The Crocodile's Jaws: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No.7) (11 page)

Alice just stood there, stunned by what she heard. She
looked around frantically, looking for some way to stop this, but realized she
had been too late. The captain continued.

'Mikhail was on the radio with me just a few minutes ago.
The guard at the Weapons Room killed your friends and now he is programming the
missiles. He will launch in two minutes' time.'

Alice began to pivot on her feet, hoping that she could get
out in time and find the Weapons Room, when the captain raised his pistol and
fired a single shot which would have hit her head had Zohar not run into the
room and pushed Alice out of the way. Alice fell behind a desk. On his knees, Zohar
fired his pistol, emptying the clip before he was hit by a shot to the shoulder
and fell, screaming. He had not fallen in vain as his shots had hit one of the
guards who now lay dying when Alice jumped up to fire at the captain.

The captain was behind the tall, padded chair in the middle
of the bridge and was screaming into the radio.

'Mikhail, fire the damn missile!'

The remaining guard fired with his rifle and Alice took
cover as bullets pinged off the desk. When the man stopped to reload, she
jumped over the desk, using her left hand as leverage to push her up, and
before she came down in a roll and took cover behind another desk, she had
fired three rounds into the man. She was up again, scanning for the captain,
who was now trying to escape by going out the emergency exit door at the far
end of the bridge. When he was just feet away from it, the door opened and
Bunny Ears came in. Behind him was Mikhail with John's gun pointed at his head.

The captain screamed, a low-pitched shriek of terror as he
realized that all was lost. His last thought was that he should have stayed on
that island with his First Officer. Then Bunny Ears broke his neck.

***

ELEVEN

It was a smell that Alice knew only too well, yet even after
all these years, standing at the site of a battlefield never ceased to move
her. She had been taught to fight from an early age, but also to respect the
damage a gun or knife could do, and to feel grief when a life was wasted in
unnecessary bloodshed. Before her, she saw lives thrown away to serve masters
who had moved these men like pieces on a chessboard, dispensable before their
agendas and goals.

Four marines from the submarine lay dead in a ditch where
they had laid their ambush, just a kilometer from the landing zone, along with
a dozen of their local thugs. Before them lay more than two dozen troopers who
had flown in from the Homeland, many of them cut down in the first volley
before the others had regrouped and fought back.

Alice took it all in with a practiced eye. The troopers from
the Homeland had been taken by surprise but the reinforcements that Nikolai was
supposed to bring with him had never arrived, so they had the advantage of
numbers. Also, they were all very well equipped, with body armor and top-of-the-line
assault rifles, while only the captain's men were similarly equipped. None of
the local thugs had body armor, so when the counterattack began, the troopers
must have extracted a heavy toll. The marines had tried to withdraw, knowing
reinforcements were not coming any more, and tried to get to higher ground.
They had all been cut down at the base of a hill where they had prepared a
fallback position. Their local thugs had not been as disciplined and had
scattered, many being cut down in ones and twos all around the battlefield.

'War is old men plotting and young men dying. Some things
never change. I wish I had kept my bloody mouth shut.'

Alice looked at John, who spat in disgust. He had taken it
particularly hard, as he had given Robertson the idea of landing on the
highway, without realizing what that would lead to.

'We had no idea at the time. You can't blame yourself. These
troopers died because of Robertson's greed and the captain's desire for power.'

John knelt down to examine some spent shell casings. Then he
suddenly spoke in a whisper.

'Get inside the ditch.'

Alice did as she was asked and he pointed up the hill.

'Those shell casings are higher than the ditch. They must
have rolled down the hill. There might be someone still up there. Let me say hi
and make sure.'

'How do we find out?

Alice never got to finish her sentence as John got up and
waved his hands.

'Privet!'

A hand waved back from behind a boulder.

'Stay here and cover me.'

Alice watched as John climbed up the hill and two men stood
up to greet him—one a blond marine from the submarine and the other a thug,
both carrying rifles. Seeing him in uniform and hearing him speak in Russian,
they must have assumed he had come from the ship. The marine began to walk down
towards John and about a dozen paces from him realized that something was
amiss. The marine brought up his gun but never got a shot off as Alice shot
him. The thug dropped his gun and began to shout something but Alice shot him
as well. There was a place and a time for mercy and compassion, but this was
not one of them. In the eyes of the man she shot, Alice saw not a human being
deserving of mercy, but a ruthless predator who had preyed on the weak like
Neha and countless others like her.

