by Dhar, Mainak
Alice looked up from the tracks. ‘They may not be far away, but you do realize that Sayoni may not be here or even be alive.’
‘I know that, Alice, and this isn’t just about Sayoni. There were three others there, and after having seen the life you’re creating at Wonderland, we can’t leave people out here to be treated like animals.’
Alice wanted to have a look for herself before she got any more people involved. She followed the tracks, walking for close to an hour before they reached the crest of a small hill. There were largely barren fields with a few trees to their right. In the dust, she could see a small group. A fire had been lit in the middle of the makeshift camp, and there were four armed men sitting around it. In a corner, a single figure lay prone, a bloodied bandage around her leg. Alice brought her rifle up to her shoulder and took a closer look through the scope. The men were carrying ancient single-shot rifles, perhaps looted from some old police station. She and Salil had the latest-issue automatic rifles captured from Zeus troopers. Even with the numbers stacked against them, with their superior firepower and element of surprise, this would be no contest. She handed Aalok a pair of binoculars. As he took a look, he gasped.
‘Sayoni.’
Alice counted the men again. ‘There are only four of them. Where are the rest?’
‘I don’t know, but there aren’t any other captives, either. Maybe the rest of the gang took them across the mountains.’
Alice heard a grunt and turned to see Bunny Ears looking at something. There was a fifth man, a sentry, who was sitting against a rock, drinking from a bottle.
‘Good job, Bunny Ears. Salil, I don’t want to risk shooting from here in case we don’t get them fast enough and they shoot the woman. We’ll go in closer. Bunny Ears, you distract the guard.’
Aalok looked around as if seeing how he could make himself useful, but Alice had it under control, and there was nothing really for him to do but to wait and pray.
Alice and Salil crept down the hill, moving in silence from cover to cover, rock to tree. They were halfway down, almost parallel to the sentry when Alice held up a fist to signal Salil to stop. Bunny Ears appeared over the hill and began walking towards the guard. The man must have smelled him before he saw him as his head snapped up and he grabbed the rifle next to him and chambered a round. Bunny Ears hissed at him and began walking back up the hill with the man in hot pursuit. Alice nodded at Salil and they began running down the rest of the way. The four men in the camp still hadn’t seen them and when she was about twenty feet away from them, Alice knelt and fired her first burst. The bullets caught one of the men in the neck and he went down in a spray of blood.
‘Cover me!’
With those words, Alice dropped her rifle and raced at the men, handgun in right hand and knife in her left, just as she had gone into battle countless times before. The men were getting up, trying to come to grips with this unexpected threat. One went down as Salil’s bullets raked his chest. Another had his rifle up, trying to work the ancient bolt action to chamber a round but fumbling in his panic, when Alice raised her handgun from less than ten feet away and shot him in the face. The last man got a shot off but missed as Alice rolled, coming up in a crouch and shooting him in the right thigh. As he grabbed his leg, Alice came up to him, striking him with the reversed hilt of her knife on the face, knocking him out cold.
Salil had reached the camp, and Aalok was also now coming down the hill. Alice reached the woman. She was burning with fever and unconscious.
‘Get her to the Jeep. We need to get her back to Wonderland.’
Salil had been rummaging through the camp, and there was very little of use, but one thing struck him as odd—packets of brownish herbs or grass in one of the tents.
‘What’s this?’
Aalok had reached the camp and he recognized the packets.
‘They call it Dreamweed. In the old days, we called it poppy or marijuana, and maybe it’s mixed with some other drugs. It’s what they’re paid with from across the border to send people over. These guys were all addicted to it.’
Alice looked at the stash, wondering what power it held over men to make them commit such evil. She would never let it near Wonderland.
‘Leave it there. I’ll burn it all.’
On the way up, they met Bunny Ears, standing over the body of the guard, whose neck he had snapped. As they sat in the Jeep for their journey back, Sayoni lay in the back seat, her head on Aalok’s lap. She was muttering something. As Alice leaned closer, Sayoni said, ‘They took them to hell. They took them to hell.’
