Through the Killing Glass (18 page)

It was a truism
in most wars that young soldiers paid with their lives to uphold the lies told
by old politicians, but that did not make it any easier for Chen. He saw Hu at
the control center, gloating in what he thought was to be his moment of
triumph.

‘Comrade
General, the Supreme Leader of the Central Committee has been expressing a
desire to retire and dedicate the rest of his life to serving the people. If I
succeed in the conquest of Wonderland, I may be offered the job, and I will
reward your loyalty handsomely. How would you like to be Commissar in my
place?’

Chen’s smile
was enough for Hu, and he returned to monitoring broadcasts. Chen found himself
imagining what it would feel like to take his gun and put a bullet in Hu’s
head. It would take no more than a couple of seconds to end this madness. With
immense willpower, he was able to control himself. But in that fleeting moment,
something changed within Chen. He knew that the next time he was ordered by men
like Hu to send boys to their deaths, he would not be able to go through with
it.

Alice watched
the smoke trail of the rocket snake out from her right, heading towards the
helicopter that had just landed a couple of hundred meters away. Another recon
group had already encountered a Red Guard landing and was engaged in a vicious
firefight. Part of Alice wanted to wait for the occupants of the helicopter to
disembark so that she could see whether the Red Queen was one of them, but she
didn’t want to lose any of the advantage of surprise she had. The rocket hit
the cockpit, enveloping the front of the helicopter in a bloom of smoke and
dust. The pilots were killed outright and several injured, bleeding Red Guards
stumbled out of the passenger compartment. A few of the uninjured Red Guards
had their weapons ready, searching for an enemy they could not see. Alice
centered her scope on an officer who seemed to be in charge and was trying to
rally his men. This was not the helicopter that would bring the Red Queen and
her Biters, but the fate of the men who had just landed in it had already been
sealed. Alice exhaled slightly and pulled the trigger.

***

Arjun was
dealing with chaos of a sort he had never handled before. He had spent years
living in the Ruins, leading his motley crew of `Ruin Rats’ in running battles
against Biters and the occasional Zeus patrol. So fighting in built up urban
areas was nothing new for him or for many of the others who had joined him in
their months of warfare against the Red Guards. Now, however, there was a
subtle but important difference. People were no longer preparing to hide and
fight in ruins that belonged to nobody other than perhaps the ghosts of their
previous owners. Now they were preparing to fight for buildings they had come
to consider home. All morning the TV had been carrying news reports of battles
between the Red Guards and ‘terrorists’ and intelligence reports of impending
Biter attacks. Regardless of where their trust lay, every single person in
Wonderland knew a few things for certain now. The Central Committee was lying.
Arun was not dead. Alice and her supporters were not trying to take over power
by force. And finally, whatever the Central Committee said, people were not
sure they wanted the Red Guards so close to their homes.

The positive
side was that it had galvanized everyone into action. The negative was that as
the old saying went, every man’s home was his castle, and now every man was
trying to be his own commander. Arjun knew that they would not survive long if
they fought as small, isolated units, and he began to realize just how badly
the months of peace had hurt their preparedness. A society at peace can be a
wonderful one, but only if it never forgets how to wage war if needed.

Arjun and his
men were trying to rally people into fire teams and create natural choke points
among the buildings where they could trap incoming forces. The boys who had
attacked him and Satish were now standing nearby, looking slightly sheepish.
Arjun walked up to them. ‘What’s the matter?’

One of them
answered, ‘We all came into Wonderland with our families a few months ago. We
don’t know much about the tactics and tricks your men talk about. Tell us what
we can do.’

Arjun sized him
up. ‘How many of you have killed a man or a Biter?’

Every single
one of them raised his hand. Nobody could have grown into adolescence in the
Deadland without knowing how to take a life.

‘Then you all
know most of what you need to know. I’ll keep the older folks inside the city,
but you are young and fast. I need you to do something that you don’t need much
tactics for.’

