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

by Dhar, Mainak

  Alice looked at the covered body.

  ‘What happened to them that didn’t happen here?’

  ‘Alice, if they have come from the hills across the old border, then they came from a land that was subject to the worst nuclear catastrophe in human history. During The Rising, Pakistan launched missiles at India and India retaliated with overwhelming force. From what I gather, when it looked like some Pakistani nukes were getting into the wrong hands, the US also struck. Their cities were vaporized and these men must have escaped to the hills, though clearly they did not totally escape the effects of radiation. I’ll open one of them for an autopsy. You don’t need to see that. Rest and I’ll get back to you.’

  Alice stepped out of the clinic, wondering just what other monstrosities man’s hunger for power had unleashed.

  Arjun rushed up to her holding something familiar in his hand. As Alice took a closer look, she saw it was the old certificate Aalok had shown her, the one that he thought might have some links to Bunny Ears’ past. The frame had been shattered, it was torn down the middle and had a few drops of blood on it. Alice looked at Arjun, and as if reading the question implicit in her look, he answered by shaking his head.

  ‘We cannot find either Bunny Ears or Aalok. I’ve had patrols out for the last thirty minutes scouring every inch of Wonderland, and there’s no sign of them.’

  Alice thought of the gentle Aalok, always more comfortable tinkering with his machines than in the company of others. She thought of Bunny Ears, the one constant companion she had over the last few years, always by her side, always willing to put himself in harm’s way to protect her. Then she thought of them at the mercy of the bloodthirsty monsters who had attacked them.

  Just then, Edwards came out, ashen-faced and seemingly in shock.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Edwards wiped the edge of his mouth. He had thrown up after opening up one of the bodies for his autopsy and discovering what lay half digested in their stomachs. He struggled to compose himself as he answered Alice.

  ‘They….they eat people and Biters.’

  ***

  Aalok struggled to see through the blood that had covered his eyes from the wound to his head, unable to clear it away with his hands tied behind his back. He had been taken totally by surprise when he and Bunny Ears had stumbled into the path of the horsemen. He had been put down by a single blow to the head, and before he fell unconscious with the next blow, he had caught a glimpse of Bunny Ears, surrounded by cloaked men on horses. He had woken up in the back of a cart, being pulled by two horses with a cloaked man at the reins. Bunny Ears was lying in a corner of the cart, hands and legs bound, bleeding from several cuts to his chest and arms. He was missing the ears that had given him his name, and Aalok saw an unruly mop of curly hair.

  ‘Bunny Ears.’

  His head turned towards Aalok and he growled, not a growl of anger, but a low-pitched noise. Somehow, Aalok thought he understand what Bunny Ears was trying to say. Perhaps he had spent so much time with him, but he now had begun to develop an intuitive understanding of what Bunny Ears was trying to say through his tone and sounds.

  ‘I’m okay, Bunny Ears. It looks worse than it probably is. The question is what do these guys want with us?’

  Bunny Ears shook his head and lay back on the cart. Aalok raised his head over the edge of the cart, using his shoulders to try and clear some of the blood away so he could see where they were.

  They had long passed Wonderland and seemed to be in a mountainous area. In the distance, Aalok could see snow-covered peaks. As a young child before The Rising, he had gone on a holiday with his family to Ladakh, and he thought that was where they were, or perhaps close to it, but he couldn’t be sure. The riders were supposed to have come from an area across the old border and Aalok tried to do the maths in his head, though his throbbing headache didn’t help him think clearly. They might be half a day or so away from their destination, and had probably ridden for the best part of a day, no doubt slowed down by the cart. He tried to think of how he could get away. Even if he managed to free his hands, what could he do? He would likely be run down by the horses before he got too far.

  A rider came close and tapped the side of the cart with a rifle. Aalok found himself looking up at a giant of a man, who was now pointing the rifle straight at Aalok. To Aalok’s surprise, the man spoke flawless English.

