'Relax. We're not here to kill you or arrest you.'
Alice kept her hand on the gun but now took a closer look at the troopers. They looked like they had just come out of a battle-many had cuts and scrapes from running through the forest, and at least one had a bloody bandage around his head. The trooper extended a hand, and as Alice got a closer look at him, she saw that he must have been very young, and looked like a local boy, certainly not one of the dreaded Red Guards.
'Alice, my name is Satish. I was from a settlement near the old city of Agra. All of us were drafted into Zeus from settlements in the Deadland.'
He turned to see the Queen, who was still on edge and Alice could see his eyes widen but he made no threatening move.
'Dr. Protima, I presume.'
The Queen stopped hissing, but still stood rigidly, her book clutched to her chest with her one remaining arm.
'Satish, how do you know who we are?'
The trooper smiled.
'A blond girl and a half-Biter are not exactly a common sight in these parts. Plus, Colonel Dewan had given all the details of who you were and what role you'd played so far.'
At the mention of Dewan's name, Alice sat bolt upright.
'The Colonel. Amit. Is he okay?'
Satish motioned for the other troopers to fan out.
'Guys, keep a watch while I fill them in on what's going on.'
He sat down in front of Alice and took out a tablet from his backpack. Alice saw that the Queen, while not feeling at ease enough to join them, had come closer to listen to what he had to say.
He told them about how initially Dewan had pretended that someone had just hacked into his account to post the first messages, and then when messages started being posted from other accounts created by Nikhil, he never showed any signs of support in public. However, when the Red Guards were brought into the Deadland in ever increasing numbers and their tactics kept getting increasingly brutal, his men had sensed a shift in his mood. When troopers began deserting, he stayed at his post, but on more than one occasion, he saw troopers slip out but didn't raise the alarm.
'But none of us knew just how deeply he supported your cause till in his last moments, he posted this. We all saw his last warning when he learnt of the air raids, but it was all too late to warn anyone in the Deadland. The Reds have deleted his post, but I saved a copy to my tablet.'
Satish held his tablet up and both Alice and the Queen skimmed it. Dewan had laid out everything he had learnt. Coming from anonymous posters, such messages could always have been dismissed and countered by official propaganda. Coming from a veteran officer in Zeus, it would have been explosive, and with the devastation the air raids had unleashed on the Deadland, there was now more or less open mutiny among the local Zeus troopers.
'Is that why you deserted? What happened to the Colonel?'
Satish looked at Alice and she noticed that he was quite terrified.
'Red Guards were hunting down all local troopers. We managed to get out just in time to save our lives. I'm not sure if the Colonel made it, but I heard that they sent several units to attack his quarters.'
Alice looked at the Queen.
'They've now declared war on their own troopers! That's crazy. Why would they do that?'
The Queen was studying the tablet as she replied.
'Alice, troopers like Satish have always been expendable. If what Dewan wrote about the ongoing insurgencies in other parts of the world like America is true, then using local troopers under Zeus just helped them wipe out the remaining Biters and ensure human settlements continued to provide labor while their main forces were being used to suppress resistance in what was the United States.'
Alice was looking off into the distance and the Queen asked what was on her mind.
'I'm thinking of how we could fight this war.'
***
The next week went by in a blur. Alice, the Queen and the Zeus troopers spent much of it in hiding from the Red Guards who had been airdropped across the Deadland to mop up any survivors. With much of the foliage burnt out and a lot of the underground passages and tunnels exposed by the bombing, they were forced to use a different tactic, and instead of moving deeper into the Deadland, they moved into the heart of what had once been the city of Delhi. There they sought refuge among the ruins of the buildings that had once been the landmarks of the Indian capital. Almost all the buildings bore signs of damage, the result of the many waves of devastation Delhi, like many other cities had suffered. The ravages of The Rising, the nuclear bursts that came soon after, and then years of warfare that had followed till the remaining human survivors had left the city to seek refuge in the Deadland had all taken their toll on the city. Now what had once been the bustling, overcrowded city of Delhi looked deserted, but Alice knew better than that. The Queen had told her that several bands of Biters were likely hidden in the city, usually emerging at night.
Alice saw a tall building which had half of it's top cleaved off, as if a giant unseen hand had taken an axe and chopped it off. The Queen muttered.
'Well, I guess we'll have 5 Star accommodation tonight. Welcome to what's left of the Taj Hotel.'
Satish, as young and inexperienced as he was, had become the de facto leader of the Zeus troopers and he told three of them to take up positions near the lobby to watch for any attackers while the others went deeper into the hotel. Alice had never been in a hotel before, though she had heard stories of the nice hotels her parents had been to when they had gone on holidays before The Rising. Imagine that! Someone to bring you food and drink whenever you wanted and a warm, cosy bed to sleep in instead of a dirty old sleeping bag. Alice wanted to go upstairs and look at the rooms but Satish stopped her.
'The stairs looks pretty unstable and I don't want us to be stuck in here if there's any trouble.'
So they lay down in what had once been the lobby and Alice was about to sleep when one of the sentries spoke in a hoarse whisper.
'Folks, I see multiple shadows approaching!'
All around her, Alice heard the sounds of guns being loaded and cocked. She had only her pistol with her, having lost her rifle in the bombing, but she quickly rushed to a window to see what was happening. As she looked around her in the darkness, she realized that the Zeus troopers may have been lavishly equipped, with their night vision scopes and rifles, but most of these boys had never seen much combat before. Satish was hurrying to get them into position and she saw them fumble their way in the dark. With an army like this, Alice realized their war was off to a pretty bad start.
Satish crawled up next to her, and she saw that he was carrying a spare assault rifle, which he handed to her with a smile.
'I think you can use this better than most of these kids.'
Alice took the rifle in her hands and flipped on the scope and looked through it. In the ghostly green light of the night vision scope, she saw a large mob appearing over the driveway that led to the hotel lobby. She switched off the scope, knowing that they needed to preserve the precious batteries of the night vision sights till they found refuge someplace with a generator which they could jury-rig to recharge them. What she had just seen did not make any sense. The figures were not moving like Biters, but like humans. However, there was no way such a large group of Red Guards would just amble up to them in the open, where they were sitting ducks for the defenders.
'What do you make of it? Should we fire?'
Alice shook her head.
'No, Satish. I don't think they mean to attack us. They probably outnumber us three to one or more, but walking in the open like that means we could pick them all off with probably little or no losses. I think they're trying to signal that they're friendly.'
'Friendly? Who could they be?'
As if by way of reply, a male voice spoke up outside.
'Which one of you is Alice?'
Satish was about to rest a restraining hand on Alice's arm, but she replied.
