Deadland: Untold Stories of Alice in Deadland (Alice, No. 5) (12 page)

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 faced 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.