by Dhar, Mainak
A couple of people laughed, and Gladwell raised his hand to quiet them.
'I know, I know. It seems impossible for them to act with any co-ordination, but they are on the move, and thousands of them are headed our way.'
'What the hell happened? Do we know anything more, Bob?'
Sunil stepped up next to Gladwell and answered.
'Look, we don't know a whole lot, but we passed a couple of settlements on our way out on patrol, and they had stories.'
'Stories? What kind of stories?'
Sunil paused and looked at Gladwell. The last thing he wanted to do was to spook everyone even more. Gladwell, who had already heard the reports from Sunil, nodded.
'Go on, Sunil. It's best if everyone knows what's going on.'
'They say that the guys in the choppers we've been seeing have been clearing out areas. They brought in some heavy firepower and are trying to take back the old airport and are setting up other bases around the old city. They're wiping out the Biters there and driving them into the Deadland.'
'These guys could be the government, couldn't they, Bob?'
Gladwell addressed the woman who had asked the question.
'We don't know who they are, and we have no way of getting in touch with them till they choose to contact us. That can come later, but for now we need to figure out how to last the night with all those Biters headed our way.'
That shut everyone up, and Gladwell outlined what he hoped would be a plan that would keep them alive.
'No lights. Let's not forget this a pretty big area, and the probability of them just stumbling onto us is low unless we attract them somehow. No sound, either. And Arvind, that includes your snoring.'
That brought a couple of smiles, and people leaned in to listen, willing themselves to believe that they would make it through one more night.
'Get every man, woman and child who's old enough to hold a gun armed. If it does come to a fight, we are well protected, and we can hold our own, as long as we're disciplined and don't panic. Jones, you get a couple of guys and rustle up some Molotovs.'
Jones grinned. In a previous encounter in the dark, when the Biters had almost reached the gates, they had beaten them back with Molotov cocktails. Yes, Biters only went down with a shot to the head and seemed oblivious to pain, but while Molotovs didn't necessarily kill them, they lit up the targets, making it easier to get a bead on them.
Over the next fifteen minutes, they made sure everyone had weapons. All adults carried at least a sidearm at all times, but their armory was now opened and their entire stock of assault rifles, all thirty of them, was handed out to the best shots. Kids were taught to shoot from the age of ten, and handguns were distributed to them. Gladwell didn't like the idea of sending kids to the frontlines, but he'd keep them back, protecting the younger kids and the two newborns. He then shouted out his last orders before they would lie low.
'Okay, folks, turn off all the lights. I want all the riflemen on the walls. We don't need lights to know so many Biters are coming, we'll hear and smell them well enough. And nobody, repeat, nobody opens fire without me or Jones saying so. If you spot a Biter, pass the word to one of the kids who're going to be our runners and one of us will be there pronto.'
As everyone scurried to their positions, he saw Jane in the corner of the room and something struck Gladwell. Jane began to head back towards their building, and he ran after her.
'Jane,' he hissed, not wanting to shout too loudly.
'Yes, Dad?'
'Where's Alice? I thought I asked you to be with her.'
***
'Doggie, come back!'
Alice had gone over the pathway outside the gate in pursuit of the puppy. Perhaps unaware that the rock had bounced off the path and fallen into the moat, the puppy had kept running down the path in search of his quarry, with Alice in hot pursuit.
'Stop, please.'
The puppy looked back at her, wagging his tail in anticipation of a new game. Alice began to run towards him, seeing him in the light of the lamps that were strung up on the settlement walls. To her exasperation, he thought she was playing and ran further away towards some trees in front of the settlement.
She was within a couple of feet of him when the lights suddenly went off. Alice felt a stab of panic as she was engulfed in total darkness.
'Doggie?'
There was no response and she heard the shuffling of paws as the puppy, similarly panicked by the sudden darkness, ran away from her and further away from the settlement.
'Doggie, come back.'
The words came out in a croak, as Alice realized where she was now. She was alone, far from her Mama and Daddy and in total darkness. Part of her wanted to run back to the settlement, shouting out for her parents. She knew that they would be very angry with her, but that was better than being out there.
Then she heard a whimper. It was Doggie, and he seemed to be scared or hurt. She started to take a step back towards the settlement, but then a low growl came from the puppy. Her daddy always told her that one should help others, that good girls and boys didn't just think of themselves. What would he say if he knew that she had abandoned her Doggie out here, all alone? Her heart was pounding, and her feet felt like they were made of stone, but she forced herself to walk after her Doggie, softly calling out his name as she approached him in the darkness.
She smelled them before she heard or saw them. To Alice, they smelled like the filth and human waste that the older kids sometimes carted away from the settlement to burn nearby. She remembered asking her Daddy what they were doing and when he told her, she had giggled uncontrollably. Much to the annoyance of the kids who had carried out the unpleasant task and to the merriment of everyone else, Alice had insisted on calling them the 'poo-poo team'.
There was nothing remotely funny about her current situation, though. She sat down, her back flattened against a tree as she heard shuffling noises nearby.
Biters.
