Through the Killing Glass (9 page)

Then came the
horror of the Biters, and Chen and his fellow officers were thrown into the
forefront of a terrible new war. Several months went by in a blur of savage
fighting and Chen had initially been relieved when the Central Committee was
formed and announced, hoping it would mean some stability and security.
Securing food and safety for mainland citizens was the declared priority, and
Chen signed up when the elite Red Guards were announced. Then came one
revelation after another. The fact that they were to work with Zeus, an
American Private Military Contractor, and then a war that soon shifted from
being one waged in defense of the Mainland to an aggressive war of
counter-insurgency in the Deadland. Chen had gone along, putting aside any
misgivings before the terrible threat of the Biters and the need to secure food
sources for the Mainland. He had directed the struggle with brutal vigor in the
Deadland, with the clear understanding that the ones he was fighting were
inhuman Biters and human terrorists who were disrupting the flow of food.

And then he had
come face to face with Alice and the Biters, and his conviction had been
shaken. He had already paid dearly for the doubts he had expressed then. What
was he to do with what he had learnt today? How did one reconcile to being part
of a campaign whose first salvo had included the murder of innocent children?

***

'All but two of
my recon teams are back within the city limits! I never thought they would fold
so easily.'

The
disappointment and hurt on Satish's face was clear. Most of his men were those
he had commanded in Zeus for several years and then fought shoulder to shoulder
with in the war against the Red Guards. To have them now effectively desert him
and report back to the city on Arun's orders had come as a shock.

Alice was
silent. She understood Satish's frustration but also knew that many of the men had
wives and families back in Wonderland. They would not risk being cut off from
them – but at the same time, they were now willingly blinding themselves to the
Red Guards’ next move. There were just two recon teams left, no more than a
dozen men patrolling the vast expanse of the Deadland.

Vince was
drawing something on the sand. Alice asked him what he was doing.

'We can figure
out how to convince this Prime Minister of yours later. Right now, the best
thing we can do is to prevent another attack. I spent the last two hours
talking to Satish to understand the lay of the land and how your city is
situated. I flew V-22 Ospreys in the Marines for years, so I can guess where
their chopper pilots will try to come in.'

Satish radioed
his teams to cover two of the likely ingress routes. He and Alice would have to
cover the third. As they gathered their weapons and backpacks, they saw Vince
shoulder his rifle as well. Alice looked at him and Edwards.

'You don't have
to join the fight if you don't want to. This is not your war.'

She saw Vince's
eyes narrow.

'Alice, this is
my war. My squadron was wiped out when we refused to do what Zeus and their
masters wanted, and I lost my whole family in a Red Guard missile attack.'

Alice went
ahead on her bike, intending to also make contact with the Biters and get them
to join the battle. The problem was that they would only follow in helping the
humans if she were there to lead them. Edwards was already frail and the escape
had taken a heavy toll, so he sat behind her. Vince and Satish would cover the
ten-kilometer distance on foot.

Alice reached
one of the nearby tunnel openings that she knew the Biters used and threw a
flare down. She hoped it would be noticed in time. She was about to reach their
patrol area when she felt Edwards grip her shoulder tightly.

'I can see them
coming.'

***

Alice watched
the two transport helicopters come in low and fast. She had not heard them
until they were merely a few hundred meters away, but Edwards had seen them in
the fading light. The moment she saw the helicopters, she ditched the bike and
she and Edwards took cover behind a sand dune.

'I've never
seen a helicopter as silent as these. No wonder they managed to come in for
their attacks without us realizing it.'

Edwards peered
around the dune’s edge. 'Stealth, or maybe it’s some sort of noise suppressant
technology. The United States, China and some other countries had such
technology before The Rising. Clearly they've been saving these for whatever
they have in mind.'

Both helicopters
landed as Alice kept watching in impotent rage. With her assault rifle and
pistol, she would be able to do precious little against them. Edwards had been
given a pistol, but it transpired that he’d never fired a gun before, so he
would be of dubious utility in a fight. Even with Satish and Vince here they’d
be hopelessly outnumbered.