  ‘My men are tired after the raid, and we have some hard riding to do before we get home. With both of you in it, the cart’s too heavy and we’re making slow progress. You will ride behind me. Let me warn you though. If you try any stunts, I will slit your throat and drink your blood while you’re still alive.’

  Aalok was picked up two men and put on the giant’s horse, tied to him with a rope. Any thoughts of resistance or a heroic escape had disappeared from his mind, replaced by a kind of mind-numbing fear that he had never felt before.

  ***

  Alice was sitting with Doctor Edwards and Danish in the gutted and blackened ruins of the Looking Glass. Danish had worked all night trying to recover what he could, and his eyes were bloodshot and tired. Doctor Edwards was silent, and they were all trying to come to grips with what they had learned about their attackers. Alice had seen and fought all kinds of evil, but this was an evil of a sort she had never encountered. What would make people eat other people?

  ‘Doctor, these are not men. They are monsters, and they must be destroyed.’

  ‘Do you think it’s wise for us to seek them out?’

  Alice could sense Danish’s hesitation. ‘They’ve attacked us and they have got a measure of our defenses. We now know that they are very well equipped and led by someone who has some training. We cannot sit back and wait for them to attack us again.’

  Arjun came by on a bicycle and Alice stood up when she saw what was in his hand. A pair of bunny ears.

  Less than an hour later, most of Wonderland had assembled to discuss what to do. Word had spread, and Alice could see looks of panic as people tried to comprehend the kind of monsters who had attacked them. Monsters who might have once been men, but had been mutated by radiation into deformed creatures, and more than their physical deformities, had become fiends who fed on people.

  Alice waited for everyone to settle down and for the buzz of conversation to die down a bit before she spoke.

  ‘We were taken by surprise and I apologize for that, because we may have underestimated this adversary. I have no doubt they will be back and we must seek them out and destroy them before they can threaten us again.’

  Someone in the crowd spoke up.

  ‘Why pick a fight? Let’s get our defences stronger. We have Jeeps with rocket launchers and Gatling guns we captured from Zeus. We can get all of those out of storage and be ready for them. Why go and fight on their territory?’

  ‘Because they have one of ours. We can’t abandon him.’

  For Alice, it was a true measure of just how much things had changed over the last few years that nobody objected to that point, and she saw several heads nodding. It did not matter that the one who had been abducted was Bunny Ears, a Biter. At that point, Alice realized that Wonderland had finally become a place where humans and Biters could truly coexist. Everybody had realized that the force which broke off the raid on Wonderland had been one of Biters, and without their intervention, the loss of life would likely have been much higher. If anyone had any doubts, Danish had an added piece of information that sealed the decision for them.

  ‘Folks, these guys were not just vandals burning down the Looking Glass. They left one terminal intact, and someone saved a message on it.’

  Danish had copied it down and read it out in a trembling voice.

  ‘Alice of Wonderland, we can burn your lands and cut down your people at will. But we are willing to settle for an arrangement: a simple arrangement where you supply us with two healthy humans every day.’

  Word of the autopsy findings had also spread, and as Alice looked around, s
everal people looked visibly sick. There was now no real choice but to fight.

  Arjun had been thinking logistics through and said, ‘We’ll need some time to organize a force.’

  Alice had other ideas.

  ‘Just get me a Jeep to drop me near the old border, beyond which their home lies. I’ve already had the boys get a couple of bandits who helped them plan their raid. They’ll tell us where we need to go if they want to live.’

  ‘Alice, we don’t know how many of them there are.’

  ‘Yes, but we don’t have much time. I don’t need to eat, I don’t need water and I don’t need to sleep. I can keep going without planning for any of that, which you’ll need to organize if you want a larger force ready. Let me go ahead and scout and try and save Bunny Ears, you come as soon as you can with reinforcements.’

  There was sound logic in what Alice suggested, though it was difficult for them to let her go into such danger on her own. Sayoni came by, her eyes full of tears.