Satisfied that there were no more surprises in store for
them, Alice and John set out for where the plane would be.

'Alice, let me handle this.'

Alice took cover a few hundred meters away from the large
propeller-driven transport aircraft that was parked on the highway. The two
crew members were on the side of the road, holding their rifles at the ready,
spooked by the sound of gunfire and awaiting news from the men they had
unloaded just a few hours ago. John walked to them, unarmed, his hands in the
air.

'Hey, guys. I'm American and on your side.'

The pilots lowered their guns and walked towards him and
after a few minutes of talking, John waved towards Alice. One of the pilots had
flown to Wonderland before and had seen Alice so he quickly slapped his
friend's hands down when he was about to bring his rifle up. Alice looked at the
name tag on the pilot's chest.

'Captain Rollins, your men were ambushed not far from here,
and I'm afraid there were no survivors. Their attackers came from a submarine
located near the port, which we have secured. I could use your help and ideas
in destroying that ship and then taking us back to Wonderland.'

Rollins visibly sagged, taking in the news that all the men
he had ferried over, many of whom he had known for years, were now dead. Then
something clicked into place as he remembered Alice mentioning a submarine.

'Three of the guys we brought were pretty old. They were
hardly frontline soldiers, so I had wondered why the hell they had been sent
along. When I talked to them, turned out they had something in common—they all
served on subs before the Rising.'

His expression changed as he realized what he had just said.

'But how did they know there would be a sub?'

Alice said nothing. This would hardly be the first time, or
the last, that fighting men had been sent into harm's way on the basis of the lies
of their masters, but that would not make it any easier for Rollins to deal
with.

They set off back for the port, with Alice hoping that Bunny
Ears was holding up at his end and that Zohar was alive.

***

Neha flinched involuntarily as Bunny Ears came up to where
Zohar was lying down, Neha's father and another man near him. Neha's father
been a doctor before the Rising, and with the first-aid kits they had found on
board the submarine, they had tried to tend to Zohar's wounds the best they
could. Bunny Ears leaned down and his hand grazed the boy's hair.

Zohar's eyes opened.

'I'm fine, Bunny Ears. It just hurts a lot.'

Neha's father grinned.

'This boy is a real fighter, and you, my friend, are a Biter
unlike any I have ever seen. They all call you Bunny Ears. Is that your name?'

Bunny Ears looked at Neha and then at him.

'Neeeehhaa… Neeeiil.'

Mikhail was sitting in a corner with his hands tied behind
his back. Alice's gut had told her that he would not be trouble, but she could
not take the risk, especially when neither she nor John were around. There was
always the danger that some more of the captain's thugs might come back to
extract revenge, or just to get more of their drugs, so several of the workers ringed
the area armed with weapons recovered from the factory and the submarine.

Bunny Ears took a round of the area. There were Biters in
the adjoining streets and he had already warned them to leave the humans alone,
but he knew that he would not be able to ensure their total compliance till
Alice came back with her book.

He sensed movement behind him and turned to see Neha. His
mind was racing, trying to make connections that somehow never seemed to be
completed. He could recall snatches—of the name Neha being incredibly important
to him, of her calling him Neil, and of a struggle against time and death
itself that he had once endured. But the details eluded him no matter how hard
he tried, and all he got for his efforts was a splitting headache that caused
him to roar in frustration. Neha took a tentative step back, and Bunny Ears
held out his hand, palm outward, as he had sometimes seen Alice do when she
wanted to show Biters that she meant no harm.

In the time he had spent as a Biter, for Bunny Ears life had
been a daily struggle for survival. That had been till he had met Alice, and
been told by his Queen that she was someone special, that she needed to be
protected. That duty, that devotion had consumed him over the last few years,
providing some certainty and purpose to his life. Now that had been joined by a
new certainty, the fact that he once had a name. Neil. He too had people he had
cared about, and had been cared for in return. He so wanted to remember, he so
wanted to be the man he had once been. For the first time since the Rising,
since the day a young man called Neil had been bitten in a struggle to save a
girl called Neha from a horde of Biters and managed to get her to safety just
before he turned into a Biter, he wanted to live.

