The Crocodile's Jaws: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No.7) (6 page)

This was why Alice had left the stability to Wonderland.
Everyone had a path they must follow, and Alice's path did not lie in enjoying
the comforts of the world before the Rising that her old friends in Wonderland
were trying so hard to restore—electricity, running water, canned food,
entertainment. She had little to contribute there, and she knew nothing of the
world before the Rising. However, what she could contribute was to help those
who still did not enjoy the stability and peace that the people of Wonderland
did. People like the ones at this settlement.

Some people really came into their own when the darkness was
dispelled and they got an opportunity to create a better world by the light of
day. People like Aalok, Danish, Doctor Edwards and others like them. However,
some people's purpose lay in slaying the monsters that lay waiting in the
darkness of night and keeping that darkness at bay. People like Alice.

She picked up her rifle and nodded at Bunny Ears.

'We're going to Karachi, old friend.'

***

Of course, it wasn't quite as simple as that. Alice had
started out the gate when John walked behind her.

'I'll come along. I can be of help.'

Alice shook her head even before the words were fully out of
John's mouth.

'Bunny Ears and I don't need food or water and we are a bit
harder to kill than an average human. So we'll be much faster on our own.'

John smiled, wondering how to put into words what he had in
mind without offending Alice, but then he just said it.

'That may be true, but the two of you won't exactly blend
in. I can help get intel and link up with any humans we find out there. As for
food, we used to be called Snake Eaters for a reason. I don't need a fancy
table set for me—I can live off the land.'

Alice looked at Cheshire, hoping he would talk his friend
out of this, but she found little support there.

'Alice, I asked John to come along. Whatever's out there
threatens us as well, and we need to contribute. I have a bad back and can't
really go out playing cowboy any more, but John here is the fittest of us all,
and back in the day, he went into all kind of hellholes with Delta. If you need
a man in a fight with you, he's the best in our group.'

Realizing that he had made up his mind, Alice nodded at
John. They had reached the gate when Alice heard little footsteps behind her.
It was Zohar.

'Come on, now. Not you, kid. When I have finally got you
somewhere safe you are not coming out into danger with me again.'

Zohar looked at her with the wisdom in his eyes belying his
age. A wisdom that comes from realizing at an early age just how fickle and
brutal life could be, a wisdom that makes one grow up before one's time.

'I'm done hiding and being safe. I want to be like you, to
help people, to fight evil instead of hiding from it. We hid all these years,
what good did it do us? It found us in the end.'

'Zohar…'

He burst into tears.

'I went with those bandits. I told them all about our
settlement. I caused my parents' deaths. I want to do something that matters for
a change. I want to help someone instead of getting them killed.'

Alice looked at him. An orphan, his family taken brutally
from him. A child who had to live with the terrible guilt of perhaps having
caused his family's death. A guilt that she knew could be erased only by making
sure others did not fall prey to the same evil his family had.

'Come on, kid. Join the gang.'

***

SIX

Alice and Bunny Ears needed no food, water or rest, and so
they set a scorching pace. John was a trained Special Forces soldier, and he
kept up pretty well, but what really surprised Alice was how hard Zohar drove
himself. They had been walking nonstop for close to three hours when Alice
turned towards Zohar.

'Want a break?'

Zohar shook his head and kept going.

'Only when it's dark and you decide to take a break.'

John came up beside Alice, whispering to her.

'The kid's pretty tough on himself, isn't he?'

'He knows we're going to find out the men behind his
family's massacre. Also, I think he pleaded to come along, and now doesn't want
to slow us down.'

Even as she said the words, Alice couldn't help smiling. A
child on a mission of vengeance, with bull-headed stubbornness that led to
trouble more often than not. She had known such a child not too long ago, very
well in fact, because she had been that child.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden roar from Bunny
Ears. John and Alice both got their rifles up, flipping the safeties off as
they ran ahead to see what Bunny Ears had discovered. Zohar was too small to
carry a rifle, but he had his handgun out as well and was just behind as they
approached Bunny Ears, who was looking down at something on the side of the
highway. It was a body. A young man, lying dead on the ground, his body already
stiff, indicating that he had been dead for some time. She knelt and saw the
greenish scales covering his arms and stomach that she had seen before. John
was beside her.

'Look at his leg—bent at a weird angle. I'd say he fell and
broke his leg and couldn't keep up and his friends left him to die. Now, what's
this?'

There was a syringe lying next to the body and John looked
at it closely, seeing a milky liquid inside.

'As we thought, these guys are on some drugs.'

'Could that do this to their bodies?'         

John looked at the scales. 'Maybe. Let's keep going. It will
be dark soon, and we'll need to find a place to hunker down till daylight. I
reckon Karachi is no more than a day's journey away, but I'd rest up before we
get there, since we have no real idea who we'll be against. Anyone running an
organized racket like this has to have the brains, muscle and weapons to be a
tough enemy.'

