Alice in Zombieland

more than nothing.’

‘Nobody asked your opinion,’ said Alice.

‘Who’s making personal remarks now?’ the Hatter asked triumphantly. His eyes rolled around in their dark sockets, like wet pebbles, and he gave a half growl, half snicker.

Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and one of the gnawed-upon bones (the cup was rather smeared with blood and other fluids, but she could no longer control her hunger), and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. ‘Why did they live at the bottom of a well?’

The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, ‘It was a treacle-well.’

‘There’s no such thing!’ Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the Dead Hare went ‘Sh! sh!’ and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, ‘If you can’t be civil, you’d better finish the story for yourself.’

‘No, please go on!’ Alice said very humbly; ‘I won’t interrupt again. I dare say there may be one.’

‘One, indeed!’ said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. ‘And so these three little sisters—they were learning to draw, you know—’

‘What did they draw?’ said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.

‘Treacle,’ said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.

‘I want a clean cup,’ interrupted the Hatter: ‘let’s all move one place on.’ He tossed a chipped and bloodied cup to the ground.

He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the Dead Hare moved into the Dormouse’s place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the Dead Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the Dead Hare had just upset the milk-jug into his plate. But it did not hold milk; instead thick dark blood, with chunks of torn flesh swimming in it, clopped to the dirty plate and table. She pushed the plate away with a disgusted grimace.

Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: ‘But I don’t understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?’

‘You can draw water out of a water-well,’ said the Hatter; ‘so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well—eh, stupid?’

‘But they were in the well,’ Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.

‘Of course they were’, said the Dormouse; ‘—well in.’

This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.

As it spoke, its fur was falling in little dry clumps at its feet even as it tried in vain to retrieve the stray pieces and put them back.

‘They were learning to draw,’ the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; ‘and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—’

‘Why with an M?’ said Alice.

‘Why not?’ said the Dead Hare.

Alice was silent, but her curiosity was getting the best of her again. She wanted to hear the story about the Red Queen and how she controlled the dead. She turned to the Hatter, who seemed of the three the least sleepy, and said, ‘If you please, could you finish the story about how the Queen came to control the zombies?’

For a moment the Hatter only stared at her with his strangely distant gaze and then he shrugged, sipping in vain at his empty tea cup. ‘I suppose it would not hurt.’

‘What?’ asked Alice, confused again.

‘The story,’ the Hatter replied. ‘Nothing that isn’t already common knowledge except to newcomers and visitors.’

Alice settled in her seat and waited eagerly.

The Hatter found a small bone with some meat still on it and nibbled at it for a moment, then he began: ‘Some say she came from a world outside of Zombieland, but no one can say for sure, and she certainly isn’t going to say. She was a poor serving girl at a local pub who happened to be serving the night the King himself came to stay while he was traveling to a far away land to meet a witch and a wizard about acquiring a labor force from their diminutive populace of workers.

Alice frowned in confusion; she’d never heard of such a place before.

The Hatter continued between nibbles at the raw meat on the bone. ‘She made herself irresistible to the King and soon they were married. Then one day, our fair land was struck down by some dread disease that caused the dead to rise again and seek out fresh flesh. Before long, the whole land was in turmoil and there were more zombies than living. But the Red Queen had fought long and hard to become the Queen and she wasn’t about to let a bit of bad luck get in her way. She kept her scientists working day and night to come up with some way to control the undead. I’m not sure how it all worked, but I do know that soon the Queen had an army of the undead under her control and she was using them to destroy those she could not control. At first, just the undead. But as her powers grew and she became more angry with her world, she began to take it out on both the living and the undead. Now she walks the kingdom with her zombie army and her control box, keeping us all in line with fear. And no one dares to defy her because she can turn her undead army against anyone silly enough to do so. Do you see?’

Alice nodded silently, unsure how much of what the Hatter said was true and how much was just make believe.

The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: ‘—that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know you say things are “much of a muchness” —did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?’

‘Really, now you ask me,’ said Alice, very much confused, ‘I don’t think—’

‘Then you shouldn’t talk,’ said the Hatter.

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot, and his arm was dangling at an alarming angle.

‘At any rate I’ll never go there again!’ said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. ‘It’s the stupidest and most disgusting tea-party I ever was at in all my life!’

Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the wind-whipped trees had a door leading right into it. ‘That’s very curious!’ she thought. ‘But everything’s curious today. I think I may as well go in at once.’

And in she went.

Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. ‘Now, I’ll manage better this time,’ she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the graveyard. Then she went to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and then—she found herself at last in the wonderfully spooky graveyard, among the tilting tombstones and weeds and decayed crosses.

Chapter 8 The Queen’s Graveyard Croquet-Ground

Alarge gray tomb stood near the entrance of the graveyard. The roses growing on it were twisted, black and thorny, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red. Each of the gardeners was pale-faced and smelled terrible. And each wore one of those strange jeweled collars she’d seen on other dead men. Alice thought this a very curious thing, and she went nearer to watch them, and just as she came up to them she heard one of them say, ‘Look out now, Five! Don’t go splashing paint over me like that!’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ said Five, in a sulky tone; ‘Seven jogged my elbow.’

On which Seven looked up and said, ‘That’s right, Five! Always lay the blame on others!’

‘You’d better not talk!’ said Five. ‘I heard the Queen say only yesterday you