'Who is asking?'
'Why does that matter?'
Alice sighted her rifle on the man who had been speaking and saw him through her night vision scope. He was heavily bearded, wearing a cap and carrying at least two rifles slung across his back, but his hands were held up in front of him. She spoke up again.
'It matters because it determines whether I greet you with a smile or a bullet through that silly cap of yours.'
She heard several chuckles outside and the man answered, his voice now much softer.
'We are friends. We come to join you.'
Satish and the troopers covered her while Alice stepped out. She still had her rifle at her shoulder but she lowered it when she saw the man smile and motion for all those with him to put their weapons down on the ground. There must have been over thirty of them, men, women and some children. Every one of them was carrying at least two guns, which Alice noted seemed to be all weapons taken from Zeus troopers or Red Guards. The man stepped forward, extending a hand that Alice shook.
'Alice, we have heard so much about you. My name is Arjun and we would like to join your group.'
For a minute Alice was too surprised to reply. She had never really consciously thought that she was leading anyone or anything. They had just been so focused on staying alive for the last few days that she had not had much time to think of anything beyond immediate survival. Arjun coughed softly, which snapped her back to reality. To her surprise, he seemed to be almost pleading.
'Look, we may not seem like much, but we can all fight. Give us a chance.'
They all walked in and sat around the lobby, with the newcomers looking at the armed Zeus troopers with some initial suspicion. Satish broke the ice by offering his hand to Arjun.
'Arjun, we're all local boys and all on the same team. We've been trying to escape the Red Guards for the last one week and finally decided the Ruins may be a better bet than the Deadland, or what's left of it.'
Arjun sighed and sat back.
'I know, we've been tracking you since you entered the Ruins.'
Alice spoke up, the surprise in her voice evident.
'Tracking us? But we…'
Arjun smiled, his eyes creased with years of worry, and making him look much older than his forty years.
'When The Rising happened, we decided to stay and protect our homes instead of escaping out of the city as many did. The first few years we lived like rats, then we began to fight back-against human looters and the Biters alike. You never saw us, but we saw you.'
He turned to Satish.
'Zeus never came in here much. It's easier to pick off targets from the air but that's of no use in a built up area like this. We'd meet and trade with folks in the Deadland but when we learnt how Zeus was taking over, we decided to stay here and remain free.'
Alice had always taken for granted that only Biters remained in the ruins of the old city, but as she was learning, there was much more to the world than she had ever imagined. She asked the question that had been on her mind ever since Arjun's group had shown up.
'How did you know about me?'
Now it was Arjun's turn to be surprised.
'Everyone knows about you! Many more troopers like Satish and his friends have been through the Deadland and the Ruins. They all have stories from what they read and heard, and some of them passed these papers out. Word spreads fast. We all lost everything in The Rising, and now that we know who was behind all the misery we faced, we want to help fight back.'
Alice saw the paper in Arjun's hand and saw that it had Dewan's last email printed on it. Even in death, the Colonel had more than done his duty.
***
'It's going to blow!'
Alice hid her head in her hands as the Improvised Explosive Device went off with an ear-splitting boom. When she peered back around the corner, she saw the results of the first ever IED she had rigged. Half of the target building was blown off and smoke and dust covered the whole area.
'Amazing what you can accomplish with a humble gas cylinder, isn't it?'
She turned to see Arjun standing there, grinning. Over the last two weeks, more human survivors in the Ruins had sought them out as well as close to a hundred more Zeus deserters. While Alice had naively believed they would all stay together, Arjun had told her to scatter them across the Ruins, to be kept in touch via a system of messengers. Satish and the other Zeus troopers were heavily armed, and Alice was skilled well beyond her years when it came to combat, but when it came to fighting in a congested, built-up environment like the Ruins, Arjun was the resident expert. His people called him General, but he had once sheepishly admitted to Alice that he had no military experience, but had been a salesman before The Rising. When he lost his young family in the chaos, he fought to survive and there his mastery of his former sales routes served him well.
With more than three hundred people now in her force, Alice had asked aloud how they should plan their campaign. Bitter at all she had lost, she had been tempted to lash out, but Satish and Arjun had convinced her otherwise.
'Alice, the Red Guards will smash us if we challenge them in the open. We need to lure them into the Ruins and bleed them.'
The Queen had been quiet and withdrawn for much of this time, and Alice wondered if it were because she had been so used to being among Biters that she found it hard to adjust to human company. That night, the Queen came to Alice as she was about to go to sleep.
'Alice, I want you to keep something.'
She thrust the red vial that contained the vaccine into Alice's palms. When Alice protested, the Queen insisted she keep it.
'Alice, I had foolishly thought that we could find some honest men in power who would help us. It looks like we are condemned to a life of war now, but I don't want to give up hope. Keep it with you and if there is someone we can trust, hand it over.'
Alice woke the next morning to find the Queen gone. Nobody had seen her slip out during the night, and when Alice mentioned it to Arjun, his face darkened.
'Are you sure you can trust her?'
Alice was shocked at his reaction. She had been genuinely worried about the Queen being on her own in the Ruins.
'Alice, there are still bands of Biters in the Ruins, and there are areas we never go into. She seemed sane enough and I know that she and her followers helped you but the Biters in the Ruins are crazed and would rip our throats out any chance they got.'
'She is not going to betray us.'
Alice said those words and walked away, hoping that her faith in the Queen was well placed. They did not get much of a chance to talk about it further because they soon got busy in planning their first operation.
As Alice watched the men and women move about their drills, she saw just how far they had come. Now it was impossible to tell apart someone who had been a Zeus trooper living in the relative luxury of their barracks and someone who had spent years hiding and fighting as a `Ruins Rat', as they had come to be called. The troopers had swapped their uniforms for civilian clothes and as Alice noted, if nothing else, they all smelt alike, since bathing was a luxury to be enjoyed once in a few days in the Ruins.
'Where do you want the first squad to go?'
Arjun, Satish, a woman called Sheila who led one of the groups of Rats and Alice were huddled around a hand-drawn map showing the Ruins, the Deadland and a Forward Base just ten kilometers from the city center where a large detachment of Red Guards had set up. It took a second for Alice to realize that the question had been directed to her. She struggled to answer and then Arjun gently nudged her along.
'Maybe we could do it as you said last night. Okay?'
When the others had dispersed, Alice called Arjun aside.
