The Crocodile's Jaws: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No.7)

by Dhar, Mainak

  Alice heard his growl and turned to see the Biters rush towards a thick bush. She shouted at Zohar to get out the water and scrambled towards the shore, where her weapons were kept in a pile. But even as she neared the shore, a loud scream rang out as Bunny Ears parted the bush and the Biters streamed in.

  The scream had been that of a small child.

  ***

  FOUR

  The identity and fate of the first human to have become a Biter might be forever lost to history, but ever since the first infected person had bared his or her teeth and laid lifeless eyes on human prey, Biters had come to be regarded with a fear that was not unfounded given the bloodbath to come. Perhaps one day someone would find out what had happened to the infected, for the answer lay not in the supernatural, but in the laboratories and test-tubes where men had created the instruments of their own downfall in their quest for power. However, there are some things science cannot explain, and perhaps humanity is indeed something more subjective and amorphous than to be precisely measured and distilled through scientific observation and measurement. Indeed, perhaps the best way of regaining humanity is to be treated with compassion and respect, to have something or someone to live for, to have a future that is worth striving for. Perhaps, given time, all Biters could have started regaining some vestiges of the people they had been, if they had not been loathed and hunted down, if someone like Alice had been there to act as a bridge between them and humans.

  Perhaps that is what had happened to Bunny Ears, but whatever the cause, when the little three-year-old girl looked up at him and screamed, he did not lunge forward and tear her into pieces. Indeed, three Biters behind him who roared and tried to attack the girl found themselves being pushed back. Bunny Ears went down on one knee and regarded the little girl standing in front of him, wearing a pink dress and now crying in terror at the Biters standing just feet from her. Bunny Ears growled in frustration, not knowing how to reassure her, to tell her that he posed no threat to her, since she was not someone who could threaten Alice.

  Alice had now run up to the Biters carrying her handgun and knife, but as she saw the scene before her, she smiled and tapped Bunny Ears on his shoulder.

  'Thank you, Bunny Ears. The rest of you, we do not hurt children or those who pose no threat to us.'

  Bunny Ears let out a low growl of pleasure and the other Biters shuffled about, uncertain of what to do with the tiny human before them. Alice spoke gently to the girl, who must have been reassured to hear a human voice, but perhaps equally terrified to see her Biter-like face.

  'Where is your home?'

  The girl's lip quivered and she seemed to be on the verge of tears again when the bushes behind her parted and a woman appeared, her gaunt face framed by silver hair, a shotgun in her hands. Her eyes widened when she saw Alice and her companions and she was about to bring the shotgun up when Alice shouted out.

  'No, please, we mean no harm.'

  Hearing her voice, the woman hesitated and then pointed her gun down when Zohar walked up next to Alice.

  'You are a Biter yet you talk. How can that be?'

  'My name is Alice and it's a long story. Let us see you to safety and perhaps if you have any food to spare for the boy here it would be much appreciated. Then, if you're still interested, I can tell you all about how I came to be who and where I am.'

  The woman stuck out a tentative hand, flinching slightly at the cold, clammy feel of Alice's hand.

  'I am Ayesha. Follow me. I'm sure we can spare some food for your companion, but if you don't mind, can your friends stay here? The men would be alarmed to see so many Biters.'

  Bunny Ears was clearly unhappy at letting Alice go ahead into the unknown, but she soothed him and told him she would call for him when it was time to rejoin her. Alice and Zohar followed Ayesha and the little girl through a patch of forest, and every so often Ayesha would tell Alice to move to the right or left. Nothing was said, but several fine wires criss-crossed the trees and the ground in places. Someone had done a pretty good job of booby-trapping the approach. Certainly no Biter horde would sense them, and any bandits would probably not have the training or patience to watch for them either.

