Phantoms of the North: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 6)

by Dhar, Mainak

  Phantoms of the North

  An Alice in Deadland Adventure

  By Mainak Dhar

  Copyright © 2013 Mainak Dhar

  All Rights Reserved.

  www.mainakdhar.com

  This is a work of fiction, and all characters and incidents depicted in it are purely the result of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely co-incidental.

  Table of Contents

  Greetings from the Deadland

  Phantoms of the North

  Credits

  About Mainak Dhar

  As always,

  for Puja & Aaditya

  GREETINGS FROM THE DEADLAND

  In late November of 2011, I uploaded my novel Alice in Deadland to the Kindle store using Amazon’s KDP self-publishing program. I had first discovered the tremendous opportunity in reaching readers worldwide through the Kindle store in March, and after a modest beginning (I sold 118 ebooks in my first month), I was beginning to see some success, having sold some 20,000 ebooks by November. However, nothing had prepared me for the reception my story about a girl called Alice in a dystopian world called the Deadland got from readers. Alice in Deadland quickly became an Amazon.com bestseller and encouragement from readers like yourself led me to write the sequel, Through The Killing Glass, which was published in March 2012.

  As of November 2012, the two Alice in Deadland novels had been downloaded by well over 100,000 readers on the Kindle store. This was the kind of reception most writers dream of, and certainly more than I had ever expected. I received more than two hundred reader emails and also started a Facebook group for Alice in Deadland fans (at http://www.facebook.com/groups/345795412099089/). The feedback I got was pretty unanimous—readers wanted to know more about the world that Alice found herself in. How had our civilization been reduced to the Deadland? What was the story behind some of the characters readers encountered such as the Queen and Bunny Ears?

  That feedback motivated me to keep the story alive, and I wrote the prequel to the series, Off With Their Heads. As I interacted with readers, I was inspired to take the story further. Many of my readers asked me what would happen if Alice came back to the land her parents came from, the land where the architects of The Rising were still entrenched—the United States? That led to Hunting The Snark. A few readers asked me what had life been like for Alice when she was growing up in her settlement? What had she seen and endured that made her the girl we meet in the first Alice in Deadland novel? This collection of shorts takes us all back to those dark years, and together we will explore the experiences in her formative years that made Alice who she became later as she dove into the adventures depicted in the other books in the series. That led to the fifth book in the series- Deadland: Untold Stories of Alice in Deadland.

  This novel takes Alice’s tale forward, as she encounters terrible new enemies and embarks on new adventures. You, dear reader, have been a partner in this journey, and this series is as much yours as it is mine. I do hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Mainak Dhar

  ONE

  It had been a long time since Alice had a birthday party. The mere fact that they were all able to gather in the middle of Wonderland and sing songs and eat cake together with no worries about Zeus troopers, Red Guards or air strikes told Alice just how much things had changed.

  Six months ago, she had returned from the Homeland after her mission to seek out and destroy the threat posed by the Snark missiles in the possession of the Executive Committee, after they had used such a weapon to obliterate Shanghai. As Alice looked at the smiling people around her, she hoped they all realized just how much had been lost to buy them this freedom and security. She had seen the people of Wonderland fall into complacency before, only to almost lose all they had fought for to the plotting of the Central Committee. She would never let that happen again. Freedom was most threatened when those who had it began to take it for granted. Thousands had perished in the long struggle against the Red Guards and their masters in the Central Committee; thousands more had perished in Shanghai in the nuclear blast that ended their short-lived liberation, and in the Homeland that had once been the United States, many more had died in the struggle that raged till the last remnants of the Executive Committee surrendered.

  The cost had been high for Alice as well. She had lost her family, and many of her friends had perished fighting by her side. She remembered birthdays back at their settlement, her mother baking cake for her, his sister Jane hugging her, her father telling her she was his angel. May fourth. That was the day she had been told she had been born. In the world Alice had grown up in, calendars and months meant little, but still it was nice to know that you had a special day all to yourself in the year—a day when you could set aside worries about bandits, Biters and Zeus mercenaries to celebrate with your family. Her chest ached dully as she remembered her family, and she realized that half Biter or not, she could still feel pain and sorrow.

  Of course, having become half Biter meant that she was deprived of many of the pleasures that came with being a young girl—including enjoying her own birthday cake. She bit into it, but tasted nothing.

  A growl came from next to her where Bunny Ears, her trusted companion, was watching her. Being a Biter, he had no interest in the cake, and she wasn’t even sure that he remembered what a birthday was, but as always, he was there by her side. Among the hundreds gathered around her were many Biters, another sign of how things had changed. Alice’s role as a unifying force, a very real symbol of the co-existence of human and Biter, had helped, as had the fact that all the humans in Wonderland were now vaccinated so that there was no longer the fear of them turning into Biters. However, more than that, what bound them together was the shared knowledge of just how hard they had fought and bled together for their freedom and survival.