The boy looked
perplexed.

‘What do we
need to do?’

Arjun smiled.
‘You need to run as fast as you can.’

***

‘White Rook,
this is Looking Glass. Do you have a parking space ready for our cars?’

Satish heard
Danish and answered in the negative. From being their window to the outside
world, Danish and his Looking Glass had now effectively become their command
and control center. With his access to the Red Guard Intranet and
transmissions, he could provide some forewarning of what may come their way. He
also had the main radio switchboard, and so was vital for team-to-team
coordination. Danish had been asking where to send their only real heavy land
weapons: the three jeeps that had been fitted with rocket launchers captured
from downed Red Guard helicopters. Without a clear idea of where the assault
would come from, Satish did not want to risk exposing the jeeps to air strikes,
so they had been kept well hidden.

His group of
six had already had a skirmish with a group of Red Guards, leaving three Red
Guards and one of his men dead. Now he was waiting for the helicopter that was
supposedly flying towards their position.

One of his men
whispered to him, ‘Sir, I see it. There!’

He followed the
man’s outstretched hand and saw a black speck appear in the morning sky.
Satish’s team had been closer to Wonderland’s borders than Alice, so he had a
SAM unit nearby and he radioed for them to come in. Within a minute, two men
jogged by, one of them carrying the large tube shaped missile launcher.

‘Sir, I see
three choppers.’

Satish began to
reconsider his options. If there had been only one helicopter, he would have ordered
it shot down without a second thought, but with three incoming choppers that
would be a risky proposition. Even if they managed to shoot one down with the
first shot, the others would be onto them before they managed to reload. He had
mere seconds in which to decide, and he barked to his men, ‘Everyone, take
cover! We’ll get them when they land.’

Now the
helicopters were close enough that Satish could see details. One was a black
helicopter of the sort Vince had flown out to Calcutta; another was a larger
and noisier transport helicopter; and the third was a smaller, sleek gunship.
So far every indication had been that the Red Queen and her Biters flew in on
the stealthy helicopter, but he had no way of knowing which of the choppers
she’d be in now.

The two
transport helicopters came down to land about five hundred meters away from
Satish’s position, but the gunship remained in the air. Satish knew the Biters
inside the transport helicopter were the primary threat but if he attacked them
first, he would be vulnerable to attack from the air. Making a split second
decision, he ordered his men to fire their SAM at the gunship and ordered his
man armed with the RPG launcher to fire at the black helicopter.

The missile
snaked up towards the helicopter, and while the Red Guard pilot saw it and
tried to evade, at such close range he really did not have a chance. The
gunship exploded from a direct hit and its wreckage came falling down like a
rainstorm of fire and metal.

On seeing the
gunship fall, Red Guards began to troop out of the black helicopter. Satish
screamed at his men to stop, to redirect to the other helicopter, which would
hold the Red Queen and her Biters – but he was too late. The RPG hit the
helicopter near the door, obliterating the Red Guards who were still trying to
jump out. The few who had made it outside took cover and began firing at Satish
and his men.

In the
distance, he saw a female form in a Red Guard uniform run towards Wonderland,
followed by dozens of Biters.

He had failed.
The Red Queen had entered Wonderland.

***

‘People of
Wonderland, this is an urgent message for you. Stay in your houses and do not
try and interfere with the ongoing security operation against the intruding
Biter hordes. Red Guards are coming to your assistance.’

Danish sat
upright as the message flashed on his screen. A second later, he got a report
on the radio that the same message was being repeated on the TV news
broadcasts. That could mean only one thing: that Alice and Satish’s teams had
somehow failed and hostile Biters were approaching Wonderland. Now it would be
up to Arjun to stop them and the Red Guards before things got totally out of
control. Alice had briefed him on what to do in a situation like this and he
patched her in on the radio so that she could communicate directly with the
frequency the Red Guard Commissar had been using for his broadcasts lately.