  Alice's senses were now heightened, wondering who this woman was and who her companions were to have had such training. Her hand went to the gun at her belt almost unconsciously and she had to stay her hand with an effort of will as they passed the trees and entered a clearing. Even this area was booby-trapped and Ayesha told them to move around several patches of grass. In the distance stood a wooden wall twice as tall as a man.

  As if such a well-defended settlement in the middle of nowhere was not strange enough, light glinted off something. From years of training and experience, Alice knew what she had spotted. The scope of a sniper rifle was now trained on her. Now that it was well and truly too late to turn back, she kept going, approaching whoever or whatever awaited her and Zohar behind those walls.

  ***

  The gate opened when they were a dozen meters away, at least four snipers aiming at her. No doubt through their scopes they had seen what she looked like and would equally without doubt have shot her down but for the fact that she had two of their own and a human child in tow. She heard a faint growl behind her. Bunny Ears would be anxious but she was glad she had not brought him along. Seeing so many Biters approach might have sent some trigger-happy guard off.

  A man stood at the open gate, a trim, tall man with grey hair carrying a submachine gun in his hand. He raised his hand in greeting and Ayesha smiled and ran towards him, followed by the little girl. Alice stopped, unsure how welcome she really was, and the man looked in her direction repeatedly as Ayesha filled him in on what had happened. He looked at Zohar and motioned for him to come closer. The boy held onto Alice's hand but she pushed him gently.

  'Go on. You are human and may be more welcome here. At least they may have some food for you.'

  As Zohar approached, the man's features softened as he ruffled the boy's hair and sent him into the settlement with Ayesha and the girl and then he walked towards Alice.

  'You are quite unlike anyone I have seen, girl. With all that's happened, I thought I'd seen it all, but I have never seen anyone like you.'

  Alice was conscious of the fact that the man was smiling, yet his eyes were hard, and his finger was still on the trigger of his gun, held casually in front of him, but which could be turned on her in a second. If it came to it, Alice would take a bullet to the body and then finish him with her gun or knife, both of which were hanging at her belt. Then, to her surprise, his hand left the trigger and came up, extended towards her. She shook his hand and he closed in.

  'That little girl, Laila, had wandered off sometime this morning and my wife, Ayesha, had gone crazy looking for her. Ayesha went out on her own and if they had met unfriendlier company than yours, I don't know what would have happened. Whoever you are, I owe your young friend a decent meal, and if you want shelter for a while, it is yours.'

  Alice shook his hand, feeling his grip. The man looked frail, but his grip was strong. She nodded and walked into their settlement. There were six more men visible, three fair-skinned like the man who had greeted her, and three more of brownish skin, like many of those Alice had grown up with in her own settlement in the Deadland. After the Rising, the god you worshipped or the color of your skin meant very little. The only real factor that bound together the survivors was the fact they were yet alive and yet human. That was all that mattered, yet Alice was curious as to how men from so-called Western countries had come to live in a remote settlement in the middle of a wild, desolate wasteland.

  Zohar sat in a corner, devouring a piece of bread with a bowl of soup. The walls were ringed with barbed wire and raised platforms for snipers, and there were neatly arrayed huts for people to live in. Beyond the buildings, there was a large farm, which must have stretched for at least a kilometer or more, all ringed by the defensive wall, and the field was covered with crops—tomatoes, potat
oes and wheat. These men had created a self-sufficient community, much like the settlement Alice had grown up in.

  The man who had welcomed her in let her look around and then nodded at her.

  'Now, let's talk. Who are you and what brings you here?'

  He listened in rapt attention as Alice told her story, and soon all six men were gathered around her, together with four women, including Ayesha. Alice kept speaking, of her life in the Deadland, of the Zeus mercenaries who had been as much of a threat as the Biters, of her fateful plunge down a hole in the ground and the adventure it had unleashed. Of the wars that had followed, and how the world that she had known had transformed, how people had learned to rid themselves of the tyranny enforced by powerful men from far away—a tyranny based on perpetuating the fear of Biters, a tyranny that thrived on bartering blind obedience for so-called security; one that made people no more than slaves to serve the needs of a few elite, one that was born out of the same conspiracy that had triggered the Rising in the first place.

