The Crocodile's Jaws: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No.7) (10 page)

That was precisely what Alice was afraid of.

A man came running into the bridge.

'Sir, our boat is approaching.'

'Who's on it, idiot?'

The man blanched and recovered his composure before
replying.

'Sir, it seems to be Vasili. But he may be hurt. I can see
the uniform through my binoculars, but he's slumped over the steering wheel so
I can't see his face.'

'Did he get the supplies?'

'I can see blankets covering boxes in the back.'

The captain nodded, satisfied.

'Looks like our goons managed to find some food after all
and perhaps Vasili just needed time to complete the transaction and give them
the krokodil. Have two men up to get him and the cargo.'

As Nikolai barked his orders, Alice was reminded of just how
precarious the captain's situation was, despite all his bluster and all the
nuclear warheads his ship carried. While his onboard filters could get him and
his men drinking water, he had no fresh supplies of food, and depended on his
local network of thugs to scrounge for food supplies and raid settlements in
return for the drug that the captain and Nikolai had got them addicted to.
Alice realized that the captain and his ship were like parasites, moving from
place to place, sucking it dry of supplies and crushing the people there before
moving on. They had done so to dozens of islands and ports so far, and now that
Karachi was drying up, he had his sights set on Wonderland.

Alice could not and would not allow such a fate to befall
her people.

She was led back to her room, only one man guarding her as
the others were busy receiving Vasili and his shipment or preparing for the
ambush. By now the captain figured that he had her on so short a leash that she
would not dare attempt any resistance. She was just a few feet from the room
where she and Zohar had been imprisoned when the man behind her stopped,
talking into his radio mouthpiece.

'Sir, Boris here. I'll be right there.'

He looked at the man standing in front of the room and shouted
out.

'Something's up. They're asking me to go topside and see
what's going on. Take her into the room.'

As the man turned and ran, Alice walked closer the room and
the guard prodded her with his gun.

'Get in there, freak.'

That was when the unmistakable sound of gunfire came from
somewhere above her, and then a sound that she would recognize anywhere.

A roar of pure fury from Bunny Ears followed by a bellowed
scream.

'Aaa… aa… lisssss.'

The guard in front of her looked up involuntarily at the
sound, and that was when Alice's hand shot out and her clenched fist connected
with his trachea. The man's eyes widened as his hands came up to his neck and
Alice brought her right elbow around in an arc, smashing his nose. As he went
down, she grabbed the pistol from his belt and shot him once in the head. She
took the keys from his belt and as she opened the door, she tossed the pistol
to Zohar as she grabbed the guard's assault rifle.

'Come on, kid. It's payback time.'

***

TEN

John ducked as a round glanced off the hull of the submarine
and pulled Bunny Ears down close to him. Neha was right behind him. So far the
girl had proved absolutely indispensable and fearless. She looked slight,
almost fragile but clearly had a ruthless streak to her, perhaps born out of
years of suffering and struggling to survive. She had been born to an Indian
father and a Pakistani mother before the Rising, and they had been visiting
relatives in Karachi when things went bad. Her father had survived and kept her
alive, meeting up with other survivors and moving from place to place,
scrounging to survive, trying to stay out of the way of Biters and bandits who
now ruled the city.

She had guided them to the berth at the old port where their
boat was kept, awaiting Vasili and the food and supplies he was supposed to
take back. She had told him that Vasili needed to radio in an all-clear for the
boat to be allowed near the sub, and he had done so. Once John had realized
that Neha knew enough to get him and Bunny Ears close to the submarine and that
Vasili's old uniform fitted him pretty well, he realized he had very little use
for Vasili any more. John would have put a bullet in his head but ironically it
was Neha, who had suffered so much at the hands of Vasili and others like him,
who stopped him.

'He and his captain have been predators for too long. Let
him realize what it means to be at the bottom of the food chain.'

So Vasili had been set free in the old ruins of Karachi,
unarmed and unable to run with the wound in his leg. John wasn't sure who would
get him first—Biters or people who had slaved at the factory. Either way,
Vasili was a dead man.

Getting onto the submarine had been easy enough. A sentry
had lowered a ladder and had barely had time to register that it was not Vasili
looking up at him before John had shot him. John had climbed up the ladder as
fast as he could and when another guard appeared above the hatch, John had
killed him as well. But a third had appeared and engaged him in a firefight
that had now been raging for a couple of minutes. Bunny Ears and Neha had
joined John and he knew that he was running out of time. He no longer had the
element of surprise on his side and he had to get inside before more
reinforcements came or the hatch was simply closed.

Bunny Ears pulled Neha to one side as another bullet came
their way. Something about learning Neha's name had changed Bunny Ears. He was
insanely protective towards her, and seemed to be trying to communicate—saying
the name Neil over and over again, and then grunting in frustration when he was
unable to give voice to the thoughts in his head. Neha had been mortified at
first to be in such close quarters with a Biter, but like all humans who had
crossed paths with Bunny Ears, she was realizing that there was much more to
him than an undead monster.

