by Mainak Dhar
‘The general?’
‘General Konrath, Alice. He’s the leader of the American resistance in the Deadland there. He is one stubborn man; I’ll give him that. Do you know they lost five Dakotas and their crew before they managed to get one as far as Calcutta?’
Alice wondered why anybody would go to such lengths and sacrifice so much.
‘Because he knew that the only hope for lasting peace lies in humans coming to terms with Biters. Two things can make that happen: the vaccine, which hopefully Edwards is working on right now, and you. Your voice, your story could change how people in America view Biters. Many there have heard of you but they dismiss you as nothing more than a fairy tale or myth.’
‘How could I possibly get to them, Vince? You know our computers have all been disabled by the Red Guards from communicating with the Americans.’
Vince reached into his backpack and took out a large tablet.
‘The general sent this. Now you can communicate all you want with the Americans.’
That afternoon, Alice walked through Wonderland. The damage and losses had been high. Despite their lack of training and practice, the people of Wonderland had fought to protect their freedom with a ferocity that even Alice had not anticipated. Whole families had perished in battle, and she had heard of small boys and girls setting off bombs that their fallen parents had laid. Despite the terrible losses, she felt a surge of hope. If there was one thing her own journey had taught her, it was the fact that liberty was secured not by a handful of heroes and champions, but when every ordinary citizen gathered up the courage to stand up against tyranny.
Bunny Ears and his Biters were waiting, so Alice approached.
‘You did really well, Bunny Ears. Thank you for your help.’
Bunny Ears seemed to have lost an ear in the fighting and his face was a bloody mess, but he grunted and all the Biters knelt before Alice. Then Alice saw something that she had never seen before. People began streaming out of their houses, many still bloodied and bandaged, and they stood beside the Biters.
One of them, an old man who had served on Arun’s Cabinet, spoke up, his head bowed as if not wanting to look Alice in the eye. ‘Alice, please do forgive us doubting you. We are free today because of you.’
Alice raised him up.
‘No. We are free today because we stood together. Let us never forget that.’
Satish had walked up behind Alice and he took in the sight before him, hundreds of humans and Biters, united in something for the first time.
‘Alice, you know what you said about Biters needing symbols to follow a leader? It’s not just Biters; humans need symbols to believe in as well. For the Biters, that symbol is that old book. For these people, that symbol is you.’
The rest of the day was spent beginning the monumental task of cleaning, and the Biters returned to the Reservation, though this time Alice noticed that nobody turned on the electrified fence or locked the gate.
That evening, Alice went to the Looking Glass, where Danish hooked her up via the new tablet the Americans had sent. It had a camera on it, and Alice soon found herself looking at a grizzled, bearded face.
‘Alice, I am General Konrath, but you may call me Jack. Danish has been telling me about your battle, and the tale of your victory is being spread far and wide across America. Now, all we need is for you to share your story with our people. The camera will record everything you say.’
Alice spoke for the next twenty minutes, starting with her childhood, her life in the settlement at the Deadland, the day she jumped into a hole after a Biter, and then the adventure that had followed. Reliving it all left her emotionally drained, and while Biters did not cry, she knew those who heard could feel the pain that could only come from reliving the loss of loved ones.
‘Thank you, Alice. One day we will meet, and our battles for freedom will become one. By the way, Danish knows of one more operation you could lead. Good night.’
Alice looked at Danish, who was grinning.
‘What did he mean?’
‘The Americans have managed to hack into the Central Committee’s servers and broadcast systems. We can do this only once, because I’m sure the Central Committee will block all further transmissions, so we have to make it count.’
‘What do you mean?’
Danish pointed to the tablet the Americans had sent. ‘Reports of the battle for Wonderland are spreading through the Mainland. Many Red Guard officers have been arrested for questioning orders, and it seems General Chen is also in custody after he refused orders to assault the city. Their plan is unraveling and once those veterans are killed or carted off to labor camps, you can bet their families and comrades will seek answers. The Mainland has been brimming with discontent, and one spark is all it will take to set it off. That spark could be you. They have made you out to be either something scared conscripts have dreamed up, or an evil witch. Seeing you, hearing you in your own voice, hearing all you have gone through, hearing about the Red Queen and her Biters, could change that. Also, Satish had recorded Captain Tso’s testimony. So far only some Red Guards have heard it on their radios. Now we can broadcast it to every citizen in the Mainland. But we have only a few minutes that the Americans can assure us of. So let’s get started.’
Alice held the tablet in her hands after Danish had told her they were ready. The people of Wonderland were gathered around the TVs, and they saw the usual news broadcast and soap operas replaced by Alice’s face. That same face was now being streamed into millions of homes in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing.
