Deadland: Untold Stories of Alice in Deadland (Alice, No. 5)
Read Deadland: Untold Stories of Alice in Deadland (Alice, No. 5) Online
Authors: Mainak Dhar
Deadland
Untold
Stories of Alice in Deadland
Copyright © 2013
Mainak Dhar
All Rights Reserved.
This is a work of
fiction, and all characters and incidents depicted in it are purely the result
of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
real people or incidents is purely co-incidental.
Table of Contents
Books
in the Alice in Deadland series
Free excerpt
from Chronicler of the Undead
As always, for
Puja & Aaditya
GREETINGS FROM THE DEADLAND
In late November of 2011, I uploaded my novel Alice in Deadland
to the Kindle store using Amazon’s KDP self-publishing program. I had first
discovered the tremendous opportunity in reaching readers worldwide through the
Kindle store in March, and after a modest beginning (I sold 118 ebooks in my
first month), I was beginning to see some success, having sold some 20,000
ebooks by November. However, nothing had prepared me for the reception my story
about a girl called Alice in a dystopian world called the Deadland got from
readers. Alice in Deadland quickly became an Amazon.com bestseller and
encouragement from readers like yourself led me to write the sequel, Through
The Killing Glass, which was published in March 2012.
As of November 2012, the two Alice in Deadland novels had
been downloaded by well over 100,000 readers on the Kindle store. This was the
kind of reception most writers dream of, and certainly more than I had ever
expected. I received more than two hundred reader emails and also started a
Facebook group for Alice in Deadland fans (at
http://www.facebook.com/groups/345795412099089/
).
The feedback I got was pretty unanimous—readers wanted to know more about the
world that Alice found herself in. How had our civilization been reduced to the
Deadland? What was the story behind some of the characters readers encountered
such as the Queen and Bunny Ears?
That feedback motivated me to keep the story alive, and I
wrote the prequel to the series, Off With Their Heads. As I interacted with
readers, I was inspired to take the story further. Many of my readers asked me
what would happen if Alice came back to the land her parents came from, the
land where the architects of The Rising were still entrenched—the United
States? That led to Hunting The Snark. A few readers asked me what had life
been like for Alice when she was growing up in her settlement? What had she
seen and endured that made her the girl we meet in the first Alice in Deadland
novel? This collection of shorts takes us all back to those dark years, and
together we will explore the experiences in her formative years that made Alice
who she became later as she dove into the adventures depicted in the other
books in the series.
I do hope you enjoy taking this trip back into the Deadland
as much as I did writing it.
Mainak Dhar
When midnight mists
are creeping,
And all the land is
sleeping,
Around me tread the
mighty dead,
And slowly pass away.
- Lewis Carroll,
Dreamland
DAYS OF SORROW
'Daddy, I saw a hellocottor again.'
Robert Gladwell rushed out of his home, assault rifle in
hand.
'Alice, get back here!'
He caught up with his four-year-old daughter near the gates
of their settlement and dragged her back. Bewildered as to why the simple
pleasure of seeing such a wonderful and strange flying machine had been
interrupted so rudely, Alice began bawling. Gladwell took cover behind the wall
of the old building that he and his family had made their home and watched
skyward, looking anxiously for any signs of the black helicopter that had been circling
over their area for the past few weeks. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw
no more sign of it, and then turned to his little daughter. He knelt in front
of her and wiped away her tears.
'Alice, sweetheart, you know I told you that when those things
fly around, we must stay inside our houses, and you know it's not safe to go
wandering about without a grown-up, don't you?'
She nodded, still choking back her tears. Gladwell sensed
movement all around him as others in their settlement came out from behind
cover. They had agreed that till it was clear who the men in the helicopters
were and what they wanted, it was best to lie low. Four years of surviving in
what had come to be known as the Deadland had taught them all to be naturally
suspicious and cautious if they wanted to survive.
Jane, Alice's elder sister, came and fetched her.
'Alice, come on. I'll show you the puppy who wandered in
last night.'
All her sorrows forgotten in an instant, Alice's face lit up
in a smile.
'I'll name him Doggie. Can I please? Please, can I?'
Jane tousled Alice's hair and took her hand as she led her
away. She was ten years older than Alice, and in the last four years, Gladwell
sometimes thought his older daughter had aged four decades. Gone was the
sometimes rebellious and always active girl who had been knocking on the doors
of what promised to be a trouble-filled stint as a teenager. Jane seemed more
mature, more composed, but in her eyes, Gladwell saw none of the old spark. The
lifelessness of the land they lived in was reflected in his daughter's eyes.
'Bob, you okay?' His wife, Joanne, had come up behind him
and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
'We still don't know who those choppers belong to or what
they want. As if the Biters weren't bad enough, now we have to worry about
them. Sometimes, I wish we could have given our kids a better life than one
where we count surviving one more day as success.'
Jo faced him.
'We're all alive, and you've kept us all safe. That's what
matters now.'
Jones, who had been a Marine at the US Embassy where
Gladwell had worked as a diplomat before their world was torn apart by the
series of events called The Rising, came up.
'Boss, who do you reckon those flyboys are?'
'I don't know. I took a look through field glasses last
time, and they had no insignia. Let them show their hand first, and then we'll
talk.'
'Hey, we're supposed to all meet in an hour's time. Should
we go ahead or wait for the patrol to get back?'
Gladwell looked out over the short walls that ringed their
settlement, hoping to get a glimpse of the four men who had left in the
morning. 'I don't want us to meet again and have people panic over news of
Biter hordes coming our way till we know more. Let Arvind and the boys get back
with some more news and we can meet then.'
What was left unsaid was that, in the event of their patrol
not coming back, they would know for sure that they faced imminent danger.
