by Dhar, Mainak
She turned to see Junior watching her, but he quickly averted his gaze.
'Junior, do you think we'll have Biters come by today?'
'No idea. Hey, Alice. Can I ask you something?'
This must have been the first time Alice had heard Junior ask for permission for anything, so she was curious to know what was on his mind and she nodded.
'It's Valentine's Day tomorrow.'
'So I hear but how would you know anything about Valentine's Day? You were a small kid when The Rising happened.'
'I talked to the older kids, like Ravi. He knows all about it. He's quite keen on Jane, you know?'
Alice smiled, remembering her sister scurrying off for her rendezvous with Ravi.
'I know. I just hope he's giving her chocolates. I sure would like to share some with her.'
Junior had a blank look on his face, as if the way he had planned for the conversation to go had been totally derailed, so he tried bringing it back on track.
'Ravi was saying he'll set up a dance tomorrow for couples. He sings very well.'
'I hope he doesn't sing too loud, or the Biters will hear and come for his dance.'
Once again, Junior had a slightly dumbfounded look, as he tried to steer the conversation the way he had hoped it would unfold.
'Alice, I was thinking maybe you and me...'
Comprehension dawned on Alice and she looked at Junior and began giggling.
'Why are you laughing at me?'
'You need to at least give me flowers and chocolates first.'
Now Junior looked totally lost. Alice solved his dilemma on what to do or say by reaching out towards him.
'At least start by giving me that scope. Let me have a look.'
Alice took the night vision scope that had been salvaged from the crashed Zeus aircraft and held it up to one eye. Jones had told everyone that they had only two scopes, and they needed to be recharged using the generator, which consumed precious fuel. So they were to be used sparingly and only when absolutely necessary.
'Alice, only for a second...'
Now that she had the scope, Alice hardly registered Junior's words and peered through the scope, switching it on. The land in front of her was now bathed in a ghostly green light, but other than that she was amazed at the clarity with which she could see everything. Then she saw two figures ambling past the walls, out in the Deadland. With their shuffling gait, there was no mistaking who they were.
'Biters.'
Junior sat upright at Alice's whispered warning. He took the scope from her and took a look.
'Just two of them, but they're headed right towards us. I'll go call others.'
Alice held his hand as he was about to get up.
'It's just two of them. We can take them out. I'm not afraid of them.'
Junior hesitated. His instructions had been explicit—call adults if there was any sign of trouble. The problem was that for reasons he didn't fully understand, he didn't want to look weak or afraid in front of Alice.
'Fine, let's shoot them and be done with it.'
Alice screwed up her face in a grimace.
'Shoot them? Just two Biters? We shoot them and we'll bring in Biters from all around.'
Junior saw Alice reach for the knife at her belt. He had always known Alice as being hot-headed, but going into the dark with knives against Biters was not something he was sure he was ready to sign up for. Alice stood up, the knife in her right hand, the handgun at her belt, and the rifle lying where it had been.
'Come on, Junior. We'll get them as they fall into the moat.'
And then she was off.
Junior scrambled after her, pulling his own knife from its sheath. He caught up with her just as she reached the wall.
'Alice, I haven't actually ever killed a Biter with a knife. We've practiced it a lot, but I don't know if it works in real life.'
Alice grinned.
'I haven't either. Let's find out if it works or not.'
Junior shook his head as Alice went outside the walls, wondering what he was getting himself into. In the moonlight, Alice could see the two Biters just a dozen feet away, walking towards them. Her earliest memories were of being out in the dark, all alone, clutching a small puppy, looking at a hideous Biter. Then she remembered clutching on to her Dad while Biters attacked from all directions and blood and body parts splattering her as they were cut down. She had spent years waking up to the same nightmare, years of telling herself that if she were bigger, better trained, braver, she would not be so terrified again. Every time she saw a Biter was an opportunity to prove that, to exorcize the ghosts that had tormented her dreams since that night.
The first Biter was now just a couple of feet away from the shallow moat that had been dug hurriedly around the exposed wall. Alice stopped at the edge of the moat and looked at him. He must have been someone of means before he had been turned. He was wearing some sort of fancy suit of the kind Alice had once seen a Zeus General wear when he had come to visit her Dad.
The Biter's face was streaked with blood and his lips were drawn back as she had seen Biters do when they sensed prey. His eyes were looking at her, but there was no real emotion or sign of intelligence in them. It wasn't obvious where he had been bitten as his clothes seemed spotless, but a single bite was enough to transform a healthy, normal man into one of these monsters. Perhaps this one had been bitten in the back where she could not see, perhaps the blood on his face came from a bite there. Either way, he was no longer the man he had once been. Now he was just a mindless monster whose only purpose in life was to bite and ravage any human he found till they also became a monster like him.
Alice waited as the Biter came towards her. Her heart was hammering, and smelling the stench of the undead and seeing his bloodied face reminded her of the nightmares she had endured for years. Yet she knew the only way to stand up to those monsters of her childhood nights was to slay the monster that stood before her now.
