The Crocodile's Jaws: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No.7) (3 page)

'They charged us, seeing I had a gun. What was wrong with
them? What were they doing here? Why are their knives covered with blood?'

Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer. Zohar
had sensed it too. As she looked up, Zohar stared into the distance.

'They were coming from the direction of my home.'

With that, he was running, shouting for his parents. Alice
ran after him, telling him to wait, but knowing that he would not wait for
anyone or anything till he reached his home.

He was screaming for his parents when she caught up with him.
Alice knew what had happened—the smell of death was all around her. Zohar
clambered up the hills to check the caves and found nobody. He looked at Alice,
wild-eyed in fear and desperation.

'Where are they? Where have they gone?'

Bunny Ears emitted a low growl. He was looking to the East,
beyond some bushes. Zohar ran off in the direction as Alice called out to him
in vain.

They had been slaughtered near the small river that had
served as their water supply. Buckets lay all around them, the spilled water
mixing with their blood. Perhaps some of them had been ambushed while on a
water-gathering run and others had rushed to their defense, only to meet the
same fate.

Zohar was kneeling near two bodies—his parents—screaming out
his fury and loss. His father had a knife by his side. There were no guns, as
they had perhaps been looted by their attackers, but he had put up a fight. Three
bodies lay near him, and a couple more around the area did not belong in the
group. All of Zohar's people were similarly dressed, in loose pyjamas and
shirts. Their attackers looked like city folks, wearing jeans, like the two
Alice had encountered on the way here. And like them, when she turned one of
the bodies over, their arms and torsos were covered in reptile-like scales and
pus.

Zohar held onto her leg and cried. Alice wanted to tell him
that his father had died well, that he had fought to save his family and people
and taken at least three of the enemy with him. She wanted to tell him that we
all died, and rarely had a choice about when our time came, but we could choose
whether to die a coward or a hero, and his father had been a hero.

But she said nothing, for she knew the deep grief Zohar felt—the
heart-wrenching pain of a child losing his or her parents. She had felt the
same loss, and had turned that grief into a fury that had set her on her
current path.

Zohar grabbed at her belt, pulling out her handgun. He
screamed at nobody in particular, mouthing his rage.

'Come on, fight me. Kill me! Come on!'

Alice gently took the gun from his hand and hugged him, the
first real human contact she had felt in years, and felt his racking sobs
against her chest. Bunny Ears was keening now as he looked at the bodies. Who
said Biters felt no grief? Who said they had no emotions left?

'We hurt nobody. My father always helped everyone. Why did
they do this? I will kill them. I will kill them all.'

The little boy screaming out his rage and sorrow struck
Alice to the core. She too had been young, just a few years older than Zohar,
when she had embarked on her journey. Did vengeance ever bring back the lost?
Did fallen enemies ever make up for having to see your family killed? But as
the little boy cried in her arms, Alice decided that while she had set out to
find some meaning to her journey, perhaps that meaning lay not in some grand
new quest but in helping this boy come to grips with his loss. To help him
realize that he was not helpless and alone. To help him realize that while
injustice and evil could not always be avoided, it must never go unanswered.

She would find the men who had done this, and she would make
them pay.

'We have some hunting to do.'

***

THREE

They had been walking for close to a day when Zohar finally
told Alice about the medicines. Alice had spotted tracks belonging to the
attackers and they had set out in pursuit. There seemed to be more than a dozen
of them, so Alice had been taking it easy, tracking them, but also waiting for
them to rest so that she could strike with the advantage of surprise on her
side. She had been assuming that they had been bandits, on the lookout for
random plunder, but what Zohar told her made her think otherwise.

'A few days before I left, my father found an abandoned
factory far from our settlement looking for supplies. It had been half buried
so he got some of the men to dig inside, and they came back with bags full of
some pills they found there.'

Alice had not seen any such pills when they went through the
settlement, looking for survivors or supplies. The attackers had taken none of
the food or supplies, but the medicines were nowhere to be found.

Alice had seen Doctor Edwards use medicines to treat all
kinds of ailments, and she knew just how valuable they could be, but why would
someone massacre a whole settlement over a couple of bags of pills?

As they sat around a tree, Alice asked Bunny Ears to go on
patrol and then she spoke to Zohar.

'All they took were the medicines. What's so special about
them?'

Zohar shook his head.

'I have no idea, but a day before I ran away, some traders
came asking whether we had found anything at the old factory. My father did not
trust them and said no.'

None of it made sense to Alice. People being massacred for
medicines. Men with lizard-like scales on their bodies. Bandits who took no
plunder other than some old pills.

Zohar reached inside his loose, baggy shirt. Tucked into his
waist was an old pistol.

'What are you doing with that gun?'

He looked at Alice, no apology in his eyes.

'It was my father's gun, and when I find the men who did
this, I will use this gun to kill them.'

At that moment, seeing a kid with a gun in his hands,
looking for vengeance, Alice was reminded of herself. She wanted to tell him
that revenge was not the solution it seemed to be, that it changed you in ways
you could never anticipate, that sometimes what began as revenge became a habit
of seeking out violence. And that once you were caught in that cycle, it was
very difficult to get out.

