The Crocodile's Jaws: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No.7) (4 page)

She motioned to Bunny Ears and they turned towards the lake.
Zohar's eyes lit up on seeing the water and he ran ahead, forgetting his
fatigue. As he jumped into the water and shouted in glee, Alice saw him for the
little boy he should be, instead of carrying the burdens of all his losses.

'Come on, the water's great!'

Caught up in Zohar's infectious enthusiasm, Alice stripped
off her weapons and joined him, feeling the cool water wash off her skin and
rinsing her hair, untangling the knots with her fingers. Bunny Ears and the
other Biters stayed on the banks, watching them, shuffling about. Zohar was
telling a tale, no doubt amplified beyond resemblance to actual events, of how he
had once caught a giant fish in a lake near their home. Alice began telling him
of her own life back in the settlement, of how her father had taught her to
hunt and live off the land. For a few moments, they were once again two young
people reminiscing about their families and the lives they had led.

Alice should have known such snatches of normalcy were only
too rare in the world she lived in. However, she was so caught up in chatting
with Zohar that she never noticed Bunny Ears' head snap up as he sensed
something.

Bunny Ears turned to his right as he heard some rustling in
the bushes. The smell confirmed his suspicions—there were strange humans
nearby. Perhaps they had come to hurt Alice. He turned to see Alice in the
water with her back to him, oblivious to the danger she was in. He growled at
the other Biters, and they followed him as he charged towards the bush, baring
his teeth, ready to kill and be killed to save the girl whom he had taken upon
himself to protect.

Alice heard his growl and turned to see the Biters rush
towards a thick bush. She shouted at Zohar to get out the water and scrambled
towards the shore, where her weapons were kept in a pile. But even as she
neared the shore, a loud scream rang out as Bunny Ears parted the bush and the
Biters streamed in.

The scream had been that of a small child.

***

FOUR

The identity and fate of the first human to have become a
Biter might be forever lost to history, but ever since the first infected
person had bared his or her teeth and laid lifeless eyes on human prey, Biters
had come to be regarded with a fear that was not unfounded given the bloodbath
to come. Perhaps one day someone would find out what had happened to the
infected, for the answer lay not in the supernatural, but in the laboratories
and test-tubes where men had created the instruments of their own downfall in
their quest for power. However, there are some things science cannot explain,
and perhaps humanity is indeed something more subjective and amorphous than to
be precisely measured and distilled through scientific observation and
measurement. Indeed, perhaps the best way of regaining humanity is to be
treated with compassion and respect, to have something or someone to live for,
to have a future that is worth striving for. Perhaps, given time, all Biters
could have started regaining some vestiges of the people they had been, if they
had not been loathed and hunted down, if someone like Alice had been there to
act as a bridge between them and humans.

Perhaps that is what had happened to Bunny Ears, but
whatever the cause, when the little three-year-old girl looked up at him and
screamed, he did not lunge forward and tear her into pieces. Indeed, three
Biters behind him who roared and tried to attack the girl found themselves
being pushed back. Bunny Ears went down on one knee and regarded the little
girl standing in front of him, wearing a pink dress and now crying in terror at
the Biters standing just feet from her. Bunny Ears growled in frustration, not
knowing how to reassure her, to tell her that he posed no threat to her, since
she was not someone who could threaten Alice.

Alice had now run up to the Biters carrying her handgun and
knife, but as she saw the scene before her, she smiled and tapped Bunny Ears on
his shoulder.

'Thank you, Bunny Ears. The rest of you, we do not hurt
children or those who pose no threat to us.'

Bunny Ears let out a low growl of pleasure and the other
Biters shuffled about, uncertain of what to do with the tiny human before them.
Alice spoke gently to the girl, who must have been reassured to hear a human
voice, but perhaps equally terrified to see her Biter-like face.

'Where is your home?'

The girl's lip quivered and she seemed to be on the verge of
tears again when the bushes behind her parted and a woman appeared, her gaunt
face framed by silver hair, a shotgun in her hands. Her eyes widened when she
saw Alice and her companions and she was about to bring the shotgun up when
Alice shouted out.

'No, please, we mean no harm.'

Hearing her voice, the woman hesitated and then pointed her
gun down when Zohar walked up next to Alice.

'You are a Biter yet you talk. How can that be?'

'My name is Alice and it's a long story. Let us see you to
safety and perhaps if you have any food to spare for the boy here it would be
much appreciated. Then, if you're still interested, I can tell you all about
how I came to be who and where I am.'

The woman stuck out a tentative hand, flinching slightly at
the cold, clammy feel of Alice's hand.