The Biter lunged towards her and fell into the moat in an ungainly heap. The moat was shallow, and as the Biter struggled to his feet, Alice saw that he was visible from the waist up. She didn't know if a Biter possessed enough co-ordination to climb out of such a hole, but she wasn't about to wait to find out.
She did just as Jones had taught her. Hold the knife in her left hand in front of her chest, with her right palm behind the handle. Rush the target and instead of stabbing with one hand, which would not likely penetrate the brain, use her full body weight through her right hand to force the knife in. As she dove towards the Biter, he turned to look at her, and she felt the jarring impact work its way through to her right shoulder as her razor-sharp blade sank into the side of his head.
The Biter jerked back and fell back into the moat, her blade still stuck in his head. Alice had wondered what it would feel like to kill a Biter with her knife, but it had all happened so fast that she had no time to really register anything.
On her left Junior stabbed at the second Biter with one hand, grazing his head, but not putting him down. In his panic and adrenaline rush, he had forgotten his training. The Biter grabbed his arm and brought his jaws to bite down.
The Biter's teeth were inches from Junior's hand when Alice pulled her knife out of the fallen Biter's head and stuck the second Biter in the neck. He roared in anger and reared back towards her as she pulled the knife out, and she leaned back and kicked him, sweeping him off his feet and sending him into the moat. As he scrambled to climb out, Junior finished him with his knife.
As they walked back, cleaning their blood-stained knives, Junior said nothing. Finally, Alice broke the ice.
'So, Junior, what were you saying about tomorrow?'
She turned to look at him and saw an emotion in his eyes that she had never seen in his eyes before when he had been looking at her.
Fear.
'Nothing, Alice. Nothing.'
***
Alice woke up to the sound of Jane singing. She had never heard Jane singing
before and while she didn't know what the song was or what its words meant, it sounded pleasant. For a while, Alice lay there, listening to her sister.
'It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart,
Without saying a word you can light up the dark.'
And on she went. Finally, Alice could not pretend to be asleep any longer and sat up.
'You're thinking of Ravi, aren't you?'
Jane smiled at her. Alice had always known her sister to be serious, even sad. To see her smile like this made her happy. If Valentine's Day could do this to a person, it must be a good thing indeed.
'So, are you going to be Ravi's valentine? Has he given you flowers?'
Jane laughed at Alice's questions and then sat down next to her sister.
'I like him, Alice. He's not like the other men. He sings, he writes poetry, he dreams of how things can be beautiful again. He takes me far away from this Deadland and makes me remember how life once was.'
As Jane spoke, Alice sat there, looking into the distance. She had no idea what life had been like before The Rising. It must have been something truly wonderful, given how much Jane seemed to miss it. All Alice had known was her life in the Deadland, and she was sad and a little envious of Jane, to have enjoyed all the wonders of such a life before the Biters tore the world down. 'What would you have done on Valentine's Day before The Rising?'
'Well, I was too young to have done it myself, but I knew what happened. A boy and a girl would have gone out on a date.'
'A date?'
Now that was a new word for Alice, and she was intensely curious as to what that meant.
'A boy and a girl would go out, without anyone else with them, to be together.'
Alice thought about that, and what Junior had said to her the previous night came to her. She felt in equal measure mortification and excitement at the prospect that she had been out on a date without even realizing it. To clarify, she ventured, 'Go out together, like on a patrol?'
Jane looked at Alice and then broke out into laughter. She laughed for several seconds, and then paused to wipe a tear from her eye.
'You are priceless. No, not a combat patrol. They would eat dinner at a restaurant, maybe dance, maybe watch a movie.'
Alice was wide-eyed. She had heard of movies and restaurants, but of course had never experienced them. Clearly Valentine's Day was a very special day for people to have indulged in so many luxuries on one day. Then Jane leaned towards Alice and whispered in a conspiratorial whisper.
'They would sometimes kiss each other on the lips.'
As Jane ran out, Alice sat there. Suddenly, Valentine's Day seemed to have lost most of its sheen. Dancing, eating, flowers and chocolates were one thing, but she was sure she was not going to enjoy being kissed by a boy.
Least of all Junior.
***
'Jones, that girl is getting reckless. She should have called for help.'
Jones smiled as Gladwell vented.
'Sir, she may be reckless but she is good. I don't know of any eleven-year-old who has taken out a Biter with a knife. For that matter, I don't know of any other kid who shot three Biters at point-blank range at the age of seven.'
Gladwell knew that Alice was Jones' prized pupil and he would defend her, so he changed the topic of conversation.
'More and more people are talking of these Biter bases. I head two newcomers swear they saw Biters appear out of pipes in the middle of nowhere.'
Jones shook his head. 'I know the stories, but I can't believe them. Sure, some Biters may have stumbled into a tunnel, a cave or a sewer pipe but we've fought Biters for so many years and nothing I've seen indicates that they have anything like the co-ordination needed to set up bases.'
