Through the Killing Glass (17 page)

Arjun answered,
‘We do not take orders from the Central Committee and certainly we do not send
our boys to work for them again. Obedience to tyrants is a habit that is hard
to break once formed. Today in the name of security they ask for so-called
volunteers. Tomorrow once again they will start taking our people to work on
their farms or labor camps.’

Jeers went up
from some members of the crowd.

The young man
persisted. ‘Don’t you get it? Those bloody Biters have run amuck again and
Arun’s dead. The Central Committee has done nothing but help us.’

Arjun stepped
forward, bringing his face to within inches of the young man, who took a
nervous step back.

‘They have done
nothing to help us. They seek to buy our dependence and obedience – to conquer with
their cheap clothes and shampoos what they could not with their armies. They
want to make us sell our freedom by making us live in fear once more.’

Another boy
shouted above the crowd, ‘What other option do we have? To trust our safety to
criminals and smugglers?’

Suddenly, the
crowd began surging forward and Satish and Arjun began backing up towards the
building. There were thousands of others who had gathered to hear the morning
transmission and most of them stood as mute onlookers. Yet it took only a few
to start a mob.

Satish tried
reasoning with the boys. ‘Look, we have all fought together and lived together
like a family. We need to work together, not fight each other.’

A fist shot out
and grazed Satish on the chin. He calmly grabbed the wrist and snapped it,
hearing bones crack. Another boy grabbed him by the hair but he kicked the feet
out from under the boy. Arjun had his finger on the trigger of his gun, but he
knew that if he fired there would be a bloodbath, and that was just the kind of
chaos that the Red Guards wanted to take advantage of.

Two more boys
tried to grab Satish and he lost his footing in the surge of the mob. Arjun had
his rifle out now and was about to fire in the air, but before he could, a
series of shots rang out. Everyone stopped and looked to see Alice standing
there, rifle in hand. Just behind her stood Bunny Ears and a second Biter. When
people saw his clothes and his bloodied face, there were gasps of horror and
surprise.

‘Arun,’ someone
whispered.

Alice walked
towards the mob surrounding Satish and they melted before her. She climbed the
stairs leading into the building and said in a loud, commanding voice, ‘I’m
glad at least you remember how to get angry and to fight. I had thought the
people of Wonderland had forgotten how to be angry about all that had been
taken from us by the Central Committee. But if you have to be angry, if you
have to fight, do it against the real enemy, not amongst ourselves.’

There was a
stunned silence as Arun stepped forward and the deception of the Central
Committee became clear. Arjun told everyone about the Biters the Red Guards had
unleashed and how they had divided the people of Wonderland.

Alice looked at
the gathered crowd. ‘I don’t have time to convince each and every one of you.
The Red Guards are right outside our borders and we will soon be surrounded.
Who is with me?’

When Arjun and
Satish stood beside her, Bunny Ears shuffled along to join them. At first only
a few of those in the crowd moved – but then more and more hands lifted in the
air, more and more cries of support rose up.

Smiling, Alice
walked away.

‘Get ready.
Wonderland just declared war on the Red Guards.’

***

‘The heroic Red
Guards have fanned out across the Deadland to ensure that our brethren in Wonderland
can sleep secure in the knowledge that in this time of need they are not
alone.’

Someone spat on
the ground, another shouted abuse, and Arjun began to see a perceptible change
in the mood of the gathered crowd. Many of the younger folks still seemed skeptical,
but Arun’s reappearance as a Biter had given many of them reason to doubt what
the Central Committee had been telling them. Now seeing the news footage being
streamed on the TV showing aerial footage of Red Guard units being air-dropped
across the Deadland was a sobering dose of reality. A few of them still shouted
out that perhaps the Red Guards meant no imminent harm, but then the ominous
announcement was repeated.

‘We repeat our
request to the people of Wonderland. Our intelligence indicates that hordes of
Biters are about to attack. Please let Red Guards inside the city center to
help secure your homes and families and please cooperate with them.’

