Alice in Deadland

***

'It's her!'

Over the last couple of weeks, Alice had slowly got used to this kind of reception whenever she walked into a human settlement in the Deadland. While Nikhil had kept up a relentless barrage of messages aimed at the Zeus troops, Alice had never really accounted for how fast the news would spread among the settlements. Most of the deserters found their way back to their settlements, and there they shared tales of the lies they had been told, of how the Central Committee, far from being a benevolent power, represented forces that had perhaps brought upon the catastrophe of The Rising in the first place to serve their pursuit of power. Most people found it hard to think of the Biters as anything other than the monsters they had always taken them for, but once doubts were sowed about the true nature of the Central Committee, they proved hard to undo. Add to that the heavy-handed tactics of the Red Guards and Chen, and one settlement after another had started to side with Alice.

Alice found herself facing more than three hundred people in the settlement, located just west of what had once been the suburb of Noida. Their leader, a grizzled old man, walked up to her and looked at her, as if sizing her up.

'You are but a young girl, little more than child, and a foreigner at that. What makes you expect that we would side with you and risk facing the Red Guards?'

Alice looked the old man in the eye.

'I don't expect you or your people to do anything other than to hear me out. After that, you can still choose to send your young ones to serve Zeus and to slave in the Central Committee's labor camps. Or you can choose to fight.'

The old man snorted derisively.

'Fight for what? You speak very fancy words for someone so young. Do you even know what those words mean?'

Alice did not even flinch as she replied.

'I fight for the freedom that we all have as human beings. The freedom to live the way we want, the freedom to choose our leaders, the freedom my father and hundreds of others have died to protect.'

The man averted his eyes and turned to the assembled crowd.

'Let us hear her out.'

When Alice finished, twenty more young men and women had joined her ranks. She never quite realized when her struggle to ensure safety and survival for her settlement had become something more. Perhaps it was when she watched her father and his friends be killed by the Red Guards, perhaps it was when she realized the full extent of the conspiracy behind it all, but what mattered now was that whether she liked it or not, she was effectively leading an ever growing army that fought back against the Red Guards. The Biters still would not really take orders from her, but she noticed that they were always lurking in the background on the Queen's orders, waiting to wade into the battle to support her.

Alice waited on the small hill outside the settlement as Nikhil uploaded his latest message-about how more and more desertions were taking place. They had actually met a dozen deserters who had returned to their settlements and Nikhil had used the tablet's camera to record a few of their testimonies that he was also uploading. When he finished, he looked at Alice.

'I'm almost out of juice. We need to be heading back.'

Alice realized that the small tablet in Nikhil's hand had proved to be a more devastating weapon in their struggle than any amount of firepower, and she also understood that it needed recharging. Dewan had left a charger behind, but only one of the underground shelters had an old generator which was being carefully husbanded to provide limited electricity and now also to power up the tablet. Alice and Nikhil set off at a brisk pace, jogging more than walking through the forest. Along the way, Alice spotted three men with rifles who waved to her. Even if people had not met her, almost everyone seemed to know about the blond haired girl who was fighting back. As Alice ran faster and faster, she felt Nikhil fall behind, but she wasn't worried. There was no sign of Red Guards nearby and they had only about five kilometers to go before they could disappear underground. Running always helped clear her mind, and Alice realized just what a motley crew she was leading. There were of course the people from her own settlement, who she knew would follow her to the end, then there were some from other settlements in the Deadland who had supported her but would not trust the Biters and so chose to stay in their own settlements while helping her with scouting, and finally there were those who said they wanted to help but would not bring themselves to follow a young girl, and remained uneasy allies at best. Even among the Biters, Alice had realized that while the Queen commanded the loyalty of many of them, there were small bands in the Deadland who had gone almost rabid, crazed with fear and hate, and would attack any human on sight. That made it tougher for her to sell her story of how the Biters could be worked with. It was all such a complicated mess that it made her head hurt and made her wish that she did not have to be the one to deal with it all.

'Alice, stop!'

Alice slowed down and saw Nikhil bent over, holding his knees, trying to catch his breath.

'Nikhil, the Red Guards will be at the site of our last transmission any time. We need to get underground as soon as we can.'

Nikhil closed his palms together, in a theatrical show of begging for mercy. Alice laughed out loud. Nikhil was not much of a fighter, but he was fun to have around, and he was the only one who knew how to use the tablet and that made him invaluable.

'Ok, get a drink of water and we'll be on our way.'

Nikhil took out a bottle from his backpack and drank and when he was about to put it back, took out his tablet for one last look.

'Let me see if they've already taken down my message.'

Alice watched his expression and knew that something was very wrong.

'Nikhil, what happened?'

He called her closer and showed her the screen. There was a single message.

'To all friends in the Deadland-keep you heads down. Heavy downpour expected soon.'

The message had been uploaded from Dewan's account. Alice ground her teeth in anger and frustration.

'Why the Hell would he expose himself by posting like that? Appleseed and the others will be sure to question him.'

Nikhil turned the tablet off.

'Alice, he was trying to be as cryptic as he could, and I guess he could claim it was aimed at his men and comrades on mission in the Deadland, but he would take such a risk only if he desperately needed to get a message through to us.'

'What…'

Alice never got a chance to finish her sentence as her voice was drowned out by the drone of multiple jet engines overhead. Alice looked up see dozens of jets approaching from over the horizon. She had seen the occasional Zeus attack helicopter, but she had never seen aircraft such as this-large bombers with swept wings, flying in formation, darkening the sky like a swarm of locusts.

'Nikhil! Are they coming to bomb where we last transmitted from?'

She saw that Nikhil was staring at the approaching armada, his face frozen in fear.

'Alice, they don't need so many heavy bombers to target one location. That fleet could flatten many, many miles of land.'

'Could they get through to our underground shelters?'

Nikhil never took his eyes off the approaching aircraft as he replied.

'I don't know. Some of them seem to be hardened bomb shelters that were built before The Rising, but the rest are no more than old sewers, maintenance tunnels and underground parking lots. Those wouldn't survive a direct hit. And nobody in the open would have a chance.'

Alice thought of the hundreds of people including her mother and sister in one of those shelters and of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of human settlements overground in the Deadland.'