exhaustion, Bunny Ears came and stood over him. Zohar took a look up and raised his hands.
'Okay, okay. I get the message.'
Finally Alice decided to stop when it was dark. They had been walking for almost one full day through hilly, unforgiving terrain. They had not had any more company, but Alice had smelled Biters and Bunny Ears had growled to let her know that he too had sensed them. However, the Biters had left them alone. As they sat on the hill and Zohar devoured the last food in the bag he had, he looked at Alice.
'Are you mad at me?'
'You stole something that was not yours and then you hid it from me, despite the fact that I saved your life. You could have got us all killed.'
He was sheepish and had nothing to offer in his defense other than to mumble out an apology once again. Alice looked at him, and he shriveled under her gaze and seemed to be on the verge of tears. Then Alice backed off. He was after all a kid, a kid who had not known better than to take off on a foolhardy quest in search of adventure. Just as Alice herself had. It had been clear that Zohar had no hope of getting back home on his own, and since Alice had no particular destination in mind, she had agreed to take him home and see what lay deeper in the land they had entered.
Within a few minutes Zohar was fast asleep. Alice didn't sleep, but out of habit, she would sit or lie down and close her eyes for some time at night. Not sleeping meant that she had no dreams either, but she would use that time to think of her parents and the friends she had lost. Before the Rising, Jane had told her people would keep photographs to remember people. Alice had no photos, all she had were her memories, and she never wanted to forget what her family had been like, so at night she sat there alone and remembered things big and small. Fights with Jane, her dad's smile, her mom's exasperation at a younger daughter who seemed to get into so much trouble. Being half-Biter, Alice couldn't cry either, but at times like this, she wished she could.
She heard a low growl nearby. Bunny Ears had spotted someone or something. She crept in silence towards him, leaving Zohar asleep against the tree. She smelled them just as Bunny Ears growled again. Biters, lots of them. There must have at least twenty Biters shuffling along below them. They seemed to have no idea that Alice and Bunny Ears were just meters away, and Alice would have been happy to let them go on their way till one of them stopped and sniffed in the air.
They knew a human was nearby. Alice looked back to see Zohar, still snoring gently, oblivious to the danger he was in.
'Come on, Bunny Ears. We need to make some new friends.'
Two of the Biters turned to face her as she walked behind them. In the moonlight, Alice could see their torn skin, blood-soaked bodies and tattered clothes. Biters remained wearing what they had been when they were turned, and most were wearing little more than rags. Most of the Biters in the Deadland had been living in Delhi or its suburbs, a mix of the rich and the poor, IT professionals and slum-dwellers. However, the condition of the Biters before her hinted at desperate, grinding poverty before they had been turned. The Biter closest to her, a tall man with a wicked gash down the side of his face, bellowed a challenge.
'I am a friend.'
The moment she spoke, every Biter there screamed and began to close in on her. Two of them went down as Bunny Ears strode into their midst, swatting them down. Alice swept the big Biter's feet under him and he went down in a heap. Behind him was a woman who looked to have most of both hands missing. Alice kicked her down as Bunny Ears brought down two more. Then she took out the book from her bag, the book that Protima, the Queen of the Biters, had given to her. The book that had become a symbol of her destiny. She held it above her head.
'I don't want to hurt you. My name is Alice and you will listen to me.'
By now Zohar was awake, and he watched dumbfounded as Alice spoke, and then one by one, every single one of the Biters knelt before her.
The next morning as they continued their journey, Alice could sense and hear the Biters around them in the bushes. Bunny Ears had dissuaded them from following her, but Alice had come to accept that they would likely not be far away. She had never really understood the disease or virus that turned people into Biters, but one of the effects was a very strong pack mentality like among wild dogs or wolves. Every pack needed a leader, and Alice was that leader. Whether she liked it or not, they would now follow her.
Zohar had been looking at her peculiarly all morning.
'Come on,
kid. What's on your mind?'
'What you did… you could help us so much. We live in fear of Biters all the time. You could make it so much better. Please, can you help us?'
