The Crocodile's Jaws: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No.7) (5 page)

'Lots of villages had been ravaged here, and while we
couldn't help everyone, we took in a few orphaned kids, really babies—now
they're the older teens you see here. Over time, we set out on limited patrols
and found more families that needed help, or had just abandoned kids as they
ran from Biters or bandits. We brought them in.'

Alice immediately looked at Zohar. With her, he had little
to look forward to other than more danger and hardship. He could find a good
home here with these people. One where he would find safety and food. Perhaps
there had been a reason why they had stumbled onto this settlement, after all.
She was about to bring it up when she heard an ear-splitting roar.

It was Bunny Ears, and it meant there was danger nearby.

***

'Ayesha, get the kids inside!'

As she began to get the kids into the barn, Alice caught
Cheshire's eye. He knew what was on her mind.

'Take the boy as well.'

Zohar had taken the gun out of his belt and was coming
towards Alice.

'I can fight. I don't need to hide with the kids.'

He was no older than many of the
kids
.
Yet perhaps the experience of the last few days, when he had lost his family
and taken a life, had aged him more than she had realized.

'Zohar, I need you there to protect the kids. We can't be
distracted with having to worry with them if there's danger coming our way.'

As he scampered away, a grin on his face, Cheshire smiled at
Alice.

'Now let's welcome our guests.'

Alice's first concern was not the safety of the settlement.
She had seen the booby traps, and it would need a concerted assault by a large
force to breach them. She was however worried about Bunny Ears and the Biters
putting themselves in harm's way in trying to protect her.

All around her the men were moving into position, moving
with military precision. The arsenal they wielded gave them firepower
disproportionate to their numbers. One of Abid's men was carrying a rocket
launcher and Abid himself had a large belt-fed machine gun which was now being
placed along the wall. All the others had assault rifles and had put on belts
festooned with grenades. Jarrod was carrying a long sniper rifle which he
rested on the wall.

The men were ready for a fight and Alice did not doubt that
their firepower together with the net of booby traps would give any potential
attacker a lot of trouble. However, she had other, more urgent business to
attend to. She approached Cheshire, who was loading a fresh magazine into his
rifle.

'Open the gate. Bunny Ears is out there.'

He was barely able to contain his smirk.

'A Biter?'

Alice looked him squarely in the eye.

'A Biter who has been my companion for years. A Biter who
has risked his life to save mine more times than I can count. A Biter who gives
his loyalty without asking for anything in return. How many humans would do
that?'

Cheshire relented and Alice slipped out to meet whatever
threat lay beyond the gates.

***

FIVE

Alice walked through the intricate layer of booby traps, her
head telling her to watch her step and not blunder into one of the traps and
her heart telling her to hurry up, to rush to Bunny Ears' aid. Bunny Ears would
unthinkingly sacrifice his life to save hers, and she was not going to abandon
him when he faced danger. Humans had agendas, they wanted things in return for
their loyalty and service. Biters expected none of that. As Alice rushed on,
she thought, who was ultimately more human?

As she cleared the thick bushes that concealed the
settlement, she saw Bunny Ears and the other Biters facing off against men
coming ashore in a boat. The boat carried four men armed with an assortment of
weapons—cleavers, knives and one rifle. Judging by the defenses and the
firepower Cheshire and his comrades had at their disposal, these attackers
would be little more than cannon fodder. Yet they seemed to have no specific
agenda or target. They seemed to have been on a scouting expedition when they
had stumbled onto the Biters, and there was nothing to be gained by alerting
them to the location of the settlement. The fact that they were part of something
bigger was clear to Alice from the fact that they all seemed to have the
vacant, crazed look of the men who had attacked Zohar's settlement, and as she
took a closer look through the scope on her rifle, each of them had the same
scaly skin that she had seen earlier.

'Bunny Ears, get back! Get everyone back into the bushes.'

Bunny Ears heard Alice and turned to face her and
reluctantly obeyed her orders. One of the men on the boat spotted Alice and
shouted out to his friends. Alice couldn't discern the words, but their impact
was immediate. The man with the gun raised it to his shoulder and aimed at
Alice.

That was the last mistake he ever made. Alice shot him once,
her bullet entering his neck and exiting out the back. The man grabbed at his
neck, blood spurting out from between his fingers as he fell. The other men
gaped at her and then dropped their weapons and grabbed the oars on the side of
the boat. They were too late. Alice picked off two of them with single shots.
That left the last man, who was looking at her open-mouthed. Alice waded into
the water, her rifle trained on him.

'Come out with your hands up and I will not kill you like I
did your friends.'