His brain no longer worked as it once did—the virus that had
caused people to turn into Biters had mutated to the point that nobody was
really sure what it did to humans—but one thing was sure. Neil now remembered
that he was more than a Biter called Bunny Ears.

Neha touched his arm and he flinched at the unfamiliar
touch.

'Shh… Neil. That is your name, right? I suspect you knew
someone called Neha. I'm so sorry that you had to go through all this, but
Alice told me they have a vaccine now, and maybe they will have a cure. I pray
one day you can become the Neil you once were.'

Just then, Alice and John arrived with the two pilots. John
took Mikhail aside and returned after ten minutes.

'He says he can disable the boat but he wants assurance that
he can come with us to Wonderland and be allowed to live as a free man.'

Alice was about to say that Mikhail had been a party to many
crimes committed by the captain and Nikolai, but she held back. She had long
realized that there were only a few truly evil men and women who would actively
hurt others to further their interests. There were also very few people who
would stand up and resist such tyranny. The reality was that the vast majority
of people were sheep who would follow without question, for whom
self-preservation was all-important. There was nothing to be gained by killing
Mikhail, who from what Neha had said had been at best a reluctant partner in
the captain's schemes.

'All right, but go with him, just in case.'

Just as John was leading Mikhail to the boat that would take
them to the sub, Alice saw an incoming video call on her tablet.

It was Robertson.

***

'Have you been able to get in touch with my men? They have
not reported in ever since they landed.'

Alice looked right into his eyes. There was genuine concern
there, but was it really for the welfare of his men, or the prize that he
coveted so much? She decided to stick to the truth as much as possible without
giving away just how much she knew. A few years ago, Alice would have waded
into the man, bringing up how he was a liar and how he had wasted his men's lives
for his own purpose. She had learned in the years since then that compromise
with people you didn't like was part and parcel of growing up.

'I'm sorry, they were ambushed soon after they landed and
there are no survivors other than the pilots who stayed with the plane. We
reached them too late to stop the slaughter.'

Robertson closed his eyes in exasperation and took a deep
breath, unconsciously rubbing his right temple with his hand, as if trying to
wish away an impending headache.

'None of them?'

'No, none of them made it. I'm sorry—it seemed like a waste
of a lot of lives.'

Robertson composed himself, as if trying to see if he could
salvage something out of the situation.

'I have got some recent intelligence which has given me a
clearer picture of what we're up against. Can you, John and the pilots mount a
mission to try and neutralize this threat? Otherwise I worry that with our attack
foiled, they will strike us with their nuclear weapons.'

He leaned forward, as if sharing a big secret. Alice had to
give the man points for being an accomplished liar and actor. Of course, she
had not seen the world before the Rising, otherwise she would have realized
that those were usually preconditions for being a politician.

'The threat we're talking about is a submarine. I don't know
how far they are from the port and if they are submerged then they are
impossible to target, but I am assuming they must have some arrangement to get
supplies or food from shore. Can you help out?'

Alice simply turned the tablet so that the camera showed the
massive black bulk of the submarine anchored a kilometer or so from the shore.
Robertson's eyes widened.

'We actually had found the threat and have neutralized the
crew. From what I gather, this one ship could have destroyed all the humans
left alive on Earth, and destroying our small city of Wonderland and your major
settlements would have been an easy task for it.'

Robertson was trying to think of what to say to get his
hands on the submarine and the missiles in it. Alice let him stew for a while,
enjoying the look she saw on his face. A man who had harbored dreams of ruling
the world, and had a good man like Konrath killed to achieve it, now coming to
grips with the fact that things had rapidly slipped out of his control.

'I could have a team of specialists flown over in a day or
two. If you could hold the position, they can be there and advise us on how to
deal with this vessel.'

Alice now turned the tablet so that once again she was
looking straight into Robertson's eyes.

'That won't be necessary. One of the crew members, luckily
enough the Weapons Officer, survived and is in our custody. He has agreed to
cooperate with us and as we speak he is on board with John, carrying out our
order to destroy this ship.'

A look of sheer panic crossed Robertson's face.

'That ship… we could study it further. Maybe the reactors
could be of use in providing power. We should try and preserve it till our
specialists can be there.'

Alice wanted to say a lot of things, but all she did was
point the tablet back towards the sub.

A small boat was visible coming ashore. Mikhail and then
John stepped out of it, and John began waving to everyone.