The Crocodile's Jaws: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No.7) (9 page)

The girl was now on her knees, pleading with her father, and
she kissed him on his forehead before she was yanked to her feet by one of the
thugs.

'Come on, let's get you inside so that Vasili Sir can have a
go, and then you're all ours.'

The girl's face was suddenly splattered with a spray of
blood as the man holding her fell, his head blown apart by the bullet John had
fired.

The other men scrambled for cover behind the jeep and the two
men on the guard tower began firing wildly, most of their shots coming nowhere
near John. As bad as their aim was, John could not afford to let the enemy have
the high ground, which would severely restrict his freedom of movement, so he
put two aimed bursts into the guard tower. One of the men was hit and tottered
for a second before falling off to the ground below where his dead body landed
with a sickening thud. The other man lived only a few seconds more as John took
aim again and fired, hitting him in the neck and sending him slumping down on
the floor of the guard tower. The driver and the man who had been called Vasili
had disappeared into the building, dragging the girl and the old man with them.
The remaining gunman was behind the jeep, firing the occasional shot in John's
direction.

John knew what was to come next, and six armed men ran out
of the gate, taking cover behind the jeep and nearby buildings. He got one
before the others disappeared behind cover, but a firefight against five
opponents was always going to be a losing proposition. It would be a matter of
time before they had him pinned down and one or more men flanked him and got
him.

John shot another man as he leaned out from behind cover to
take aim and then jerked his own head back as a bullet struck the wall inches
from his face. His face stung from the spray of bricks that had cut it open and
he could taste his own blood as it seeped down from his cheek and nose.

There was a momentary lull in the firing, perhaps because
his attackers were trying to move to new positions to flank him, when he heard
the unmistakable roars and shuffles of a group of Biters on the move.

He leaned out to see at least a dozen Biters appear out of
the darkness beyond the far wall of the factory. With the guards on the tower
dead, nobody had spotted them coming. Leading them was Bunny Ears.

The gunman nearest the Biters had no time to react before
several pairs of hands reached out for him and dragged him down kicking and
screaming as teeth tore into him.

The three remaining men saw that the odds were now suddenly
turned against them and began to retreat towards the gate. One of them fired,
hitting a Biter in the head before John dropped him. The other two disappeared
behind the gate as John sprinted across the street and into the compound. As he
passed Bunny Ears, he mumbled to himself.

'I never thought the most welcome sight I'd see was a bloody
horde of Biters.'

***

NINE

Zohar whimpered in a corner, clutching at his face where
Nikolai had slapped him. Alice felt a fury the likes of which she had rarely
felt before. If Nikolai had been in front of her, she would have killed him
then and there, the consequences be damned. With an intense effort of will, she
stopped herself from launching herself at the old man who brought in the tepid
soup that was going to be the only food Zohar would get. The old man looked
apologetically at her, and Alice realized that he was as much a prisoner as
they were and lashing out at him would serve no purpose.

Her ruse of co-operating with the captain while learning
more about his plans and plotting a potential escape had worked well for a
couple of days. In that time, Neha had become more and more open with them and
had told Alice much about what the captain and his crew had been doing. What
Alice had heard had convinced her that there was no way she could let a man
like him take over Wonderland.

The captain and his ship had arrived in Karachi, much to the
bewilderment of the human survivors, who had woken up one day to see this behemoth
rising up from beneath the waves. While the crew's numbers were limited, with
their military training and superior weapons, they had soon cleared out the
local bandits and established a zone free of bandits and Biters alike around
the old port. However, human survivors who had mistakenly seen them as saviors
were to be proven tragically wrong. The captain was a man who sought power more
than anything else, and in Karachi, he found a new means of exerting that.

Nikolai had apparently been involved in the drug trade in
the Russian mafia before the Rising, and when he and his men found several
abandoned pharmaceutical factories in the city, they began putting their plan
into motion. They made drugs which had in the days before the Rising been
called krokodil, or crocodile, a potent mixture of medication, thinner and
gasoline. It made the people who took them hopelessly addicted and dependent on
the captain for their supplies. Being in the submarine far from shore made the
captain invulnerable to anyone who tried to contest his grip over the city, and
he used his gangs of addicts to round up food, supplies, people to work his
factories and more pills and syrups to use as raw material for the krokodil.