Alice looked at Zohar in a different light. A ten-year-old who ran off in search of adventure was just another troublesome kid, but one who thought of helping others deserved to be helped.
'Sure, kid. I'll see what I can do.'
***
The highway stretched ahead of them as far as the eye could see, littered with abandoned vehicles. Well, not really abandoned. Many of them still had the skeletons of their occupants—people who had died at the hands of looters or Biters. It was a giant graveyard, a graveyard not just of human bodies but of the world that had been left behind during the Rising.
The Biters who had been following them had disappeared, perhaps nervous about being out and about in such an open area. Alice stopped and powered on her tablet to see the map. They had been walking for over a day and they should have been near the old city of Islamabad. Alice looked at Zohar. 'There is supposed to be a big city near here somewhere. Any idea where it is?'
Zohar looked at her, puzzled, as they kept walking to the crest of a small hill. He pointed straight ahead.
'Nothing here but the Black Land.'
A vast expanse of crumbled buildings and blackened sands stretched out before her. Bunny Ears growled in apprehension. Even after all these years, the place smelled of only one thing—death. Alice had expected something like the ruins of the city of Delhi that she had grown up near, but this was totally different. Unlike Delhi, which had been hit by airburst nuclear weapons as a last-ditch measure to get rid of Biters, Islamabad had been hit by multiple catastrophes—nuclear missiles fired by India, dirty bombs detonated by jihadis and leaks at sabotaged nuclear reactors. Alice had seen a lot of death and suffering in her time, but even she hesitated to step into the blackened wasteland before her.
'Come on, kid. Let's take the highway and pass this place.'
***
'Does he understand what we say?'
They had been walking for a few more hours and Zohar kept looking at Bunny Ears nervously. Alice could understand—she had been brought up thinking that Biters were some sort of supernatural monsters. Better dead than undead, as they used to say. Alice now knew better—there were far worse things to be than the so-called undead.
'Try him.'
She looked away, trying to contain her smile as Zohar nervously walked closer to Bunny Ears.
'Do you understand what I say to you?'
Bunny Ears snapped his jaws at him, and Zohar yelped and jumped back. Alice smiled as they kept walking.
Zohar's settlement should have been just a couple of hours' walk away, but Alice decided to wait till daybreak. It was already getting dark and she didn't want to take the risk of Zohar getting caught in the middle if they ran into hostile Biters or bandits.
'Kid, let's take a break over there.'
Zohar grumbled a bit as Alice made him climb up a steep hill, not realizing that she was doing it both to ensure he stayed out of harm's way and also to give herself a good vantage point to scan the terrain around them.
Bunny Ears came up for a while and sat there as Alice read to him from the book she carried. Zohar watched with wide eyes.
'I never saw a book before. I had heard of them, but we never had one in our place. That story you read about a girl called Alice—is that you?'
After a few minutes, Bunny Ears went down to keep watch while Zohar slept. Alice knew Zohar had been thirsty but to his credit he had not slowed down or asked for a break. As he slept, Alice took a good look around them through her scope and then came down the hill.
'Bunny Ears, stay here. I'll go and see if I can get anything to eat or drink for him.'
Alice walked ahead along the old highway, but the few trees remaining standing near them were barren. After twenty minutes of walking, she heard something and turned off the road, and saw a small stream. There had been a small bottle in the things she had recovered from the bandits, and she filled it with water and began her walk back.
That was when she heard faint popping sounds. Gunfire? She strained to hear again but there was nothing. She shook her head and headed back. Perhaps she had got so accustomed to being around guns and gunfire that she was imagining things.
The next morning they resumed their journey. They just had to follow the highway and then they should come upon a big lake near the town of Mianwali. She was hoping that Zohar would be able to tell the way from there on.
As they got closer to his home, Zohar began to talk much more, with an almost palpable spring in his step. Alice remembered what it was like to have family and parents waiting for you, and asked Zohar if he missed them. He looked up at her.
'I thought I would be happy without them always telling me what to do, but a week after I left, I began to miss them. I won't tell him this, but I even missed my older brother Rafiq, even though he always picks on me. I hope they aren't mad at me for running away.'
