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

by Dhar, Mainak

  ‘Some people don’t think of the consequences when they turn on someone they are no match for.’

  The Khan rode towards the Biter, gathering speed as he closed in. When he was but a few feet away, he took out the sword that had been hanging at his belt, and sunlight glinted off metal as the sword sliced through the air as he crossed the Biter. The Khan kept riding and Rashid and the others followed in silence, passing the headless body of the Biter.

  ***

  It was easy to get carried away in the celebrations. It was not just Christopher’s birthday—Aalok had also declared it to be the groundbreaking ceremony of the canned food plant. The building for the factory itself was some two kilometers away from the farm, and to be honest, Alice couldn’t see any discernible change in it compared to a week ago. It was still the broken-down hulk of a building, and while they had managed to scavenge several spare parts and a few more were due to be flown in from the Homeland, the factory itself was no closer to being operational than it had been a few days ago.

  Arjun must have seen her expression and came and sat down next to her. ‘Getting bored?’

  ‘No, just wondering if Aalok declared the groundbreaking ceremony as another excuse to have a party.’

  Arjun chuckled. ‘Quite likely, but people are working really hard on the factory and at the farms, so the occasional party to let off steam and to have some fun doesn’t hurt.’

  The kids had all gathered and Haroula brought out a huge cake that she had been laboring on. Teresa came up to Alice.

  ‘Come on, we’re about to cut the cake.’

  Alice joined them as they all sang for Christopher and then slices of the cake were passed around. She noticed Salil and Brittany talking in a corner and made her way to them.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘No, we’ve had a few recon teams out, and no sign of any horsemen. A couple of the guys radioed back asking if they could get back and join the party.’

  Salil saw the indecision in Alice’s eyes.

  ‘Look, I’ll go out in a Jeep and do a round so the guys out there can have a break.’

  Alice nodded and Salil left after finishing his cake. She found Aalok talking to Bunny Ears, and she walked up to them.

  ‘I see he hasn’t bitten your head off yet, so you’re not boring him too much.’

  Aalok grinned. ‘Alice, I was telling him all about myself, about my job before The Rising, my friends, my hobbies. I’m hoping that triggers memories of who he was.’

  As the two of them continued, Sayoni walked by.

  ‘That man spends more time with Bunny Ears than with me.’

  ‘Jealous?’

  Sayoni smiled. ‘Hardly. Come on, the kids have put on a show and they insist on you being there.’

  ‘What show is it?’

  ‘It’s a retelling of your story, and Teresa’s playing you.’

  ***

  Alice always felt uncomfortable when people made her out to be some kind of hero or savior. She had done what she had because of the circumstances she had found herself in, and she knew people who had been far braver than her. People like her father. Yet, more than the people of Wonderland, the new settlers from the Homeland saw her more as a myth or legend than a flesh-and-blood person, their image of her shaped by the stories they had heard and General Konrath’s retelling of her story in his book. On the small makeshift stage, Teresa was fighting off Red Guards armed with a gun and a knife and Chris was doing an admirable job as Bunny Ears, to laughter and cheers from the crowd.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Alice had been trying to slip away when Arjun stopped her.

  ‘You know I don’t like shows like these.’

  ‘Hang around a bit. It’s just harmless fun, and once the newcomers get to know you as a person, I’m sure they’ll realize you’re not just a legend.’

  ‘Arjun, I don’t want to be a legend. I just want to get on with my life and of those of everyone in Wonderland.’

  Arjun smiled.

  ‘Sometimes we don’t get to choose what we become. Call it coincidence, dumb luck or destiny, who and what we become is shaped by things beyond our control, and yes, by the choices we make. You couldn’t control the circumstances you were placed in but the choices you made make you more than just an ordinary person.’

  ‘So what am I?’

  Arjun tapped the book at Alice’s belt and walked away.

  Alice watched on stage as three make-believe Biters knelt before Teresa and she held up a book. Was that what Alice had become—a symbol or a legend? What did a legend do when she tired of it and just wanted a life as normal as possible? What did a warrior do when there were no more battles to be fought? What did a liberator do when freedom had been won?

  Alice looked at the people around her and wondered if they really needed her any more. She had helped win their freedom and together they had created a new home. They would have their farms, their factories, and would begin life anew, working their way back to what life was like before The Rising—a life Alice had never known and had no particular affinity for. On the other hand, her experience in the Homeland and with the bandits had showed her that there were people still out there who did not enjoy the same kind of freedom.

  For the first time, Alice wondered if she should move on from Wonderland. She wanted the rest of her life to mean something more than to stay on as a symbol or legend for the people of Wonderland. She wondered if there were people out there like Aalok and Sayoni, still living in fear of bandits and tyrants, without the freedom that the people of Wonderland had. Wouldn’t it be a better use of her life to help them?

  That thought process was interrupted when one of the barns on the farm erupted in a spectacular fireball.

  They had been storing some of their reserves of fuel for the machines there and the resulting fireball sent people scurrying for cover. A couple of bodies lay unmoving on the ground and Alice wondered whether there had been an accident of some sort. People were now running in a panic and Alice caught up with Arjun as he ran towards the fire.

