by Dhar, Mainak
'Bunny Ears, get back! Get everyone back into the bushes.'
Bunny Ears heard Alice and turned to face her and reluctantly obeyed her orders. One of the men on the boat spotted Alice and shouted out to his friends. Alice couldn't discern the words, but their impact was immediate. The man with the gun raised it to his shoulder and aimed at Alice.
That was the last mistake he ever made. Alice shot him once, her bullet entering his neck and exiting out the back. The man grabbed at his neck, blood spurting out from between his fingers as he fell. The other men gaped at her and then dropped their weapons and grabbed the oars on the side of the boat. They were too late. Alice picked off two of them with single shots. That left the last man, who was looking at her open-mouthed. Alice waded into the water, her rifle trained on him.
'Come out with your hands up and I will not kill you like I did your friends.'
The man looked pale and was scared out of his mind, but seeing Alice approach him, he jumped off the side of the boat and swam towards her. Alice pulled him to the shore, dripping wet and babbling something about mercy. Alice yanked him upright and then kicked his feet from under him, sending him sprawling in an ungainly heap. When he looked up, Alice's knife was at his throat. Not that he needed any further persuasion or threats—just Alice's face had him terrified out of his wits.
'Who are you and what do you want here?'
The man just kept looking at her blankly, terror in his eyes. Alice hit him on the bridge of his nose with the handle of her knife and he keeled over, screaming in agony as blood spurted from his nose.
'What were you and your friends doing here?'
'Alice, let me talk to him.'
She turned to see Cheshire behind her, and he walked over, hauling their captive to his feet.
'There are people back there who depend on me for their safety and I will not have scum like you endanger them. Answer her question or I will slit your throat now and dump you in the water.'
'We were told to look for a factory that made pills. That's all I know. I swear that's all I know.'
Alice thought back to the bag of medicines that Zohar's father had found and which had seemingly led to the raid on their settlement. Clearly there was someone out there who wanted these pills badly enough to kill for them. 'Do you know where this factory is?'
The man kept looking at Cheshire, as if he were afraid of looking at this talking Biter who had just killed his friends.
'I'm not sure. They showed us some old maps which said the factory may be within twenty kilometers of here. We planned to get off our boat here and look on foot. One of the other teams had seen a building north of here, and we were going to check that out.'
Something in what the man said caught Alice's attention.
'Who are 'they'? Who gave you the order to come here?'
The man looked at her, and she saw that he was afraid of something even more than he was of her.
'The men from the Crocodile. They told us what they wanted, and we cannot refuse them.'
A few minutes later, Alice was back in Cheshire's settlement. Their prisoner was still outside, guarded by Bunny Ears and the other Biters. Alice had not wanted him to see where the settlement was, and surrounded by Biters, he was so terrified that there was little question of him attempting an escape.
'Cheshire, I have seen a settlement slaughtered for these pills. If they are after them, they will come again, and while you are prepared, there are only a handful of you and you don't want to be put under a siege with all the kids here. That can end only one way.'
Abid began to protest.
'We have weapons and ammo, and we have our booby traps. We can hold out.'
Alice turned towards him.
'You may well hold off one wave, and if you're lucky, a couple more. Then your booby traps are finished. You shoot down another wave of attackers. Then another. Then what happens? You're not up against some bandits looking for random targets. Someone's guiding them, someone they all feel compelled to obey, and they will keep coming. All it would take is a few men with long guns who know what they're doing and a handful of cannon fodder like the idiot we captured and your settlement would fall in a day. Then what happens to the kids? I've seen a settlement where they killed every single person—young and old, male and female. If you sit here and wait for them to hit you, it's a matter of time before you're all dead. You know that as well as I do.'
Abid looked down. Alice had been brutally honest, but she had also been right. Cheshire looked at his men and he saw the same feeling reflected in their eyes.
'Alice, what do you want to do?'
'We find this factory and we find out what they want so badly in these pills.'
***
Alice and Cheshire had been cycling for just over half an hour when they saw the abandoned factory. A board lay shattered by its side, proclaiming the name of an old British pharmaceutical company that was now long forgotten. Their captive sat behind Alice. Alice had overridden much protest from Bunny Ears, who wanted to come with her. She had asked him to deploy the Biters in the bushes around the settlement to guard against any more intruders.
They left the bikes outside and entered the factory through rusted gates lying on the ground. As Cheshire went in, Alice scanned the area, her rifle at her shoulder, but soon it was apparent that there was nobody here, and probably had not been for years. The man they had captured was behind her, and as Cheshire began rummaging through the boxes scattered around the factory floor, the man spasmed and fell to the ground. He stiffened and the veins on his neck and arms bulged and his back arched as the man moaned in agony.
'What is happening to him?'
Cheshire looked at the man in silence.
'I had suspected it when I saw his eyes and the marks on his arms and torso. He's hooked onto some drug and is having withdrawal symptoms. Come on, there's nothing we can do for him.'