Alice smiled, remembering Jane and how she had always been at odds with her older sister, who had been so unlike her. Her family was all gone now, and she patted Zohar on his shoulder.
'Even if they're mad with you, tell them you missed them.'
'Are you sure?'
Alice spoke with the certainty of someone who had lost every single person she had once counted as family.
'Very sure. I wish I had told my parents how much I loved them. I wish I had told Jane that even though I fought with her, she was my big sister and I cared about her. Now I'll never get that chance, so yes, kid, tell them.'
***
Bunny Ears smelled it before any of them. He stopped in the middle of the road and growled.
'What's up, Bunny Ears?'
He put his one good hand, the other long lost to a Zeus grenade, in front of Alice, preventing her from going further. Alice knew Bunny Ears well. He sensed danger, and when he did so, he was usually right. Zohar had by now walked ahead of them, excited at being close to home.
'Come on, Alice, we aren't far now. I know where we are. We just turn off the big road and then it's just a short walk till we get to the hills where my folks are.'
They had resumed their journey at dawn, and had been walking for just over an hour. Zohar had been running more than walking, and for all the terrors he had been through, he was but a ten-year-old boy excited at being back with his family. Alice called out to him, careful to keep her voice down.
'Get back here. Bunny Ears thinks there's danger up ahead.'
Zohar screwed up his face in disbelief.
'Danger? All we see is the occasional Biter and you don't need to worry about that, right? Bandits stay near the city ruins where they can scavenge stuff, or go after smaller settlements. There's no danger here.'
Zohar continued walking, going off the road and up a slight rise, when the two men came towards him.
They moved with an erratic shuffle, but they did not smell like Biters. Both carried long knives covered with blood, and no Biter had ever used weapons. And they were coming straight at Zohar.
Alice and Bunny Ears rushed to his side and the two men stopped. Alice noticed their eyes first. Wild, blank, feral. Not the look of normal men. Then as one of them raised his knife hand and his sleeve rode up his arm, green scales shone on his skin, almost like those of a reptile, like the lizards or the occasional snake Alice had seen growing up in the Deadland.
Who were these men?
The first man looked at Alice and spat.
'Biter trash!'
He rushed at her, holding his knife above his head. Everything happened in a blur that lasted no more than a few seconds. Zohar screamed. Bunny Ears came between the man and Alice, grabbed his knife hand and bit down on his neck. The man moaned and went down while Bunny Ears snapped his neck.
The second man, seemingly not fazed by the death of his friend, yelled and rushed forward. Alice deflected his hand w
ith a sweep of her left hand and pivoted on her heels, bringing her right hand around, striking him on the back of his neck. The man went down to his knees and before he could get back up, Alice had her own knife out and cut him down.
She turned the bodies over, tearing open their shirts. Their bodies were criss-crossed with green scales, many of which seemed to be leaking pus. The insides of their arms, just below the elbow, were mottled red with many small holes. Alice had never seen anything like these men. She rummaged through their pockets, but all they had was an empty vial of the sort Zohar had in the bag he had stolen from the bandits and a syringe of the sort she had seen Doctor Edwards use to give medicines to people.
'They charged us, seeing I had a gun. What was wrong with them? What were they doing here? Why are their knives covered with blood?'
Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer. Zohar had sensed it too. As she looked up, Zohar stared into the distance.
'They were coming from the direction of my home.'
With that, he was running, shouting for his parents. Alice ran after him, telling him to wait, but knowing that he would not wait for anyone or anything till he reached his home.
He was screaming for his parents when she caught up with him. Alice knew what had happened—the smell of death was all around her. Zohar clambered up the hills to check the caves and found nobody. He looked at Alice, wild-eyed in fear and desperation.
'Where are they? Where have they gone?'
Bunny Ears emitted a low growl. He was looking to the East, beyond some bushes. Zohar ran off in the direction as Alice called out to him in vain.
They had been slaughtered near the small river that had served as their water supply. Buckets lay all around them, the spilled water mixing with their blood. Perhaps some of them had been ambushed while on a water-gathering run and others had rushed to their defense, only to meet the same fate.