  ‘Get the kids away and into the main farm buildings. Get some water here and get someone to look at the wounded!’

  As Alice approached the burning barn, her assumption was that it had been an accident and the imperative was to tend to the wounded and to control the fire. She passed Patricia, who was walking around dazed, bleeding from a cut to the forehead. Haroula poured water on the blaze with a bucket and Teresa helped the younger kids get away to safety. Arjun was there, pulling one of the wounded men away, and Sayoni was screaming for Aalok and asking passersby whether they had seen him.

  Alice picked up a bucket near the water pump and went to the burning barn to help put out the fire. That was when the unmistakable smoke trail of another RPG came snaking in towards the farm.

  They were under attack.

  ***

  SIX

  ‘Stop shooting! You’re wasting your bullets. Get everyone to the far end of the farm while we get a plan.’

  The crescendo of automatic weapon fire that had erupted from the defenders at the farm died down as people scrambled back on Alice’s orders. Alice had worked back the position of the shooters from the smoke trail, and through her night vision scope, she had got a glimpse of movement. The rangefinder on the scope told her that the shooters were at least a kilometer out. That in itself told her three things. One, they were using advanced RPG launchers, not dissimilar to the ones she had seen used by the Red Guards; two, they had night vision optics since they were shooting with reasonable accuracy at dusk; and finally, the rifles Alice and her people had would not reach them at such a range. They needed sniper rifles, and they didn’t have time to get back to the armory in the city, and Salil, who was carrying one, was still out on patrol.

  They had spotters out but they had not counted on an enemy shooting rockets at them from more than a kilometer out in the dark. Alice kicked herself for being lulled into a sense of complacency. If these were the h
orsemen they had been waiting for, then they had better equipment and tactics than any bandits out in the wasteland, and they were led by someone who knew his stuff. Of course, admiration and appreciation of an adversary’s capabilities is the first necessary step to figuring out how to kill him.

  Another rocket came in, this time with a parabolic trajectory, implying the shooter had angled the launcher up, sacrificing accuracy for range. Alice watched as the rocket arced over her and landed in the fields behind. Then another rocket came in, landing close by. What were these guys thinking? They could lob rockets in all night, without causing much damage or casualties, and sooner or later they would have to run out of rockets and either close in to engage or retreat.

  What kind of a strategy was that?

  ***

  Shock and awe.

  Those words had sounded great a lifetime ago when The Khan had landed in Afghanistan to spearhead the War on Terror as a rookie agent, with air strikes and cruise missiles battering the enemy into submission. The end result of all that had been a quagmire, but the strategy had been sound, it was the follow-through that had left much to be desired.

  The Khan did not have bombers or cruise missiles, but he had his own version of shock and awe: a small number of RPG-29 launchers, taken from Libyan Army stocks, passed through various Al Qaeda subsidiaries and then into the tribal belts of Pakistan where he had been holed up after The Rising. The region was miserable—little by way of agriculture, grinding poverty, high crime, fundamentalist groups running rampant—but the two things it was rich in were drugs and advanced weapons, coming in through Afghanistan and various hellholes in the Middle East to arm the Taliban affiliates there. The Khan had taken the RPGs from a group he had killed early on, and he had insisted his men keep them in working order with constant cleaning and maintenance. He knew he would need to use them one day, and that day was now.

  He had left three men and a spotter outside the farm with eight rockets between them to attack the farm from long range while he and the rest of his men went deeper inside the so-called Wonderland. The bandits had served them well, and he and his men had an intimate knowledge of the wastelands outside Wonderland and how to approach it without being tracked. They had made full use of it, and the fact that so many of the people of Wonderland were busy at the farm meant that they did not have too many patrols out.

  Disrupting command and control. That had been another catchphrase of his earlier employers, and it had been put to very good use in numerous conflicts. The Khan had every intention of doing the same now. The intelligence from his scouts and from bandits had been clear about where Alice and her people had their communications nerve center. The brutes he employed certainly had not expressed it in so many words, but he had told them what to look for, a building that had antennae on top or perhaps even a satellite dish, and they had not disappointed him.

  The Khan saw the glass-domed building ahead in the fading light, and the three antennae and the mess of cables outside. So, this was the Looking Glass, the nerve center through which Alice and her people coordinated their activities across Wonderland and stayed in touch with the outside world. The Khan had heard tales of how the country he had once called home, a country he had shed his blood for, the United States of America, was once more a free country. However, he felt nothing but hatred for them. They had abandoned him, leaving him for dead. They had used him to carry out their dirty work, and then when it was inconvenient to risk being exposed, strung him out to dry. Their involvement only made his hatred for Wonderland sharper.

  ‘Fall in and stay close. This is not the time to go on a bloody solo charge for glory and Allah.’

  The Khan imagined his words would raise hackles, but he didn’t care. If any of his men still retained enough allegiance to their gods of yore to challenge him, he welcomed the opportunity to remind their beheaded corpses that in this new world they inhabited, he stood above any tattered old holy books or imaginary gods.

  As they rode closer to the building, he spotted a group of a half dozen Biters. They shuffled into view and one of them looked at him and bared his teeth.