The very word sent a shiver up her spine. She had never seen one up close, but like every other kid in the settlement, she had grown up in a world dominated by one overriding concern—keeping the people of the settlement safe from Biters. They were the boogeymen of many of a child's nightmare, with fangs and blood dripping from their jaws. Monsters who couldn't be killed, monsters who ravaged humans without any motivation or reason. Alice had been only a few months old when their refuge at the old base had been breached and it had come down to hand-to-hand combat, but of course she had no memory of that. When she had been older, she had heard the sounds of gunfire, huddled in Jane's arms in their hut while the adults beat off their undead attackers. She had also seen some bodies being carried off in the distance and the flames from the pyres where fallen Biters were burnt. But she had never seen a Biter up close and personal, and had never been in a position where that was a likely possibility.
Till now.
Something brushed against her leg and she had to force herself to not scream by biting into her hand. It hurt like hell and blood trickled down her hand, but at least she had not given herself away. When she felt at her feet, she sighed with relief.
It was not a Biter out to eat her. It was her Doggie.
She scooped the puppy up in her arms and cradled him in her lap. The puppy perhaps understood the peril they were in and dug his head into Alice's armpit without making a sound. Alice's eyes, long accustomed to helping her find her way in the darkened settlement, had adjusted fast to the darkness and by the moonlight, she now began to see the first of the Biters pass within a few meters of her.
They did not walk as people did, instead they seemed to shuffle along, almost as if dragging one foot along behind the other. The stench was now almost unbearable, and one of them turned to look at her as Doggie whimpered in fear.
That was when Alice got her first good look at a Biter.
The skin on the left side of his face had almost entirely peeled off and hung like an open flap, slapping against his neck as he w
alked. His eyes were looking at the darkness beyond Alice but there was no trace of humanity in them. Indeed, his eyes seemed vacant, like Jane when Alice woke her up in the middle of the night. That thought brought on a nervous giggle and Alice put a hand over her mouth to try and control it. The Biter came even closer and she was not sure whether he had seen her or not. He opened his mouth and made some growling sounds and looked around, snapping his jaws in the air. Alice pressed herself even tighter against the tree and closed her eyes. If she couldn't see the Biter, he couldn't see her either, right?
She heard more shuffling noises and now the stench from the Biters was almost unbearable. She kept wishing they would go away, that they would leave her alone. She knew she should not speak up, but almost of its own accord, her mouth began moving, whispering the same word over and over again.
'Daddy, Daddy, Daddy...'
She heard more footsteps near her and more growls. A warm, wet feeling spread under her, and while she was too terrified to realize it then, she had wet herself out of sheer terror.
There were several Biters now congregating around the tree where Alice was hidden. They had heard her, but they were scanning the area in front of them, and didn't see anything. Perhaps one day someone would figure out how a Biter's diseased and infected brain worked, but they did not look down. They had perhaps been so used to hunting, or running from, adult humans that they looked only straight ahead. They did not think to look down at the little girl flattened against a tree, with a small puppy pressed against her chest.
After a few seconds, the Biters moved on in search of prey elsewhere, but one remained, continuing to scan the area. She came so close that a fallen leaf brushed against Alice's leg when the Biter's legs kicked it away. Alice involuntarily shuddered and opened her eyes and found herself looking up at a female Biter. She was wearing the tattered remains of a dress, and her skin was gouged open on the right side of her torso. Blood was still seeping out from the wound, indicating that she had turned recently. Alice remembered what her daddy had told her, that if you were bitten by a Biter, you became like them. Anyone bitten by a Biter seemed to die, but then came back as one of them. She looked at the ghoul in front of her and wanted to scream out aloud that she never wanted to be like it. She had heard some of the older kids repeat something they had been told in their training.
Better dead than undead.
Alice had no idea what that meant, and she had asked Jane what undead meant. If it meant looking like the monster she saw in front of her, then it was very, very scary. Much scarier than even what she had imagined Biters to be.
The Biter was now with a couple of feet of where Alice lay huddled and despite her best efforts, Alice began sobbing. Whenever she had been scared, for example after hearing the repeated volleys of gunfire during an attack, or the moans and growls of passing Biter hordes, her Daddy had told her that she was his brave little girl and that he would be there to keep her safe. Now her Daddy was nowhere near her, and she did not feel brave at all.
The Biter stopped on hearing the sob, and looked down. Her eyes widened at the unexpected prey and she opened her mouth, revealing teeth that were already stained with blood from a recent kill at a settlement her horde had torn through half an hour ago. Alice looked at her and gasped in horror, her childish mind yet unable to come to grips with the fact that death, or worse, could be mere seconds away.
Alice was not the only one watching the imminent danger. The puppy smelled and felt that his master was intensely fearful and in danger, and the little dog bared his own small teeth. He shook himself free of Alice's grasp and with a loud bark, launched himself at the creature who was threatening his master.
***
'Bob, I've looked everywhere and I can't find her.'
Ten minutes had passed since Gladwell had issued the order to extinguish all lights in the settlement. They had heard the Biter horde passing and indeed had smelled them, but so far it seemed that the Biters were passing them by. However, that had been scant consolation for Gladwell.
Alice had gone missing.
