When Bunny Ears lunged at her, he was met with a sharp kick that had him rocking on his heels and then Alice delivered a knife thrust to his chest. He just looked up and snarled through bloodied teeth before Alice kicked him again, sending him down on one knee. Alice knew it was a losing battle. She was hopelessly outnumbered and even if by some miracle she managed to drive the knife through one of the Biter's brains, that would still leave several of them to rip her apart. Be that as it may, she was not about to go down without a fight. A Biter with half his face torn off reached towards her with a hand that had several fingers missing. Alice put all her strength into it and drove the knife through his skull. The Biter fell back and did not get back up.
Now she had no weapon to defend herself with.
As two more Biters reached towards her, Alice overturned the desk in front of her, sending both of them sprawling, but she knew that at best she was merely delaying the inevitable. She felt a painful blow to the side of her head as Bunny Ears hit her and she fell over hard against the wall.
As she scrambled to get up, she felt cold hands grip her legs and sharp nails dig into her jeans. She grabbed onto the bookshelf by her side and it toppled over with a crash, scattering papers and files all around her. She was now being dragged along the ground, and could hear the Biters screeching in anticipation of the kill, like a pack of wild dogs around their prey.
Alice looked up to see Bunny Ears looming over her, his eyes yellowed and wide, his skin peeling off in places and his stench unbearable as he bent over her.
Then he suddenly stopped. A couple of the other Biters tried to get to her, but he stopped them with an authoritative roar. Alice cringed as he grabbed her hair, but instead of attacking her, he seemed to be examining it, turning it around in his fingers. Alice was nearly paralyzed with fear, wondering what torture he had in mind for her, half wishing that he would just get it over with and grant her a quick death. As far as she had ever imagined Biters capable of emotions, she saw a flicker of doubt cross Bunny Ear's face, and something had clearly caused him to put his bloodlust on hold. Whatever that was seemed to be something right behind Alice since he seemed to be looking beyond her at the wall where the bookshelf had been seconds earlier.
He reached out with a torn and callused finger and Alice cringed, only to find that he was reaching for the wall behind her. The other Biters were now gathered around him, looking at her. A few of them were jostling and pushing, eager to get at her, but he snarled again, and they held back. Clearly Bunny Ears was in charge here. Whether that was a good thing or not was something Alice reckoned she would find out very soon. He grabbed her hair again, this time almost yanking them out from the roots, and Alice shouted. That got him focused on her again, and he brought his face close to hers. Alice tried hard not to throw up as she smelt his stench and saw his torn and decayed face up close. He was but a few inches away from her face when to her shock he said one word.
'A…a……lisssssssss.'
Alice thought she had imagined it but when he repeated himself, she recoiled in horror. Not only did this creature speak but it was calling out her name. She had not said anything, but her reaction must have given her away. Bunny Ears leapt back, as if he had been electrocuted, and the other Biters all took a step back. She was alone, unarmed and utterly at their mercy, but the tables had somehow been turned in an instant. They seemed to be terrified of her. No, as Alice studied them almost bowing down before her and heard a few more of them growling, trying to utter her name, she realized it was not just fear. They were in awe of her.
Alice scrambled to her feet, unsure of what was going on, when Bunny Ears pointed to the wall behind her. Now that she had got her first close look at Biters outside of the heat of battle when all that mattered was killing them or being bitten, she realized that while they certainly looked hideous and were capable of savage violence, they were also capable of some level of rational action. She hoped that if she did as they wanted, she had at least some chance of appealing to that part of them and getting out alive. As she turned towards the wall, it felt as if the world had stopped around her. On the wall was a drawing, with smudged lines and crudely filled colors, as if it had been made by a small child. But what it showed was clear enough.
It showed a blonde girl jumping down a hole. In front of her was a creature that was wearing some sort of coat but had the unmistakable ears and whiskers of a rabbit. Just above the drawing was etched in a childish scrawl.
'Alice.'
Alice's reading skills may not have been great but one thing she did know well was how her own name was spelt. She sat down on the ground, oblivious to the bloodthirsty Biters just feet away from her.
What was going on?
She felt strong hands grab her by her shoulders and pull her upright. The Biters were now in a state of considerable agitation and between grunts and screeches, Bunny Ears was trying to tell them something. Whatever it was, they seemed to agree on it soon enough, and Alice was pushed out of the room and into another tunnel.
She was too shell-shocked to resist or even ask where they were taking her. And so Alice was bundled off even deeper into the Biter base.