'What matters is not whether they have real bases or not, but the fact that people are beginning to believe that they do. It panics them, it makes them feel less in control, and it gets them talking of signing away our freedom to Zeus.'
'I know who you're talking about, Sir. How about I announce we're launching patrols and sweeps through the area? It'll keep people busy and not have enough time for idle gossip, and we can then announce at the end that there are no bloody holes in the ground where Biters appear from.'
Gladwell nodded and as Jones walked off, he thought back to their original topic of conversation.
Alice.
He knew she had grown up in circumstances that he would never have wished on his worst enemy. He knew that she had seen violence and horrors of the sort he would never have wanted his baby to see. He knew all that, and he understood that she was going to grow up in a very different way from how Jane had before The Rising. Violence and death was a part of their lives, something he could not wish away, or shield his children from. That was not what bothered Gladwell.
What bothered him was that Alice enjoyed it.
***
Alice went straight to training. Strictly speaking, all kids were required to attend one training session a day but Alice so preferred it to working on the farm or doing other chores at the settlement that she went more than once almost every day.
Today, some of the newcomers, adults and kids alike, were being taught the finer points of taking down Biters. Eleven years after The Rising, every human being still alive knew how Biters could be destroyed. It took a blow to the head. Nowhere else. A blow to the head that penetrated the skull and destroyed the brain. However, there was a big difference between knowing that, occasionally killing the odd Biter with several crudely aimed blows to the head with a rock or club, and having the combat skills to take on hordes on Biters in hand-to-hand combat. Jones was busy organizing the patrols, so Sunil had taken on the job of teacher for this batch.
As Alice sat down on the side, watching, she noticed a big difference between how the adults and older kids reacted compared to the younger kids. Some of the younger kids were smiling, looking on in excitement, but the older newcomers were grim, many nodding along, as they absorbed the lessons. They had all learnt from bitter experience that killing a Biter sounded easy enough, but it was tough to do in practice. Many had lost friends and family to Biters and the lessons they were learning were very real. Sunil was holding a rock in his hand.
'As you've seen, we have guns and plenty of ammo, so you may think all we need to do is aim and spray when we see Biters.'
'Give me a rifle and I don't need any fancy footwork.'
Sunil walked up to the man who had spoken and looked him in the eye.
'What happens when the bullets run out?'
The man was silent.
'We scrounge for ammo when we can find it, but we don't have a factory making bullets, folks. We need to conserve our guns for when there is no option but to use them. For a single Biter, it's almost criminal to use a gun and waste bullets.'
'We don't all have knives or axes.'
Sunil smiled.
'Anything you can lay your hands on can be a weapon if you know how to use it. This rock in my hand, if used properly with the sharp edge pointed in the right direction, can penetrate the eye all the way to the brain. I need a volunteer. Pretend I'm a Biter and show how you'd destroy me.'
A tall man stepped forward and took the rock from Sunil. He brought his hand around, aiming at Sunil's head. Sunil bobbed his head back and the man missed.
'Now, Biters don't evade blows, but they shuffle a lot and move and jerk randomly. No idea why, but some people smarter than me think their nerves are all messed up. So if you swing like that, you may bust his skull, or you could just land a glancing blow, and the next thing you know is that he's eating your hand.'
And so the lessons continued. Learning how to fight and destroy Biters was one thing, but the reality was that the moment you fought back too hard, the Biters also changed their tactics. Normally, Biters would try and bite to convert humans to monsters like themselves, but if faced with stiff resistance, they would go into a rage and tear apart their opponents. Alice had once asked why they didn't just run away when face
d with Biters out in the Deadland, and she still remembered what her father had told her.
'You can't keep running. This is our home now, and we have to make a stand.'
After a few minutes, Alice walked back to her house. She didn't enjoy the chores, but her Mom hadn't really made them optional. So she could while away time at the training and combat practice, but there was work that needed to be done.
Today it was washing clothes. The settlement's water source lay in a stream a kilometer away. In the early years they had dug a shallow canal to try and divert water to a pool closer to the settlement, but that was abandoned after they found a Biter in the pool one day. As a result, they would organize daily patrols to fetch water for drinking, cleaning and cooking. There was a central pool that was brought in and shared among all, and each family was free to go and fetch more if they wanted, but only in daylight and only with at least two armed members out there.
Alice sat near the drainage hole behind her home, washing the clothes with water, seeing the accumulated dirt and dust wash away, but her mind was elsewhere.
It was Valentine's Day. She had thought if it were such an important day, something special would happen, especially after what Junior had said the previous night. Yet, here she was, getting bored washing clothes. She saw some movement, and peered around the wall to see Jane.
She was with Ravi, and he had his arms around her.
'Don't go. Not today.'
'Jane, I have to go. Jones is sending out patrols but we're supposed to look for these Biter holes, and I tell you, they don't exist. So we'll go out, walk around a bit, and then come back in time for the party.'
'And then?'
He brought Jane closer and spoke in little more than a whisper.
