Through the Killing Glass (10 page)

‘You cannot gut
me like a mere human, witch!’

This woman was
unlike any enemy she had ever faced. Biters were simple to deal with; they knew
nothing of tactics nor skill. Human adversaries, no matter how skilled or
strong, were at a disadvantage versus her because they would tire, fall victim
to wounds – she would not. However, for the first time she was facing someone
like her, and she would have to rethink how she fought.

Li struck again
and Alice again weaved out of the way, this time sweeping Li’s leg under her as
she passed. Li hit the ground hard as Alice turned to face the next attack. She
did not know where this half-Biter had come from or where she fit into the
Central Committee’s plans, but one thing was clear. She was making an
elementary mistake: she was fighting angry.

Li swung her
sword again and grunted in despair as she missed and overshot and once again
Alice stabbed her in the back before rolling away.

Li and her
elder brother had been brought up in a Red Guard Academy since she had been
five years old when her father had been called up on duty in the Deadland and
her mother killed by Biters in the chaos following The Rising. The Central
Committe had identified gifted children and trained them from an early age,
hoping to create the vanguard of a new China when things stablized. As the war
raged on, the graduates of the Academy became the elite officers of the Red
Guards. With her impressionable young mind filled with tales of brutal hordes
of Biters and of terrorists threatening the Mainland, Li had grown up with the
certain knowledge that one day she too would serve her nation in this war.

Then as the war
continued to rage in the Deadland and more and more Red Guard officers were
rushed into frontline combat as Zeus units began to munity, her father and
brother were sent to the Deadland to combat the menace posed by the terrorists
led by some Yellow Witch. Rumors in the Academy spoke of a half-Biter monster
who could not be killed. Then came the news that both Li’s father and brother
had perished in the fighting. At that time she had not yet graduated, but based
on her skills had already been assigned to a Special Forces unit. She sent a
petition to the Central Committee, pleading to be sent to the Deadland, hoping
she would have a chance to avenge her father and brother. When Commissar Hu
himself visited her and told her that she was to be part of a special unit to
be inserted in the Deadland, she was ecstatic. When she learnt what she would
have to endure, she began to have second thoughts. Then she was shown photos of
the Yellow Witch, who it was said had been personally responsible for the death
of her brother. She talked to combat veterans who told her about how her
brother had been about to surrender, but had been killed in cold blood by the
Witch. She was shown photographs of her brother’s mutilated body. She had
nobody or nothing to live for and she wanted to get revenge, so she signed up
for the special program.

And now she
finally had her chance at vengeance.

She was
screaming at Alice to attack, but Alice held back, waiting for Li to commit to
another strike. Alice knew that her only chance at a decisive blow was to the
head and she would just wait for Li to make another mistake. Li had had years
of the very best training. Alice had nowhere near that, but she had learned
from years of living and surviving in the Deadland.

Li reached into
her belt and hurled another shuriken at Alice. Alice ducked, the star whizzing
past her. However that gave Li the time to rush forward with her sword, slicing
deep into Alice’s side. The sharp samurai sword cut into Alice’s flanks where
her belt was. Alice looked down and saw that it had sliced through the book she
carried tied there at all times. The sword strike would not have finished her,
but she would have had a pretty hard time trying to fight with her guts
spilling out, and that would have slowed her down enough for Li to finish her
off. Alice backed off, thanking the storybook named after a girl called Alice
for having saved her. As Li screamed in frustration and lunged at her again,
Alice went down on a knee, striking up with both hands as her knife penetrated
Li’s defenses and took her in the chest. As Li stopped, Alice jumped up, her
elbow hitting Li’s nose hard. A front kick sent Li satggering to the ground.

Seeing their
leader in trouble, two of Li’s Biters rushed to attack Alice, who turned to
face this new threat. The first Biter was just a couple of feet away when his
head disappeared in a mist of blood. The second followed an instantt later.
Alice turned to see Vince and Satish approaching, firing their assault rifles.
The bodies of dozens of Biters lay scattered around her. While Bunny Ears and
the remaining Biters were still outnumbered, with Vince and Satish there they
would thin the odds pretty fast.