Alice walked inside the factory, seeing little but empty boxes and the occasional empty bottle. Large sections of the factory were blackened, and at some point over the years, a fire had ravaged the building. Whatever the factory had once contained had long been looted or destroyed in the fire.
Cheshire kicked away an empty box, sending it skittering across the floor. The box revealed a trap door on the factory floor. Alice tugged on the rusty chains that held it closed and opened it. As they crawled down the rickety stairs, Cheshire took out an old flashlight. The space beneath them was filled with boxes of pills and syrups. The factory owners must have locked them here when the Rising began, hoping to recover their inventory when things got better, which of course they never did. Alice looked at some of the boxes, seeing unfamiliar words on the side. One which appeared regularly was 'codeine'.
'Why do they want the pills so badly?'
'That part is easy. They need those pills to make whatever drugs they're on. But that's not what worries me.'
In the short while that Alice had known Cheshire, he had seemed confident, always ready with his grin, but now he was dead serious.
'These different gangs operating across such a broad area looking for these pills means that someone, somewhere is coordinating them. That means someone with considerable power or influence over them, and now they're right at our doorstep.'
***
Alice saw the smoke rising above the treeline first and began pumping her legs harder, riding as fast as she could. Cheshire was fit for his age, but was an old man, and unlike Alice, would get tired like any human. So he fell further and further behind as Alice raced towards the settlement.
A terrible battle had been waged on the banks of the lake, and three torn bodies of attackers lay sprawled, but there were also a half dozen Biters lying around, their heads shot out. There were two more boats lying near the bank, and Alice guessed they had been on another scouting mission when they had spotted the abandoned boat with the bodies of the men she had killed and come closer.
She wanted to scream out for Bunny Ears, to see i
f her old companion was safe, but she didn't want to alert any remaining attackers. As she parted the bushes and walked towards the settlement, she passed two bodies, ripped to shreds by the booby traps. But two men hid behind trees, pouring fire into the settlement from automatic weapons. These men were nothing like the local bandits and thugs she had encountered so far. They had fair hair, wore thick body armor and were carrying well-maintained automatic rifles. The goons they employed had died as fodder for the Biters and in the booby traps, and these men had come in unscathed. There was return fire from the settlement, but the two men were too well concealed to be hit. One of them reached for a radio at his chest, calling for reinforcements. As she crept closer, the man spoke in thickly accented English.
'Get our location and send more men. We are…'
He never finished his sentence as Alice shot him in the back of his head with her pistol. As he fell, the second man turned to face Alice, bringing his rifle up to shoot. Alice shot him thrice. Two shots hit him on his chest. His vest stopped them but he was rocked back by the impact and his own burst went wild. The third shot hit him just above the right eye.
Alice spent the next five minutes making sure there were no more attackers, and then a growl came from her right. It was Bunny Ears and he was followed by two Biters who had fresh blood coming out of wounds on their necks and arms. They still wore knives at their belts, showing that till recently they had been among their attackers. Alice guessed their attackers had sent a smaller force to lure away Bunny Ears and some of the Biters while the two men who clearly were the best-armed and equipped, perhaps their leaders, attacked the settlement. She nodded in relief at Bunny Ears, and realized just how much she had dreaded losing him.
Cheshire now rode into view and the gates of the settlement opened. Alice walked in, and the people inside cheered in relief at their narrow escape, especially when they heard that their attackers had been calling for reinforcements when Alice interrupted them. Alice went back out to strip the two men of their weapons and equipment. Body armor, radios, automatic weapons, all with lettering in a script that Alice did not recognize, and clearly they had a base they were coordinating with. Cheshire had suspected that some larger force was coordinating the efforts of the bandits in locating pills, and now they had got their first glimpse at what that force looked like.
They all started when one of the radios came to life.
'Where are you?'
Then came chattering in a language Alice had never heard. Cheshire muttered to himself.
'Russians. What the bloody hell are Russians doing here?'
John pulled a map from one of the men's pockets.
'This map has locations marked. I guess areas they've scouted, but one area is marked in a different color, and it has arrows leading out of it, indicating routes to the other locations. I'd guess that's where their base is.'
Cheshire took a look.
'Karachi.'
Alice didn't know where that was, but as she looked around at the terrified faces of the children in the settlement, as she saw Zohar cling to her arm, shaking at the narrow escape they knew they had just had, and as she thought back to the massacre at his settlement, she knew one thing.
She was going to Karachi.
She had fought for many things—her family, her friends, the people of Wonderland. People called her a freedom fighter, but the freedom she most fought for lay not in rising up against any particular tyrant, but in freeing herself from being haunted by the paralyzing, numbing guilt of losing everyone she had cared about. A part of her still blamed herself for bringing the wrath of the Red Guards and Zeus onto her people, and she had never really stopped making amends by fighting to free others, to atone for her reckless adventure down a hole in the ground that had triggered events that had killed her family and destroyed her settlement. Now she saw another settlement, another group of people who had just been trying to get by and create a better life for themselves, threatened by forces well beyond their means to defend against.