The rear doors
swung open on the large helicopters and Alice saw several figures walk out.
From their shuffling gait it was obvious they were Biters. Alice raised her rifle
scope to her eyes to take a closer look and saw what she had noticed before in
Wonderland: these Biters were all wearing clean clothes and did not seem to
have the many wounds and mutilations that Biters in the Deadland would almost
inevitably have.

'Doctor, they
seem to have produced their Biters, but one thing makes no sense to me. Biters
would never follow a human being this way. How did they manage it?'

Edwards had no
answer but kept watching as a total of more than fifty Biters filed out and stood
there, as if awaiting orders. Alice gasped almost audibly as a woman in a Red
Guard uniform walked out and the Biters knelt before her. The woman was wearing
dark glasses and had her mouth covered in a mask, presumably to keep out the
stench of the Biters.

'That's
impossible! I've never seen Biters take orders from a human.'

Edwards’ mind
reeled, grappling with the science. 'I know they managed to inject healthy,
loyal Chinese citizens to transform them into Biters. Perhaps they were able to
create variations in the virus.'

Alice stayed
focused on the assembled Biters. Their origin was unimportant; the main concern
now was preventing them from reaching Wonderland. She did not fully understand
what the Red Guards' plan was, but with the two Biter attacks they had
effectively stripped Wonderland of much of its defenses. Alice and Satish, two
of the most experienced in combat, were essentially outlaws; the Biters who had
provided Alice's forces with much of its strength of numbers could no longer be
counted on to defend Wonderland; and now the deep recon teams who served as
their eyes and ears in the Deadland had been withdrawn to the city.

As Alice
watched, the Biters began walking behind the Red Guard officer. It was less
than a thirty-minute walk to the borders of Wonderland and once inside, Alice
knew the kind of havoc they could wreak. The two helicopters stayed where they
were, and other than the pilots there did not seem to any other Red Guards on
board. That was at least one saving grace; that meant there would not be anyone
to man the Gatling guns mounted on the helicopters.

Alice heard a
double click on her tactical radio. That meant Satish and Vince were almost
there, but she could not afford to wait. She had to do something to delay the Biters.
The Red Guard officer was now striding past them, with the Biters following
her, and as Alice watched the Biters began to disperse. If she didn’t take them
out as they were bunched up, it would be almost impossible to track them all
down.

Alice took out
a grenade from her belt and pulled the pin. She took a deep breath and then
hurled it at the passing group. To her dismay, the Red Guard officer either had
great instincts or was just very lucky. She looked up to see the dark
projectile coming through the air and screamed and dove to her right. The
Biters could not react with such speed and agility and as the grenade exploded,
Alice saw at least three of them go down. It might not have killed them, but at
least they would not move any further. The officer was now shouting orders and
the Biters began to converge on her position. Edwards had his gun out and was
firing, but all he managed to do was to distract them for a second before they
again closed in on them. Alice now had her rifle out and was firing on
single-shot mode. She took out two Biters before pulling Edwards back with her,
climbing a short hill. Her only hope was to hold out until reinforcements came
and to trade space for kills. She saw the Red Guard officer screaming orders
and five of the Biters detached from the main group and came around from the
left. Biters who could follow combat tactics on a human's orders and flank
enemy positions was something Alice had never seen, but clearly this officer
had some such control over them. She knelt and fired again, felling one more
Biter before retreating further up the hill.

Suddenly she
heard a loud roar and saw dark shapes emerge from a hole about a hundred meters
to her left. Her Biters had got the message and come to her assistance. Hatter
was the first out, followed by Bunny Ears and twenty more Biters. When Hatter
saw the danger Alice was in, he screamed and the Biters following him tore into
the attackers. Alice watched as Hatter caught one of the Biters by the neck and
nearly tore his head off. Bunny Ears had only one good arm, but he and another
Biter wrestled a six-foot giant down. All around Alice, Biters were locked in
hand-to-hand combat, clawing and biting each other to shreds. What was clear
was that Hatter and his Biters were both outnumbered and outmatched. The Biters
who followed Alice had been transformed years ago, and their bodies had all the
damage and wear and tear that came with being a Biter in the Deadland. The Red
Guard Biters, meanwhile, were healthy by comparison, young and fit.