  ‘Folks, it’s almost showtime. In ten minutes, you’ll see what my baby is capable of.’

  There was a buzz of anticipation as with that announcement a thin, bespectacled man made his way to the middle of the group.

  ‘Aalok, just make sure you don’t blow us all up.’

  That comment came from Arjun, who had been a shoe salesman before The Rising, and became a guerrilla fighter alongside Alice in her struggle against the Red Guards. Today, he was effectively the leader of their settlement at Wonderland. When she had returned from her mission to the Homeland, she had seen how well he had run things in her absence, and while she was young in years, she knew that people needed a very different kind of leader in times of peace than in times of war. Arjun was the kind of leader Wonderland needed now. Alice’s own special skills might still be needed, and she would talk to Arjun after Aalok was finished with his demonstration. With all the hype he had built up, she sincerely hoped he would deliver.

  They had chanced upon Aalok three months ago while on a routine recon sweep a few miles outside the borders of Wonderland. He had been dehydrated, starving, and with feet bloodied raw from walking for days on end.

  Aalok’s arrival at Wonderland had been a mixed blessing. It turned out that he had been a scientist before The Rising, and was by far the smartest man Alice had ever met. He asked questions that others didn’t even think of, and had used his newfound freedom to repay his liberators with a slew of innovations. He had improvised a running water supply at a big public toilet complex he created, and Alice was amazed at how excited some of the older residents had been at getting a toilet that flushed. She had never seen one growing up in the Dead
land, and she didn’t quite understand the excitement that surrounded their unveiling, but she was glad to see their joy.

  Today, Aalok had an even bigger enterprise on his mind. He had spent much of the last two months scouring through the ruins of what had been Delhi, scavenging the wrecked and deserted remains of factories and offices for the parts he needed, and today he was ready to show the people of Wonderland what he had been able to achieve.

  ‘Alice, would the birthday girl do the honors?’

  Alice smiled as she took the string Aalok was holding and tugged it hard. The cloth that had spread over a large area in the middle of the square was pulled back revealing dozens of gleaming black squares that were arrayed end to end. Alice had heard rumors of how he would harness the power of the sun, but she wasn’t sure she understood much of how that was supposed to work. Now she was about to find out.

  ‘Let there be light!’

  Displaying his usual penchant for the theatrical that seemed to go hand in hand with his brilliance, Aalok flipped a switch and all the buildings around them lit up. He had installed a single bulb in each of them, and there was a collective gasp all around as people understood what he had done. They could now have electricity without depending on unreliable generators and precious fuel supplies. With solar power, they would have all the light they could want. A couple of the older folks started talking about fans and coolers and many reached out to shake Aalok’s hand.

  Alice had never seen her people so excited in recent times, and it was also a reminder to her that while she had led their fight for freedom, creating a life for them, one that mimicked all the comforts and conveniences of the life they had known before The Rising, was something she could not do on her own. At times like this, she wished her parents had been around to see just how far they had come from their settlement in the Deadland. Wonderland was now home to close to five thousand souls, spread over a few city blocks in the middle of what had once been Delhi.

  Aalok joked with some of the men that this was a demonstration—his first priority was installing a working set of streetlights which would allow them to continue their chores after dark. Then would come electrification of all the homes. He was beaming when Alice came up to him.

  ‘This is fantastic. Thank you so much.’

  He smiled down at Alice.

  ‘It’s the least I could do after you picked me up from out there. Now, have you considered my request?’

  As he was swept away in a crowd of more admirers, Alice stepped aside, glad that she had not had to answer his question yet.

  Arjun had heard the exchange. ‘I think we should talk. Whatever we think of it, Aalok is now a very popular man here, and he has been talking to others. Word is spreading of what he says, and we need to have a plan before people start drawing their own conclusions.’

  That evening, they met in the old library that they had made their meeting room. Arjun was there, as was Danish, who was in charge of all their communications with the outside world through his center at an old temple that he called Looking Glass. While he would not take any part in the discussions, Bunny Ears was there, as always by Alice’s side. If anything, after the fighting they had seen in the Homeland on their last mission, he had become even more protective of her.

  There was a knock on the door, and Arjun opened it to reveal Dr. Edwards and Aalok. The Doctor had returned to Wonderland with a consignment of vaccines two months ago from the Homeland and had opened a medical center to treat people. He had bonded instantly with Aalok, both having been men of science before The Rising, and both having been on the run when they had been taken into Wonderland. These were the men the people of Wonderland had chosen to lead them, and Alice’s inclusion was automatic, given the role she had played in starting it all. She normally stayed out of their administrative duties, as they were better qualified than her to decide water supplies, crop planting and resolving domestic disputes, but the issue they needed to talk about today was right up her alley.

