Alice in Zombieland (5 page)

     
‘The first thing I’ve got to do,’ said Alice to herself, as she wandered about in the deep dark wood, hearing only her own footsteps crunching in the dead leaves scattered across the shadowy forest floor, ‘is to grow to my right size again; and the second thing is to find my way into that lovely graveyard. I think that will be the best plan.’

     
It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply arranged; the only difficulty was, that she had not the smallest idea how to set about it; and while she was peering about anxiously among the trees, a little sharp bark just over her head made her look up in a great hurry.

     
An enormous dog, its head like a sharply-angled rock, two flint coals for eyes staring eagerly at her, was stretching out one massive, taloned paw, trying to get at her. ‘Oh my!’ said Alice, in a terrified tone, and she tried shoo it away; but she was terribly frightened all the time at the thought that it might be hungry, in which case it would be very likely to eat her up in spite of all her hopeful shooing.

     
Hardly knowing what she did, she picked up a little bit of rotting bone under a huge dark tree root, and held it out to the savage dog; whereupon it jumped into the air off all its feet at once, with a yelp of hunger, and rushed at the bone, worrying the bits of decaying flesh upon it; then Alice dodged behind the great tree trunk, to keep herself from being run over; and the moment she appeared on the other side, the growling animal made another rush at her, and tumbled head over heels in its hurry to get hold of her; then Alice, thinking it was very like having a game of play with a cart-horse, and expecting every moment to be trampled under its feet, ran round the twisted tree again; then the monstrous dog began a series of short charges at her, running a very little way forwards each time and a long way back, and barking hoarsely all the while, till at last it sat down a good way off and began to chew upon the rotting bone in earnest, its great eyes half shut.

     
This seemed to Alice a good opportunity for making her escape; so she set off at once, and ran till she was quite tired and out of breath, and till the animal’s gnawing sounded quite faint in the distance.

     
‘That was close!’ said Alice, as she leant against a thin sapling that felt dry and cancerous to her touch. A fairy circle of stinking toadstools, all pale and striped with red and brown, were spread round the trees near her, some quite large, in fact, big enough for her to sleep beneath if she ever wanted to sleep in such a musty and frightening place. ‘I might have liked to take a bite of him, instead, if I’d only been the right size to do it! Oh dear! I’d nearly forgotten that I’ve got to grow up again! Let me see—how
is
it to be managed? I suppose I ought to eat or drink something or other; but the great question is, what?’

     
The great question certainly was, what? Alice looked all round her at the tall foreboding trees, all dark and shadowed within their vast skeletal branches and but she did not see anything that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the circumstances. There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as herself; and when she had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and behind it, it occurred to her that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it.

     
She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the pale, smelly mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large black wurm, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly supping on a freshly dismembered human ear which it had stolen from the nearby graveyard and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else.

Chapter V

Advice from the Conqueror Wurm

     
T
he Wurm and
Alice looked at each other for some time in silence. The Conqueror Wurm’s body was long and segmented, and the color of wet ash, and smelled somewhat like a dead mouse that Dinah had once brought home to lie at her feet last year. The mouse, all rotting flesh and patchy gray fur, had been dead for quite some time. The Wurm smelled as if it had as well. Or perhaps, Alice thought, it’s what it chooses to eat that makes it smell so badly.

     
At last the Wurm took the half-chewed human ear out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice. ‘Who are
you
?’ said the Wurm.

     
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I
was
when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.’

     
‘What do you mean by that?’ said the Wurm sternly. ‘Explain yourself!’

     
‘I can’t explain
myself
, I’m afraid, sir’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see.’

     
‘I don’t see,’ said the Wurm.

     
“I feel strangely cold all the time and I’m so dreadfully hungry for the bits and pieces of other living things. I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,’ Alice replied very politely, ‘for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing”

     
‘It isn’t,’ said the Wurm, ‘hard to explain in the least. Quite natural here, young lady.’

     
‘Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,’ said Alice; ‘but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?’

     
‘Not a bit,’ said the Wurm, writhing its long gray body into a loop so to better face Alice.

     
‘Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,’ said Alice; ‘all I know is, I feel very queer indeed. Not myself.’

     
‘You!’ said the Conqueror Wurm contemptuously. ‘Who are
you
?’

     
Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Wurm’s making such
very
short remarks, and she drew herself up and said,

very gravely, ‘I think, you ought to tell me who
you
are, first.’

     
‘Why?’ said the Wurm.

     
Here was another puzzling question; and as Alice could not think of any good reason, and as the ugly Wurm seemed to be in a
very
unpleasant state of mind, she turned away.

     
‘Come back!’ the Wurm called after her, bits of half chewed ear flesh dangling from its small mouth. ‘I’ve something important to say!’

     
This sounded promising, certainly: Alice turned and came back again.

     
‘Keep your temper,’ said the Wurm.

     
‘Is that all?’ said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she could.

     
‘No,’ said the Wurm.

     
Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had nothing else to do, and perhaps after all it might tell her something worth hearing. For some minutes it munched away on its grotesque dead meal without speaking, but at last it unfolded its arms, took the rotting ear out of its mouth again, and said, ‘So you think you’re changed, do you?’

     
‘I’m afraid I am, sir,’ said Alice; ‘I can’t remember things as I used—and I don’t keep the same size for ten minutes together! And I’m so cold! And starving for warm flesh! I have changed! I know it!’ And it was true. Looking at her hands and arms now, she saw they both had a slight blue tinge to them. And her long beautiful hair, which so many people made comments upon, was beginning to come out in stringy handfuls. She would hate to see her reflection now. There was no telling what terrible apparition would look back at her.

     
‘Can’t remember
what
things?’ said the Wurm.

     
‘Well, I’ve tried to say “
How doth the little busy bee
,” but it all came different!’ Alice replied in a very melancholy voice.

