When Alice entered the room, she found herself in what resembled an office of some sort, with a large couch at one end, and a desk with a high-backed chair at the other. The Queen was sitting in the chair, but had her back turned to the door, so Alice could see little more of her than a gloved arm resting on the chair's side. Bunny Ears was standing behind her, and making vaguely threatening growling noises. Alice had no idea how they communicated, but she thought a fair attempt at translation would indicate that he was reminding her not to try anything since he was right behind her. That suited Alice just fine, since she was so terrified that any act of bravado was the last thing on her mind.
'Dear, please sit down, and don't mind Rabbit there. He's just very protective but is otherwise quite gentle.'
Alice found it impossible to contain a dismissive snort as she considered how anyone could think of a vicious Biter as gentle. The Queen seemed not to notice, or at any rate, take any offense, and so Alice sat down on the couch and waited. When the chair swiveled around, Alice's curiosity was in overdrive and she was leaning so far forward that she was on the verge of falling off the couch. Then she got her first glimpse of the Queen, and to say that she was let down would be quite the understatement of the century.
The Queen of the Biters looked like a friendly librarian at the local library, complete with her grey hair tied in a neat bun, and dark tinted glasses perched on the edge of her nose, framing an aging, tired, but kind face. Of course, Alice had never been to a library, and had never seen a librarian, but the figure she saw in front of her was the farthest thing possible from the fearsome Biter leader she had half-expected to see. As the Queen got up, Alice saw that she was most certainly not a Biter, with her face unblemished, and that she was evidently Indian, for she wore a saree that hung loosely around her thin frame.
'Are you the Queen?'
The old lady smiled, as she came closer to Alice.
'My name was Protima, though nobody has called me by that name in a very long time. In our world, I guess I am considered the Queen, though what I rule over is something I myself am not very sure of. Now, young lady, let me take a look at you and see if what has got these fellows so excited has any basis in fact or not.'
When the Queen came closer and took off her glasses, Alice gasped and shrank back.
The Queen's face may have looked as unblemished as that of any healthy human, but her eyes were red, dilated and lifeless, the eyes of the undead. When she grinned, Alice saw crusted blood on her lips and around the corners of her mouth. Alice began to scream, but a gloved hand was clamped over her mouth.
'Shh, dear. There's nothing to be so terrified of. Yet.'
With that, the Queen grabbed a lock of Alice's hair and pulled on it hard enough to make Alice grimace.
'Well, it is real blond hair. When these fools came in blabbering about a blond haired Alice, I was sure they had got it wrong. Who would have expected a young blond girl in the middle of what was once Delhi?'
Alice was sitting frozen in place. Somehow, the combination of her unblemished face and her ability to speak so articulately made the Queen even more fearsome than the most outwardly bloodthirsty and fearsome Biters Alice had ever encountered. Finally, she mustered up the courage to speak.
'Are you one of…'
She never got a chance to complete her question as the Queen snapped back.
'One of the undead? One of the Biters? What other hateful label were you planning to use? That's always been the problem with humans. You take anything you fear and cannot understand and make it an object of hate. So much easier to hate and destroy than to seek to understand.'
Actually, Alice had been about to just say 'them', but she was too scared to interrupt the Queen's rant, so she just sat in silence and waited for what was to come next. The Queen sat down next to Alice and took off her gloves. Alice saw that underneath the gloves were not the hands of a healthy human, but yellowed, decayed and blood crusted hands crisscrossed with open wounds and bite marks. When the Queen laid a cold, hard hand on Alice's wrist, she involuntarily flinched, but the vice like grip on her wrist prevented her from moving. In a brief moment of panic, Alice contemplated striking out, but a low growl behind her warned her that Bunny Ears was right there, watching her every move.
'Dear, you must be wondering what all the fuss is about, right?'
Alice noticed that the Queen's face was twitching and while her lifeless eyes betrayed no emotion, she seemed excited like a little girl at a toy shop.
'It is the prophecy I had made. It is finally coming true, and that means that our days of suffering will come to an end.'