Gladwell knew that there was no point in fretting over things he couldn't
control, so he decided to focus on something which was under his control—making
sure their little settlement was secure.
Their home for the last three years had been a small village
just a few kilometers from an Indian army base where Gladwell and his family
had taken refuge after The Rising, along with some staff and Marines from the
US Embassy and a contingent of Indian Army soldiers and their families led by
Gladwell's friend, Brigadier Randhawa. As Gladwell walked around the
settlement, he couldn't but contrast the relative peace they now enjoyed to the
chaos and bloodletting of the first year.
Hordes of undead, which they now knew as Biters, had risen
and swarmed over the cities, biting and scratching victims, turning them into
ghouls like themselves. If that weren't bad enough, human governments had gone
mad, choosing to settle scores when all seemed lost, and much of the world had been
ravaged by nuclear exchanges. Huddled in their base, Gladwell and his
companions had faced innumerable attacks by Biters and human looters. They had
fought them off, and earned in blood a reputation as a group not to be easily
messed with. Part of that came from the fact that they had inherited a
veritable arsenal of weapons in a land where private gun ownership was very
low, part from the fact that they had had several trained soldiers in their
midst, but also part from the fact that Gladwell and others like him had made
sure that they stuck together. Randhawa had died soon after The Rising in an
attack by looters, and Gladwell had become the de facto leader of their group
of a hundred men, women and children.
In the distance, his daughters played with a little puppy
that had fallen into the moat that had been dug around their settlement. When
one of their sentries had called out the previous night, a dozen men had raced
to the wall, guns at the ready. They had shared a laugh afterwards when they
discovered that the intruder had not been a Biter on the rampage, but a small,
dirty puppy.
As Alice stroked the puppy's head, a lump formed in Gladwell’s
throat. Alice had been born in the middle of the worst carnage they had faced
after The Rising, and the first year of her life had been a constant struggle
for survival against Biters and humans alike. One day, their base had been
breached by Biters and they had to abandon it and find a new refuge in this
settlement that they now called home. When Alice had been born, Gladwell often
wondered what kind of a world he was bringing his new baby into, a world where
there was nothing but hatred, death and violence. Now, seeing her laugh and
jump with joy, he was grateful that at least, in the middle of all that they
had to endure, she was able to find something that gave her such happiness. It
was much more than he had been able to offer his family over the last four
years.
A commotion began at the gate and he ran towards it. It
couldn't have been Biters, otherwise the sentries would have raised an alarm.
When he reached the gate, Jones and Arvind, a former officer in the Indian
Army, were pushing the gate open. Standing on raised platforms near the wall
were three men armed with rifles, all aiming outside. The four men who had gone
out on patrol had returned. From the look on their faces, he knew that
something was very wrong.
The patrol leader, a man called Sunil, collapsed to the
ground as he entered the settlement. Gladwell took the bottle of water at his
hip and offered him a drink.
'Sunil, what happened?'
'We've been fighting a running battle for the last two
hours. We're lucky to have gotten away alive.'
'What did you guys run into?'
Sunil's eyes had a haunted look in them as he answered.
'Biters. More of them than I've ever seen before and they're
headed our way.'
***
'Doggie, where are your Mama and Daddy?'
The little puppy wagged his tail and snuggled in closer to
Alice, who laughed as she stroked his head.
'You know what? I can be your Mama. I'll give you food, I'll
give you a bath so you're not so stinky and we can have fun together. Do you
like soup? All we get is soup, but I'll save a bowl for you, okay?'
The puppy turned over and Alice tickled his tummy as the two
of them rolled on the ground.
'Alice.'
She turned to see Jane standing behind her. Jane was
carrying a gun in her right hand, and Alice knew that when people started
taking out the guns, bad things happened. Her Mama had explained to her that
there were bad people out there, and they needed to protect themselves. Alice
didn't know if the bad people were coming, but Jane looked scared.
'Alice, all the grown-ups are meeting now. I want to be
there to see what's going on. Will you be a good girl and stay right here with
the dog?'
Alice nodded. She would rather be nowhere else at that
moment than playing with her Doggie, so Jane's request was an easy one to agree
to.
Jane knelt down beside Alice and gripped her little sister's
shoulders. 'Look, Dad asked me to take care of you, but I'm missing out on
everything. Something big's going on, and I want to know. Please don't tell Mom
or Dad I left you here and please don't wander off anywhere.'
Alice nodded and Jane went off to the school building that
now served as their community center, where most of the adults had been called
by Gladwell after he had debriefed with the patrol. Men ringed the wall,
carrying rifles and speaking to each other in hushed tones. Once or twice, she
thought she heard them say a word.
Biters
.
Alice giggled as she tried to say the word aloud herself.
Her parents had told her that the Biters were very dangerous and she should
never, ever go out of the settlement unless one of the adults took her along.
Truth be told, Alice had been outside the settlement only a couple of times,
and she had loved it. There were tall trees, insects to be seen in the grass,
all kinds of colorful fruits and leaves, and birds to chase and play with. Much
more interesting than the mud huts and buildings that dotted their settlement.
But she knew better than to disobey her Daddy.
It wasn't that she was scared of him, but because she could
sense that he was afraid of the Biters, and if something could scare her Daddy,
then she was going to stay away from it. After all, her Daddy was the bravest
and strongest person in the whole world, wasn't he? Alice remembered all the
times she had been bundled into a hut with her sister while her Mommy, Daddy
and the other grown-ups grabbed their guns to fight the Biters that had come to
attack their settlement. Alice had heard the sound of gunfire so many times
that it no longer frightened her. Indeed, while children before The Rising had
gone to sleep listening to lullabies, Alice had slipped into fitful slumber on
countless nights listening to the sound of automatic weapons and the moans and
screeches of Biters as they were destroyed.