The man looked pale and was scared out of his mind, but
seeing Alice approach him, he jumped off the side of the boat and swam towards
her. Alice pulled him to the shore, dripping wet and babbling something about
mercy. Alice yanked him upright and then kicked his feet from under him,
sending him sprawling in an ungainly heap. When he looked up, Alice's knife was
at his throat. Not that he needed any further persuasion or threats—just
Alice's face had him terrified out of his wits.

'Who are you and what do you want here?'

The man just kept looking at her blankly, terror in his
eyes. Alice hit him on the bridge of his nose with the handle of her knife and
he keeled over, screaming in agony as blood spurted from his nose.

'What were you and your friends doing here?'

'Alice, let me talk to him.'

She turned to see Cheshire behind her, and he walked over,
hauling their captive to his feet.

'There are people back there who depend on me for their
safety and I will not have scum like you endanger them. Answer her question or
I will slit your throat now and dump you in the water.'

'We were told to look for a factory that made pills. That's
all I know. I swear that's all I know.'

Alice thought back to the bag of medicines that Zohar's
father had found and which had seemingly led to the raid on their settlement.
Clearly there was someone out there who wanted these pills badly enough to kill
for them. 'Do you know where this factory is?'

The man kept looking at Cheshire, as if he were afraid of
looking at this talking Biter who had just killed his friends.

'I'm not sure. They showed us some old maps which said the
factory may be within twenty kilometers of here. We planned to get off our boat
here and look on foot. One of the other teams had seen a building north of
here, and we were going to check that out.'

Something in what the man said caught Alice's attention.

'Who are 'they'? Who gave you the order to come here?'

The man looked at her, and she saw that he was afraid of
something even more than he was of her.

'The men from the Crocodile. They told us what they wanted,
and we cannot refuse them.'

A few minutes later, Alice was back in Cheshire's
settlement. Their prisoner was still outside, guarded by Bunny Ears and the
other Biters. Alice had not wanted him to see where the settlement was, and
surrounded by Biters, he was so terrified that there was little question of him
attempting an escape.

'Cheshire, I have seen a settlement slaughtered for these
pills. If they are after them, they will come again, and while you are
prepared, there are only a handful of you and you don't want to be put under a
siege with all the kids here. That can end only one way.'

Abid began to protest.

'We have weapons and ammo, and we have our booby traps. We
can hold out.'

Alice turned towards him.

'You may well hold off one wave, and if you're lucky, a
couple more. Then your booby traps are finished. You shoot down another wave of
attackers. Then another. Then what happens? You're not up against some bandits
looking for random targets. Someone's guiding them, someone they all feel
compelled to obey, and they will keep coming. All it would take is a few men
with long guns who know what they're doing and a handful of cannon fodder like
the idiot we captured and your settlement would fall in a day. Then what
happens to the kids? I've seen a settlement where they killed every single
person—young and old, male and female. If you sit here and wait for them to hit
you, it's a matter of time before you're all dead. You know that as well as I
do.'

Abid looked down. Alice had been brutally honest, but she
had also been right. Cheshire looked at his men and he saw the same feeling
reflected in their eyes.

'Alice, what do you want to do?'

'We find this factory and we find out what they want so
badly in these pills.'

***

Alice and Cheshire had been cycling for just over half an
hour when they saw the abandoned factory. A board lay shattered by its side,
proclaiming the name of an old British pharmaceutical company that was now long
forgotten. Their captive sat behind Alice. Alice had overridden much protest
from Bunny Ears, who wanted to come with her. She had asked him to deploy the
Biters in the bushes around the settlement to guard against any more intruders.

They left the bikes outside and entered the factory through
rusted gates lying on the ground. As Cheshire went in, Alice scanned the area,
her rifle at her shoulder, but soon it was apparent that there was nobody here,
and probably had not been for years. The man they had captured was behind her,
and as Cheshire began rummaging through the boxes scattered around the factory
floor, the man spasmed and fell to the ground. He stiffened and the veins on
his neck and arms bulged and his back arched as the man moaned in agony.

'What is happening to him?'

Cheshire looked at the man in silence.

'I had suspected it when I saw his eyes and the marks on his
arms and torso. He's hooked onto some drug and is having withdrawal symptoms.
Come on, there's nothing we can do for him.'

Alice walked inside the factory, seeing little but empty
boxes and the occasional empty bottle. Large sections of the factory were
blackened, and at some point over the years, a fire had ravaged the building.
Whatever the factory had once contained had long been looted or destroyed in
the fire.

Cheshire kicked away an empty box, sending it skittering across
the floor. The box revealed a trap door on the factory floor. Alice tugged on
the rusty chains that held it closed and opened it. As they crawled down the
rickety stairs, Cheshire took out an old flashlight. The space beneath them was
filled with boxes of pills and syrups. The factory owners must have locked them
here when the Rising began, hoping to recover their inventory when things got
better, which of course they never did. Alice looked at some of the boxes,
seeing unfamiliar words on the side. One which appeared regularly was 'codeine'.