  ‘I still haven’t seen any sign of Aalok. He was last seen with Bunny Ears. Oh God, those monsters have got him as well.’

  ***

  The Khan sat down in his tent and almost immediately suffered another coughing fit. By now, he had come to take the blood that he would cough up for granted.

  His men were celebrating, smoking Dreamweed around their camp, telling tales of their raid to their companions who had been left behind. By their accounts, every single one of them had personally beheaded a dozen enemies and that the defenders of Wonderland had cowered in terror. Some of them talked about how they had cut through defenders to get to Alice and then Rashid had charged, till they were held back by overwhelming forces from helping him and he had been cut down by deceit by the blonde witch.

  The Khan smiled to himself as he wiped blood off his lips. He would let them brag and exaggerate—it made Rashid’s death even more glorious and took away any possibility of anyone thinking there was anything amiss, and it also charged up the men who had not gone on the first raid. The Khan would rest, because after their feast, he would lead out some of the men who had not gone on the first raid out again. He would not give Wonderland a chance to rest or organize, but subject them to a blitzkrieg of raids. And on this raid, he would take with him an even more unpleasant surprise. He would keep increasing the level of terror, making Alice and her people wonder what was coming next, paralyzing them with fear and at the same time emboldening the bandits to join his cause.

  He called out to a man below.

  ‘Stop smoking for a minute and fetch the two canisters I asked to be kept ready.’

  The man called another comrade and they disappeared into the cave that acted as their armory, emerging five minutes later with a heavy metal box. One of them was about to open the lid when The Khan stopped him.

  ‘Get back, you fool. We’ll open it when we’re ready to deploy the mortars and they’ll be handled only by the men trained to use them with the mortars.’

  The box contained two Sarin gas shells brought in by smugglers from Syria just before The Rising. The local Taliban had been planning to use them against an American base, and The Khan had located their cell as part of his work with the CIA. Ironically, on the run and abandoned by his own people, he had later led his men to pick up the shells to add to his armory. He had had no opportunity to use them, till today. They would kill perhaps only a few dozen, since they would likely not have retained their full effectiveness after so many years, as careful and diligent as The Khan had been in maintaining them. However, they would sow panic, and panic and terror were to be his biggest weapons in engineering the downfall of Wonderland.

  He now clambered down, passing the cage where Bunny Ears and Aalok were kept. He smiled at Aalok, and then took his mask off. Aalok gasped and moved to the back of the cage, looking on in horror at the deformed face. His face was pockmarked with warts and tumors like his men, and he had wiped his mouth after his coughing fit, but his chest was covered with blood. As The Khan came closer to the cage, Bunny Ears put himself between Aalok and The Khan, baring his teeth. The Khan smiled, though to Aalok it looked nothing like a smile, with the swollen lips moving slightly, revealing yellow, sharp teeth. He spoke to them in English.

  ‘Enjoy our hospitality a little bit longer, then you go into our pot. You people and your Alice take so much pride in humans and Biters living together, well, now you can be cooked together.’

  He laughed and then moved on to address his men.

  ‘Feast and rest, my men. Tomorrow, some of you will ride down again to strike terror into our enemies’ hearts.’

  ***

  EIGHT

  The bandit had fallen asleep and Alice woke him with a slap across the face. The man whimpered in fear as he saw Alice inches away from his face.

  ‘We vaccinated you, we treated you well, and we let you go. In return, you let those monsters into our home. Now it’s your turn to make amends. You can sleep later, first tell us which turn to take up ahead.’

  Negi, a young scout, was at the wheels. He had been out on numerous recon patrols, but they had never ventured so far from Wonderland. Danish had used the one working computer to communicate with the Homeland, and they had sent him an old satellite map, which was now displayed on the tablet Negi had with him. Zeus had created a sophisticated network that pushed information to handheld tablets. After their victory, Alice and her friends had inherited those tablets and with the help of Konrath’s forces, once they overran the servers based in the erstwhile United States, the network as well.