The guard had steadied his aim to fire another shot when he
was suddenly pulled downwards, back inside the submarine through the hatch.
John threw caution to the winds, worried that they would be closing down the
hatch, leaving him and Bunny Ears helpless to do anything. However, when he
reached the hatch, he saw familiar blonde hair emerge.

Alice grinned as she saw John and Bunny Ears a few feet
behind him, and then her look changed to one of concern.

'Come on, we don't have a lot of time!'

As they raced through the narrow corridor below the hatch,
Alice filled John in briefly on the predicament in which she had found herself.
Alice called out to Neha.

'Do you know where the weapons room is?'

Neha nodded and pointed to a corridor leading to the left.
John followed Neha down the corridor, with Alice hoping that they got there
before the captain's men manning the weapons realized what was happening and
fired their missiles. 

Alice continued towards the bridge, with Bunny Ears and
Zohar just behind her. As they passed a corridor to their right, a man emerged
from a room, armed with a rifle, perhaps alerted by the gun battle above. He
saw Bunny Ears and his eyes widened. He raised his rifle to fire but it clicked
harmlessly. In his panic, he had forgotten to thumb the safety off. He never
got a second chance as Bunny Ears barreled into him, knocking the rifle out of
his hands with one blow and then throwing the man against the wall. Alice kept
running, hearing the man's screams echo behind her as Bunny Ears finished him.

She was almost at the bridge when Zohar shouted something.
She turned and that saved her life. Something hit her hard from the right,
followed shortly by the deafening echo of a gun fired in an enclosed space. She
was thrown hard against the wall, and blood spurted from the wound in her left
shoulder. If she had not looked back at Zohar while running the shot would have
hit her head. Zohar brought up his pistol to fire but their attacker kicked the
boy's feet from under him and he went down. Another hard kick to the body and
Zohar was still.

'Now, you witch, let me carve you up before we burn your
city down.'

A hulking figure emerged from the darkness before her,
holding a pistol in his right hand and a curved hunting knife in the other.

It was Nikolai.

***

From John's interrogation, Vasili had been an officer of
some sort, in theory second only to the captain, but in practice third in line
behind a man called Nikolai, who headed the marine detachment on the submarine
and provided the muscle the captain needed to enforce his will. John was hardly
an expert on submarines but on several occasions had been deployed or picked up
by US Navy subs after missions, and he knew that the sub they were on was a
very big one, nuclear-powered from what little Alice had told him. He had seen
the long flat deck on top, ringed by circular hatches, launch tubes for intercontinental
nuclear missiles.

He paused outside the door to the weapons room.

'Who's normally in there?'

Neha was beside him, back flattened against the wall like
him and breathing heavily from the exertion of the last few minutes.

'There's a man called Mikhail. He's old and seems different
from the rest—he never mistreated me or anyone else that I saw. I think the
captain keeps him alive because he's the one who knows how to operate the
weapons and keep them in working order.'

'Anyone else?'

'The captain doesn't really trust anyone, so every time I
brought food for Mikhail, there was a guard in there with him, perhaps to ensure
he did what the captain wanted.'

John digested all that. Blundering in, guns blazing, into a
room where a frightened man sat with his finger on the button that could
unleash nuclear hell did not sound like a smart idea. The men above had been
taken by surprise, but the guard inside would now be on alert after hearing the
shots. Alice had said the men were marines, and John had worked with Russian
special forces before the Rising, tracking down a renegade Serbian general
accused of war crimes. They were well trained and ruthless, and if there was
one thing he had learned in all his years of being a Delta operator and of
surviving after the Rising, it was that there was no glory in fighting fair—what
mattered was winning and stealth and subterfuge often were more important than brute
force or indeed fighting skill. In that same mission in Serbia, he had bonded
with a couple of the Russian troopers and had picked up some rudimentary
Russian, including a phrase which he had heard almost every day as they had
gone out on one wild goose chase after another based on faulty intelligence.

He tapped on the door and spoke in an authoritative voice.

'Mikhail,
lozhnaya trevoga
.'

The guard inside motioned for Mikhail to keep sitting at his
console and walked to the door, relieved that someone was calling out a false
alarm. The last few minutes had been nerve-wracking. Nikolai had radioed in
saying he would have the commotion checked out, but then there had been no news
after that. Were they under attack? What was going on? It was a relief to hear
that it was a false alarm, but a part of his mind also began ringing alarm
bells. A part he should have listened to more—a part that would have made him
question who this voice belonged to.