Alice had no idea what the Queen was talking about, so she just waited for her to continue.
'Don't you see? You must be the one the book told me about.'
'What book?'
The Queen got up, and Alice saw that she was virtually hopping in excitement. At that point, Alice realized that human or undead, one thing was for sure. The Queen was totally unhinged. The Queen walked back to her desk and fished in the drawers for a few seconds before bringing out something covered in a coarse cloth. As soon as she raised the package in her hands, Alice saw that Bunny Ears had gone down on his knees. Several thoughts were buzzing through her mind. Since when did mindless Biters get religious? How the hell was this so-called Queen partly human and partly Biter? How was it at all possible that she of all people had anything to do with any prophecy this crazed old Queen claimed to have made?
The Queen was now in front of Alice and holding the package in front of her.
'Do you realize what this is?'
Of course Alice had no way of knowing, but she was young enough to not know a rhetorical question, so she shook her head. Any response on her part was largely unnecessary because the Queen was in a trance like state, talking without a pause.
'When the mad human governments rained fire, I hid in the underground chambers that they had made as bomb shelters and old sewers, moving from one tunnel to another. Do you know how long I was down there?'
Another rhetorical question, and then the Queen continued.
'I kept my phone running as long as I could, turning it on for a few seconds every day to see the time and date. When I lost it, it had been three months. I had been bitten seven times.'
The Queen put the package on the sofa next to Alice and raised her sleeves, showing a bloody, mangled mess on her hands. Alice wondered again how this woman had retained some human faculties despite so obviously having been bitten by Biters. Also, she shuddered to think just how horrible it must have been to wander alone in the dark tunnels, surrounded by crazed Biters in utter darkness, with no easy access to food or water. Anybody would have lost their mind in such circumstances. The Queen continued.
'I would have given up and killed myself if I had been just a human, but as you can see, I was becoming something more. I did not have much to eat, so I scrounged around for herbs and leaves. And one day, I found this.'
She motioned to the package.
'At the time, I didn't know what to make of it, but when I came back to the surface and saw what the world had been reduced to, I realized it was perhaps the last book left in the Deadland.'
The Queen took a break and went back to her desk, bringing out a bunch of green leaves that she proceeded to chew raw. Alice could hear Bunny Ears growling in anticipation and the Queen threw him a couple of leaves that he gobbled down. Alice recognized the leaves as ganja leaves and remembered the warnings from the adults about never eating them. If this woman, or Biter, or whatever the Queen was, had been living on ganja leaves for months, no wonder her mind was a bit messed up with all the hallucinations it must have caused. That feeling was cemented in her mind when the Queen took out what was in the package and held it before Alice.
'Behold the prophecy I was given by the last book left in the Deadland. A vision of you coming to lead us to victory.'
Alice saw what the Queen was holding and saw a slightly charred book cover. It showed a blonde girl jumping into a hole after a rabbit, and Alice suddenly realized that it must have inspired the drawing she had seen and also explained why they had been so excited to see her. She could not immediately make out all the words, but saw her name on top. The Queen seemed a bit disappointed at the lack of recognition from Alice, but then she did not know that Alice had not read a single book in her life, and did not recognize the title on the cover.
Alice in Wonderland.
***
There must have been hundreds, if not more Biters crowding the large underground hall in front of the Queen, all down on their knees. They kept up a constant crescendo of howling and screeching that made Alice want to put her hands over her ears. But her hands were pinned behind her by Bunny Ears and the Queen was now addressing her troops.
'Look at her! The prophecy is true! She will lead us to victory and we will throw off the oppression and savagery of those evil humans forever. They did not want to coexist with us but now we will have a chance to make them understand, to accept us, and let us survive side by side with men. Otherwise, we will wage our final war for survival and make them understand that we can and will become the dominant species on this planet.'
The Biters seemed incapable of speaking in any human tongue but they seemed to understand the Queen just fine, and soon they had worked themselves into a frenzy. The more Alice saw them, the more they resembled wild animals, and the Queen ended her exhortation by asking them to prepare for their missions that night.