***
Back in Wonderland, Alice, Arjun, Doctor Edwards and Danish spent much of the evening closeted at the Looking Glass. Aalok was still by Sayoni’s side as she lay in the medical center.
‘Doctor, how’s Sayoni?’
Edwards looked up at Alice; smiling because this was perhaps the tenth time she had asked the question. ‘She’s badly dehydrated, has some sort of bacterial infection that’s causing the fever and has a broken leg. She will be out for some time, and Alice, you need to relax. Nothing’s changed in her situation since you last asked.’
‘I can’t relax. I have a very bad feeling about all this. The men we killed were not just bandits. They are sending people over the mountains to someone. Who could they be? What are these drugs that give them such a hold over the slave traders?’
Danish had been on his radio, chatting with his counterparts in the Homeland, trying to get any more information. ‘I asked Konrath’s people, and they’ve gone and checked the records the Executive Committee kept and also any papers kept by the old US Government as the Rising broke. Much of Pakistan and Afghanistan was wiped out in The Rising. Pakistan was hit by nuclear weapons several times and their own terrorists imploded dirty bombs when the outbreak was spiraling out of control. After that, nobody heard much from them. The Central Committee had a few flights sent over, but they reported the cities to be in ruins, with no signs of any settlements. They then basically just ignored the area.’
‘Someone out there is organized enough to do this, and what worries me is that they’re not all that far from us.’
Arjun had been listening quietly, but now he spoke, with an urgency in his voice that got everybody’s attention.
‘Whoever they are, they’re up to no good. They’re trading drugs for people, to be kept as slaves or for whatever purpose they have in mind. So far they’ve just operated on the fringes of the Deadland, which is why we never crossed paths with them, but with more and more of the settlements moving in and joining Wonderland, I suppose their pickings are getting slimmer. Add to the fact that you just took out one of the gangs they use, and I worry they’ll be tempted to come closer to Wonderland.’
Alice was beginning to understand that their few months of peace were now coming to an end. There was a new threat on the horizon, and she would have to nip it in the bud before her people were threatened again. ‘We can’t wait for them to come looking for us. I saw what those men did to Sayoni, and we can’t let other gangs roam free out there, doing this to other people. Once they realize that these lands are off bounds, they may just go elsewhere.’
Arjun smiled as he realized that the line of thinking Alice had started was one that might have far-reaching consequences.
‘Alice, you do realize what a big country India was, don’t you? We’ve lived and fought in one very small corner of it, and we don’t have the numbers or the means to go to every single nook and cranny of it to help people. We simply cannot do that. God alone knows what else is festering in the jungles, deserts and cities of the old country—there could be gangs, warlords or slave traders all over the place. Or there could be nothing but radioactive ruins.’
Alice didn’t want to argue with her old companion, but she didn’t at all agree with him.
‘You’re right, I don’t know what else is out there, but I do know what is happening in the deserts outside the Deadland. Ignoring the presence of evil in th
e hope it doesn’t touch you is usually the easiest way of ensuring it turns on you.’
Arjun stayed silent. He had known Alice for years, since he and his group had joined forces with her in their struggle against Zeus and the Red Guards. She had gone from being a young, impetuous girl to the half-Biter leader of thousands of humans and Biters alike, and he knew that she often perceived things well beyond what would be expected of someone her age. In his heart, he knew Alice was right, but after all the sacrifices they had made to create and defend Wonderland; he didn’t want to bring more danger upon it.
Danish interrupted their debate.
‘Alice, Konrath wants to talk to you.’
The screen in front of Danish flickered to life and the image of President Konrath appeared over the video link. Konrath’s journey had been no less eventful than Alice’s, from a novelist before The Rising to a guerrilla leader fighting Zeus, and now the President of a nation that was trying to regain its identity after overthrowing the Executive Committee—the first President of the United States since The Rising.