  The names on the map no longer mattered, since those who had given those names were long dead or turned into Biters, but Negi could see that to his right lay the Ladakh valley. They had seen a few Biters along the roadside, but other than that the area seemed totally depopulated. Danish had said that the area was home to several large army bases which had been hit by tactical nuclear and conventional missile strikes in the fighting during The Rising.

  The bandit moved, trying to ease the discomfort of having his arms tied behind his back. But if he was looking for sympathy, he was in the wrong company. Alice glared at him.

  ‘How well guarded is their approach?’

  ‘I’ve never been to their camp, but we used to hear it’s just a few kilometers from the mountain path they met us on. It’s a narrow path, and I don’t think they normally have it under guard. Someone once told me that they have guards further in, closer to their camp.’

  Alice kept glaring at him, and he withered under her gaze and looked down, mumbling, ‘I swear that’s all I know. I swear.’

  ‘Where now?’

  The bandit was going by memory, and had never seen the map Negi had, but so far the path he was telling them to follow led to the foothills of the Kargil area, near the old India Pakistan border.

  ‘Keep right.’

  The Jeep was now off the paved road and had headed into a bumpy path littered with rocks and the occasional shell of a burned-out vehicle, a testament to the battles that had been fought here. He was forced to slow down in the darkness, but was still pushing ahead as fast as he could. He knew that Aalok and Bunny Ears might have very little time. Negi took a drink from his bottle and out of habit offered it to Alice, who smiled.

  ‘I don’t get thirsty.’

  The bandit would have asked for water, but he realized that it was best for him to keep his mouth shut and hope to be released when he took them where they wanted to go. They had been driving non-stop for the best part of a day, and Danish had sent them a message saying that a larger force under Arjun had set out four hours after they had left. Alice did not know exactly what odds she was going up against, but she knew she would have the advantage of surprise. The Khan, which was what the leader was called according to the bandit, would likely not expect a retaliatory raid so soon, especially not by one person.

  ‘Almost there.’

  At Negi’s call, Alice began checking her kit. She was carrying a sniper rifle, a submachine gu
n for close in work and her usual knife and handgun at her belt. Arjun had told her to scout the area and wait for reinforcements, but Alice was not going to wait around if it looked like Bunny Ears and Aalok were in imminent danger. So she had carried along some heavier artillery in the form of two fragmentation and two flashbang grenades.

  She sat in silence as Negi drove on, thinking of the kind of enemies she was going up against. When she had been growing up in the Deadland, she had believed that Biters were the worst kind of monsters humans could face. Now, having seen what humans were capable of doing to each other, she realized that there was nothing quite as dangerous, or quite as ugly, as human beings at their worst. And the men, if they could still be called that, she was about to face were worse than Red Guards or Zeus soldiers. They fought for their masters, who were driven by the desire to get and keep power. These Phantoms were little better than crazed, rabid animals who literally fed on those weaker than themselves.

  It was time to show them that they were not at the top of the food chain.

  ***

  Aalok crawled to Bunny Ears. Their captors had worked themselves up into a frenzy over the last few hours, and now in the darkness, wearing their masks in the light of the torches that ringed the walls of their camp, they looked like someone’s worst nightmare. Aalok had never considered himself a fighter, but he was a survivor, and he was not going to go quietly. He remained flat on the ground and spoke in a whisper.

  ‘Turn a bit. I’ll try and get at your ropes with my teeth.’

  Bunny Ears said nothing, but turned a bit so that the rope that bound his one good arm to his body was easily within Aalok’s reach. It was painstaking work. Just getting a good grip on the rope with his teeth was tricky enough, and then as he worked at loosening the bond his teeth and mouth hurt, but he knew it was nothing compared to being cut or flayed alive by these monsters to be their meal. He kept at it for several minutes and finally lay back flat on the ground, trying to catch his breath and have another go. He also used that break to take another look at what the Phantoms were doing.