Alice was herded back to the small room that was effectively her cell. She had no idea of how the Queen expected her to lead her forces to victory. What could one young girl contribute? Moreover, Alice had no intention whatsoever of playing out whatever role the Queen had imagined for her in her delusional prophecy. She was just biding her time, waiting for when she could escape, and so, for now she decided that playing along with the Queen was her best strategy. Her chance came sooner than she had expected when later that evening the Queen sent for her.
'Alice, they look to me to be their leader, but I was an old woman even before I transformed, and while I had my skills, being able to fight and lead in battle was not one of them. You are the one who must take on my mantle and continue our struggle.'
Alice could take it no longer and blurted out.
'What struggle? Why don't you just leave humans alone? What harm have we done to you that you lead these creatures to attack us?'
The Queen sat down, and while a smile played at he edges of her lips, her eyes were as lifeless as ever.
'I don't blame you for believing what you do. You've grown up hearing only one side of the story, and from my old life I know just how good the powers that be are at propaganda.'
She saw the skeptical look on Alice's face and continued.
'I won't try and convince you because my words would be of no value to you. So I will let you see through your own eyes.'
She nodded and Bunny Ears grabbed Alice by her arm and led her out. She was dragged more than led up a series of winding tunnels and then suddenly she found herself outside again. It was getting dark outside and she was in a thickly wooded area. She saw a broken sign and she recognized the symbols from some of her training when they had been familiarized with the surrounding landscape. They were near the Yamuna River, or rather what used to be the river, but now was a dried up trickle after the nuclear firestorms and subsequent battles had destroyed the dams and reservoirs feeding it. She sensed movement around her and she saw that there were at least a dozen more Biters hiding among the trees.
After more than an hour of waiting, she turned to Bunny Ears, asking him what it was he had brought her here to see, but he merely grunted in reply, as if telling her to shut up and wait. Then as she watched, something strange happened. She saw a large group of Biters emerge from the trees, perhaps a hundred or more of them. They were all walking in single file, which was totally contrary to the image Alice had grown up with of them being savage, mindless brutes incapable of any act of coordination or reason. But what totally took her breath away was the fact that the Biters were not just a random group out to inflict violence, but seemed to be a social grouping of some sort. There were a handful of women, many of them carrying small children. The children themselves looked like something out of a nightmare, with their yellowed skin, and many cuts and bruises on their blood covered bodies, but all the same, they were children. Alice had no idea if these were families formed and born after the adults had been transformed to Biters of if these were families that had retained some of their old bonds even after they ceased to be human. Either way, yet again irrevocable proof was in front of her eyes that there was much more to the Biters than she had been brought up to believe.
As the column came closer, Alice got a better look at them. With their bowed backs and trundling along slowly in single file, they looked more like a group of refugees than a band of marauding monsters. She heard Bunny Ears screech behind her, and two Biters in the group ahead responded in kind. What was the Queen trying to show her by sending her here? True, there seemed to be much more to the Biters than what she had grown up believing, but so far she had seen nothing that would change her mind about joining the Queen or fulfilling some deranged prophecy of hers. No, if there was one thing Alice was sure of, it was the fact that she would find the earliest possible opportunity to escape.
Just then, the convoy in front of her stopped in its tracks, many of the adults looking up at the skies. Several of children began howling, their inhuman cries making Alice's hair stand up on end. She didn't know what had suddenly brought about the change in their behavior, but within a few seconds, the group transformed from an orderly convoy to a totally panic-stricken mob. The Biters were now screaming and running in such a panic that she saw more than one run into trees and fall down. Bunny Ears had now emerged and was howling, an ear-splitting noise that was taken up by the others who had been hiding in the trees with him. It almost looked like he and the others had been sent by the Queen to shepherd the group to safety through the woods, but now there was no more semblance of order. The Biters were running around screaming like wild animals that have caught a scent of hunters and one of them, a woman with a bloodied and mangled child in her arms, came within a few feet of Alice. She glared at Alice with hate-filled eyes, and baring bloodied teeth, seemed ready to pounce when Bunny Ears knocked her off her feet with a blow to the back of her head.
