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.'