'I am Ayesha. Follow me. I'm sure we can spare some food for
your companion, but if you don't mind, can your friends stay here? The men
would be alarmed to see so many Biters.'

Bunny Ears was clearly unhappy at letting Alice go ahead
into the unknown, but she soothed him and told him she would call for him when
it was time to rejoin her. Alice and Zohar followed Ayesha and the little girl
through a patch of forest, and every so often Ayesha would tell Alice to move
to the right or left. Nothing was said, but several fine wires criss-crossed
the trees and the ground in places. Someone had done a pretty good job of booby-trapping
the approach. Certainly no Biter horde would sense them, and any bandits would
probably not have the training or patience to watch for them either.

Alice's senses were now heightened, wondering who this woman
was and who her companions were to have had such training. Her hand went to the
gun at her belt almost unconsciously and she had to stay her hand with an
effort of will as they passed the trees and entered a clearing. Even this area
was booby-trapped and Ayesha told them to move around several patches of grass.
In the distance stood a wooden wall twice as tall as a man.

As if such a well-defended settlement in the middle of
nowhere was not strange enough, light glinted off something. From years of
training and experience, Alice knew what she had spotted. The scope of a sniper
rifle was now trained on her. Now that it was well and truly too late to turn
back, she kept going, approaching whoever or whatever awaited her and Zohar
behind those walls.

***

The gate opened when they were a dozen meters away, at least
four snipers aiming at her. No doubt through their scopes they had seen what
she looked like and would equally without doubt have shot her down but for the
fact that she had two of their own and a human child in tow. She heard a faint
growl behind her. Bunny Ears would be anxious but she was glad she had not
brought him along. Seeing so many Biters approach might have sent some trigger-happy
guard off.

A man stood at the open gate, a trim, tall man with grey
hair carrying a submachine gun in his hand. He raised his hand in greeting and
Ayesha smiled and ran towards him, followed by the little girl. Alice stopped,
unsure how welcome she really was, and the man looked in her direction
repeatedly as Ayesha filled him in on what had happened. He looked at Zohar and
motioned for him to come closer. The boy held onto Alice's hand but she pushed
him gently.

'Go on. You are human and may be more welcome here. At least
they may have some food for you.'

As Zohar approached, the man's features softened as he
ruffled the boy's hair and sent him into the settlement with Ayesha and the
girl and then he walked towards Alice.

'You are quite unlike anyone I have seen, girl. With all
that's happened, I thought I'd seen it all, but I have never seen anyone like
you.'

Alice was conscious of the fact that the man was smiling,
yet his eyes were hard, and his finger was still on the trigger of his gun,
held casually in front of him, but which could be turned on her in a second. If
it came to it, Alice would take a bullet to the body and then finish him with
her gun or knife, both of which were hanging at her belt. Then, to her surprise,
his hand left the trigger and came up, extended towards her. She shook his hand
and he closed in.

'That little girl, Laila, had wandered off sometime this
morning and my wife, Ayesha, had gone crazy looking for her. Ayesha went out on
her own and if they had met unfriendlier company than yours, I don't know what
would have happened. Whoever you are, I owe your young friend a decent meal,
and if you want shelter for a while, it is yours.'

Alice shook his hand, feeling his grip. The man looked frail,
but his grip was strong. She nodded and walked into their settlement. There were
six more men visible, three fair-skinned like the man who had greeted her, and
three more of brownish skin, like many of those Alice had grown up with in her
own settlement in the Deadland. After the Rising, the god you worshipped or the
color of your skin meant very little. The only real factor that bound together
the survivors was the fact they were yet alive and yet human. That was all that
mattered, yet Alice was curious as to how men from so-called Western countries
had come to live in a remote settlement in the middle of a wild, desolate
wasteland.

Zohar sat in a corner, devouring a piece of bread with a
bowl of soup. The walls were ringed with barbed wire and raised platforms for
snipers, and there were neatly arrayed huts for people to live in. Beyond the
buildings, there was a large farm, which must have stretched for at least a
kilometer or more, all ringed by the defensive wall, and the field was covered
with crops—tomatoes, potatoes and wheat. These men had created a
self-sufficient community, much like the settlement Alice had grown up in.

The man who had welcomed her in let her look around and then
nodded at her.

'Now, let's talk. Who are you and what brings you here?'