They were now
too mixed up together for Alice to use her assault rifle, so she handed it to
Edwards and took out her favored combination for close combat: knife in one
hand and handgun in the other. She ran towards the melee and saw a Biter come
at her from her left. A shot to the kneecap sent him stumbling down and another
to the head took him out as she ran past him, barely breaking her stride.
Another Biter came at her and lashed out at her. Alice was momentarily knocked
off balance, but she recovered in a second, going down on one knee to avoid the
next blow and stabbing up with her knife, severing the Biter’s hamstring. As
the Biter stumbled, she put a bullet in his head. Alice's mind was a mask of
concentration, filtering out everything other than the immediate threat in
front of her, and her hands and legs moved as if by their own volition, driven
by years of training and combat experience.

Another Biter
went down before her and then she saw the Red Guard officer. Alice saw the
officer was armed with a short sword and as Alice watched, she swung it in a
deadly arc, decapitating one of Alice's Biters.

Hatter was now
behind the officer and Alice saw him grab the officer's arm and bite into it.
Before Alice could see what happened next, a Biter came in front of her. His
teeth were dripping blood and his face was torn in several places. He lunged to
bite, but Alice swiped with her knife first, catching him in the throat. Before
he could recover, she shot him in the face.

She paused for
a second to get her bearings. It seemed that Hatter had succeeded in taking out
the Red Guard officer; and without someone to control and co-ordinate them it
would be easier to pick off the remaining Biters.

Alice heard a
scream and looked up, and for a second her mind refused to believe what her
eyes were seeing. The Red Guard officer had a large chunk of flesh torn out of
her left arm but she was hardly out of the fight. No human could have been
bitten by Hatter and not been affected. The officer pivoted on one leg and
kicked, making solid contact with Hatter's face, stopping him in his tracks. In
one fluid movement, she turned and brought her sword up and cut through
Hatter's stomach, slicing upwards as she cut through his chest. The move would
have killed any human, but Hatter was oblivious to pain, and the unexpected
resistance only enraged him further. He tried to claw the officer's face and
she swerved out of the way in the nick of time, losing her glasses and mask in
the process. Before Hatter could attack again, she had cut him off at the right
knee with her sword. Hatter collapsed on the ground and she brought her sword
down on his head.

'No!'

Alice ran – but
it was too late. Hearing her scream, the Red Guard officer stood up to face
her. Now Alice was close enough to see her features and she stopped, her mind
trying to reconcile to the impossibility of what she saw before her. The Red
Guard smiled.

'This is an
unexpected bonus. I had not hoped to meet you so soon. Now die at the hands of
the Red Queen!'

***

Alice brought
up her gun to fire, but Li’s hand shot out at blinding speed, and the gun flew
from Alice’s grip. She looked down to see a metallic star embedded in her right
palm. Even before Alice had fully pulled it out, Li was upon her, screaming
with her sword raised above her head with both hands. Alice brought up her
knife to parry the blow and barely succeeded, the razor shap edge of the sword
slicing through part of her left arm. Alice might have felt no pain, but she
realized that she was up against a formidable enemy, so she rolled out of the
way to gain some space and time to think.

Li’s red eyes
were glowering and she hissed in rage.

‘I have heard
much about you, Yellow Witch. Now I will avenge all you have done by cutting
your head off and taking it with me.’

Alice had her
knife ready, but she knew that her enemy would have a big reach advantage with
her sword. She seemed to be perhaps only a few years older than Alice, and like
the other enemy Biters she had seen, her face and skin seemed relatively
unmarked. She came in again, thrusting with the sword, and Alice side-stepped
her, twisting the knife into her stomach as she passed. As Alice regained her
balance, she saw Li spit in contempt.