Alice in Zombieland

and a bright idea came into her head. ‘If I eat one of these cakes,’ she thought, ‘it’s sure to make some change in my size; and as it can’t possibly make me larger, it must make me smaller, I suppose.’

And although what she really wanted was a nice tasty hunk of red meat, she swallowed one of the cakes, and was delighted to find that she began shrinking directly. As soon as she was small enough to get through the door, she ran out of the house, and found quite a crowd of little animals and birds waiting outside. The poor little dead Lizard, Bill, was in the middle, being held down by two guinea-pigs, who were trying to avoid his snapping teeth.

‘We must get a collar for poor dead Bill,’ said the Black Rat.

‘Oh, not the collar, yer honour,’ said one of the guinea pigs in a woeful tone. ‘Surely we can hide ’im out like. No need to report it to the Queen.’

The Black Rat waved a distracted hand at his servant. ‘You know the rules as well as I do. All dead must be reported to the Red Queen and must be collared. If you want to risk your own head, that’s fine by me, my good man. But as this happened in my house, we will follow the letter of the law. I happen to like my whiskers sitting above my neck, you know.’

And with that he turned away to find Alice was watching them.

They all made a rush at Alice the moment she appeared; but she ran off as hard as she could, and soon found herself safe in a thick wood. She wondered if this was the same wood she had seen from the little door before. It certainly looked dark and foreboding enough. No birds gathered in its branches, and she could only see small red eyes peeking from the thick underbrush within. But she had wanted adventure; and surely the wood had to be better than rats and other animals that wanted to eat her arm.

‘The first thing I’ve got to do,’ said Alice to herself, as she wandered about in the deep dark wood, hearing only her own footsteps crunching in the dead leaves scattered across the shadowy forest floor, ‘is to grow to my right size again; and the second thing is to find my way into that lovely graveyard. I think that will be the best plan.’

It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply arranged; the only difficulty was, that she had not the smallest idea how to set about it; and while she was peering about anxiously among the trees, a little sharp bark just over her head made her look up in a great hurry.

An enormous dog, its head like a sharply-angled rock, two flint coals for eyes staring eagerly at her, was stretching out one massive, taloned paw, trying to get at her. ‘Oh my!’ said Alice, in a terrified tone, and she tried shoo it away; but she was terribly frightened all the time at the thought that it might be hungry, in which case it would be very likely to eat her up in spite of all her hopeful shooing.

Hardly knowing what she did, she picked up a little bit of rotting bone under a huge dark tree root, and held it out to the savage dog; whereupon it jumped into the air off all its feet at once, with a yelp of hunger, and rushed at the bone, worrying the bits of decaying flesh upon it; then Alice dodged behind the great tree trunk, to keep herself from being run over; and the moment she appeared on the other side, the growling animal made another rush at her, and tumbled head over heels in its hurry to get hold of her; then Alice, thinking it was very like having a game of play with a cart-horse, and expecting every moment to be trampled under its feet, ran round the twisted tree again; then the monstrous dog began a series of short charges at her, running a very little way forwards each time and a long way back, and barking hoarsely all the while, till at last it sat down a good way off and began to chew upon the rotting bone in earnest, its great eyes half shut.

This seemed to Alice a good opportunity for making her escape; so she set off at once, and ran till she was quite tired and out of breath, and till the animal’s gnawing sounded quite faint in the distance.

‘That was close!’ said Alice, as she leant against a thin sapling that felt dry and cancerous to her touch. A fairy circle of stinking toadstools, all pale and striped with red and brown, were spread round the trees near her, some quite large, in fact, big enough for her to sleep beneath if she ever wanted to sleep in such a musty and frightening place. ‘I might have liked to take a bite of him, instead, if I’d only been the right size to do it! Oh dear! I’d nearly forgotten that I’ve got to grow up again! Let me see—how is it to be managed? I suppose I ought to eat or drink something or other; but the great question is, what?’

The great question certainly was, what? Alice looked all round her at the tall foreboding trees, all dark and shadowed within their vast skeletal branches and but she did not see anything that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the circumstances. There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as herself; and when she had looked under it, and on both sides of it, and behind it, it occurred to her that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it.

She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the pale, smelly mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large black wurm, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly supping on a freshly dismembered human ear which it had stolen from the nearby graveyard and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else.

Chapter 5 Advice from the Conqueror Wurm

The Wurm and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence. The Conqueror Wurm’s body was long and segmented, and the color of wet ash, and smelled somewhat like a dead mouse that Dinah had once brought home to lie at her feet last year. The mouse, all rotting flesh and patchy gray fur, had been dead for quite some time. The Wurm smelled as if it had as well. Or perhaps, Alice thought, it’s what it chooses to eat that makes it smell so badly.

At last the Wurm took the half-chewed human ear out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice. ‘Who are you?’ said the Wurm.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said the Wurm sternly. ‘Explain yourself!’

‘I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see.’

‘I don’t see,’ said the Wurm.

“I feel strangely cold all the time and I’m so dreadfully hungry for the bits and pieces of other living things. I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,’ Alice replied very politely, ‘for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing”

‘It isn’t,’ said the Wurm, ‘hard to explain in the least. Quite natural here, young lady.’

‘Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,’ said Alice; ‘but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?’

‘Not a bit,’ said the Wurm, writhing its long gray body into a loop so to better face Alice.

‘Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,’ said Alice; ‘all I know is, I feel very queer indeed. Not myself.’

‘You!’ said the Conqueror Wurm contemptuously. ‘Who are you?’

Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Wurm’s making such very short remarks, and she drew herself up and said,

very gravely, ‘I think, you ought to tell me who you are, first.’

‘Why?’ said the Wurm.

Here was another puzzling question; and as Alice could not think of any good reason, and as the ugly Wurm seemed to be in a very unpleasant state of mind, she turned away.

‘Come back!’ the Wurm called after her, bits of half chewed ear flesh dangling from its small mouth. ‘I’ve something important to say!’

This sounded promising, certainly: Alice turned and came back again.

‘Keep your temper,’ said the Wurm.

‘Is that all?’ said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she could.

‘No,’ said the Wurm.