He listened in rapt attention as Alice told her story, and
soon all six men were gathered around her, together with four women, including
Ayesha. Alice kept speaking, of her life in the Deadland, of the Zeus
mercenaries who had been as much of a threat as the Biters, of her fateful
plunge down a hole in the ground and the adventure it had unleashed. Of the
wars that had followed, and how the world that she had known had transformed,
how people had learned to rid themselves of the tyranny enforced by powerful
men from far away—a tyranny based on perpetuating the fear of Biters, a tyranny
that thrived on bartering blind obedience for so-called security; one that made
people no more than slaves to serve the needs of a few elite, one that was born
out of the same conspiracy that had triggered the Rising in the first place.

It sounded like a fantastic story, and coming out of the
mouth of any other young girl her age, it would have sounded less believable.
But Alice herself was a walking testimony to the truthfulness of her account. A
symbol that Biters were not quite what people had been taught to believe them
to be, and that the biggest threat to ordinary folks sometimes came not from
far-away foreign terror, but from the immediate tyranny of those who ruled in
their name. She showed them the old Zeus tablet she carried and messages from
her friends back at Wonderland. She told them of how she had set out on a new
journey, born out of a desire to see what lay beyond the land she had known as
home and to see how people elsewhere were coping, and if they could be helped,
as her own people had been.

When she finished, every single one of the adults looked at
her with rapt attention. The man who had met her and who seemed to be their
leader smiled, a slightly lopsided smile that seemed to be his style, and the
hard glint in his eyes disappeared.

'Alice, yours is an amazing tale, and you seem to be an
amazing young lady. Our story may not be quite as eventful, but we have had our
share of adventures. Let me tell you the story of our little group. My name is
Joshua Cheshire and we call ourselves Cheshire's Cats.'

***

'I was a fighter pilot with the 617 Squadron of the Royal
Air Force. Long ago, one of my great-grand uncles had led the squadron, and I
bear his family name. We were on sea trials on the new aircraft carrier, the
Queen
Elizabeth
, flying the newly acquired F-35 fighters, when the Rising
started. We were deployed near the Persian Gulf and were ordered to get to
Pakistan, where things were starting to go out of control.'

One of the white men, a lean man but looking to possess
tremendous, wiry strength and endurance, took up the tale.

'I'm Jarrod Gorman. Me and my buddy here, John Ayer, were
with Delta and had been inserted to ensure terrorists did not get Pakistan's
nukes. We were all too late.'

A tall, brooding man, presumably John, nodded along as
Jarrod continued.

'Pakistan's armed forces had been badly infiltrated. They
launched nukes against India and turned on each other, and us. It was a bloodbath,
especially when India retaliated.'

Alice told them what she had learned, and how all the chaos
unfolding during the Rising had not been a coincidence. It had been carefully
orchestrated by some of the world's richest and most powerful men, the members
of the Executive Committee, who were now in prison or dead in what had been the
United States. Their plot had called for Earth to be depopulated through
nuclear war and the spread of a deadly new virus, so that a more 'manageable'
number of survivors would live who could be sustained on the planet's dwindling
food and oil supplies and serve as slave labor for the New World Order.

The three men who looked to be locals had been silent till
now, but one of them snorted angrily as he heard the tale.

'I am Major Abid Hussain. I served in the Pakistani Army and
my men and I fought the jihadis till the end. Now we know how we, and our
nation, were set up and betrayed.'

Cheshire had been shot down on a mission to destroy rogue
missile launchers, and hooked up with Jarrod, John and their team, who were
also stranded behind enemy lines. As the cities were consumed in nuclear fires,
they had escaped into the remote rural areas, fighting their way through
jihadis, bandits and Biters. They had met up with Abid's team and finally set
up a small settlement. They had rescued Ayesha from bandits, and in time,
Cheshire had married her.

'Just six of you? Where are the others?'

Cheshire's grin disappeared.

'There were over thirty of us. Biters and bandits whittled us
down till we found this place and created a more permanent and secure base.
Easy access to water, enough cover and also enough space to grow food. John
here is our resident farming expert.'

The big man nodded.

'Grew up in a farm in Michigan before joining the Army. Abid
here is good with machines as well, and we jury-rigged a biodiesel plant. To
feed fifty mouths, we need just over a square kilometer of land, and we have
more than that, so we're pretty self-sufficient.'

They seemed to have done very well for themselves,
considering the odds they must have faced when they started off. Then something
in what John said struck Alice.

'Fifty? There are only a handful of you here.'

Cheshire nodded to Ayesha and she unlocked the doors of a
large barn, and to Alice's astonishment, more than thirty kids came trooping
out, ranging from small toddlers to teenagers. Many of them looked fearfully at
Alice but seemed reassured that she had been welcomed by their guardians.
Cheshire's toothy grin was back.