     
‘Repeat, “
You are old, Father William
,”’ said the Wurm.

     
Alice folded her hands, and began:

-

 
‘You are old, Father William,’ the young man said,

 
‘And your hair has become very white;

 
And yet you incessantly stand on your head—

 
Do you think, at your age, it is right?’

-

 
‘In my youth,’ Father William replied to his son,

 
‘I feared it might injure the brain;

 
But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,

 
Why, I do it again and again.’

-

 
‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘as I mentioned before,

 
And have grown most uncommonly fat;

 
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—

 
Pray, what is the reason of that?’

-

 
‘In my youth,’ said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,

 
‘I kept all my limbs very supple

 
By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box—

 
Allow me to sell you a couple?’

-

 
‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘and your jaws are too weak

 
For anything tougher than suet;

 
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak—

 
Pray how did you manage to do it?’

-

 
‘In my youth,’ said his father, ‘I took to the law,

 
And argued each case with my wife;

 
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,

 
Has lasted the rest of my life.’

-

 
‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘one would hardly suppose

 
That your eye was as steady as ever;

 
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose—

 
What made you so awfully clever?’

-

 
‘I have answered three questions, and that is enough,’

 
Said his father; ‘don’t give yourself airs!

 
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

 
Be off, or I’ll kick you down stairs!’

-

     
‘That is not said right,’ said the Wurm.

     
‘Not
quite
right, I’m afraid,’ said Alice, timidly; ‘some of the words have got altered.’

     
‘It is wrong from beginning to end,’ said the Wurm decidedly, and there was silence for some minutes.

     
The Wurm was the first to speak, as it had almost finished its gory meal of graveyard ear. ‘What size do you want to be?’ it asked.

     
‘Oh, I’m not particular as to size,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘only one doesn’t like changing so often, you know.’

     
‘I
don’t
know,’ said the Wurm.

     
Alice said nothing: she had never been so much contradicted in her life before, and she felt that she was losing her temper.

     
‘Are you content now?’ said the Wurm. It began to clean its mandibles by rubbing them against its legs and then to its bulbous and shiny gray stomach.

     
‘Well, I should like to be a
little
larger, sir, if you wouldn’t mind,’ said Alice: ‘three inches is such a wretched height to be.’

     
‘It is a very good height indeed!’ said the Wurm angrily, rearing itself upright as it spoke (it was exactly three inches high). Its many legs waved in silent fury as it stared down on her with its dead eyes.

     
For a moment she feared it meant to consume her next, and she backed away in fright. ‘But I’m not used to it!’ pleaded poor Alice in a piteous tone. And she thought of herself, ‘I wish the creatures wouldn’t be so easily offended!’

     
‘You’ll get used to it in time,’ said the Wurm; and it continued to clean its mandibles. ‘Have you met the Red Queen yet?’

     
‘No, but I’ve heard such dreadful things about her that I’m sure I’d rather not meet her,’ said Alice, crossing her arms across her chest to show she meant business.

     
The Wurm squirmed a little closer and looked down at her, still working diligently at cleaning its gory mandibles. ‘You certainly don’t want her to see you in that state.’

     
‘What state?’ asked Alice.

     
‘The state which you are in,’ it replied.

     
‘I rather thought I was in a land, not a state,’ she said, quite pleased with her quick and logical wit.

     
‘She’s sure to show you, young lady,’ said the Wurm, not at all impressed with her play on words.

     
This time Alice waited patiently until it chose to speak again. In a minute or two the Wurm stopped cleaning itself and yawned once or twice, and shook itself. Then it got down off the mushroom, and crawled away in the dead leaves and broken, rotting twigs, merely remarking as it went, ‘One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.’

     
‘One side of
what
? The other side of
what
?’ thought Alice to herself.

     
‘Of the mushroom,’ said the Wurm, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment its squirming gray body was out of sight.

     
Alice remained looking thoughtfully at the mushroom for a minute, trying to make out which were the two sides of it; and as it was perfectly round, she found this a very difficult question. However, at last she stretched her arms round it as far as they would go, and broke off a bit of the edge with each hand.

     
‘And now which is which?’ she said to herself, and nibbled a little of the right-hand bit to try the effect: the next moment she felt a violent blow underneath her chin: it had struck her foot!

     
She was a good deal frightened by this very sudden change, but she felt that there was no time to be lost, as she was shrinking rapidly; so she set to work at once to eat some of the other bit. Her chin was pressed so closely against her foot, that there was hardly room to open her mouth; but she did it at last, and managed to swallow a morsel of the left hand bit.

     
‘Come, my head’s free at last!’ said Alice in a tone of delight, which changed into alarm in another moment, when she found that her shoulders were nowhere to be found: all she could see, when she looked down, was an immense length of pale blue neck, which seemed to rise like a stalk out of a tangle of spiny sharp dead branches and autumnal orange and brown leaves that lay far below her.

     
‘What
can
all that brown and orange stuff be?’ said Alice. ‘And where
have
my shoulders got to? And oh, my poor hands, how is it I can’t see you?’ She was moving them about as she spoke, but no result seemed to follow, except a little shaking among the distant dead leaves.

     
As there seemed to be no chance of getting her hands up to her head, she tried to get her head down to them, and was delighted to find that her neck would bend about easily in any direction, like a serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the dying branches, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large black raven had flown into her face, and was beating her violently with its long black wings.

     
‘Serpent!’ screamed the Raven.

     
‘I’m
not
a serpent!’ said Alice indignantly. ‘Let me alone!’

     
‘Serpent, I say again!’ cawed the Raven, but in a more subdued tone, and added with a kind of sob, ‘I’ve tried every way, and nothing seems to suit them!’

     
‘I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about,’ said Alice.