Alice had been with the captain on the bridge reading the
latest updates from Arjun when she had heard a commotion. Neha had been caught
smuggling fresh food to Zohar and under interrogation she had revealed that she
had been talking to Alice about the captain and his plans. The retribution had
been instant and harsh—Neha had been beaten and driven from the boat, to be
handed over to the captain's local thugs for their entertainment, and the
captain had discarded all pretense of civility. Now it was a simple enough
transaction—Alice would comply with his wishes or he would kill everyone she
cared about. Nikolai had taken that as a license to inflict his own brand of
torture—he would push and prod her, stab her and laugh when she bled, saying
that it was fun to have a personal Biter as a punching bag. Today when Zohar
had stepped in between them to try and shield Alice, Nikolai had slapped him
and kicked him.

Alice sat, stewing, knowing that the only way she could make
things right was to kill the captain and destroy this ship before it launched
missiles at Wonderland. Nothing else would save her people from ruin, and she
wasn't even sure if life under an evil tyrant like the captain would be any
better than being wiped out in a nuclear fireball. Then there was the matter of
Robertson and his agenda. In one fell swoop, the Homeland, which she had taken
to be a reliable ally, had become a potential danger. In his hunger to acquire
the submarine, Robertson was continuing to pretend to negotiate with the
captain, but she had come to know from Arjun that the aircraft from the
Homeland, laden with soldiers, was about to land at Wonderland in two days, en
route to Karachi. The captain had made Alice reveal the location of the stretch
of highways where they could land, and was planning to ambush them and then use
the plane to get to Wonderland.

Alice was overwhelmed by the dangers she and her people
faced, and unlike dangers she had faced before which could be destroyed with a
gun or knife, she could see no way out. Alice had once asked her father, long
ago in their settlement in the Deadland, why people continued to pray to their
gods when clearly there was no method to the madness that had enveloped their
world, no divine plan that could explain the ruin of so many billions of
people, no proof that prayer could bring any more safety than a loaded gun. Her
dad had looked at her, smiling in the easy, warm way that came naturally to
him, and told her, 'Alice, God is not some omnipotent being up there in the
sky, waiting to settle our affairs for us. God is the courage in our own hearts
to do the right thing even when it may not be the easy thing, the kindness to
help others and the love that keeps us together even in times like this.
Stilling your mind, blocking out all the worries, sometimes helps you connect
with that part of yourself. That's why I pray.'

As with many things her father had told her when she had
been younger, she had not fully understood it then, but now was beginning to
appreciate it. Alice didn't know how to pray, or even which god would accept
the prayers of a half-Biter, but she knelt and closed her eyes and thought of
her parents, her sister, all those whom she had cared for and lost, and hoped
that she could discover the courage needed within her or get any ideas on what
to do.

When she opened her eyes, she felt a pang of despair as she
realized she had no new bright ideas.

Then Alice laid aside all her skepticism and prayed to
whatever god would care to hear her, and asked for some help.

***

John was on autopilot, acting on training from years ago,
honed in distant battlefields like Somalia and Libya, all coming to him through
pure instinct and muscle reflex. Approach wall, cover flank, identify enemy by
gun in hand, double tap to the chest and head, move on to next target. Within
ten minutes, he had cleared the factory, and without the advantage of massed
numbers or surprise, the thugs he was up against were slaughtered. Six of them
lay dead around the factory floor as more than a dozen workers huddled in a
corner. Another gunman peeked out from behind a wall, and judging that
discretion was the better part of valor when going up one on one against John,
he made a run for the door. John spotted him and turned to fire, but the man
ran straight into Bunny Ears, who snapped his neck.

The other Biters streamed in behind Bunny Ears and the
workers began to scream. John ran towards them and herded them into a room and
latched the door. When he turned, he saw something that astonished him. The
Biters were standing around Bunny Ears, as if waiting for his command.

John had seen Alice exercise that kind of power over Biters,
binding them with a loyalty that overrode their seemingly instinctive desire to
attack people. Somehow, through the years he had spent with Alice, Bunny Ears
had taken on that mantle of leadership, and he didn't even need the tattered
book that Alice wore around her waist.

John opened the door and the old man whom he had seen being
beaten outside peeked out.

'The Biters…'

'Don't worry, they will not hurt you. Bunny Ears is a friend
and he will not let any harm come to you.'

The man looked skeptical, but he had other, perhaps bigger
worries on his mind.

'That white man is still up there. He ran up the stairs when
you came in, and he has my daughter with him.'

John nodded at Bunny Ears to wait and crept up the stairs.
He winced at the creak of the old floorboards under his boots, but he had no
real advantage of surprise anyways. As he came to the top of the stairs, he saw
a narrow corridor with a single closed door on either side. There was no light
coming out from under either door and if he opened the wrong door, he could be
a sitting duck for an attacker coming up from behind the other door. He crept
closer, and then paused beside one of the doors, his back flat against the
wall.

He whispered just loudly enough to be heard.

'Vasili?'