***
They continued in darkness and total silence for many minutes, and the only consolation Alice had was that if the Biters had wanted to kill her they would have done so long ago. They clearly wanted her alive, but to what end she had no idea. They soon began a steep climb and while the Biters seemed accustomed to both the darkness and the area they were going through, Alice found herself stumbling and falling more than once. Finally they rounded a turn and she felt hands holding her back as if asking her to wait. She saw a sliver of light open up ahead, gradually growing as the door out of the tunnel was pushed open. As she came closer, she saw that it was not much of a door but branches and twigs gathered together, which were now being pushed back into place as their group came out of the tunnel.
The bright sunlight hurt her eyes after having been in the dark for so long and as Alice squinted and looked around, she saw that they were now very much in the heart of what had once been the bustling city of New Delhi. Now all that remained was rubble, but she recognized the broken edifice of what had once been some monument called India Gate. She had only heard about it from the adults, since this was an area that was firmly under the control of the Biters, and was avoided by humans. All around her, she saw evidence of that. There were small groups of Biters lumbering around, and when one or two of them saw her, they snarled and were about to launch themselves at her. Bunny Ears swatted one of them away, and growled a warning to the others. Whatever he said, she realized that her name had been mentioned more than once, and the effect on the Biters was immediate. They all backed away, as if fearful of her, and she continued with the group that was now herding her along to their unknown destination.
Alice subconsciously tried not to breathe too deeply. While the Great Fires had taken place years ago, nobody really knew how much radiation still lingered. When Alice had first heard of the Great Fires and the terrible weapons that had been unleashed, she had wondered aloud how much of the Biters' hideous nature was the result of the radioactive fallout and how much was due to whatever had caused The Rising in the first place. Nobody seemed to have much by way of answers. Most of the nuclear blasts had supposedly been air-bursts designed to incinerate the Biters but keep the ground as free from radiation as possible, but nobody could really be sure what their legacy had been. Her father had by all accounts been someone senior in the Embassy, but things had moved so fast that even he had no real idea of what had been the exact chain of events during the last days.
Alice saw that they were headed towards what seemed to be an opening in the ground. Clearly the rumors about the underground bases had been an understatement. Far from being an isolated base that she had stumbled upon, it seemed like the Biters had a fairly sophisticated network of underground tunnels and bases. She filed away all the details she could spot so that she might be able to help others when she got back. That kept her thinking positively that she would indeed somehow make it back and also took her mind off the growing fear about just where she was being taken.
She heard a dull whirring sound coming from the sky above and she froze. She had heard similar sounds before, and in the past they had always been an unwelcome omen. Today, they signaled hope for her liberation. Bunny Ears pushed her behind the walls of some ruins and they hid as the three black helicopters came into view. As they came closer to the ground, Alice could see that most of the Biters had taken cover. Most, but not all. Two Biters were running around frantically, as if in a state of panic, trying to find safety. A door slid open in one of the helicopters and two men leaned out with sniper rifles at their shoulders. Two shots rang out and both Biters went down, their heads split open by high velocity rounds.
Alice looked around her at the Biters cowering behind the ruins and she saw them in a totally new light. She had grown up thinking of them as rabid, vicious creatures who had to be destroyed because their only reason for being was to destroy humans. Now as she looked at Bunny Ears and the others, she realized that they were absolutely terrified. They certainly did not display much by way of evolved intelligence, but they seemed more like a pack of terrified animals being hunted by humans than a band of evil, ferocious killers. She saw several of them shake in terror as the helicopters came closer to the ground.
She saw the golden trident and lightning bolt drawn on their side, and did not need to read the letters to know which group these represented. Zeus.
She had sometimes overheard her father talk about Private Military Contractors, and how much power they had begun to wield in the chaotic times before The Rising. She did not understand much of what had been talked among the adults, but knew that Zeus was the most powerful of those armies, and it's power had only increased after The Rising and human governments had ceased to function. Nobody knew who really controlled them, but they were the only visibly organized, and certainly best armed, human army around. Every few months, they would visit the independent settlements like the one where Alice lived and try and ask for volunteers to join them, or try and coerce the settlements to accept the rule of the Central Committee. It was unknown who made up this Central Committee, but this group controlled Zeus and it was common knowledge in the Deadland, as the area where Alice lived had come to be known, that once you accepted their rule, you signed away your freedom.
Alice had been lucky to be born in a settlement that had been begun by her father and the remaining contingent of US Marines guarding the US Embassy in New Delhi. They had then linked up with a group of Indian Army officers and their families. So, unlike most other settlements in the Deadland that had proved easy prey both for human looters and Biters in the chaos that prevailed in the early days, their settlement had been able to repel the assaults, and quickly established a reputation of being a group not to be messed with easily. Even then, whenever the Zeus soldiers had come to visit, Alice had felt a stab of fear at their sight. The men she had grown up with were mostly professional soldiers, or men like her father, fighting to save their families. The Zeus troopers in contrast, were guns for hire, and displayed little compassion or sympathy for those in the Deadland. If you didn't join them, they would turn their back even when you were under assault by Biters.