Alice had been pleasantly surprised by how things had turned out in the Homeland after she had left to hunt down and destroy the Snark missiles. Konrath had kept some of the missiles and appointed himself President, and Alice knew from how things had turned out with the Central Committee in the Mainland and its masters in the Executive Committee that men with too much power almost always led to tyranny. Not so in Konrath’s case. He had rallied much of the population in the Homeland around him, slowly but surely bringing safety to them by crushing the few remaining pockets of diehard Zeus troopers and the bandits who infested many parts of the Homeland. However, there was one problem he did not have a solution for, and that was what this video call was about.
‘Hi, Alice. Hope everyone in Wonderland is well. I hope Edwards has been able to make his mobile vaccine lab work.’
‘General, I mean President, we’re all well.’
Konrath chuckled. ‘Please just call me Jake. We’re well beyond those formalities.’
Edwards peeked over Alice’s shoulder. ‘Yes, the mobile lab is up and running and everyone in Wonderland is now vaccinated. How’re things stateside?’
A crease appeared on Konrath’s brow.
‘The fighting is still on in some pockets, but it’s a matter of time before the last Zeus troopers surrender or die. The bandits know their time is up and many are turning themselves in. So, on the positive side, we have lots of people who are seeing freedom and the hope of a united nation after ages, but you all know the big downside, don’t you? What do I feed them?’
This was the problem Konrath had been grappling with. When he took over the reins, Konrath had realized just how bad things were in the Homeland—much of the US heartland had been devastated in the nuclear and biological strikes by the Chinese during The Rising, and to make things worse, in the final stages of the fighting against the Executive Committee, it had adopted a scorched-earth tactic, using napalm and fuel air explosives on areas it wanted to deny the resistance. As a result, the US, once the biggest food producer in the world, had very little arable area. It was now apparent why the Executive Committee and its minions in the Central Committee had gone to such lengths to take over the remaining fertile areas in what had been India and China and get slave labor to work those farms from the Deadland.
Alice had the reverse dilemma. The areas in the Deadland that had been North India still had huge swathes of fertile land, and with the growing population of Wonderland, she also had many more mouths to feed. However, she didn’t have the means to farm all the land. Manual labor would never get the kind of yields they needed to feed such an expanding population. In contrast, the US, a much more industrialized nation before The Rising, had huge stocks of agricultural machinery, but fewer arable areas. The deal was simple—machines and experts to use them would fly in from the Homeland and start working farms near Wonderland, with the produce shared between Wonderland and the Homeland.
‘Jake, I think our plan seems like the only solution to both our problems. Please send your people over and we can get started.’
As they disconnected, Alice wondered just how far their plans would go before they began to unravel in the light of the day’s events. The experts and settlers from the Homeland would start working large farmlands in what had once been Punjab, not more than a couple of hours away from the evil that Alice now knew lurked in the deserts beyond.
***
TWO
The convoy drove through the night without any headlights on. Alice was in the Jeep up front, together with Salil and three more men. She turned to one of them.
‘Norbert, you okay back there?’
Norbert Szucs tried to put on a brave face and nodded. He was a doctor, one of Edwards’ team who had come down from the Homeland, and had played a major role in the refinement of the vaccine. Alice had had him come along in case they found others like Sayoni who needed medical assistance. Like the others, he was carrying a rifle, though he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. He was much better at saving lives than he was at taking them.
Salil stopped the Jeep and the truck behind them also came to a halt by the side of the road. As they dismounted, a man got out of the truck and opened the back. Bunny Ears and a dozen Biters came out and stood, waiting for Alice.
Alice had made a deal with Arjun. Whether or not they went after the slave traders, they would have to ensure the farmlands they had chosen were free of hostile Biters. If they happened to come across any bandit gangs then they would deal with them. Arjun knew of course that Alice would do more than just wait around to stumble upon gangs of slave traders. He had seen the fury in her eyes when she had talked about the condition they had found Sayoni in. They had spent a week formulating their plan, while a few recon teams went out to gather intelligence about the area Alice had in mind for the farmland.
