by Mainak Dhar
‘Comrade General, the Supreme Leader of the Central Committee has been expressing a desire to retire and dedicate the rest of his life to serving the people. If I succeed in the conquest of Wonderland, I may be offered the job, and I will reward your loyalty handsomely. How would you like to be Commissar in my place?’
Chen’s smile was enough for Hu, and he returned to monitoring broadcasts. Chen found himself imagining what it would feel like to take his gun and put a bullet in Hu’s head. It would take no more than a couple of seconds to end this madness. With immense willpower, he was able to control himself. But in that fleeting moment, something changed within Chen. He knew that the next time he was ordered by men like Hu to send boys to their deaths, he would not be able to go through with it.
Alice watched the smoke trail of the rocket snake out from her right, heading towards the helicopter that had just landed a couple of hundred meters away. Another recon group had already encountered a Red Guard landing and was engaged in a vicious firefight. Part of Alice wanted to wait for the occupants of the helicopter to disembark so that she could see whether the Red Queen was one of them, but she didn’t want to lose any of the advantage of surprise she had. The rocket hit the cockpit, enveloping the front of the helicopter in a bloom of smoke and dust. The pilots were killed outright and several injured, bleeding Red Guards stumbled out of the passenger compartment. A few of the uninjured Red Guards had their weapons ready, searching for an enemy they could not see. Alice centered her scope on an officer who seemed to be in charge and was trying to rally his men. This was not the helicopter that would bring the Red Queen and her Biters, but the fate of the men who had just landed in it had already been sealed. Alice exhaled slightly and pulled the trigger.
***
Arjun was dealing with chaos of a sort he had never handled before. He had spent years living in the Ruins, leading his motley crew of `Ruin Rats’ in running battles against Biters and the occasional Zeus patrol. So fighting in built up urban areas was nothing new for him or for many of the others who had joined him in their months of warfare against the Red Guards. Now, however, there was a subtle but important difference. People were no longer preparing to hide and fight in ruins that belonged to nobody other than perhaps the ghosts of their previous owners. Now they were preparing to fight for buildings they had come to consider home. All morning the TV had been carrying news reports of battles between the Red Guards and ‘terrorists’ and intelligence reports of impending Biter attacks. Regardless of where their trust lay, every single person in Wonderland knew a few things for certain now. The Central Committee was lying. Arun was not dead. Alice and her supporters were not trying to take over power by force. And finally, whatever the Central Committee said, people were not sure they wanted the Red Guards so close to their homes.
The positive side was that it had galvanized everyone into action. The negative was that as the old saying went, every man’s home was his castle, and now every man was trying to be his own commander. Arjun knew that they would not survive long if they fought as small, isolated units, and he began to realize just how badly the months of peace had hurt their preparedness. A society at peace can be a wonderful one, but only if it never forgets how to wage war if needed.
Arjun and his men were trying to rally people into fire teams and create natural choke points among the buildings where they could trap incoming forces. The boys who had attacked him and Satish were now standing nearby, looking slightly sheepish. Arjun walked up to them. ‘What’s the matter?’
One of them answered, ‘We all came into Wonderland with our families a few months ago. We don’t know much about the tactics and tricks your men talk about. Tell us what we can do.’
Arjun sized him up. ‘How many of you have killed a man or a Biter?’
Every single one of them raised his hand. Nobody could have grown into adolescence in the Deadland without knowing how to take a life.
‘Then you all know most of what you need to know. I’ll keep the older folks inside the city, but you are young and fast. I need you to do something that you don’t need much tactics for.’
The boy looked perplexed.
‘What do we need to do?’
Arjun smiled. ‘You need to run as fast as you can.’
***
‘White Rook, this is Looking Glass. Do you have a parking space ready for our cars?’
Satish heard Danish and answered in the negative. From being their window to the outside world, Danish and his Looking Glass had now effectively become their command and control center. With his access to the Red Guard Intranet and transmissions, he could provide some forewarning of what may come their way. He also had the main radio switchboard, and so was vital for team-to-team coordination. Danish had been asking where to send their only real heavy land weapons: the three jeeps that had been fitted with rocket launchers captured from downed Red Guard helicopters. Without a clear idea of where the assault would come from, Satish did not want to risk exposing the jeeps to air strikes, so they had been kept well hidden.
His group of six had already had a skirmish with a group of Red Guards, leaving three Red Guards and one of his men dead. Now he was waiting for the helicopter that was supposedly flying towards their position.
One of his men whispered to him, ‘Sir, I see it. There!’
He followed the man’s outstretched hand and saw a black speck appear in the morning sky. Satish’s team had been closer to Wonderland’s borders than Alice, so he had a SAM unit nearby and he radioed for them to come in. Within a minute, two men jogged by, one of them carrying the large tube shaped missile launcher.
‘Sir, I see three choppers.’
Satish began to reconsider his options. If there had been only one helicopter, he would have ordered it shot down without a second thought, but with three incoming choppers that would be a risky proposition. Even if they managed to shoot one down with the first shot, the others would be onto them before they managed to reload. He had mere seconds in which to decide, and he barked to his men, ‘Everyone, take cover! We’ll get them when they land.’