It was an old trick in the special forces community, because
hearing one's name usually triggered an involuntary response. A slight
shuffling noise came from the door across the corridor. He had his rifle ready
but he didn't want to open fire, since he wasn't sure if the girl would be in
harm's way, so he kicked the door open and rolled to one side as a burst of
automatic weapon fire shredded the wall behind him. He leaned over the edge of
the doorway and put a single shot into the shooter's boot. The man screamed in
agony and released the girl, whom he had been holding as a human shield. The
girl ran out into the hallway and John was inside the room in a second,
throwing the man to the ground and holding him in a chokehold with one hand.

'Please, don't kill me.'

A Russian accent? Here, in the middle of Karachi? He had
seen the Cyrillic script on some of the equipment captured during the attack at
their settlement, but had not thought much of it, since Pakistan had been awash
in weapons from all sources before the Rising.

John looked at the man's eyes and he decided to make a deal.

'Okay, you live, but you need to take me to where my friends
have been taken.'

When John dragged the bleeding and whimpering Vasili
downstairs, he found the girl he had just rescued in her father's arms. The
Biters were milling around, with Bunny Ears standing between them and the
humans.

John dumped Vasili on the ground at Bunny Ears' feet.

'He'll take us to Alice. If he tries anything funny, bite
his head off.' 

Vasili needed no more prodding. He was pleading to have his
wounds tended to and when he tried to grab John's leg, he was rewarded with a
kick to the ribs.

'I shot you through the calf and from what I can see, the
bullet went clean through. I'll bandage you but don't expect any more mercy
from me. You have no reason to expect more humanity than you showed the people
here. Now, where are Alice and the kid?'

Vasili looked away, and John was ready to strike him again
when Neha came up behind him.

'I know where they are, but I can't take you there by
myself. He will have to get you near the dock where they come ashore to pick up
supplies.'

John looked at her, wondering where she was going with this.
He had assumed they would have a hideout or base somewhere in the city and had
been planning on how he could co-ordinate an attack with Bunny Ears and his
Biters.

Neha sensed his bewilderment. She had been born just a
couple of years before the Rising and had no idea of what submarines were, so she
used the words that meant sense to her.

'They're in a ship that can go under the water.'

For a few seconds, John just stood there, taking in all the
implications of what she had said and what it meant. A submarine? How would he
assault that? The Biters would be of no use at all, and he would have to head
out into an enemy bastion out in the sea all alone.

'We need to talk and get him to talk. Only then can we get a
plan.'

Neha had a fire in her eyes now, sensing that now there was
a chance to get her revenge on the captain and his men.

'I can tell you all about what's happening on that ship and
who's there. There's an old school building nearby where we can hide for the
night.'

'Great. What's your name?'

'Neha.'

Bunny Ears swiveled towards her on hearing the name, and
kept staring at her. As Neha walked out with the others and John hauled Vasili
to his feet, he looked at Bunny Ears, who was rooted to the spot.

'What's up, buddy?'

He froze when he heard the words, 'Neeeeeha… Neeeeeil.
Neeeeha.'

***

Alice was on her way to the bridge, trying to think of
something she could do. Zohar was back in their room with an armed guard posted
outside and Nikolai and two more men were with her.

When she entered the bridge, a flurry of activity greeted
her. Four men had already been sent to the landing zone, where they would recon
the area and set up an ambush with their local thugs. Nikolai and others would
come closer to the time of the landing to reinforce them. Alice had shared the
co-ordinates of the stretch of highway based on the map in her tablet to Arjun.
Part of her had felt guilty since the soldiers coming would most likely have no
idea of what Robertson's plan was. They were coming to remove a threat to their
homeland, and would be walking into a trap that Alice had helped set.

The captain looked at her and smiled.

'Things are moving just as I had planned. The plane lands
tomorrow and in a couple of days, we go to Wonderland.'

Then he turned to Nikolai.

'I hope you've sent smart men. They need to ensure the pilots
are unhurt and the plane itself is not damaged.'

When he sensed some hesitation, he walked closer to Nikolai.

'What's wrong?'

'Sir, I would have wanted Vasili to lead them, but he hasn't
come back from last night's trip to the factory.'

The captain's brow furrowed for a second and then he
relaxed.

'He took that girl with him. Maybe he's just taking his time
having fun. If he doesn't come by evening, send a couple of men to look
around.'

Alice tensed at the mention of Neha. Another life destroyed
by the captain and his men. The captain caught her staring at him.

'Just be glad I didn't slit her throat and throw her
overboard. I've been reading the messages from your friends, and I get more and
more interested in this Wonderland. Running water, electricity, fresh
vegetables. I think I and my men are going to enjoy ourselves there.'