Chen was
sitting at the control center, thinking of the conscripts running into an urban
battleground for which they were neither prepared nor trained. Many of the poor
fools actually thought that they were going to receive a hero’s welcome.

The radio
operator took off his headset and beckoned to Chen.

‘Comrade
General, we have an incoming transmission from Wonderland.’

Chen put on the
headset.

‘This is
General Chen of the Red Guards. Who am I speaking with?’

The answer sent
a shiver down his spine. It was a voice that had haunted him since he had
looked into the yellowed eyes of a young girl who had become Queen.

‘General, you
should remember me. My name is Alice Gladwell.’

Hu had come up
behind him and asked Chen to put the broadcast on the speaker.

‘This is
Commissar Hu. I want to speak to some legitimate representative of the elected
government of Wonderland, not an upstart terrorist and counter-revolutionary.’

There came a
laugh from the other end. ‘Commissar Hu, it is rich of you to talk of democracy
and elections. I have no time for small talk. Tell your men to stay away from
Wonderland while we destroy this Red Queen and her Biters.’

‘The people of
Wonderland –’

Alice cut him
off. ‘They know what you have been plotting. Arun is not dead. He became a
Biter and is now with us. Now call off the Red Guards or I will be forced to
kill them all.’

With that Alice
ended the call. Chen looked at Hu, feeling numb with fear for what was to
befall his men.

‘Comrade
Commissar, the plan is failing. If they truly know the truth then they will not
be divided; elements among them will not welcome our boys. It will be a death
trap for them.’

Pulling Chen
aside, Hu addressed him in a harsh growl. ‘Your critics in the Central
Committee were right. You had lost your courage in the Deadland, and deserved
to die in a labor camp. I resurrected your career because I needed your
experience, but now I see that you have no nerve left for battle after all.
That witch is just bluffing.’

The men in the
control center looked at the two officers with wide eyes. For a moment Chen
just stood in shock; then he straightened.

‘Comrade Commissar,
you plot in offices, pretending the world is a chessboard and people pawns to
be moved from one square to another. I have news for you, Comrade. In the real
world, those pawns bleed and die, and one day that river of blood will drown
you and the other old monsters in the Central Committee.’

Hu looked like
he had been slapped and then recovered. He motioned to the four black-clad
bodyguards he had bought with him from the Mainland.

‘Comrade
General Chen seems to be suffering from fatigue brought on by his tireless
efforts in driving forth the people’s revolution. I think he needs some rest to
recover his revolutionary fervor. Kindly escort him to his quarters.’

Chen reached
for the gun at his belt, but strong hands grabbed him, and he was pulled away
outside the room.

Hu looked
around at the terrified looking Red Guards in the room.

‘Comrades, does
anyone else have any doubts about the war we are waging against
counter-revolutionaries and terrorists that I can help dispel?’

Every single
man looked down, unwilling to meet his gaze.

‘Very well.
Now, let us see how long this witch lasts against our own Red Queen.’

***

Neel watched
the first Biters come into view from his second floor window. He was more
terrified than he had ever been, and he wondered if the two boys with him were
as scared as he was. Still, at sixteen he was the oldest of the three and he
could not appear weak in front of the others. He had volunteered for sentry
duty when Arjun had asked for volunteers and his job was to watch for Biters
who were supposed to be entering Wonderland. He had a pistol in his hand, and
while his father had taught him how to shoot, he had not touched the gun in the
last year that they had been living in Wonderland. He now saw six or seven
Biters almost directly below him and he knew that shooting at them would
achieve little. There was no way he could kill all of them. He needed to get
word to Arjun or one of the other adults nearby.

Suddenly the
boy next to him keeled over, blood spurting from a wound to the neck. The
second boy screamed in terror, only to be silenced by another bullet to the
head. Neel crouched low, too scared to move. Biters could never shoot like
that. Then again, he had no idea that Li was just behind the Biters, taking out
targets with her rifle, clearing the path. Red Guards were going to be just
behind.