Through the Killing Glass (20 page)

Li snarled and
lunged, bringing her knife up in an arc. Alice blocked the blow, elbowed Li in
the face with her left hand and then followed through with a knife strike to
the throat. Li pulled back, the knife still embedded. She felt no pain, but she
wanted to scream at this witch, to tell her of all she had caused her to lose –
but all she could manage was a sickening gurgle. Blood and spittle bubbled up
at her mouth and she spat at Alice.

Alice turned
her face away as the bloody spittle hit her and that gave Li the opening she
needed. She sliced at Alice’s left wrist, cutting through veins, and as blood
spurted out the knife fell from Alice’s grasp. Li brought her knife up, aiming
at Alice’s head, but Alice moved out of the way, backing up. As Li closed in,
Alice pivoted on one foot and kicked, catching Li in the solar plexus. As Li
staggered back, Alice rushed at her, pushing her like a battering ram straight
through the window. Both of them landed on the street outside, covered in
shattered and bloodied glass fragments, and as Li tried to get up, Alice
smashed her head into the bridge of Li’s nose, shattering it. Alice reached
down and pulled her knife out of Li’s neck, but before she could strike, Li
managed to get her foot up and kick Alice off, and the two once again faced
each other, knives in hand, circling each other.

Several bullets
hit the wall around Alice and she felt at least one tear through her shoulder
as she dove to the ground. A full squad of Red Guards was approaching now, guns
trained on her. Li roared in frustration. She wanted to finish the Yellow Witch
herself, but she was unable to speak, her vocal cords severed. So she raised
her hand, signaling for the Red Guards to cease fire.

Tso ordered his
men to pause. He had left the APCs behind and come through the buildings,
fighting a running battle with Biters and human defenders, trying to get to the
Special Forces officer he had been ordered to aid. Now he was finally close
enough to look at her through his scope and he stopped in horror. She looked
like a Biter. Both of them did: the Yellow Witch they had been tasked to kill
and this mysterious Special Forces officer called the Red Queen. What was going
on?

Alice took
advantage of the momentary lull in the fighting to take cover behind a wall.
There were at least a dozen fully armed Red Guards and the damn Red Queen.
Armed with only a knife, Alice knew she would not last long. She tried to move
to the open area to her right but a volley of fire from one of the Red Guards
pinned her down.

Several of Tso’s
men had seen what he had and one of them asked, ‘Sir, that Red Queen is a
Biter. I thought our mission was to save people here from Biters.’ Tso had no
answer to that, but he did have a mission to accomplish. He ordered his men to
fan out. They had the Yellow Witch trapped behind the wall and he would finish
her. He saw the Red Queen approaching, and he felt himself pull back at the
stench and recoil at her blood-covered appearance. What was a monster like this
doing in a Red Guard uniform? Li held out her hand and grabbed an assault rifle
from one of the men and then she started walking towards the position where
Alice was trapped.

Glass crunched
underfoot as Li approached. So this is how it all had to end; surrounded,
outnumbered, trapped. Alice felt no regret or sorrow. She had no real life to
look forward to anyways and the way she figured it, she had already died
thrice. First when she had looked on as her father and his friends were
massacred at their settlement; second when she had looked upon the charred
remains of her mother and sister, killed in an air strike; and finally that day
when she had ceased to be Alice Gladwell and become the Queen of Wonderland.
She closed her eyes, thinking back to everything she had gone through. If it
all had to mean something, to be worth anything, then she could not let
Wonderland be taken without one last fight. If she was going down, she would
take as many of her adversaries down with her. Growing up in the Deadland, she
had been taught from an early age that there was nothing worse than becoming
one of the undead. Better dead than undead. That had been the motto drilled
into her during combat training. But in the past few years, she had learnt that
there
was
something worse than that: losing one’s freedom.

Better undead
than unfree. She wondered what her teachers would have said to that as she
stepped out, knife in hand, ready for the inevitable.