Alice walked up to Bunny Ears and the other Biters. Even after all this time, some humans might have found it strange for her to talk to Biters. After all, Biters had been presumed to be nothing more than mindless monsters. Alice, of course, knew better. ‘There may be other Biters out here. I don’t want to hurt any of them, so if you come across them, bring them to me and we can make peace with them. If you come across any gangs, wait for me. I don’t want you to go up against men with guns by yourselves.’
Bunny Ears grunted and led the other Biters off into the darkness.
‘Salil, get the boys ready. We need to clean up our neighborhood.’
***
‘Pass me one of those. I need some Dreamweed too.’
The bandit lazily passed one of the cigarettes back to his friend, who was sprawled nearby. As he took a drag and inhaled, he sighed and rested his head against the rock. He had been taking drugs since well before The Rising, and the lack of a fix was as bad as any of the other terrors he had had to endure since the day all the guards at his prison had abandoned their posts, and he had stepped out, not into the freedom he had at first anticipated, but into a terrifying new world where the undead and the living alike preyed on the weak.
‘We need to get into a new line of business. Hardly any people to grab around here, and with what happened to Bilal and our boys, that yellow-haired witch seems to be coming into our area.’
Another man, sitting behind a tree, spat on the ground.
‘She got lucky, that’s all. This is our land, and we’ve done as we’ve pleased here for years. If she comes by again, I swear I’ll cut off her head.’
He shifted painfully, his leg still stiff from the bullet wound Alice had inflicted on him in the attack on his camp. She had left him alive, and that was a mistake he was sure he would make her pay dearly for.
‘Bilal, what of the folks across the border? If we don’t get more people to them, they told me they would stop giving us Dreamweed.’
Bilal sat there, thinking in silence. The absence of the drug he and his mates were so hooked on would be troublesome, but he was
far more worried about crossing the monsters they supplied people to. He shivered at the thought of his last meeting. Despite still bleeding from his wounds, he had been driven down to the old border, through a bone-jarring journey over a mountain pass where he had met two of the cloaked and masked monsters on horseback. They had been clear. If Bilal and his men did not send fresh supplies, they would come for them. But they had also offered a deal, one that Bilal was going to take them up on. It was his only way of escaping their wrath.
‘The Phantoms gave me an option. We give them Biters instead of humans, and they’ll still pay us, though we’ll get only half a packet of Dreamweed per Biter.’
‘I always thought they wanted people as slaves. What the hell do they want with Biters?’
Bilal shrugged.
‘I have no clue, and I’m not about to ask them. All I know is that hunting humans has got more dangerous, but there’s no shortage of Biters in these parts. Let’s give the Phantoms what they want and get our Dreamweed. They also told me that they’d give us some AKs if we got them a couple of healthy humans.’
The man he was talking to smiled at that prospect. They had all been convicted killers, serving life sentences before The Rising, Bilal having been a professional contract killer for the land mafia in North India. So killing and surviving had come naturally to them. They had looted police stations of their handguns and old bolt-action rifles, which had been more than enough to terrorize settlements out in the Deadland, but they were no match for the kind of firepower Alice and her people seemed to have. Getting a few assault rifles would help even that balance, and then maybe that yellow-haired Biter witch would think twice about stepping into their territory.
***
Alice heard the low growls and knew that Bunny Ears had not failed her. He emerged out of the undergrowth, followed by at least three dozen new Biters. The moment the Biters saw Salil and the other humans, a couple of them bared their teeth and began to charge them. Bunny Ears swatted one of them down to the ground and pushed another away, growling to let them know who was in charge. Then Alice stepped forward. The Biters stopped on seeing her, unsure as to what she was—human or Biter? A couple of them came closer and sniffed the air, going back to their comrades with a whine, wondering what this was.