  It sounded like a fantastic story, and coming out of the mouth of any other young girl her age, it would have sounded less believable. But Alice herself was a walking testimony to the truthfulness of her account. A symbol that Biters were not quite what people had been taught to believe them to be, and that the biggest threat to ordinary folks sometimes came not from far-away foreign terror, but from the immediate tyranny of those who ruled in their name. She showed them the old Zeus tablet she carried and messages from her friends back at Wonderland. She told them of how she had set out on a new journey, born out of a desire to see what lay beyond the land she had known as home and to see how people elsewhere were coping, and if they could be helped, as her own people had been.

  When she finished, every single one of the adults looked at her with rapt attention. The man who had met her and who seemed to be their leader smiled, a slightly lopsided smile that seemed to be his style, and the hard glint in his eyes disappeared.

  'Alice, yours is an amazing tale, and you seem to be an amazing young lady. Our story may not be quite as eventful, but we have had our share of adventures. Let me tell you the story of our little group. My name is Joshua Cheshire and we call ourselves Cheshire's Cats.'

  ***

  'I was a fighter pilot with the 617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force. Long ago, one of my great-grand uncles had led the squadron, and I bear his family name. We were on sea trials on the new aircraft carrier, the Queen Elizabeth, flying the newly acquired F-35 fighters, when the Rising started. We were deployed near the Persian Gulf and were ordered to get to Pakistan, where things were starting to go out of control.'

  One of the white men, a lean man but looking to possess tremendous, wiry strength and endurance, took up the tale.

  'I'm Jarrod Gorman. Me and my buddy here, John Ayer, were with Delta and had been inserted to ensure terrorists did not get Pakistan's nukes. We were all too late.'

  A tall, brooding man, presumably John, nodded along as Jarrod continued.

  'Pakistan's armed forces had been badly infiltrated. They launched nukes against India and turned on each other, and us. It was a bloodbath, especially when India retaliated.'

  Alice told them what she had learned, and how all the chaos unfolding during the Rising had not been a coincidence. It had been carefully orchestrated by some of the world's richest and most powerful men, the members of the Executive Committee, who were now in prison or dead in what had been the United States. Their plot had called for Earth to be depopulated through nuclear war and the spread of a deadly new virus, so that a more 'manageable' number of survivors would live who could be sustained on the planet's dwindling food and oil supplies and serve as slave labor for the New World Order.

  The three men who looked to be locals had been silent till now, but one of them snorted angrily as he heard the tale.

  'I am Major Abid Hussain. I served in the Pakistani Army and my men and I fought the jihadis till the end. Now we know how we, and our nation, were set up and betrayed.'

  Cheshire had been shot down on a mission to destroy rogue missile launchers, and hooked up with Jarrod, John and their team, who were also stranded behind enemy lines. As the cities were consumed in nuclear fires, they had escaped into the remote rural areas, fighting their way through jihadis, bandits and Biters. They had met up with Abid's team and finally set up a small settlement. They had rescued Ayesha from bandits, and in time, Cheshire had married her.

  'Just six of you? Where are the others?'

  Cheshire's grin disappeared.

  'There were over thirty of us. Biters and bandits whittled us down till we found this place and created a more permanent and secure base. Easy access to water, enough cover and also enough space to grow food. John here is our resident farming expert.'

  The big man nodded.

  'Grew up in a farm in Michigan before joining the Army. Abid here is good with machines as well, and we jury-rigged a biodiesel plant. To feed fifty mouths, we need just over a square kilometer of land, and we have more than that, so we're pretty self-sufficient.'

  They seemed to have done very well for themselves, considering the odds they must have faced when they started off. Then something in what John said struck Alice.

  'Fifty? There are only a handful of you here.'