As snipers on the helicopters provided cover, men dressed all in black rappelled down from the helicopters and began fanning out. Alice was only too conscious of the reputation Zeus had, but right now between being herded to an unknown fate as a prisoner of the Biters, and getting a chance of going back home, even if it meant trusting the Zeus troopers, she would choose the latter in a heartbeat. She waited for the Zeus troopers to come closer, since she knew that if she tried to attract their attention too early, Bunny Ears and his friends would surely kill her. She kept waiting for the right moment, but then without her having to do anything, a distraction presented itself.
A female Biter near Alice lost her nerve and ran into the open, screeching wildly. Two Zeus troopers knelt and fired their weapons on full automatic at her, the crisscrossing lines of fire turning the Biter around like a puppet on a string, before she was thrown to the ground. When she tried to get up, a sniper on a helicopter shot her head off with a single bullet. Another Biter ran towards one of the doors leading to an underground base when several shots sent him down, and once again a sniper delivered the coup de grace.
Alice watched, realizing that this was no battle. This was a massacre. She saw Bunny Ears and the others with her huddling, as if deciding what to do, when she decided to make her move. She stepped out from behind cover, hoping that the Zeus troopers would not shoot her, and screamed at the top of her voice.
'Help me! I'm human!'
***
Alice's eyes widened in fear when instead of coming to her assistance one of the Zeus troopers knelt down and aimed his rifle at her. She was pushed to one side as the bullets tore through the air where she had stood scant seconds before. She looked up to see Bunny Ears glaring at her before he grabbed her by her arm and dragged her behind cover.
The Zeus troopers seemed to comprehend what was going on, and the fact that a young human girl seemed to be help captive by this horde of Biters galvanized them into action. More troopers rappelled out of the helicopters and they began advancing towards the wall behind which Alice was now hidden.
Bunny Ears whistled, an ear piercing sound that made Alice involuntarily cover her ears. When she peeked out the side of the wall, she saw what his signal had meant. All around the Zeus troopers, Biters gathered among the ruins and advanced upon them. The troopers opened fire and Alice saw several of the Biters fall, but the others were now advancing at speed. The snipers on the helicopters took out a few more Biters with carefully aimed head shots.
Alice looked on in fascination. She had directly participated in more than a dozen skirmishes with the Biters and witnessed a dozen or more as a spotter or during her training. At that time, it had been but natural to think of the Biters as the ferocious, formidable adversaries everyone said they were, and she had not even thought twice before emptying her clip into the undead Santa's head when he had blundered into their path during a patrol.
Now, sitting among the Biters and getting a glimpse of what battle against humans looked like from their perspective, she began to see things a bit differently. Sure, up close they were formidable, with their strength, seeming immunity to pain, and their single-minded dedication to biting human flesh. But in the open like this, against trained soldiers, they were cannon fodder. They could not use any weapons, moved slower than humans, and did not seem to have enough intelligence for anything more than the most rudimentary tactics.
The dozen or so Zeus soldiers were now tightly packed with their backs to each other, like a phalanx, and were moving steadily towards her position. They were still picking off targets at will, and dozens of Biters littered the ground around them. But the Biters kept coming, and Alice saw that at least two holes had opened up in the ground, and Biters were pouring through them, trying to get close enough to the soldiers to bring their teeth and nails to bear. It was a massacre, and Alice wondered what the Biters were trying to achieve by walking straight into certain annihilation, or were they just such mindless drones that they kept going, driven by instinct or bloodlust, regardless of the odds that faced them?
She felt a tug at her arm, and Bunny Ears pulled her up and dragged her along. She tried to resist, but his grip on her arm was so tight that she could not shake him off. When she kicked out at him, sending him staggering back, he nonchalantly slapped her across the face. The blow was so hard it knocked her down and she felt the ground spinning around her as Bunny Ears picked her up and slung her across his shoulders. He screeched loudly, and in apparent response, a dozen or more Biters stepped between them and the advancing Zeus troopers.
It became instantly clear to Alice that there was a method to what the Biters were doing. They were buying Bunny Ears some time so he could get her away. Why they wanted her so badly, and what the drawing on the wall had meant were beyond her, but what was certain was that her hopes of a rescue were being dashed. She could now see the Zeus troopers falter and start to withdraw in face of the sheer strength of numbers of the Biters. Before Bunny Ears ducked into some ruins, she saw the first Zeus trooper fall under a group of clawing and slashing Biters.