The guard opened the door and poked his head out. He never
got to say a word as John clamped a hand behind his neck and jabbed a knife
under his throat with the other hand. He pulled the taller man down and close
to him, as if embracing him, and walked into the room. An old man wearing
wire-rimmed spectacles held together with tape looked at him with his mouth
wide open. John dumped the dead guard on the floor and took a quick few steps
towards Mikhail, till he was within touching distance of the man.

'Hi, Comrade Mikhail. You are relieved of duty.'

***

Alice's rifle had been thrown from her hands by the impact
and lay a few feet away. She had no other weapons on her but her first priority
was to get the gun in Nikolai's hand out of the equation. As he brought up the
pistol to fire at her, Alice rolled towards him and kicked up, connecting with
his wrist and sending the gun skittering across the hallway. He was fast,
faster than Alice would have expected of a man his size and before she could
bring her leg down, he had slashed across her ankle with his knife. Blood
spurted out and Alice rolled away, getting on her feet to face him. The blow
would have incapacitated a normal human, but Alice was very different from any
adversary Nikolai had ever faced, as he was rapidly finding out. He pointed his
knife at Alice.

'Freak. Now you die.'

Nikolai was a big man, used to leveraging his superior reach
and strength in fights, and he fought according to those same rules that had
served him so well over the years. He came in close, slashing with the knife in
his right hand and ready to land a knockout blow with his left if he got close
enough.

Alice on the other hand had spent most of her life fighting
against opponents bigger and stronger than her. If Nikolai got in too close, he
would have the edge, so she backed away, further from Zohar, who still lay
prone on the ground, trying to get some distance between them.

As he lunged with the knife, Alice swiveled out of the way
and brought her right leg sweeping around in a kick to the back of Nikolai's
knee. He stopped, wincing at the blow, and Alice followed with a blow, aiming
with the heel of her hand for the bridge of his nose. Nikolai blocked the blow
and moved forward, suddenly and with frightening speed, trying to headbutt her.
Alice jerked her head out of the way and fell back, rolling to get her balance
back as she stood up again. Nikolai's face was a mask of rage as he closed in
again, frustrated and angry at being denied what he had thought would be an
easy victory.

Never fight angry.

That had been one rule that had been drummed into Alice by
Jones, her teacher back at the settlement. Given her impulsive nature and
propensity for getting into trouble, it had been needed. Nikolai had no such
teacher, and even if his instructors at the academy had tried to teach him
discipline, that had been frittered away by his lawless existence since the
Rising. So Alice held her ground and did not react to his provocations while he
lunged ahead again. This time, he almost succeeded with a feint with the knife,
followed by a kick to the shin that Alice just avoided as she stepped back.
Nikolai brought back his knife and thrust it straight at her stomach. He was
conditioned to humans speaking and Biters being mindless monsters with no
fighting skills, and in fighting someone like Alice, he reacted to the human
side of her. That would be a fatal error.

Alice let him follow through with the blow and the knife
entered her stomach, just below the navel. It would look messy, but it didn't
hurt and certainly did not slow her down. Nikolai's eyes widened as he realized
his folly. That was when the heel of Alice's right hand slammed into his nose,
breaking it. Nikolai roared in fury and agony and pulled out his knife from
Alice's stomach but before he could strike again, Alice had kneed him in his
groin. As he bent over, Alice put all her strength and body weight behind her,
bent her knees, and launched herself up at his face. Her head struck the bridge
of his nose and finished the job her hand had begun. Shards of bone from his shattered
nose were pushed back into his head, some into his brain. Nikolai tottered for
a second and then fell down, dead before he hit the ground.

Zohar was groaning, and as much as Alice wanted to make sure
he was okay, she didn't have much time to spare. She tousled his hair.

'Kid, you okay?'

He spoke through clenched teeth.

'Go, get the captain.'

Alice picked up Nikolai's pistol and knife and ran as fast
as she could towards the bridge, hoping she would get there in time. Hoping
John had succeeded. Hoping that the net result of all this would not be a
smoking radioactive ruin where Wonderland had once stood.

***

The captain was sitting in his chair, flanked by two of his
men, both carrying rifles. To Alice's surprise, he did not seem panicked or
concerned in the least. Instead, he snapped his fingers and both his men
lowered their rifles.

'Alice, I had thought you to be more sensible but clearly
you did not take my warning seriously. I would have loved to have gone to
Wonderland and lived near those farms, eating fresh fruits and enjoying the
labor of my slaves, but it looks like that was not meant to be. I got a message
from your friends saying that Robertson's plane is due in the next ten minutes.
When they land, they will be ambushed and killed as per my plan, but I will no
longer fly to Wonderland. I have ordered my Weapons Officer to fire a single
missile—two warheads will be targeted at Wonderland and four will go on to the
Homeland, destroying four military bases and everything around them. Robertson
will both see the power behind my intent and also be robbed of much of his long-range
aviation assets.'