He had been hoping that she had been hiding somewhere in the darkness, but Jo had swept the settlement, passing on word that their little girl was missing. Her report that she was nowhere to be found hit him hard.
'Remember once she hid inside a large pot in the kitchen. That girl is always up to some mischief. Look some more and we'll find her.'
Jo's hand covered his and he knew that there was no such hopeful news. 'Bob, she's not in the settlement. Jane told me she was playing with some puppy they had taken in, and the puppy's nowhere to be seen either.'
Gladwell just looked ahead, trying to wish away the possibility that his little girl was out there in the middle of a huge Biter horde. More to himself than to Jo, he whispered, 'Maybe we should look for her.'
Jo just stood there, holding his hand, fully conscious of the terrible burden that fell on him and their family. She knew that turning on the lights and mounting a search for Alice might well lead to her discovery, but one thing was for certain—it would attract the Biters that were on the march outside. Above all, she was a mother, and she wanted to scream out that people should look for Alice, that Bob should send out a search party. But she also knew that their survival had depended on putting the interests of the group above that of any one person.
One girl versus the safety of the more than one hundred people at the settlement.
Their little Alice versus the others in the settlement, all of whom had come to accept and depend on Gladwell as their leader.
Gladwell just looked straight ahead, weighing the decision he had to make. Finally, he got up and went into their home, coming back outside after a minute with an axe in his left hand and a large, serrated knife in his right. Jo knew what her husband had in mind, and her own heart was torn apart at the decision he was making. For her, it was not just Alice versus the settlement, but also the fact that the man she loved was now venturing out into what might be a certain death. Gladwell looked at her.
'I can't ask anyone else to risk their lives, but I can't live with the possibility that Alice is out there alone.'
He walked towards the gate, but soon found that he was not alone. Jones and Sunil had joined him, walking a step behind, armed as he was, with a knife and an axe. He turned to say something but Jones shook his head.
'Sir, we've got your back.'
As the gates opened and he stepped out, Gladwell paused for a second. He had not even got a gun with him because opening fire would mean attracting Biters for miles around. It would come down to close combat with the axe and knife. He had killed men and Biters before, indeed anyone who had survived four years after The Rising would likely have blood, of the living or the undead, on their hands. Still, going out into the darkness with an unknown number of Biters around was something that he would never ordinarily consider doing.
Of course, having his little girl out there in the middle of the Biters was not something that he had counted on either.
Something pressed into his back. Jones passed on a silenced pistol—the only one they had at the settlement.
'Sir, leave the dirty work to me. You take this in case you need it.'
Jones was the armorer and the unarmed combat instructor at the settlement, bringing with him combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq before The Rising, and Gladwell felt good that he had him and Sunil behind him as they proceeded.
They walked out into the darkness, the sounds of Biters carrying in the wind all around them. Their settlement had been chosen in part because it was at an elevation, which gave them the advantage of terrain, and they had over the years cut down most of the trees around it to give a clearer line of sight. All except a small clump of trees directly ahead of the gates about a couple of hundred meters away. Gladwell made his way towards the trees, all his senses heightened by the imminent danger of the Biters around and also the anxiety he felt about Alice. He tried to wish away the images of Alice lying bloodied an
d torn, or worse, as a Biter after having been bitten.
They were walking cautiously, trying to make as little noise as possible, when a puppy barked directly up ahead. He threw caution to the wind and ran towards the trees.
***
The Biter grabbed at the puppy who had sunk his little teeth into her legs. The Biter clumsily clawed at it and then lost her balance and fell to the ground. All the while, the puppy was growling, fighting, trying to keep his master safe.
Alice sat rooted to the spot for a few seconds, paralyzed by fear, unable to move a muscle. Then the Biter grabbed Doggie by a leg, and the puppy squealed in pain. She had heard from the older kids that Biters normally tried to bite people so that they would become like them, but if anyone tried to fight back, they would go berserk and tear their opponents to pieces. With all the courage her little heart could muster, she shouted out.
'Leave my Doggie alone!'
The Biter turned to look at her, teeth bared and eyes widening in anticipation of a larger and better quarry than the troublesome animal that had latched onto her leg. She threw Doggie to the side, where he landed with a yelp, and then she got up and began coming towards Alice.
Alice felt around her for something she could use as a weapon, and her little hands closed around a rock. As the Biter closed in on her, she flung the rock with all the strength she could put into the throw. The rock bounced off the Biter's head, and she roared in fury at the little human who had dared to resist her. She bore in on Alice, who had her back to the tree and was now shouting for her Daddy.
The Biter was no more than a couple of feet away from Alice when her head was split open by an axe. Jones kicked the body off the axe and stood guard as Gladwell took Alice in his arms. She was crying now, her body racked with uncontrollable sobs.
'Shh, sweetheart. Daddy's here.'
Jones gave a low whistle and Gladwell heard the shuffling sounds of Biters approaching. He saw the shadows in the moonlight and while the main body of the Biter horde seemed to have passed them by, several of them had heard the barks and cries and were now coming in towards them, growling in anticipation of a kill. Gladwell held Alice by the shoulder and steadied her with a tight grip.