She said none of these things, but handed the gun back to
him. While vengeance did not lead to happiness, living with injustice was no
better. One made you a bitter, violent person, but the other robbed you of the
very essence of being human.

'Do you know how to shoot?'

'Of course.'

Though he said the words, Alice could see the uncertainty in
his eyes.

'Well then, maybe I can teach you a little bit so that when
you need to, you can help me. Look, there are at least a dozen of them. I don't
know how well trained they are or what weapons they have, but it will not be
easy.'

'I don't want easy. I want revenge.'

Alice left Zohar alone and walked out to see what Bunny Ears
was up to. He was not alone. He had managed to find six Biters who were now
walking back behind him. He gave a low, pleased growl when he saw Alice.

'Good thinking, Bunny Ears. We did need some reinforcements.'

Alice took out the book and went down to meet her new
friends.

***

The men they were pursuing might or might not have other
weaknesses, but they did have one that Alice would make them pay dearly for.
That weakness was arrogance. They had a head start of at least half a day, but
had paused at least twice to drink and smoke. Alice had inspected those sites
and concluded that there were indeed more than a dozen men, and judging by the
empty bottles they left littered around, at least some of them would be too
drunk to be effective in battle.

Bunny Ears was driving their new Biter companions hard,
growling, pushing and herding them on to catch the scent of the men they were
pursuing. People said Biters had no feelings, that they lost all emotions they had
as people, but Bunny Ears had been agitated ever since they saw the scene of
the massacre, and Alice had seen him shuffle near Zohar. The boy was still wary
of him and the other Biters, but Alice could tell that Bunny Ears wanted to
comfort him, but he just didn't have the words to do so. She caught up with
Bunny Ears and said in a whisper, 'You okay, Bunny Ears?'

He looked at her and Alice could tell he was angry.

'Don't worry, Bunny Ears. We'll make these men pay.'

An hour later, Alice saw something that truly puzzled her. Tire
marks. The men had been met by someone in a vehicle, which had driven off, but
the men had continued on foot.

A few hundred meters away, Bunny Ears stopped as one of the
Biters growled. They had found their quarry.

The men were sitting around a small pond, eating and
laughing. Some of them injected themselves with syringes and lay down, closing
their eyes. Alice asked Bunny Ears to pull the Biters back and then Zohar took
his gun out. She stayed his hand.

'I want to kill them!'

Alice gently pulled him back.

'We will kill them all, but when they least expect it. You
know what I've learned in all these years of fighting? Avoid fights if you can,
but if you have to, don't give the other guy a chance.'

'But I want to fight.'

Alice knelt down next to Zohar and looked into his eyes.

'Zohar, a fair fight is not what I have in mind. These men
will pay but they will not know what hit them.'

Two men had stumbled to the bushes to empty their bladders.
They staggered in, unarmed, only half conscious. They never came back. The
first was bitten by Bunny Ears and the other was taken down by two more Biters.
Neither so much as screamed, other than a brief muffled shout that their
comrades seemed not to notice.

Alice was now just twenty meters away, hidden behind a rock,
studying the men through the scope on her rifle. One more injected his arm with
a needle and lay back, his eyes closed. Two men who had injected themselves
earlier were now shaking, as if suffering from convulsions. Another man raised
his shirt to inject himself just below the waist. She saw the same scaly skin
on all the men, and the scales converged around the points where they stuck
themselves with needles. Ten men. She reckoned she could put down at least five
before they responded, and then it would be a gunfight. One which would be
short, for they would then be swarmed from behind by Bunny Ears and his Biters.
It was a massacre, but after what they had done at Zohar's settlement, these
men deserved nothing better.

The first shot, muffled by the suppressor on Alice's rifle,
took a man's head off. The man next to him sat up as his friend's head
exploded, looking around, trying to understand what had happened. He joined his
friend a second later as another shot took him in the neck. Alice was now
moving her rifle in a steady, deadly arc, left to right. Aim, pull the trigger,
watch for the spray of blood and move to the next target. She shot six men
before the first of them grabbed a gun and raised it to shoot at her, only to
be cut down by a burst from Alice that caught him in the stomach. Another shot
passed Alice's head and she swiveled to aim at the shooter and caught him in
the throat with a bullet. But then someone else was shooting, poorly aimed
shots that rang off the rocks and ground near the two remaining bandits.

It was Zohar. He was running towards the two men, shouting
and firing from the ancient revolver he held. Alice groaned as he passed
between her and the men, robbing her of a clean shot, and she abandoned her
rifle and ran forward, handgun and knife in hand.

Zohar had fired four bullets of the six his revolver held,
but he was hardly keeping count. He just wanted revenge upon the men who had
slaughtered his family, and he wanted to see them die up close, not have Alice
shoot them from far. He wanted to avenge his family with his own hands. His
father had taught him to shoot, but of course shooting practice when you're
standing still is very different from the adrenaline-charged rage that was
propelling him now. He realized all his shots had missed and forced himself to
slow down and take more careful aim.