They were someplace dark, and Bunny Ears was running through what appeared to be long corridors of some official building. There were doors lining the corridor, and Alice saw Biters hiding behind more than one of them. Even if any of the Zeus troopers got this far, in the confined and dark environment, they would be easy pickings for the hidden Biters. She began to reassess the Biters based on what she had just seen. Yes, they were clearly not as intelligent as humans, but they were displaying some sort of planning and forethought. But the big question still remained-what the hell did they want with her?
Bunny Ears ducked low under a collapsed beam and finally stopped, unceremoniously dumping Alice on the ground. She swore with the choicest of obscenities she had learnt from years spent in the company of soldiers and glared at him, but he just looked at her with no expression in his yellowing, vacant eyes. He pointed to a hole in the wall that he motioned for her to walk through. When she hesitated, he slapped her, sending her crashing to the ground again.
'What the hell is it with you? Stop hitting me and I may listen!'
Again, her words seemed to have no effect on Bunny Ears and so Alice, realizing she had no real options and no apparent means of escape, walked in through the hole, and began a steep descent underground. Just a few minutes ago, she had got her first glimpse of humans for the first time since she had been foolhardy enough to follow Bunny Ears down the hole, and had begun to entertain hopes of rescue. However, now she was again firmly in the clutches of the Biters, and headed back into one of their underground strongholds.
They walked for what seemed to be at least an hour in total darkness, and Bunny Ears finally stopped in an opening that was lit by a single torch. Alice grabbed her sides, with barely enough strength left to stay standing, let alone follow him any deeper.
'I need water, ok? I am not like you. I need to drink and eat.'
He looked at her, with no expression on his face, and she made drinking motions with her hands, hoping that he would get the idea. When he moved his right arm, Alice flinched, wondering if he would hit her again. Instead, he held out her backpack, which he had taken from her after the fight in the Embassy. She opened it and took out her water bottle, draining it as she drank every last drop there. When she put it back inside, she felt inside the bag for a second. She had her first aid kid, and one signal flare. While she had no weapons left on her, that flare might come in handy. When Bunny Ears growled, she handed the backpack to him, thankful that he was intelligent enough to understand what she wanted, but not quite smart enough to check the bag.
She followed him deeper into the abyss, going through several more descending turns before they arrived at a door. When Bunny Ears pushed it open, Alice saw that they had entered some sort of shelter that must have once been designed for use by humans. Metal bunk beds lined the room, in which dozens of Biters were sprawled. Some of them hissed and moved in her direction, but a series of growls from Bunny Ears sent them scampering back. Perhaps to keep her close and out of harm's way, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind him. Many of the Biters glared and spat at her, and she had no doubt they would have ripped her to shreds if her unlikely guardian in the form of a Biter with bunny ears had not been there.
They paused at an open door, and Alice froze when she heard a human voice coming from somewhere on the other side. It was a gravely voice, deep and slow, but it was unmistakably the voice of a human female, unless Alice was about to meet her first talking Biter.
'What have you brought down today? Let me see.'
Alice heard some growling and screeching in response, as the speaker continued.
'Two Zeus troopers? What on Earth would I want to do with them? Their papers show that they are but fresh recruits so they could have nothing of use for me. Of course, you would have no way of knowing that, would you?'
Alice heard more screeching, and listened to this surreal conversation, wondering if the two parties actually understood what they were saying to each other.
'Oh well, you have brought them down, and I did have a chat with them. Unfortunately, they are totally brainwashed and unwilling to join us and after what they've seen, I cannot let them go back up. I was hoping that they would have a more open mind. It's probably all for the better-these two are part of the unit that killed all the little ones a fortnight ago.'
The screeching now gave way to a blood-curdling roar, and Alice realized with a start that the Biter being talked to did understand what was being said to it. The next words from the female voice made Alice's eyes open wide with fear.
'Take them, and off with their heads.'
Alice heard the men begging and pleading as they were dragged away, and then Bunny Ears began to push her into the room. She pushed him back, now in a state of panic, wondering if she was being prepared for the same fate as had befallen the captured Zeus troopers.
'Let me go! Goddammit, let go of my hand!'
Suddenly she heard the female voice inside the room call out to her in a soothing tone.
'It's quite all right, dear. I suspect you have nothing to fear from me. Come on in.'
'Who the hell are you?'
The voice tut-tutted, like a disapproving school teacher.
'Young lady, I had hoped for better manners from someone from one of the settlements. You are not one of the wild humans roaming and scavenging in the Deadland. Come on in, and we can talk like civilized people. As for who I am, these fellows down here think I'm their Queen.'
And so, shivering with fear, Alice was pushed into the room for her audience with the Queen of the Biters.