Alice still didn't know what had caused such bedlam when she heard a familiar sound. The whirring rotors of approaching helicopters. She looked up to see several black helicopters approach the clearing. Zeus had arrived.
***
The female Biter who had been knocked over by Bunny Ears was getting up unsteadily on one knee when her head exploded in a spray of blood. Alice screamed and dove for cover behind a tree as more snipers aboard the oncoming helicopters opened fire. She watch three more Biters caught in the open fall, their heads split open by high-powered sniper rifles, before the others scattered among the trees. The child the Biter had been carrying was now feet away from Alice, and looking at its hideous form, with it's mangled face and bloody skin, it was hard to feel any emotion the way one felt towards human children. Alice was about to crawl away under the bushes nearby and try and escape, but something held her back. She looked back at the child again, and this time his eyes met hers. There was no innocence, no love, just the blank, hate-filled expression that was characteristic of Biters and while he could not even walk, he began to crawl towards her, baring a handful of half-formed teeth. The rational part of Alice's mind told her to run, but she was transfixed at the sight of this little child who would no doubt bite Alice and transform her into a Biter like him given half a chance, yet who was little more than a child. A helpless child.
Just then, a huge Biter easily standing more than six and a half feet tall ran over in front of her. He was wearing a floppy hat and much of the left side of his face was missing. He picked up the child and ran towards the nearby trees as Alice heard a fresh burst of firing. This time it was not the distinctive pops of sniper rifles, but the staccato bursts of automatic weapon fire. That could mean only one thing-Zeus troopers were now on the ground.
Alice looked to her left and saw something was which no less than a miracle-her backpack, which Bunny Ears must have dropped there in the chaos. She remembered the signal flare that had been there and crawled towards the backpack, grabbing it before she again retreated behind cover. She unzipped it, and breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the signal flare was still there. She looked around and saw that Bunny Ears was nowhere to be seen. Now was her chance. She popped the flare and soon a red light shot up in the sky. She watched it sail above the treeline and hoped that it would get the attention of the Zeus troopers and someone would come to get her.
She did succeed in attracting attention all right, but of entirely the unwanted variety when she saw two Biters homing in on her. They were screaming and coming at her with their teeth bared. Alice realized with a shudder that one of them must have claimed a victim in the fighting now going on all around her since his mouth was covered with fresh blood that was dripping onto his muddy and torn shirt. There was no time and no place to run, so Alice got ready to face her attackers. The first to reach her was the man with the bloody face, a thin man who was missing his left arm below the elbow and seemed to have half his hair burnt off. As he screamed and leapt towards Alice, she went down on a knee, sweeping him off his feet. She had no weapons with her, but she brought her foot down on the biter's windpipe in a crushing kick. It would have killed a grown man, but the Biter screamed and began to get up again. The second Biter, a tall man wearing a blood stained vest and shorts was now almost upon her. Alice ran towards him dodging his outstretched arms and then turned around on her heels to kick his foot from under him behind his knee. It shattered his leg, but as Alice well knew, that would hardly be enough to stop a Biter on the rampage. He got up unsteadily on one leg, as Alice tried to run only to come straight in the path of the first Biter, whose neck now hung at an awkward angle, but his mouth was open and he lunged at her.
Alice closed her eyes, bracing herself for the attack that never came. She heard a loud pop and when she opened her eyes she saw the Biter's headless body lying just a couple of feet from her. The second Biter, now limping towards her met a similar fate as another round slammed into his head.
She looked into the trees ahead and saw a black clad man kneeling, a rifle at his shoulder. He wore the black battle dress of the Zeus troopers, but unlike the others she had seen, he had no helmet to cover his close-cropped black hair, which was covered with flecks of grey. He saw her and grinned and began to run towards her.