Li saw the new threat
and knew that she would have to abort the mission. Tempting as it was to try
and gain her vengeance this day, she knew that her Biters would not last
against the combined force of Biters and the trained soldiers who seemed to
have appeared on the scene. She screamed at her Biters to retreat and ran
towards the nearest helicopter. A handful of Biters made it with her, but the
others were picked off by Vince, Satish and Alice. Li looked down with rage as
her helicopter took off and flew off towards Ladakh. The remaining helicopter
was about to take off when Vince took aim and fired at the cockpit, killing the
pilot.

Alice stood
there, observing the carnage around her. They had prevented another attack on
Wonderland, but at a terrible cost. She saw Bunny Ears and several of her
Biters standing around Hatter’s fallen body. She had been told that Biters had
no emotions, and certainly they could not cry, but there was no doubting that
Bunny Ears and the others had felt something at the passing of their comrades.

Edwards
ventured from cover.

‘Now I know
what they were after with their experiments. They wanted to make another like
you, and looks like they succeeded.’

Alice saw Vince
grinning. She raised her eyebrows; what could he possibly find funny in the middle
of all this bloodshed? He saw her expression and while his grin instantly
disappeared, there was no mistaking the excitement in his eyes. He pointed to
the helicopter the attackers had left behind.

‘Look at the
bright side. Now we have our own air force.’

***

Chen cringed as
he heard the sounds of the neighboring office being trashed. When only one
helicopter had come back, he had known something was wrong, and Li had rushed
into the office in a rage. He looked at Hu.

‘Comrade
Commissar, she seems like a spoilt young girl, not your elite super soldier.’

He noted with
some satisfaction the twitch of irritation on Hu’s face, but the Commissar
quickly recovered his composure.

‘Give her some
time. In the meantime we will go and sit in your office.’

They passed the
time with chess. Chen thought he had the Commissar on the ropes when he managed
to trap the Queen, but then Hu surprised him by checkmating him within two
moves. The normally humorless Hu allowed himself a smile as he spoke.

‘Comrade
General, sometimes one must turn defeat into victory. Did you see the piece I
used to distract you?’

‘Yes, Comrade
Commissar, you made me think you had left your White King vulnerable.’

Hu got up and
walked to the window, watching the building at the far end of the base, where
Li was probably still taking out her anger on the office furniture.

‘Comrade
General, I did not anticipate that they would intercept this mission, but
perhaps there is yet something we can salvage from this. These is one other
possibility; a White King I have been using for small moves. Perhaps now his
role can become more decisive.’

***

Danish was in
front of his console in the Looking Glass. He had got word of the battle and
while Alice had not told him the full story, since their communications were
most likely intercepted by the Red Guards, the mention of a Red Queen and her
Biters had him worried no end. If the Red Guards had been behind the Biter
attacks, they had at one stroke found a way of driving a wedge between the
humans and Biters in Wonderland and depriving Wonderland of some of its most
experienced fighters.

Arjun came up
behind him.

‘Danish, I have
a Cabinet meeting with Arun in the evening, so I thought I’d check if you
needed anything from town.’

Danish asked
Arjun to sit down.

‘I don’t know
how you do it. You must not just have been a salesman, but a bloody Oscar
winning actor before The Rising. You actually have Arun convinced that you’re
going to side with him.’

Danish had
spoken in jest, but Arjun’s reply was dead serious.

‘When the time
comes. Till then, I can’t have all of us desert Wonderland. Any news from the
Americans?’

The question
brought a smile to Danish’s face.