***

Tso heard the
helicopter fly in, and looked up to see its sleek, black shape. He grinned at
his men. Finally, they were going to get reinforcements, and hopefully a
helicopter ride out of this hellhole. He waved to the helicopter and as the
chopper came lower, the side door slid open.

Something was
wrong. The man handling the Gatling gun was not wearing a Red Guard uniform.
Tso screamed at his men to take cover as the gun opened fire, spitting death at
the Red Guards below. More than half of Tso’s men were cut to ribbons in the
first burst and as the rest tried to take cover, Biters appeared from the
alleys behind them. Tso knelt and shot one in the head, but there were too many
of them. Tso ordered his men to retreat into the buildings and as they ran
across the street, another burst from the helicopter’s gun killed two more of
his men.

Alice did not
know where the helicopter had come from but Li had been distracted enough by
its sudden appearance to give her a window of opportunity. Alice ran towards Li
as fast as she could. Growing up, that had been Alice’s claim to fame: the fact
that she could outrun anyone in her settlement. Li tried to bring her rifle up,
but she was too late. Alice held on to the rifle with both hands and slammed it
back into Li’s face, the butt impacting against Li’s already shattered nose and
pushing broken bone fragments back into Li’s brain.

The last thing
Li saw was the Yellow Witch looking at her.

The helicopter
landed in the middle of the road and Satish and six of his men jumped out,
training RPGs at the building where the Red Guard officer and his men had taken
refuge. The Biters were now streaming towards the building, and Alice took out
the book from her belt, holding it above her head.

‘Stop!’

The Biters
stopped where they were, and Bunny Ears emerged from the crowd. Alice looked at
the building and called out to the Red Guards, ‘Surrender now or we will kill
you.’

One of Tso’s
men, a conscript barely out of his teens, was crying like a baby, and the other
remaining soldier looked to be in shock. Tso knew he was finished, and while he
might have been tempted to try and make a last stand, he did not want to be
responsible for the deaths of these two boys. There had been quite enough
bloodshed today, and for a cause that he was no longer sure of. Looking at the
shattered body of the Red Queen, he realized that they had been fighting a war
that had been based on lies. He stepped out of the building, his hands above
his head, and walked towards Alice.

‘I am the
officer here. If you want, take me, but let my men go.’

Studying the
man’s nametag for an instant, Alice said, ‘Captain Tso, nobody else needs to
die today. We will see you to the outskirts tomorrow, but please don’t come
back to Wonderland and remember to tell your masters that we are free and will
fight to preserve that freedom.’

As Satish’s men
took Tso and his men into custody, Alice walked up to the helicopter. The
cockpit window was open and she looked in to see Vince, grinning at her.

‘The White
Knight had to come to the rescue of the Queen today, I guess.’

***

‘Looking Glass,
sector 9 is clear.’

It was now
early morning, and Danish had barely slept a single minute, hearing reports as
one sector after another was cleared by Satish, Arjun or their men. Much of the
previous day had been consumed by fighting, street by street, house by house.
The tide had finally turned when Bunny Ears and his Biters had joined the
battle. Their initial arrival in the middle of Wonderland had caused many
defenders to be alarmed, and indeed a few Biters had been shot down by
Wonderland’s panicked residents. Remarkably, however, Bunny Ears and his band
had not attacked a single citizen of Wonderland, instead focusing on fighting
the Red Guards and the Biters the Red Queen had brought with her. With Vince
joining the defense, they had managed to get some air support, both to attack
Red Guard units and also to provide advance warning of incoming units.

By five in the
evening, the battle had become one of attrition, and finally Red Guard units
had begun to collapse and surrender en masse. Alice had struck a goldmine by
capturing a young officer named Tso. During his debriefing with Arjun and
Satish, he had confessed that the rank and file of the Red Guards had no idea
about the Red Queen and her Biters. He had felt betrayed and was bitter about
the loss of so many of his men for a mission that had turned out to be a lie.
Tso’s testimony had been broadcast on the Red Guard radio frequency and while
Commissar Hu was quick to call it a fabrication, Danish had no doubts that it
helped convince many of the Red Guard units in the city to give up and pull back.