What John said made a lot of sense, and soon they found a
small gathering of trees near the highway with an abandoned truck near it. The
truck was badly rusted, but the large cab in the back still had its canvas
cover intact, giving them both cover and shelter from the elements. John and
Zohar slept while Alice and Bunny Ears decided to take turns being on watch.
Alice didn't feel sleepy any more but she did get bored, so she walked up to Bunny
Ears.

'Looks like we're safe here. We'll hear or spot anyone
coming down the highway. Stay here and I'll take a quick walk.'

Bunny Ears began to growl in protest, and Alice had to laugh
at how over-protective he could sometimes be.

'I'll be nearby, and someone has to stay here and watch the
truck.'

Bunny Ears agreed, though he kept growling his reluctance as
Alice stepped away, heading onto the highway. She walked for ten minutes,
observing the few abandoned, rusted vehicles that littered the road. Then a
scraping noise made her freeze where she was. Someone was moving in the
darkness, and had brushed against one of the cars.

It might well be nothing more than an animal, but Alice was
not going to take any chances. Not knowing who else might be out there in the
darkness, she left her handgun at her belt but took out her knife from its
sheath, holding a small flashlight in her left hand. She flattened herself
against the car, and heard the scraping again. She crept till the end of the
car and then rolled over the hood, shining her flashlight straight at the
intruder.

What Alice saw shocked her.

It was a Biter crawling along the road with both his legs
chopped off at the knee. She panned her flashlight into the distance and the
blood trail told her the Biter had been crawling for some time. The blood was
still fresh and he had been cut recently. He looked up at Alice and snapped his
jaws as Alice knelt before him, wondering who could have been so cruel. As the
Biter got a good look at her, his ferocity gave way to bewilderment, and he
emitted a low growl, as if asking for help.

All she could do was to put him out of his misery but she
hesitated as she felt the heft of the knife in her hand.

'I am sorry someone did this to you. I really am. There's
nothing I can do to help or to make things better, but if I see the men who did
this, I will avenge you. That much I can promise you.'

The Biter crawled off into the darkness and off the highway.
A part of Alice wanted to race ahead down the highway and find the men who had
done this, but she held herself back. She needed to get back to the truck and
to warn the others that they might have to fight sooner than they had
anticipated.

When she got back, John was already up and watching Bunny
Ears.

'You know, Alice, I could swear at times he tries to talk.'

Alice affectionately patted Bunny Ears' arm as she passed
him.

'They understand much more than people think.'

Then she told John about the Biter she had seen, and his
eyes hardened.

'Let's head out now. If they're coming our way, best to hit
them on our terms and in the dark.'

They woke Zohar and within ten minutes they were walking
down the highway, Alice taking point, scanning the road through her night
vision scope. She heard a low growl—Bunny Ears had smelled their enemy before
she had spotted them. There were four men, carrying machetes and with rifles
slung across their backs. Liquid dripped from one of their machetes, the blood
of one of the Biters they had massacred. The men were loud, making no attempt
at stealth, and they died where they stood as Alice and John opened fire. Not a
single one of them even managed to get his rifle into his hands before they
were shot down.

***

The men carried little of value, their guns being ancient
bolt-action rifles from at least fifty years ago. However, two of them did have
bread, which John appropriated for himself and Zohar. The sun was now creeping
up over the horizon, and in the dim light, Alice saw that all four of them were
covered in the scaly skin she had seen so many times.

'More of the same gang that we've met before. They must have
a base somewhere nearby. Looks like we're on the right track.'

Alice kept looking at the bodies. While she had despised
Zeus and the Red Guards, at least she could understand why they fought and died—some
out of a misplaced sense of duty born out of having bought into the Central
Committee's propaganda, others to get power or loot. But these men were
slaughtering humans and Biters alike at random, perhaps under the influence of
the drugs that had not just made their skins like those of reptiles, but also
made their minds more reptilian than human.

Before they proceeded, Alice wanted to get a better bearing
on their location. She had not turned on her tablet for three days, and when
she turned it on to take a look at maps of the area, there were at least a
dozen messages from Arjun and Danish back at Wonderland, all asking Alice to
get in contact as soon as she could. Alice immediately tapped on the icon to
contact them on a video link, and silently thanked Zeus and the Central
Committee for having created a satellite-based communication system which Alice
and her friends had inherited after their victory in the Deadland. How it all
worked was a mystery for Alice, as unlike teens before the Rising, she had
grown up in a world with no mobile phones or Internet, but Danish seemed to
know how to keep it running, and with the US Homeland now under the control of
General Konrath and his forces, the old Internet was slowly but surely being
revived.