Commissar Hu was in Shanghai, dreading his meeting with the Central Committee the next morning, where he would have to explain how their plan to conquer Wonderland had turned into a bloody fiasco. He whirled around in shock as he heard the voice on TV. The most devastating salvo in this long and bloody war had been fired, not from a gun or a missile launcher, but from a small, glass covered room called the Looking Glass. That was perhaps appropriate because in any war against tyranny, the most effective weapon is not a bullet or missile but the freedom of information. Hu held his breath as Alice started speaking, her yellowed eyes looking straight at the camera.
‘People of the Mainland, your Central Committee calls me a witch and a terrorist, but today I want to speak to you directly so that you may know the full truth of the war they have been waging. My name is Alice Gladwell, and this is my story.’
***
EPILOGUE
Two months later
Alice and thousands of other citizens of Wonderland were at the airport, eagerly awaiting their visitors. Danish had reported that the plane had left Calcutta over two hours ago, and it could be arriving at any time. Vince was already airborne in his helicopter to watch for any Red Guards who might pose a problem, but that possibility was remote. Red Guards were seldom seen anywhere in the Deadland, though the people of Wonderland had learnt their lesson well. That lesson was the fact that freedom from the shadow of tyranny was not one that was earned or kept easily, but required constant vigilance. So Satish and his men were, as usual, roaming the Deadland in their jeeps and captured APCs, making sure that there was no danger lurking anywhere near Wonderland. Arjun and Alice had been busy helping repair the damage to Wonderland and making sure the many hundreds of wounded and displaced got medical care and new homes. Bunny Ears and the Biters still preferred to roam in the open spaces of the Deadland but every night they returned to the Reservation, where Alice would meet them and read to them from the charred and damaged book she carried.
Of all of them, only Danish felt as if he had little work to do any more. Alice’s transmission had unleashed a firestorm of dissent in the Mainland. Crowds had gathered in the streets, demanding to know the truth. Friends and relatives of imprisoned Red Guards had attacked official buildings, and most disturbingly for the Central Committee, units of Red Guards had started to rise in open mutiny. Within weeks, the Central Committee had done what tyrannies often do: shut off the flow of informa
tion in the hope that would silence dissent. All networks from the Mainland were down and the TV showed only propaganda speeches of the Commissar and old footage of Red Guard parades and exercises. That did have one side benefit for the people of Wonderland: No longer slaves to soap operas beamed through the TVs, they quickly found other, perhaps more useful ways to spend their evenings.
Alice heard Vince on the radio.
‘White Queen, the White Knight sees the White King approach.’
Alice strained to see a black speck in the sky, which soon resolved into a propeller driven airplane. Danish had been in daily contact with the Americans and knew that over the last month, they had converted Calcutta into a fully operational base, with a serviceable runway and a permanent detachment of Marines to guard it against any Red Guard attacks. For now, that was not really a worry, since the Red Guards seemed to have their hands more than full with the unfolding chaos in the Mainland.
The plane landed and taxied towards the old terminal building. The thousands of people waiting burst into uproarious applause. A ladder was lowered, and a moment later Edwards descended. He smiled broadly at Alice and walked towards her, his arms outstretched.
‘My girl, it can now finally be over.’
Alice had heard from Danish about how Edwards and his colleagues had used her blood samples to make a vaccine, which had already been tested on humans in America. Just the knowledge that what the Biters represented was not some supernatural evil but a disease that could be vaccinated against had proved to be a turning point in how people in America viewed Biters. Together with Alice’s testimony, it had at one stroke done away with the fighting between man and Biter, and together with the turmoil in the Mainland had meant that the Red Guards had largely retreated from America as well. A cure was the next frontier, and Edwards was already working on it.
Next down was General Konrath. Alice had seen him before on video but this was the first time she had seen him in person. After they greeted each other, she and the general made a speech to the people gathered. A speech where the general reminded people that if any good had come out of the years of struggle and bloodshed, it was that people had learnt just how precious and fragile freedom could be.
That evening, the general was sitting with Alice and her friends in the Council building. He was to fly out the next morning, and the question he asked was one he had already posed twice before in the evening.
‘Alice, are you sure you don’t want to come along with us tomorrow morning? America was where your parents were from; that was your home.’
Alice shook his hand and smiled. ‘No, thank you, General. I am already home.’
The next morning at the airport, General Konrath looked at the book at Alice’s belt.
‘Who would have guessed a book would have had so much power. Perhaps now we can begin to write and read books again. It would be a shame if our children forgot all that we fought for.’
‘General, I’ve heard you were a writer before the Rising.’
The general smiled. ‘Yes, I was a novelist. They started calling me General when I led the people in my neighborhood to start fighting back against the Red Guards. Alice, I am now old and tired of all the fighting. Perhaps it’s time I got back to my old calling and wrote a book. It may well be the first book written after The Rising.’
‘What’s your book going to be about?’
Smiling, the general said, ‘I still haven’t thought it all through, but I do know what I’ll call it.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Alice in Deadland.’