The two men were just a few feet from him, and one of them
was reaching for an ancient gun by his side. Zohar aimed as his father had
taught him, holding the revolver steady with both hands, and fired twice. The
man groaned as he was hit in the midsection and toppled over. Zohar turned his
gun to the remaining man and shouted, though later he would have no
recollection of what he said.

The man looked at Zohar and smiled with crooked, yellowed
teeth.

'Child, I will cut off your head and throw it away.'

Zohar pulled the trigger and heard a click. He pulled it
again and realized with a sinking feeling that he was out of bullets. The man
took out a curved knife from his belt and ran towards Zohar.

That was when Alice slammed into the man and he went down in
a heap. Alice twisted the man's wrist. Bones snapped and he dropped the knife,
screaming in agony. The man tried to say something but Alice hit him hard on
the back of his neck with the hilt of her knife and he slumped to the ground.

Alice looked up to see Zohar sitting down, shaking slightly.
Then he bent and retched.

***

'It's always easier to talk of vengeance than to kill a man
with your own hands.'

Zohar was trying to avoid Alice's gaze, and seemed ashamed
of what he had done. Alice had seen more than her share of killing and knew
just how difficult it would be for Zohar to come to grips not just with the
loss of his family, but the fact that killing their murderers did not make
things any better.

She decided to give him some space. She had left the last
man alive to learn more about their attack and their comrades in the vehicle.
The man was lying down, blood crusted around his head and lips. When he had
come to, he had begun shouting, and Alice had shut him up with a blow to the
face. There had been little need to tie him up. Bunny Ears and two more Biters
stood over him, and every time the man stirred, Bunny Ears growled menacingly.
The man had never seen Biters under such control, and was at Alice's feet
begging for mercy the moment she arrived.

She pulled off his loose shirt and revealed the scales all
over his hands and mid-section.

'Are you sick with some illness? What are these marks? What
were you injecting into yourself?'

The man kept his head lowered, not daring to meet her eyes.

'Don't kill me. I am just a poor man who was given a job to
recover some bags from that settlement and pass it on. They give us odd jobs
once in a while, and pay us in these drugs. I take it to forget all I have seen
and done. Please spare me.'

Alice was no stranger to what drugs did to men, having seen
the effects of Dreamweed on the bandits who had raided her land to capture
people and Biters for the Khan and his cannibal horde. She presumed there was
another warlord like the Khan who was using drugs to get bandits to do his
bidding. Arjun and Danish had told her that these areas had once been part of a
thriving drug trade, with drugs from neighboring Afghanistan being funneled to
markets around the world, where they ruined minds and lives. Once Alice had
heard of what drugs did and how widespread the scourge had been, she wondered
why people thought Biters were the ultimate horror; it seemed man had enough
ways to destroy himself without needing any help from the supposed undead.

After a few more minutes of interrogation, it was clear the
man knew nothing more and had no real idea of who had put him and his friends
up to this latest job. The leader of their gang, who might have known more, had
died in the attack on the settlement. Alice finally got up and nodded to Bunny
Ears. As she walked back to Zohar, the man screamed as he was bitten. After
what he had done, Alice could not release the man unscathed, but neither would
she kill him in cold blood. As one of her Biters, he might yet prove to be of
some use.

She found Zohar sitting there and began gathering her
things.

'Zohar, I will push on. I will keep going south and see what
else I find. There are men behind this gang, men who use gangs like this to
prey on other settlements. Let me see if there are other settlements who need
aid.'

As she began walking, she felt a tug on her arm. It was
Zohar, a new resolve in his eyes.

'I will come with you. I have nothing and nobody to go back
to anyways, and I'll try and help you.'

With their new companions, Alice and Bunny Ears pushed on
south, where the tire tracks had led.

***

They walked for more than three days, seeing nothing but
desolation around them. Zohar was quiet for most of the time. Like Alice, he
had grown up in a sheltered little settlement. In just a few days, he had lost
his family and was now coming to grips with the fact that the world he lived in
was a wasteland within which lurked hidden dangers.

The tire tracks had led to a major highway, which was still
littered with the hulks of long-abandoned trucks and cars. Almost everything of
use in the vehicles had long been stripped off by scavengers, and they looked
very much like the skeletons of a long-vanished race of metal monsters. Bunny
Ears walked a few feet ahead, ever protective of Alice, while the dozen Biters
they had picked up along the way walked behind them. Normally Alice would have
preferred to travel light and let the Biters go on their way, but not knowing
the odds she would be up against, she had not objected to them following her.

As they crested a small rise, a large body of water lay in
the distance. A sign a few meters away proclaimed that they were near Manchar
Lake. Alice and her Biters needed no water to drink, but Alice had held onto
one old habit despite her transformation—that of taking a bath, and especially
washing her long, golden hair. She longed for some fresh water and knew that
Zohar was parched. He had carried on manfully, never complaining about the
meagre water they had carried and a diet that consisted of nothing more than
the occasional fruit or nuts they found. The large lake promised to provide
water and Alice spotted some trees near it that might yield more food for the
boy. There were no animals in sight, otherwise she would have hunted something
for him.