Through the Killing Glass (12 page)

‘Alice, I hope
you are doing well.’

She had no
interest in exchanging pleasantries, so went straight to the point. ‘Looks like
your plan for Wonderland is well underway.’

‘No, Alice,
it’s not my plan alone. It is our plan. We all share in the success of this
plan for we will all reap the benefits. Don’t you see that by signing this
treaty we have brought peace?’

‘Arun, do you
really believe we will achieve peace?’

Smiling smugly,
Arun said, ‘Don’t think I spent all those hours in the Looking Glass only
fiddling with my ham radio. I’ve seen all the Intranet reports, including the
ones the Central Committee pulls down after a few hours. The war here is very
unpopular back in the Mainland as well, with people asking why their young men
are being sent to die in the Deadland for no real gain. With this announcement,
the Central Committee has effectively announced an end to the war here. They
will not be able to undertake any large scale military operation without it
totally losing them support back home.’

At that moment,
Alice saw Arun in a new light. She had believed that he was pushing for the
plan only because he wanted power for himself. And perhaps that was part of it,
but it was clear that he had thought it through and genuinely believed that he
was doing what was best for the people of Wonderland. It was as Danish had
said: the road to Hell was paved with good intentions.

Alice did not
want to spend much time in the city center where she kept catching people
staring at her, some looking at her with scarcely contained hatred and others
asking a question with their eyes that they dared not say aloud: why was she
silent? The ones who had been with her from the beginning, the ones who had
felt the brunt of the fighting, felt that all they had fought for was being
given away. But some of her early supporters had been shaken by the Biter
attacks, and were no longer sure whom to believe any more. And then there were
the more recent arrivals like Arun, who did not owe much personal allegiance to
Alice but wanted to create Wonderland in their own vision.

Alice rode her
bike to the outskirts, passing the abandoned Biter Reservation. On her instructions,
Bunny Ears and the others had gone underground, but Alice had clearly felt
their sense of betrayal. She did not doubt that Bunny Ears would remain loyal,
but many others, once more wild in the Deadland, and perhaps hunted by the Red
Guards, would again grow to hate and fear man.

She entered the
Looking Glass to find Danish with Edwards and Vince. The two Americans had
taken to spending most of their days at the Looking Glass, perhaps because it
was the one way they could get a glimpse into what was happening back in their
homeland.

'Alice, come
over here. The Americans seem to have more servers up and running and there are
several webpages now active. Some seem to have disappeared – I think the
Central Committee is fighting to block them – but there are some that we can
see.'

Alice quickly
scanned through what the pages told her. The story they depicted was one very
familiar to her, since she herself had lived through such a tale. The Americans
were now waging their own war for freedom, much as Alice and her friends had
waged in the Deadland. The reports she read spoke of terrible house-to-house
fighting in the abandoned shells of what had once been mighty cities, of Red
Guard missile strikes that killed hundreds of women and children, and of the
continued menace of Biters. The Americans were fighting hard but they had two
things going against them. First, with the relative peace in the Indian
Deadland, the Central Committee had been able to divert its elite combat-tested
units to the American Deadland, leaving the Indian Deadland to a few
conscripts. Second, in the American Deadland, man and Biter were still locked
in a struggle for survival.

Alice could see
the expression on Vince's face, and she wasn't sure she wanted to answer the
questions she knew he would have for her. However, it was Edwards who spoke.

'Alice, I can
understand why Arun and the others have made the choices they did, but Vince
and I need to leave.'

'Why? Where
will you go? I thought you wanted to seek us out in the first place.'

Vince got up,
looking out the glass windows.

'We were trying
to find a place that had become almost legendary among American prisoners. A
place where ordinary people were finally fighting back to regain their freedom.
A place where a young girl had united humans and Biters in trying to overthrow
the tyrants of the Central Committee. This is no longer that place. I cannot
sit here and watch as fellow Americans fight and die while the place that
inspired their struggle in the first place surrenders to the Central
Committee.'

Alice didn't
know what she could say or do. She had never felt so helpless before.

'Vince, how do
you think I feel? But I cannot abandon these people or Wonderland. I trust the
Central Committee even less than you do, but the only way I can really help my
people is to be here when I am needed.'

Edwards placed
a reassuring arm on Alice's shoulder.

'Alice, Arun is
playing a dangerous game. If there is one thing history teaches us, it is that
one can never reach a compromise with tyrants, for they inevitably mistake any
concessions for weakness. The Central Committee will be plotting and I fear
that in marginalizing you and your friends, and in creating a rift between
human and Biters once more, they will have gained a critical advantage when
they do move against you.  I wish you all the best, but I am of little use
here. I need a lab to work on my vaccine and Arun will not permit me one. I
need to find a way back to America, and perhaps one day we can find a cure.'

Before they
could talk any further, Danish tapped on the screen.

'It's a new
message from our friend Commissar Hu. The Central Committee is sending a
plane-load of goods as a gesture of friendship towards their fraternal brothers
of Wonderland.'

Alice knew she
had to get Satish, and fast.

***

Without their
recon teams deep in the Deadland, they would get little advance warning of what
exactly the Central Committee was up to. Alice could see that even Arun looked
anxious. A lot was at stake, and if the Central Committee were to launch an
airborne assault, it would undo everything. But Alice knew they would be far
from defenseless. Within hours, Satish had a plan in place. His men were
ringing the airport and the outlying areas, armed with SAM launchers. At any
sign of trouble, they would shoot down the Red Guard aircraft. Vince had taken
off in the captured helicopter to give them some advance warning of what was
coming their way, and Arjun had gathered his internal security teams to be
ready for any eventuality.

All of
Wonderland was on tenterhooks, and Alice and Arun were standing near the
airport when Vince's voice came in over the radio.