‘Oh yes!
They’ve got several servers up, and while the Red Guards are trying to block them,
they are now communicating a lot with each other and with us over the Net. The
news is that they’ve re-captured a couple of old airbases. After so many years,
I have no idea if they can get those planes flying and combat ready, but if
they do, then the battle for the American Deadland will be really interesting.’

Arjun asked him
what he was planning for lunch, and Danish replied, patting his ample belly, ‘I
haven’t had breakfast, so let’s get to town and grab a bite at McDonald’s.’

McDonald’s was
the name given to the first and so far only restaurant in Wonderland. It had
been opened in the burned out shell of an old restaurant from before The
Rising, but the large yellow ‘M’ had survived and while the food served
consisted of soups, rice, vegetables and the occasional burger when hunting
parties got lucky, it made everyone feel better that they had the option to eat
in a restaurant again. It was one small step on the long and winding road
towards normality.

A jeep pulled
up outside and they saw Arun walking in.

‘Hey, Arun. I’m
stepping out for lunch. The Looking Glass is all yours.’

Arun sat down
and fiddled with the radio in front of him. He had never anticipated that this
hobby of his from before The Rising would prove so handy now. He had been a member
of parliament, one of the rising young stars of Indian politics, when The
Rising took place. People had said that he would one day have a shot at being
Prime Minister, that he was destined for great things. The Rising had changed
all that. At one stroke, he had gone from a man of considerable power and
influence to one who was nothing. After The Rising, the only people who really
counted were those who were strong enough or ruthless enough to survive the
chaos that followed. Arun had gone into hiding in the Ruins with his family,
and seen two children be taken by the Biters. They had stumbled into a
settlement in the Deadland where they had lived the lives of scavengers,
sending a few young boys and girls every month with Zeus troopers to serve in
labor camps or farms for a modicum of security. He had been happy when Alice
had emerged, leading her rebellion against the Central Commitee. He and his
family had walked into Wonderland just over a year ago, but quickly his relief
at returning to a more stable, safe existence had given way to mixed emotions.
How could he tolerate the fact that they were supposed to now live in peace
with Biters, the same monsters who had taken his children? How could he look at
Alice every day, and follow the half-Biter monster she had become? Not having
any alternatives, he had been content to serve for some time, and his skills
with the ham radio were well appreciated, but one day he got a transmission
that told him that he perhaps had a chance after all to realize the future he
once believed he was destined to achieve. He tuned into the right frequency and
awaited his instructions.

***

Edwards was
holding the charred and torn book in his hands with an almost reverential air.
Alice had seen Dr. Protima behave that way, but that had been because she had
believed that the book contained a prophecy Alice was destined to fulfil. For
Edwards, there were different emotions at work.

‘Alice, when
people talk of starting off on civilization again, they look at buildings, at
electricity, at running water. All of those are important, but what they forget
is that perhaps the most important thing to start over may be now in my hands.’

‘What does that
mean?’

‘Our minds
react to things as we see them, and usually with our basest instincts of fear,
hatred and self-preservation. But a book captures the best of what people can
be. A book reminds us of what is possible when we put those baser instincts
aside. The ability to create something that will last beyond us, and carry our
ideas to the next generation. When you get back to Wonderland, you must get
them to start making books again.’

Alice played
with the grass at her feet.

‘I don’t know
when and how we’ll ever get back to Wonderland. I had thought that with peace
we would get a chance to create a better future.’

Edwards smiled.
‘It is easy to make peace with an enemy, but difficult for ambitious men to
make peace with their own greed and hunger for power. From what you’ve told me,
that is what led to The Rising in the first place. It looks like man hasn’t
really learnt any lessons from it.’

Ever since the
battle, Alice’s mind had been on litle else other than the unexpected adversary
she had just faced.

‘Doctor, do you
think that you can really create a vaccine that works?’

‘Science can
always be used for good or evil. The Central Committee is perhaps keen on
creating an army of hybrids, but that same science can be used to not just
create a vaccine to prevent infections among humans, but perhaps cure Biters as
well.’