Danish's face appeared on the screen. He forced a smile, but
his eyes were creased with worry. Despite not having spoken to Alice in so many
days, there was no greeting.

'What's wrong?'

'General Konrath is dead.'

The words hit Alice like a sledgehammer. Konrath had gone
from being a writer before the Rising, to a guerrilla leader fighting Zeus and
the Executive Committee, and then the first President of the free United States
once the Homeland had been liberated. Alice had been there fighting side by side
with his forces in an attempt to hunt down the nuclear-armed Snark missiles
which the Executive Committee had threatened to unleash on Wonderland after
they had destroyed Shanghai. She had seen the loyalty he inspired, and how
despite the power he had at his disposal, he had used that power not to become
a tyrant, but to try and reconstruct his nation into the free, mighty and
prosperous country it had once been. She didn't know how to react to the sudden
news, and was silent as Danish continued.

'He had a heart attack four days ago. They have a new
President in the Homeland, some general called Robertson.'

Alice took it all in, trying to understand all the
implications.

'Does it change anything for us?'

'Not that we can see so far. Their supply flights still come
in with spare parts for the farm machines and to take back crops and the tinned
food our factory's churning out. The folks here who came from the Homeland seem
worried though. Seems Robertson had a reputation of sorts. He was a diehard
Executive Committee supporter, and defected only a few years ago to the
resistance. He of course claimed he knew nothing of the Executive Committee's
real agenda, but I get the sense not too many people trust him. Anyways, he
wants to talk to you urgently. He says there's
something
you must help out with.'

John and Zohar were watching Alice in silence, their
emotions very different. John had served the United States of America before
the Rising, and to know that his old country was now emerging again from
darkness brought on a strange mixture of nostalgia and regret. Nostalgia from
remembering the life he had before the Rising, and regret at not having been a
part of the struggle his people had waged for so many years. Zohar on the other
hand knew nothing of the nations of old, and it boggled his mind just how vast the
world must be, and how magical the instrument in Alice's hand seemed to be.

Alice brought up the link to connect to General Konrath's
office and in a few seconds an unfamiliar man appeared on the screen. He was
old, with grey hair and lines across his face, but was still lean and handsome.
He wore a military uniform with medals and stripes across his chest.

'Alice, I have been so anxious to speak to you. I'm David
Robertson and you have presumably heard of the terrible news. It has been a
great loss for all of us and I know how much President Konrath liked you.'

'General, what is happening in the Homeland?'

The man's eyes narrowed in anxiety.

'As soon as the President fell, we had a few attacks from
some scattered Zeus guerrilla forces who have been holding out. That's why I
stepped in—we need a strong hand to ensure that they can be contained. So far,
we've only had a few scattered ambushes and firefights and I think we can hold
them back. It's a matter of time before the last of them surrenders or is
defeated.'

'That's good to know, General. I'm relieved to hear that.'

Then Robertson's expression changed, and his eyes burned
with a new intensity, that of a man not used to failing.

'Arjun and the others told me that you had crossed across
the old border into what had been Pakistan. Are you still there?'

When Alice told him that they were on their way to Karachi,
his eyes lit up.

'Perhaps everything does happen for a reason. In the last
few days, we have learnt of a grave new threat to all of us. A threat that the
Executive Committee had kept hidden from us, and which is now threatening us.'

Alice felt a familiar tingle—she had thought that the war
they had waged for the liberation of Wonderland and Homeland was over. Now it
seemed to be emerging again.

'We're not sure what it is, but someone contacted us,
threatening us with long-range nuclear strikes. We traced the signal to near
Karachi, but we don't know exactly what the nature of the threat is. We cannot
hit back at this range, and the only way we can get there is to secure the old
airport and fly troops in. Alice, I have no authority over you and cannot ask
you to do anything, but this is the predicament we are now in.'

John had been listening and now came in front of the tablet,
saluting the President.

'Sir, I am Sergeant John Ayers. I was a Delta operator
before the Rising. I haven't worn the US uniform in years, but I was sworn to
defend my flag and country, and to serve the Commander-in-Chief, which would be
you, sir. I will take on the mission to recce the airport.'

Alice spoke up.

'General, we have all lost too much to gain the freedom we
enjoy. I cannot let that be threatened again. I'm in.'

As they set off towards Karachi, Alice felt mixed emotions.
Part of her had been looking forward to a world where the biggest threats were
bandits or gangs looking for drugs, and not one where a giant global tyranny
threatened every free man and woman. But part of her, the part that had been
forged in years of war and suffering, looked forward to meeting and destroying
this new threat.

***

Many years ago, thousands of passengers had embarked on
flights from this airport and thousands more had thronged its terminals every
day. Businessmen going on work, families going on vacations, people coming to
receive loved ones or to see them off. Now not much remained of Karachi airport
other than a series of jagged craters.