'Why do they want the pills so badly?'

'That part is easy. They need those pills to make whatever
drugs they're on. But that's not what worries me.'

In the short while that Alice had known Cheshire, he had
seemed confident, always ready with his grin, but now he was dead serious.

'These different gangs operating across such a broad area
looking for these pills means that someone, somewhere is coordinating them.
That means someone with considerable power or influence over them, and now
they're right at our doorstep.'

***

Alice saw the smoke rising above the treeline first and
began pumping her legs harder, riding as fast as she could. Cheshire was fit
for his age, but was an old man, and unlike Alice, would get tired like any
human. So he fell further and further behind as Alice raced towards the
settlement.

A terrible battle had been waged on the banks of the lake,
and three torn bodies of attackers lay sprawled, but there were also a half
dozen Biters lying around, their heads shot out. There were two more boats
lying near the bank, and Alice guessed they had been on another scouting
mission when they had spotted the abandoned boat with the bodies of the men she
had killed and come closer.

She wanted to scream out for Bunny Ears, to see if her old
companion was safe, but she didn't want to alert any remaining attackers. As
she parted the bushes and walked towards the settlement, she passed two bodies,
ripped to shreds by the booby traps. But two men hid behind trees, pouring fire
into the settlement from automatic weapons. These men were nothing like the
local bandits and thugs she had encountered so far. They had fair hair, wore
thick body armor and were carrying well-maintained automatic rifles. The goons
they employed had died as fodder for the Biters and in the booby traps, and
these men had come in unscathed. There was return fire from the settlement, but
the two men were too well concealed to be hit. One of them reached for a radio
at his chest, calling for reinforcements. As she crept closer, the man spoke in
thickly accented English.

'Get our location and send more men. We are…'

He never finished his sentence as Alice shot him in the back
of his head with her pistol. As he fell, the second man turned to face Alice,
bringing his rifle up to shoot. Alice shot him thrice. Two shots hit him on his
chest. His vest stopped them but he was rocked back by the impact and his own
burst went wild. The third shot hit him just above the right eye.

Alice spent the next five minutes making sure there were no
more attackers, and then a growl came from her right. It was Bunny Ears and he
was followed by two Biters who had fresh blood coming out of wounds on their
necks and arms. They still wore knives at their belts, showing that till
recently they had been among their attackers. Alice guessed their attackers had
sent a smaller force to lure away Bunny Ears and some of the Biters while the
two men who clearly were the best-armed and equipped, perhaps their leaders,
attacked the settlement. She nodded in relief at Bunny Ears, and realized just
how much she had dreaded losing him.

Cheshire now rode into view and the gates of the settlement
opened. Alice walked in, and the people inside cheered in relief at their
narrow escape, especially when they heard that their attackers had been calling
for reinforcements when Alice interrupted them. Alice went back out to strip
the two men of their weapons and equipment. Body armor, radios, automatic
weapons, all with lettering in a script that Alice did not recognize, and clearly
they had a base they were coordinating with. Cheshire had suspected that some
larger force was coordinating the efforts of the bandits in locating pills, and
now they had got their first glimpse at what that force looked like.

They all started when one of the radios came to life.

'Where are you?'

Then came chattering in a language Alice had never heard.
Cheshire muttered to himself.

'Russians. What the bloody hell are Russians doing here?'

John pulled a map from one of the men's pockets.

'This map has locations marked. I guess areas they've
scouted, but one area is marked in a different color, and it has arrows leading
out of it, indicating routes to the other locations. I'd guess that's where
their base is.'

Cheshire took a look.

'Karachi.'

Alice didn't know where that was, but as she looked around
at the terrified faces of the children in the settlement, as she saw Zohar
cling to her arm, shaking at the narrow escape they knew they had just had, and
as she thought back to the massacre at his settlement, she knew one thing.

She was going to Karachi.

She had fought for many things—her family, her friends, the
people of Wonderland. People called her a freedom fighter, but the freedom she
most fought for lay not in rising up against any particular tyrant, but in
freeing herself from being haunted by the paralyzing, numbing guilt of losing
everyone she had cared about. A part of her still blamed herself for bringing
the wrath of the Red Guards and Zeus onto her people, and she had never really
stopped making amends by fighting to free others, to atone for her reckless
adventure down a hole in the ground that had triggered events that had killed
her family and destroyed her settlement. Now she saw another settlement,
another group of people who had just been trying to get by and create a better
life for themselves, threatened by forces well beyond their means to defend
against.