  The Khan rode towards the Biter in silence and beheaded him with one sweep of the sword.

  ‘No shooting till we get closer.’

  He struck out with his sword, slicing another Biter’s face down the middle, and then kicked another Biter down to have her head trampled under the horse’s hooves. Rashid was right behind him and cut down another Biter with his machete.

  ‘My Khan, look ahead.’

  The Khan’s teeth showed through the slit in his mask. He had hoped to take out their communication center and paralyze their reaction to their attack. Taking out a few of Alice’s friends was an unexpected but welcome bonus. He increased speed and rode up to the Looking Glass as two young men looked on in horror at the horsemen approaching them.

  Danish had stepped out for a walk to stretch his legs before he fetched his bike. He had been called to the party at the farm and was planning to ride his bicycle over, but first he had had a request from two kids in Wonderland who had said they wanted to learn more about how the Looking Glass worked. Danish had been happy to share his love of computers with someone else, and honestly, he needed the help. He wasn’t getting any younger and sitting there all day as the only person responsible for communication with the outside world and also co-ordinating Wonderland’s teams through their radios was increasingly leaving him fatigued. The kids had been smart and curious, more than making up for the fact that they had been born after The Rising and had never learned how to use computers, and Danish had enjoyed himself so much that he had lost track of time.

  He had been on his way back to the Looking Glass when he saw the flash of light in the distance, from the direction of the farm, followed by the boom of an explosion. He stood there, wondering what it could have been—an accident perhaps? That was when he heard the second explosion. He began to rush back to the Looking Glass to contact Alice or the others there and to also call in reinforcements if needed from Wonderland, where two recon teams were about to set out on their night patrols. Then Danish saw the men on horseback and lay flat on the ground, hidden by some bushes. He was unarmed, and could do nothing as he watched them slaughter the Biters nearby and ride up to the Looking Glass.

  That was when he spotted the two kids coming out of the building. He was about to shout a warning but he was too late. The two kids stayed rooted to the spot, paralyzed with fear and horror, as the first horseman, a giant of a man, rode up to them and cut one of them down with a sword.

  The second tried to run, but was cut down a second later. A few of the horsemen dismounted and entered the Looking Glass and Danish heard the sounds of his equipment being trashed. When they came out, the Looking Glass was on fire.

  As the horsemen rode on towards Wonderland, Danish lay there, tears in his eyes, angry at his own inability to do anything, torn by the loss of the two kids, and despairing at the fact that now there was no way he could warn Alice or the others in time about what was coming their way.

  ***

  Another rocket streaked in, exploding near the main building. Nobody was hurt badly, but it shattered the windows, sending shards flying. A couple of people stumbled towards cover, bleeding from cuts to their arms and faces. That had been the sixth rocket. Alice had no idea how many rockets their attackers had brought with them, but after the surprise of the first barrage, their rockets were not really causing much damage.

  Someone slid onto the ground next to her. It was Salil and he was bringing his sniper rifle up to his shoulder.

  ‘Where are they, Alice?’

  ‘Ten o’ clock. Just over a kilometer out.’

  Night vision or not, scoring a kill at such range was going to be a touch-and-go affair, but at least being shot at would make the enemy rethink their tactics.

  ‘Any news from Danish?’

  ‘I drove straight here when I saw the explosions. I was hoping he’d be in touch on the radio.�
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  Alice shook her head. She had tried to reach the Looking Glass several times on her radio but got nothing but static. Without Danish co-ordinating the various teams and ensuring everyone knew what was going on, they were essentially blind.

  Salil rested his rifle on a small rise in the ground and sought out his targets. He was rewarded by the sight of some movement. It had only been a slight movement, but with no other living things out there, and with no wind, he would take his chances that he had his man. He moved his crosshairs on the spot where he had seen something move, then adjusted a bit for the range, aiming slightly higher, calculating where the bullet would land, and then squeezed the trigger.

  Jamal had been handpicked by The Khan for this mission. He was one of the few among the Phantoms who had formal military training, having served in Pakistan’s elite Special Services Group as a commando before The Rising. He had been working for the Taliban, like many of his colleagues, and when The Rising took place, he had melted away into the tribal areas as the cities were engulfed in a nuclear catastrophe and the spread of the Biters.

  So far the three men with him had done their job well, which meant that they had fired their rockets where he told them to based on what he spotted through his night vision scope, and they had not exposed their positions to return fire. Till now. One idiot, tiring of lying there and shooting rockets into the night, sat up to stretch.

  ‘Get down, you fool!’

  Jamal pulled the man down, and a split second later he felt the thud of a bullet impacting against human skin as the man was hit in the shoulder. He screamed and fell down to the ground. Jamal wanted to cut the man’s throat but this part of their mission was almost over. He looked through the scope and saw the glint of a sniper rifle scope. He moved slightly left and saw someone prone on the ground. The flowing hair suggested it was a woman, holding a rifle. There was no way he could make out any details at this range, but if there was a chance that it was Alice herself, then The Khan’s orders had been clear. Take a shot at her before they retreated. Killing Alice was not part of his base plan, but if the opportunity presented itself, they were to take it.