  ‘Alice, there are many out there like me. I wouldn’t have imposed this responsibility upon you, but after hearing your story and what you and the others here have achieved, you are their only hope.’

  In his first few days at Wonderland, Aalok had been fevered and weak, often shouting deliriously in his sleep, talking of slave traders and warlords and of a woman called Sayoni. When he had recovered, he had kept to himself, but then after knowing the full story of Alice, he had sought her out and confided in her. He told her of slave traders who herded people like cattle in the remote mountains near the border with what had been Pakistan, an area they called the Wasteland. He told her of people disappearing into the mountain passes never to return. Alice and the others had been horrified, but as Arjun had pointed out to her, the Central Committee had been interested in the Deadland because of the human settlements near the old city and the large farmlands they could use to feed their people back in the Mainland. The border areas and what had been Pakistan had been devastated by nuclear strikes during The Rising, and what happened there, or if people even lived there at all, had been a matter both unknown and of little concern to the Central Committee.

  Alice wanted to say that her concern was Wonderland and its people, and that she didn’t want to bring any new danger upon them. However, she also knew from her own experience that tyranny and injustice could not be avoided by turning your back to them—they had to be confronted before they came knocking on your door. She looked up to see both Arjun and Danish nodding. They too knew from personal experience what it was like to live under tyranny and how precious freedom was.

  ‘Aalok, get ready. We have a trip tomorrow.’

  ***

  The Jeep sped through the deserted countryside, its roaring engine the only sound to be heard for miles around. They were now three hours into their journey and Alice began to see a clear difference in the landscape compared to where she had grown up. The Deadland around Delhi had been pockmarked with villages and towns before The Rising, and there were a lot of places for human survivors to take shelter. In contrast, the area they were now in was full of vast fields, sometimes with no sign of a single building for miles. Aalok was talking nonstop, perhaps excited that Alice had agreed to follow up on his tale, and also perhaps scared at going back closer to the horrors he had escaped.

  ‘When The Rising took place, the rural areas were wiped out totally. Many people came back from cities where they were working to be with their families, and once the infection spread, there was no escaping it. There was no police, no army like in the big cities like Delhi.’

  Bunny Ears, sitting next to Alice in the back seat of the open Jeep, growled. Alice too had caught the scent, and Aalok continued.

  ‘You thought where you grew up was the Deadland, but there were at least humans there—here all you’ll find are Biters.’

  ‘How did you survive your escape?’

  Aalok’s mouth tightened as he replied, remembering the horrors he had endured.

  ‘It took me over a month or perhaps more. I really lost track of time. I’d walk when I could, and hide the rest of the time. I escaped with a knife I took from a guard, and I…’

  He looked at Bunny Ears and didn’t complete his sentence, not sure if he should speak of killing Biters.

  ‘Alice, what is that mess?’

  ‘Salil, stop the Jeep.’

  The young man who had accompanied them, chosen by Arjun for his proven skills in tracking and combat, brought the Jeep to a halt. In front of them was a vast, mangled heap of steel and concrete. All around it, the ground was barren and blackened. Aalok spoke in a whisper.

  ‘This is getting closer to the old border with Pakistan. Many areas were nuked in the fighting. This seems to have been some sort of forward deployment of the army that was hit by a nuke.’

  Alice had seen what such weapons did to people when she witnessed the devastation of Shanghai, and they proceeded in silence, nothing but the blackened, charred remains of the war machines o
f the old days around them. A couple of hours more and they began to see snow-covered mountains in the distance.

  ‘Ladakh.’

  Aalok held up a hand and Salil stopped the Jeep.

  ‘We’re here.’

  Alice followed Aalok’s outstretched hand to see a pink cloth tied around a branch in the distance.

  ‘Sayoni tied it there. Told me it would help me find her again.’

  ‘Who’s Sayoni?’

  Aalok looked at Salil.

  ‘I met her at the camp, and we became friends, well, more than just friends, I guess. We tried to escape together but she was shot in the leg and couldn’t continue beyond this point and she asked me to go on and come back for her one day.’

  They dismounted, and Salil and Alice both began looking for tracks. It was easy enough to find several fresh tracks.

  ‘How many are there, Aalok?’

  ‘No more than ten, I’d say. They used to come into the Deadland and catch people from the settlements on the fringes. They got me about a year ago when I had come out to fetch water.’

  Alice had heard occasional tales of people disappearing in the far settlements, but had assumed bandits got them. Now it seemed that there was something much more sinister and organized at play.

  ‘Why did they keep you so long?’

  Aalok looked at Salil with a smile.

  ‘I made myself useful. I rigged up electricity for them, got them a functioning water heater and so on. The others…’

  He composed himself before continuing.

  ‘Once they had four or five captives, which sometimes took them a month or more, they’d send them west, across the mountains of the old border. I used to hear them complaining that with Wonderland and you in charge, more and more settlements were joining you in the old city, so they had slim pickings.’