The night had
been one of securing the borders, mopping up any last resistance, and of taking
stock of the terrible losses they had suffered.

Finally,
Satish, Arjun, Vince and Alice arrived at the Looking Glass. All the men were
dead tired, and both Satish and Arjun had several bandages to cover wounds from
shrapnel or flying glass. The most fearsome sight of all, however, was Alice.
Her hands and feet were a bloody mess and she seemed to be cut in a dozen
places.

‘Alice, are you
ok?’

Hearing the
concern in Danish’s voice, Alice managed a smile. ‘I’m ok. Being half undead
has a few advantages.’

As they sat
down, Vince told them about his journey. He had reached Calcutta, and within a day
a Dakota had landed as the Americans had promised. While he had sent Edwards
back to America, he had decided to come back after refueling from stocks left
at the old airport.

‘What made you
come back? You could have gone home, Vince.’

Vince looked at
Satish. ‘I was a United States Marine. I saw action in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and we all thought that if we ever died in combat, it would at least be while
serving our nation. Instead my mates were butchered by hired guns after we were
betrayed by one of our own once we refused to fly for the Red Guards. I was
carted off to a labor camp, where I lived the life of a slave. So I would never
give up the chance to finally fly in combat again and be what I once was.
Besides, the general wanted me to come back with something for you guys.’

‘The general?’

‘General
Konrath, Alice. He’s the leader of the American resistance in the Deadland
there. He is one stubborn man; I’ll give him that. Do you know they lost five
Dakotas and their crew before they managed to get one as far as Calcutta?’

Alice wondered
why anybody would go to such lengths and sacrifice so much.

‘Because he
knew that the only hope for lasting peace lies in humans coming to terms with
Biters. Two things can make that happen: the vaccine, which hopefully Edwards
is working on right now, and you. Your voice, your story could change how
people in America view Biters. Many there have heard of you but they dismiss
you as nothing more than a fairy tale or myth.’

‘How could I
possibly get to them, Vince? You know our computers have all been disabled by
the Red Guards from communicating with the Americans.’

Vince reached
into his backpack and took out a large tablet.

‘The general
sent this. Now you can communicate all you want with the Americans.’

That afternoon,
Alice walked through Wonderland. The damage and losses had been high. Despite
their lack of training and practice, the people of Wonderland had fought to
protect their freedom with a ferocity that even Alice had not anticipated.
Whole families had perished in battle, and she had heard of small boys and
girls setting off bombs that their fallen parents had laid. Despite the
terrible losses, she felt a surge of hope. If there was one thing her own
journey had taught her, it was the fact that liberty was secured not by a
handful of heroes and champions, but when every ordinary citizen gathered up
the courage to stand up against tyranny.

Bunny Ears and
his Biters were waiting, so Alice approached.

‘You did really
well, Bunny Ears. Thank you for your help.’

Bunny Ears
seemed to have lost an ear in the fighting and his face was a bloody mess, but
he grunted and all the Biters knelt before Alice. Then Alice saw something that
she had never seen before. People began streaming out of their houses, many
still bloodied and bandaged, and they stood beside the Biters.

One of them, an
old man who had served on Arun’s Cabinet, spoke up, his head bowed as if not
wanting to look Alice in the eye. ‘Alice, please do forgive us doubting you. We
are free today because of you.’

Alice raised
him up.

‘No. We are
free today because we stood together. Let us never forget that.’

Satish had
walked up behind Alice and he took in the sight before him, hundreds of humans
and Biters, united in something for the first time.

‘Alice, you
know what you said about Biters needing symbols to follow a leader? It’s not
just Biters; humans need symbols to believe in as well. For the Biters, that
symbol is that old book. For these people, that symbol is you.’

The rest of the
day was spent beginning the monumental task of cleaning, and the Biters
returned to the Reservation, though this time Alice noticed that nobody turned
on the electrified fence or locked the gate.