'It looks like
a single transport aircraft. I can't see any signs of other air or ground
forces.'

Arun’s relieved
sigh was audible.

Within minutes,
they saw the faint outline of the approaching aircraft. Despite the fact that
it was one airplane, Alice felt herself tense. Red Guard aircraft brought back
memories that she wished she did not have, memories of the air strike that had
killed her mother and sister and the other survivors from her settlement, and
of the strikes that had been launched against Wonderland when she had been
captured.

The black plane
banked to its right and then came in, heading for the runway.

Alice saw
Satish signal to one of his teams and she knew that even as the aircraft
approached, several missiles would have locked in on it.

The aircraft
landed bumpily on the old runway and came to a rolling halt. Flanked by several
men, Arun approached the plane as the ramp behind the aircraft lowered and a
solitary man walked out. Alice looked through her binoculars and saw that he
was a young officer dressed in the uniform of the Red Guards. He saluted Arun
and then offered his hand, which Arun shook. Then he pointed inside the aircraft
and motioned to someone inside.

As Alice
watched, Red Guards brought out several dozen large crates, which they left on
the runway. As she watched, one of them opened a crate and Arun peered inside.
She saw a smile form on his face and wondered what the Red Guards had brought
with them. Within minutes, the crates had been moved to the side of the runway
and the plane had taken off and returned to its base.

If anybody
found it ironic that trucks captured from Red Guards killed in battle were being
to transport these gestures of goodwill from the Central Committee, they kept
their opinion to themselves. All the crates were brought into a field near the
Council building and a huge crowd had gathered in no time, jostling to see what
they contained.

Up until now,
Arjun had been silent, but now he pulled Arun and Alice aside. Arun bristled a
bit at having to share decision making with Alice, but a sideways glance from
Arjun shut him up.

'Arun, let me
and my men inspect all the crates thoroughly. Only when we are sure that they
are safe should we let people get at them. Also, the last thing we need is a
stampede, so get these people home and tell them that we'll sort through what's
been sent and get back to them tomorrow.'

Arun agreed and
the orders were soon passed out, and most of Wonderland spent that night in
eager anticipation of what they would find in the crates the next morning.

***

'Alice, I am
requesting you to help us. All we need is a small sign from you. We have more
than a dozen old combat aircraft almost operational and every day we are
bleeding the Red Guards dry. Our battle for liberation got a second life thanks
to you and your struggle in the Deadland, but now the Red Guard propaganda says
you have surrendered. They are dropping leaflets saying that Wonderland has
accepted the Central Committee's terms. Just issue a statement saying it isn't
so.'

'General
Konrath, please give me some time to think things over.'

Alice was
seething with frustration and anger at her helplessness. The American General
was not asking for much, but Alice knew that having accepted Arun as the leader
of Wonderland and having decided to play along with the treaty, she could not
even do that much.

Vince said from
beside her, 'Alice, it would be easy. There was a webcam on board the
helicopter we captured. Danish and I could rig it up and we could upload your
message to one of the American servers.'

Danish slammed
his fist onto the desk in frustration. 'We could, but then Arun would go crazy.
He comes here every day supposedly to twiddle with the radio, but I know he’s
keeping tabs on what we do.'

Alice was
looking at the screen.

'It's not just
Arun and what he may think. The Central Committee would certainly see this as
an act of war, and they would react.'

Danish looked
up at her. 'Alice, since when you have been worried about what the Central
Committee may or may not think?'

Alice walked
out, a bitter tinge to her voice as she replied, 'I was always happy to fight
to the end. But I had people I could count on, people I knew would fight by my
side. How does one fight to free people who have come to like the comfort of
slavery?'

***

Chen was
sitting in his office, which had been shifted to the warehouse, and which he
now shared with Li. He hated her stench, but then he had not been given any
option in the matter. The one saving grace was that Li was usually out training
most of the day, at the firing range or practicing close combat with her
Biters. Their presence at the base was still secret, and when he went back to
the cafeteria in the main building for meals he would get questioning glances
from his young conscripts – questions he could not answer. Hu had expressly
forbidden him from revealing the real identity of Li and her Biters. The
official line, which Chen parroted, was that they were a secret Special
Operations unit flown in from the Mainland. He knew he would have got many
uncomfortable questions had the peace treaty not been announced. At least there
was to be no more fighting in this accursed war. Chen had no idea what Hu and
his masters in the Central Committee were planning, but he just hoped that he
could go back home and no longer have to stain his hands with the blood of
innocents; both his young men and the civilians of Wonderland.

He saw a video
conference call incoming on his tablet. It was Hu.

'Greetings,
Comrade General. Our token of goodwill has reached the people of Wonderland.
When the time is right, I will have another shipment for them.'

Chen was a
career soldier, and understood the cut and thrust of combat, but he had no idea
what political machinations lay behind Hu's latest moves.

'Comrade
Commissar, dare I ask what we plan to do after that and what the orders for my
men are in terms of combat readiness?'

He could see Hu
smile and share a glance with someone off camera. No doubt some political
officers were on hand to judge if Chen's revolutionary fervor was intact or
not.

'Comrade
General, we are still very much at war. The people's revolution cannot be
sustained as long as counter-revolutionary forces spread the lie of democracy
in savage places like Wonderland. The false idea of democracy died in the
flames of The Rising. Our people need to know that there is only way to assure
stability and progress, and that is for us to join together under the
benevolent guidance of the Central Committee.’

Chen's eyes
were glazing over. A year ago, he might have been more tolerant of such
propaganda, no doubt uttered for the benefit of the political officer watching
Hu, but months of torture and ‘re-education' in the camp had left Chen with
little patience for such platitudes. Hu looked at him, a new hard glint in his
eyes.