Now the helicopters were close enough that Satish could see details. One was a black helicopter of the sort Vince had flown out to Calcutta; another was a larger and noisier transport helicopter; and the third was a smaller, sleek gunship. So far every indication had been that the Red Queen and her Biters flew in on the stealthy helicopter, but he had no way of knowing which of the choppers she’d be in now.
The two transport helicopters came down to land about five hundred meters away from Satish’s position, but the gunship remained in the air. Satish knew the Biters inside the transport helicopter were the primary threat but if he attacked them first, he would be vulnerable to attack from the air. Making a split second decision, he ordered his men to fire their SAM at the gunship and ordered his man armed with the RPG launcher to fire at the black helicopter.
The missile snaked up towards the helicopter, and while the Red Guard pilot saw it and tried to evade, at such close range he really did not have a chance. The gunship exploded from a direct hit and its wreckage came falling down like a rainstorm of fire and metal.
On seeing the gunship fall, Red Guards began to troop out of the black helicopter. Satish screamed at his men to stop, to redirect to the other helicopter, which would hold the Red Queen and her Biters – but he was too late. The RPG hit the helicopter near the door, obliterating the Red Guards who were still trying to jump out. The few who had made it outside took cover and began firing at Satish and his men.
In the distance, he saw a female form in a Red Guard uniform run towards Wonderland, followed by dozens of Biters.
He had failed. The Red Queen had entered Wonderland.
***
‘People of Wonderland, this is an urgent message for you. Stay in your houses and do not try and interfere with the ongoing security operation against the intruding Biter hordes. Red Guards are coming to your assistance.’
Danish sat uprig
ht as the message flashed on his screen. A second later, he got a report on the radio that the same message was being repeated on the TV news broadcasts. That could mean only one thing: that Alice and Satish’s teams had somehow failed and hostile Biters were approaching Wonderland. Now it would be up to Arjun to stop them and the Red Guards before things got totally out of control. Alice had briefed him on what to do in a situation like this and he patched her in on the radio so that she could communicate directly with the frequency the Red Guard Commissar had been using for his broadcasts lately.
Chen was sitting at the control center, thinking of the conscripts running into an urban battleground for which they were neither prepared nor trained. Many of the poor fools actually thought that they were going to receive a hero’s welcome.
The radio operator took off his headset and beckoned to Chen.
‘Comrade General, we have an incoming transmission from Wonderland.’
Chen put on the headset.
‘This is General Chen of the Red Guards. Who am I speaking with?’
The answer sent a shiver down his spine. It was a voice that had haunted him since he had looked into the yellowed eyes of a young girl who had become Queen.
‘General, you should remember me. My name is Alice Gladwell.’
Hu had come up behind him and asked Chen to put the broadcast on the speaker.
‘This is Commissar Hu. I want to speak to some legitimate representative of the elected government of Wonderland, not an upstart terrorist and counter-revolutionary.’
There came a laugh from the other end. ‘Commissar Hu, it is rich of you to talk of democracy and elections. I have no time for small talk. Tell your men to stay away from Wonderland while we destroy this Red Queen and her Biters.’
‘The people of Wonderland –’
Alice cut him off. ‘They know what you have been plotting. Arun is not dead. He became a Biter and is now with us. Now call off the Red Guards or I will be forced to kill them all.’
With that Alice ended the call. Chen looked at Hu, feeling numb with fear for what was to befall his men.
‘Comrade Commissar, the plan is failing. If they truly know the truth then they will not be divided; elements among them will not welcome our boys. It will be a death trap for them.’
Pulling Chen aside, Hu addressed him in a harsh growl. ‘Your critics in the Central Committee were right. You had lost your courage in the Deadland, and deserved to die in a labor camp. I resurrected your career because I needed your experience, but now I see that you have no nerve left for battle after all. That witch is just bluffing.’
The men in the control center looked at the two officers with wide eyes. For a moment Chen just stood in shock; then he straightened.
‘Comrade Commissar, you plot in offices, pretending the world is a chessboard and people pawns to be moved from one square to another. I have news for you, Comrade. In the real world, those pawns bleed and die, and one day that river of blood will drown you and the other old monsters in the Central Committee.’
Hu looked like he had been slapped and then recovered. He motioned to the four black-clad bodyguards he had bought with him from the Mainland.
‘Comrade General Chen seems to be suffering from fatigue brought on by his tireless efforts in driving forth the people’s revolution. I think he needs some rest to recover his revolutionary fervor. Kindly escort him to his quarters.’
Chen reached for the gun at his belt, but strong hands grabbed him, and he was pulled away outside the room.
Hu looked around at the terrified looking Red Guards in the room.
‘Comrades, does anyone else have any doubts about the war we are waging against counter-revolutionaries and terrorists that I can help dispel?’
Every single man looked down, unwilling to meet his gaze.
‘Very well. Now, let us see how long this witch lasts against our own Red Queen.’