***
Chen looked out of his one good eye to see who had come to his cell. He had already lost his right eye in the beatings that had followed his imprisonment, and his left eye was also almost closed shut due to swelling and dried blood. He could not walk very well anymore and had to be dragged out to the courtyard every morning, where he was beaten by the black clad Interior Security forces of the Central Committee. Where or how his wife was, he no longer knew. In one of his beatings, he had been told that she was also on her way to a labor camp. If that was the case, Chen prayed that she was already dead.
He heard something being dumped into his cell: a young man in the blood-covered, tattered uniform of a Red Guard officer. The man looked at Chen and recognition flashed in his eyes.
‘General Chen.’
Chen spat, a glob of blood hitting the floor, before he spoke.
‘I am general to nobody now, young man. I just await the day they shoot me and end it all. Perhaps they have such a long list of people to execute that my turn has not yet come.’
Despite a broken nose and jaw, the officer spoke with a hint of a smile. ‘Comrade General, you are very much still the commanding officer of the Ladakh based Red Guards. For the last month, I have been leading them in guerilla warfare against the liars in the Central Committee. We’ve assassinated four of those bastards and killed a dozen or more Interior Security officers, but it seems my luck ran out today. We still owe loyalty to you, General, and we were all inspired by the sacrifice you made to try and save all of us.’
Chen sat up straight, warmth permeating his body, bringing back emotions he had no longer thought himself capable of.
‘What is your name, officer?’
The young man sat up, facing Chen, his back to the bars of the cell.
‘Comrade General, my name is Captain Tso.’
‘So what news of the outside, Captain?’
‘The people rage against the Central Committee. Thousands of unarmed civilians have been killed in Shanghai and Beijing, but bullets cannot silence the cry for freedom. More and more Red Guards mutiny and follow my example. It is but a matter of time before the Central Committee falls.’
Chen smiled despite the pain. ‘So it has been worth it after all. I had thought I would die a broken man who died for nothing.’
Tso smiled back. ‘Comrade General, you should have been with me in Wonderland. In the midst of all the bloodshed and killing, I saw something wonderful, a view of how our nation can be and will be one day. People living free, ruled by those they choose, at peace with those different from themselves.’
A guard shouted from outside the cell, ‘Shut up, you traitors! The Commissar himself is coming to meet you. I think today is the day you go to hell.’
But when the two guards outside began to whisper among themselves, Chen heard snippets of their conversation that gave away what was really happening.
‘The mob’s been building outside all morning. They want to free all the prisoners.’
‘The Commissar has said we’ll execute all of them and fly out in helicopters.’
Chen heard a few shots, which he thought meant the executions had begun. But then came the sound of assault rifles being fired on full auto. It sounded like a firefight had broken out outside the prison.
A few minutes later, the cell door opened and Commissar Hu walked in. He had lost a lot of weight and Chen noticed a pronounced limp in one leg.
‘Good morning, Comrade Commissar. It seems being back in the warm fraternal embrace of the Central Committee has not agreed with you.’
Hu snarled and kicked Chen hard in the ribs.
‘Shut up, you fool! Have your last laugh, for I shoot both of you traitors and put an end to your misery today!’
He called to the guards, and they entered. One of them pulled Tso to one side and the other held Chen up, holding his arms behind him. Chen looked at Tso and winked with his one good eye. For the last week, he had been carrying a razor sharp shard of glass he had picked up in the courtyard during one of his beatings. He had been trying to work up the courage to slit his own wrist and end it all. Now he knew he would get a chance to put it to another use. The man holding him was strong and young, but he was an Interior Security thug, the sum total of whose combat experience came down to beating civilian demonstrators.
As Hu took out the pistol from his holster, Chen rocked his head back, making solid contact wi
th the guard’s nose. It snapped. As the guard loosened his grip on him, Chen turned and slit the guard’s throat with the shard of glass.
Fumbling with the safety, Hu leveled his gun – but too late. Chen grabbed his pudgy hand, snapping the wrist and taking the weapon from him. The guard holding Tso was reaching for his gun when Tso punched him hard in the face, sending him crashing against the bars. When he tried to get up, Chen shot him dead.
Hu was now on his knees, begging for mercy. Chen wanted to say something, to remind him of just how many lives men like him had ruined, but finally he realized that no words would do justice to the rage he felt. He kicked the blubbering Commissar down and shot him once in the head.
From outside came the heavy sounds of the Interior Security guards’ boots, and the continuing sounds of the firefight raging outside the prison. Even if those outside were trying to get in and rescue the prisoners, Chen doubted they would get so far inside in time. However, he felt no fear. Indeed, he felt a sense of release wash over him as he contemplated his end. He looked at Tso and smiled as the officer saluted.
‘Come, my son. Today we finally fight together one last time, but this time for something we believe in.’
As Chen took aim at the first guard to come down the corridor, he realized that Hu had been so very wrong. Tyrannies fell not when people simply began to desire freedom, but when they had already attained one very special kind of freedom. Freedom from fear.
***
OFF WITH THEIR HEADS
THE PREQUEL TO ALICE IN DEADLAND