It was the
smartest invasion Arjun had ever seen. To take away people’s liberty in the
name of providing them security, to take away freedom in the name of fighting
terror, was not a new tactic. But the Central Committee had pulled off a nearly
flawless plan, the one weak link being the fact that they had not bargained for
Arun having survived the attack. They still did not know Arun’s fate and that
element of surprise was something Arjun and the others hoped to capitalize on.
Alice and Satish had already left to start coordinating the defenses, but
Arjun’s job was to ensure that they could prepare for the house to house
fighting that would be inevitable if the Red Guards got inside the city limits.
He did not harbor any delusions that everyone would believe that the Central
Committee had played them all as a prelude to an invasion, but he got the feeling
that he had managed to convince enough of a critical mass. More importantly, it
looked like at least the threat of open civil war that had been plaguing
Wonderland was finally something that was no longer hanging over all their
heads.

***

Chen saw three
more helicopters take off, laden with conscripts straight from the Mainland.
Hundreds of Red Guards had been sent out overnight on their supposed aid
mission. That was what they had been told in their camps in Shanghai and
Beijing and he had not done anything to contradict that. He knew he could not
do that with Hu looking over his shoulder, but he also knew that in not saying
anything to these young men he had essentially condemned many of them to a near
certain death. He felt the sting of tears and tried to blink them away. He had
almost thrown away his career and his life by surrendering a base instead of
having all the men there massacred, but now he had done nothing to stop the
bloodshed that was about to follow. Sure, he could rationalize that his dissent
would count for little, since he would likely be arrested and sent off to the
Mainland, or perhaps even just be executed on the spot for treason given his
previous stint at a labor camp. But rationalizing never compensated for not
doing the right thing.

Hu was right
next to him, smiling.

‘See, Comrade
General. Our plan is working like clockwork. We will get what we want without
much bloodshed.’

Weighing his
words carefully, Chen said, ‘Comrade Commissar, from my experience this Alice
and her friends will not go down without a fight.’

Hu chuckled.
‘One mongrel girl and a handful of former mercenaries are all that is left of
her army. How long will they last without popular support in Wonderland? If
anything, once the next phase begins our boys will be welcomed as liberators.’

Li was looking
at a photograph of her family. This was the last photograph that she retained
of her entire family together- before her mother had fallen in The Rising, and
her father and brother been shipped off to the Deadland. She wished she could
cry, that she could shed a tear for what had been taken from her by the savages
in the Deadland, but she had come to realize that tears were not for her
anymore. Now all that mattered was carrying out her mission and avenging the
deaths of her father and brother by shattering the terrorist regime of this
so-called Wonderland. She had been keenly following the news reports and she
knew that the people of Wonderland had cast away the yellow haired witch and
her men. With her latest mission, Li would help bring the common people of
Wonderland into the fold of the Central Committee, and then she would have a
free hand in hunting down and killing the witch and her followers. She
remembered her last encounter with the witch and reminded herself that she
would not make the mistake of underestimating her again. Before Li had lashed
out in haste in her quest for vengeance. This time she would operate with more
deliberation and caution.

To the Biters
kneeling before her, she shouted, ‘Come on, glory awaits us.’

***

Danish was
sitting in the Looking Glass, going through all the Central Committee
transmissions. With all that had happened in the previous few days, he had
begun to see patterns in what their propaganda meant for actions on the ground.
In the last hour, the talk had shifted to one of reported imminent Biter
threats to Wonderland and how the hapless and leaderless citizens were at the
mercy of this new terror. He knew it was largely aimed at the masses back in
the Mainland, preparing them for inevitable casualties, but it also told him
the nature of the attack that was to unfold. Satish had argued that they should
focus on the anti-air and RPG teams since the edge the Red Guards would have
lay in their air support and their armored vehicles. Danish was no military
strategist but months of studying the Central Committee broadcasts had given
him some insight into how their minds worked. He knew that popular support for
any military action in the Deadland was wafer thin and there had been growing
unrest in Mainland cities. So any outright invasion was going to be a very
risky move. Yet the Central Committee badly needed the farms in the plains and
labor to work them, otherwise the discontent caused by food shortages and by
having to work long hours in farms was going to push the masses in the Mainland
over the edge. The Central Committee needed to control the Deadland again, but
the political cost of a full-scale invasion was going to be prohibitive.