Alice took a step towards him, her heart racing in anticipation of her coming rescue when three Biters jumped out of the trees and in the path of the Zeus trooper who was less than a hundred meters from her. He shot one in the head at point blank range before another Biter knocked the rifle out of his hand. Alice had been trained to fight since she was a child, but she had never seen anyone fight like the Zeus trooper in front of her. Unfazed by the loss of his gun, he unsheathed a large knife at his belt and jumped up, bringing it down into the skull of the nearest Biter, who screamed and went down, not to get down again. The third Biter was now almost upon him, and he rolled out of the way, taking out his handgun and put three shots into the Biter's head.
Two more Zeus troopers now appeared, and judging by their salutes and the deference they showed the grey haired man, it seemed that he was an officer of some sort. He pointed to her and the two of them began to jog towards her. That was when the large Biter with the hat came crashing out of the trees. He grabbed the nearest trooper and snapped his neck, the sickening crunching sound carrying to Alice. The second trooper tried to bring his rifle to bear, but the Biter bit him on the neck, and he went down spurting blood. Alice knew what would come next. The trooper spasmed and went rigid, and when he got up again, Alice saw that his eyes were the vacant, lifeless eyes of the undead. His head exploded as the grey haired officer fired, preferring to kill his own man versus having him turn into one of the undead, as the Biter with the hat reared up to his full height and screamed. More than a dozen Biters now emerged into the clearing and the Zeus officer retreated into the trees, looking at Alice once. As their eyes met, he cocked his arm back and threw something at her before he disappeared into the trees, pursued by the Biters.
The object he had thrown landed a couple of feet away from Alice, and she ran to pick up what he had thrown just as Bunny Ears reappeared with three other Biters. He grabbed her arm to pull her away but before he yanked her away, she looked at the small blinking object in her hand. It was a radio beacon that would give away her position as long as she carried it. There was to be no escape today, but as she slipped the beacon into her pockets, she felt a new surge of hope.
Help would be on the way soon.
***
'So, what did you learn from your trip?'
The question had been asked as if the Queen were enquiring about a field trip to a museum instead of her having just been in the middle of a life and death struggle, so Alice wasn't quite sure what the Queen had in mind. That became clear when the giant Biter with the hat appeared and uttered a series of guttural growls.
'Hatter here tells me that you caused a fair bit of inconvenience, but if anything is to be learnt from today's experience, do learn that we are not fools. We did not send you out to offer you an easy and convenient escape route.'
'So why did you send me out there? I've seen enough battles and there's nothing I saw that I haven't seen before.'
The Queen turned on Alice with a fury, baring her teeth, and for a second Alice was truly fearful that she would attack her, but then the Queen seemed to control herself with a conscious effort of will and answered in a soft voice.
'You just used your usual prejudices to filter out what you didn't want to see. I wanted you to see us as we are-a society, a group of sentient beings. Different from humans, but no less deserving of the right to exist. Not animals to be hunted down and exterminated.'
That did ring a bell with Alice. True, she had never imagined that Biters could be organized in some sort of social unit, and certainly had never bargained for the fact that she would see babies and what appeared to be their parents together. Still, that did not change the fundamental equation. The anger at all the cruelty she had seen Biters visit upon humans in her life came back to her as she answered the Queen with a bitter tinge in her voice.
'I have seen enough innocent humans slaughtered by Biters. I have seen babies bitten by Biters. I have seen good, decent people turn into bloodthirsty Biters after being bitten. So it's not as if your precious Biters are innocent, helpless victims.'
The Queen hissed, though Alice sensed more regret than rage in her reaction.
'I had hoped you would begin to change your mind and embrace your destiny, but it looks like your mind is still too closed. Oh well, I hope you can reflect on it over the next few days.'
With that, the giant Biter referred to as Hatter gripped her arm and pushed her roughly out of the room. She was led to a small, dark room and the door slammed shut once she went in. Alice huddled alone in a corner of the cold, dark room, and took out the beacon from her pocket. She watched the small blinking red light till exhaustion overtook her and she fell into an uneasy slumber. She dreamt of a Biter baby having it's head shot off, and she woke up covered in sweat. There was no more sleep to be had that night.