***
Neel watched the first Biters come into view from his second floor window. He was more terrified than he had ever been, and he wondered if the two boys with him were as scared as he was. Still, at sixteen he was the oldest of the three and he could not appear weak in front of the others. He had volunteered for sentry duty when Arjun had asked for volunteers and his job was to watch for Biters who were supposed to be entering Wonderland. He had a pistol in his hand, and while his father had taught him how to shoot, he had not touched the gun in the last year that they had been living in Wonderland. He now saw six or seven Biters almost directly below him and he knew that shooting at them would achieve little. There was no way he could kill all of them. He needed to get word to Arjun or one of the other adults nearby.
Suddenly the boy next to him keeled over, blood spurting from a wound to the neck. The second boy screamed in terror, only to be silenced by another bullet to the head. Neel crouched low, too scared to move. Biters could never shoot like that. Then again, he had no idea that Li was just behind the Biters, taking out targets with her rifle, clearing the path. Red Guards were going to be just behind.
Hu’s plan was to let the Biters cause some mayhem before the Red Guards got to the city center and placed Wonderland under ‘protective custody’ until they could have an election where someone sympathetic to the Central Committee could be installed as a puppet. With everything that had happened, he hoped that enough people in Wonderland would see that allying with the Central Committee was the only way to get security. As for Alice and her followers, Hu had more than enough Red Guards headed for the Deadland to deal with them. So far his plan had gone almost exactly as he had thought it would unfold.
Arjun watched the first Biter appear on the scope of his rifle. There were four; a good number. Just as they passed a building, Arjun pressed down on a nearby plunger, detonating the improvised explosive device inside the construction. The explosion tore off much of the side of the building and obliterated the Biters.
There was no way to guard all of Wonderland’s many routes, so Arjun and Satish had decided to essentially focus on defending the city center. His scouts were in the outskirts in constant radio contact with the Looking Glass, and Danish had managed to piece together a pretty comprehensive picture of the battle as it unfolded. There seemed to be about fifty or so Biters who had entered Wonderland, and other than a group of six spotted traveling as a group with the Red Queen, the others were marauding at will. That made them relatively easy targets to pick off, but it also meant that many different teams were engaged in hunting them down, leaving precious few defenders to guard against the Red Guards who were almost certainly now entering Wonderland.
Captain Tso was leading his squad of eight Red Guards into the ruins. They had been helidropped just two kilometers away and from what he had already made out from the radio reports of other helicopters being shot down, they had been lucky to not be ambushed as they landed. He motioned for his men to stop as he scanned the buildings in front of him. His men had no combat experience but Tso had spent two tours of duty in the Deadland and hated having to go into such a congested area where an enemy sniper could be hiding in every window. But his orders had been clear. They were to go into the city and ensure safe passage for the armored carriers that were to soon follow, carrying more Red Guards. He had discounted much of the propaganda that the Commissar had spouted about them going into the city to save the hapless citizens from Biters. He had spent enough time in the Deadland to know that the people there had no love lost for Red Guards, especially since the Yellow Witch had taken over command. But orders were orders, and he just hoped that he did not lose too many of the boys walking behind him.
One of them shouted, ‘Comrade Captain, I see a young boy sitting there. Maybe he needs our help.’
Tso looked to see a boy of no more than ten sitting calmly by the roadside, watching them. Three of Tso’s men jogged over. Something did not look right to Tso and he raised his riflescope to his eyes to take a closer look. He saw the boy’s hand close around something and before
he could shout a warning to his men running towards the boy, a bomb exploded near them.
When the smoke cleared, all three Red Guards were down and the boy was nowhere to be seen.
***
Alice was pedaling as fast as she could, towards the last location where the Red Queen had been sighted. Arjun’s teams had neutralized many of the Biters and small groups of fighters were stopping advance elements of Red Guards with snipers and improvised explosive devices, but not yet the Red Queen, who was now pushing deeper into the city. Satish had also ordered most of his men to fall back, other than a few teams he was leading left on the borders with RPGs to ambush incoming APCs. It now looked like the fate of Wonderland would hang in house-to-house fighting.
Alice spotted movement to her right and came to a skidding halt as she saw three or four Biters. She unslung her rifle and fired, bringing two down with headshots. She was about to fire again when she saw a familiar figure emerging from behind a Biter.
Alice was once again face to face with the Red Queen.
***
TEN
Li stopped when she saw Alice and for a second the two girls just stood there, looking at each other. Then Li motioned to the two Biters remaining with her to attack, and they started towards Alice. Li knew that they would never stand a chance, but they’d buy her time.
Alice calmly dispatched both Biters with a single shot to the head, but that had given Li the time to get off a shot of her own. Alice tried to roll aside, but the bullet grazed her neck as she came up in a crouch and raised her own rifle. Li had learnt the lessons of the last battle, and this time she would take her time to destroy the witch and not act in haste.
Alice felt something hit her neck, and while she would not feel pain like humans did, she knew it had been a close call. She had her rifle up at her shoulder and saw the Red Queen disappear inside a nearby building. Alice ran towards her, jumping over an overturned barrel and flattening herself against the wall as bullets tore through the plaster and bricks in front of her. Glancing around the corner she fired a burst, not expecting to hit much but at least hoping it would cause the Red Queen to take cover while Alice sought a new position.