Given those
constraints, Danish had to grudgingly admire the plan the Central Committee had
put in place. If Arun had not been found the way he was, it was very likely
that, at this very moment, Wonderland would have been on the verge of civil
war. Then the Red Guards could have just stepped in, welcomed into the people’s
arms. If Danish’s reading were correct, the Central Committee would not ideally
want the bloodshed associated with a frontal assault. They still seemed to
think that Arun was dead and that the people of Wonderland had marginalized
Alice and Satish. All the talk of impending Biter attacks could mean only one
thing.

***

Alice was lying
down on the ground, hidden behind some bushes. There were two of Satish’s men
just behind her. They had ventured out more than two kilometers from the
borders of Wonderland to cut off the Biter attacks that were likely on the way.
There was really no way to anticipate exactly where the attacks would come
from, but one thing was certain: the Biters and their Red Queen would have to
be travelling together. There was no way Red Guards would be transporting a
helicopter full of Biters into battle without her around to control them. That
meant that there would have to be only one landing spot. Three deep recon teams
had gone further ahead to warn of incoming helicopters. The Deadland around
them was crawling with Red Guards and Alice and her group had already
eliminated a squad of Red Guards who had stumbled upon them. Satish was with
another team a kilometer to the west.

Alice’s radio
buzzed to life.

It was from a
recon team to the east. ‘White Queen, I think I see birds in the sky.’

Just then,
another team called in approaching helicopters to the west.

She called
Satish. ‘White Rook, the birds to the west are yours. I’ll watch the ones
coming my way.’

She nodded to
the two men with her, one of who was carrying an RPG launcher. She had
considered bringing along teams equipped with SAMs, but carrying the heavy
surface to air missiles would have meant losing much of the stealth they needed
to get around the Red Guards teeming around them. She felt a keen sense of
anticipation at the prospect of meeting the Red Queen again. She knew that the
only possible outcome when the two of them met was a fight to the death, but at
the same time she felt curious about whom this girl had been. What had made her
hate Alice and the people of Wonderland so much? Alice closed her eyes and
remembered the young Chinese girl, virtually a mirror image of her. As far as
Alice knew, this Red Queen was the only other person in the entire world like
her. In a different life, Alice might have liked to have the chance to sit and
talk to her, to understand how she was coping with all the dilemmas and
heartbreaks that came with being a young girl who could never be fully human again.
Unfortunately, the only thing that they could share in this life was the moment
when one of them died at the other’s hand.

She heard the
approaching helicopter before she saw it. She noted with some disappointment
that it was not one of the black stealthy helicopters that seemed to carry the
Red Queen.

The battle for
Wonderland was about to begin.

***

‘The latest
news is that terrorist forces are attacking Red Guard units in the Deadland. Intelligence
indicates that terrorist factions led by disgraced Zeus mercenaries and the
self-proclaimed Queen of Wonderland are trying to take advantage of the power
vacuum in Wonderland. Our Red Guards are rushing to the aid of our brethren in
Wonderland in fighting back these terrorists.’

The statement
posted on the Central Committee Intranet was clear enough. Fighting had begun.
Chen closed his eyes, thinking of the young conscripts whom he had sent to
their deaths. Most of them were little more than scared boys rustled up from
the Mainland with minimal military training, fed on a diet of horror stories
about Biters and the terrible savage humans who lived in the Deadland. They had
known no better than to trust a senior officer like Chen, and he had failed
them all by sending them into the meat grinder that the campaign to win over
the Deadland had become.