This was why Alice had left the stability to Wonderland. Everyone had a path they must follow, and Alice's path did not lie in enjoying the comforts of the world before the Rising that her old friends in Wonderland were trying so hard to restore—electricity, running water, canned food, entertainment. She had little to contribute there, and she knew nothing of the world before the Rising. However, what she could contribute was to help those who still did not enjoy the stability and peace that the people of Wonderland did. People like the ones at this settlement.
Some people really came into their own when the darkness was dispelled and they got an opportunity to create a better world by the light of day. People like Aalok, Danish, Doctor Edwards and others like them. However, some people's purpose lay in slaying the monsters that lay waiting in the darkness of night and keeping that darkness at bay. People like Alice.
She picked up her rifle and nodded at Bunny Ears.
'We're going to Karachi, old friend.'
***
Of course, it wasn't quite as simple as that. Alice had started out the gate when John walked behind her.
'I'll come along. I can be of help.'
Alice shook her head even before the words were fully out of John's mouth.
'Bunny Ears and I don't need food or water and we are a bit harder to kill than an average human. So we'll be much faster on our own.'
John smiled, wondering how to put into words what he had in mind without offending Alice, but then he just said it.
'That may be true, but the two of you won't exactly blend in. I can help get intel and link up with any humans we find out there. As for food, we used to be called Snake Eaters for a reason. I don't need a fancy table set for me—I can live off the land.'
Alice looked at Cheshire, hoping he would talk his friend out of this, but she found little support there.
'Alice, I asked John to come along. Whatever's out there threatens us as well, and we need to contribute. I have a bad back and can't really go out playing cowboy any more, but John here is the fittest of us all, and back in the day, he went into all kind of hellholes with Delta. If you need a man in a fight with you, he's the best in our group.'
Realizing that he had made up his mind, Alice nodded at John. They had reached the gate when Alice heard little footsteps behind her. It was Zohar.
'Come on, now. Not you, kid. When I have finally got you somewhere safe you are not coming out into danger with me again.'
Zohar looked at her with the wisdom in his eyes belying his age. A wisdom that comes from realizing at an early age just how fickle and brutal life could be, a wisdom that makes one grow up before one's time.
'I'm done hiding and being safe. I want to be like you, to help people, to fight evil instead of hiding from it. We hid all these years, what good did it do us? It found us in the end.'
'Zohar…'
He burst into tears.
'I went with those bandits. I told them all about our settlement. I caused my parents' deaths. I want to do something that matters for a change. I want to help someone instead of getting them killed.'
Alice looked at him. An orphan, his family taken brutally from him. A child who had to live with the terrible guilt of perhaps having caused his family's death. A guilt that she knew could be erased only by making sure others did not fall prey to the same evil his family had.
'Come on, kid. Join the gang.'
***
SIX
Alice and Bunny Ears needed no food, water or rest, and so they set a scorching pace. John was a trained Special Forces soldier, and he kept up pretty well, but what really surprised Alice was how hard Zohar drove himself. They had been walking nonstop for close to three hours when Alice turned towards Zohar.
'Want a break?'
Zohar shook his head and kept going.
'Only when it's dark and you decide to take a break.'
John came up beside Alice, whispering to her.
'The kid's pretty tough on himse
lf, isn't he?'
'He knows we're going to find out the men behind his family's massacre. Also, I think he pleaded to come along, and now doesn't want to slow us down.'
Even as she said the words, Alice couldn't help smiling. A child on a mission of vengeance, with bull-headed stubbornness that led to trouble more often than not. She had known such a child not too long ago, very well in fact, because she had been that child.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden roar from Bunny Ears. John and Alice both got their rifles up, flipping the safeties off as they ran ahead to see what Bunny Ears had discovered. Zohar was too small to carry a rifle, but he had his handgun out as well and was just behind as they approached Bunny Ears, who was looking down at something on the side of the highway. It was a body. A young man, lying dead on the ground, his body already stiff, indicating that he had been dead for some time. She knelt and saw the greenish scales covering his arms and stomach that she had seen before. John was beside her.
'Look at his leg—bent at a weird angle. I'd say he fell and broke his leg and couldn't keep up and his friends left him to die. Now, what's this?'
There was a syringe lying next to the body and John looked at it closely, seeing a milky liquid inside.
'As we thought, these guys are on some drugs.'
'Could that do this to their bodies?'
John looked at the scales. 'Maybe. Let's keep going. It will be dark soon, and we'll need to find a place to hunker down till daylight. I reckon Karachi is no more than a day's journey away, but I'd rest up before we get there, since we have no real idea who we'll be against. Anyone running an organized racket like this has to have the brains, muscle and weapons to be a tough enemy.'
What John said made a lot of sense, and soon they found a small gathering of trees near the highway with an abandoned truck near it. The truck was badly rusted, but the large cab in the back still had its canvas cover intact, giving them both cover and shelter from the elements. John and Zohar slept while Alice and Bunny Ears decided to take turns being on watch. Alice didn't feel sleepy any more but she did get bored, so she walked up to Bunny Ears.