  Cheshire nodded to Ayesha and she unlocked the doors of a large barn, and to Alice's astonishment, more than thirty kids came trooping out, ranging from small toddlers to teenagers. Many of them looked fearfully at Alice but seemed reassured that she had been welcomed by their guardians. Cheshire's toothy grin was back.

  'Lots of villages had been ravaged here, and while we couldn't help everyone, we took in a few orphaned kids, really babies—now they're the older teens you see here. Over time, we set out on limited patrols and found more families that needed help, or had just abandoned kids as they ran from Biters or bandits. We brought them in.'

  Alice immediately looked at Zohar. With her, he had little to look forward to other than more danger and hardship. He could find a good home here with these people. One where he would find safety and food. Perhaps there had been a reason why they had stumbled onto this settlement, after all. She was about to bring it up when she heard an ear-splitting roar.

  It was Bunny Ears, and it meant there was danger nearby.

  ***

  'Ayesha, get the kids inside!'

  As she began to get the kids into the barn, Alice caught Cheshire's eye. He knew what was on her mind.

  'Take the boy as well.'

  Zohar had taken the gun out of his belt and was coming towards Alice.

  'I can fight. I don't need to hide with the kids.'

  He was no older than many of the kids. Yet perhaps the experience of the last few days, when he had lost his family and taken a life, had aged him more than she had realized.

  'Zohar, I need you there to protect the kids. We can't be distracted with having to worry with them if there's danger coming our way.'

  As he scampered away, a grin on his face, Cheshire smiled at Alice.

  'Now let's welcome our guests.'

  Alice's first concern was not the safety of the settlement. She had seen the booby traps, and it would need a concerted assault by a large force to breach them. She was however worried about Bunny Ears and the Biters putting themselves in harm's way in trying to protect her.

  All around her the men were moving into position, moving with military precision. The arsenal they wielded gave them firepower disproportionate to their numbers. One of Abid's men was carrying a rocket launcher and Abid himself had a large belt-fed machine gun which was now being placed along the wall. All the others had assault rifles and had put on belts festooned with grenades. Jarrod was carrying a long sniper rifle which he rested on the wall.

  The men were ready for a fight and Alice did not doubt that their firepower together with the net of booby traps would give any potential attacker a lot of trouble. However, she had other, more urgent business to attend to. She
approached Cheshire, who was loading a fresh magazine into his rifle.

  'Open the gate. Bunny Ears is out there.'

  He was barely able to contain his smirk.

  'A Biter?'

  Alice looked him squarely in the eye.

  'A Biter who has been my companion for years. A Biter who has risked his life to save mine more times than I can count. A Biter who gives his loyalty without asking for anything in return. How many humans would do that?'

  Cheshire relented and Alice slipped out to meet whatever threat lay beyond the gates.

  ***

  FIVE

  Alice walked through the intricate layer of booby traps, her head telling her to watch her step and not blunder into one of the traps and her heart telling her to hurry up, to rush to Bunny Ears' aid. Bunny Ears would unthinkingly sacrifice his life to save hers, and she was not going to abandon him when he faced danger. Humans had agendas, they wanted things in return for their loyalty and service. Biters expected none of that. As Alice rushed on, she thought, who was ultimately more human?

  As she cleared the thick bushes that concealed the settlement, she saw Bunny Ears and the other Biters facing off against men coming ashore in a boat. The boat carried four men armed with an assortment of weapons—cleavers, knives and one rifle. Judging by the defenses and the firepower Cheshire and his comrades had at their disposal, these attackers would be little more than cannon fodder. Yet they seemed to have no specific agenda or target. They seemed to have been on a scouting expedition when they had stumbled onto the Biters, and there was nothing to be gained by alerting them to the location of the settlement. The fact that they were part of something bigger was clear to Alice from the fact that they all seemed to have the vacant, crazed look of the men who had attacked Zohar's settlement, and as she took a closer look through the scope on her rifle, each of them had the same scaly skin that she had seen earlier.