eyes of the undead. His head exploded as the grey haired officer fired, preferring to kill his own man versus having him turn into one of the undead, as the Biter with the hat reared up to his full height and screamed. More than a dozen Biters now emerged into the clearing and the Zeus officer retreated into the trees, looking at Alice once. As their eyes met, he cocked his arm back and threw something at her before he disappeared into the trees, pursued by the Biters.
The object he had thrown landed a couple of feet away from Alice, and she ran to pick up what he had thrown just as Bunny Ears reappeared with three other Biters. He grabbed her arm to pull her away but before he yanked her away, she looked at the small blinking object in her hand. It was a radio beacon that would give away her position as long as she carried it. There was to be no escape today, but as she slipped the beacon into her pockets, she felt a new surge of hope.
Help would be on the way soon.
***
'So, what did you learn from your trip?'
The question had been asked as if the Queen were enquiring about a field trip to a museum instead of her having just been in the middle of a life and death struggle, so Alice wasn't quite sure what the Queen had in mind. That became clear when the giant Biter with the hat appeared and uttered a series of guttural growls.
'Hatter here tells me that you caused a fair bit of inconvenience, but if anything is to be learnt from today's experience, do learn that we are not fools. We did not send you out to offer you an easy and convenient escape route.'
'So why did you send me out there? I've seen enough battles and there's nothing I saw that I haven't seen before.'
The Queen turned on Alice with a fury, baring her teeth, and for a second Alice was truly fearful that she would attack her, but then the Queen seemed to control herself with a conscious effort of will and answered in a soft voice.
'You just used your usual prejudices to filter out what you didn't want to see. I wanted you to see us as we are-a society, a group of sentient beings. Different from humans, but no less deserving of the right to exist. Not animals to be hunted down and exterminated.'
That did ring a bell with Alice. True, she had never imagined that Biters could be organized in some sort of social unit, and certainly had never bargained for the fact that she would see babies and what appeared to be their parents together. Still, that did not change the fundamental equation. The anger at all the cruelty she had seen Biters visit upon humans in her life came back to her as she answered the Queen with a bitter tinge in her voice.
'I have seen enough innocent humans slaughtered by Biters. I have seen babies bitten by Biters. I have seen good, decent people turn into bloodthirsty Biters after being bitten. So it's not as if your precious Biters are innocent, helpless victims.'
The Queen hissed, though Alice sensed more regret than rage in her reaction.
'I had hoped you would begin to change your mind and embrace your destiny, but it looks like your mind is still too closed. Oh well, I hope you can reflect on it over the next few days.'
With that, the giant Biter referred to as Hatter gripped her arm and pushed her roughly out of the room. She was led to a small, dark room and the door slammed shut once she went in. Alice huddled alone in a corner of the cold, dark room, and took out the beacon from her pocket. She watched the small blinking red light till exhaustion overtook her and she fell into an uneasy slumber. She dreamt of a Biter baby having it's head shot off, and she woke up covered in sweat. There was no more sleep to be had that night.
FOUR
If the Queen's intent had been to torture Alice into submission, Alice thought she was doing a pretty good job of it. For the next two days, she got nothing to eat or drink other than a single glass of dirty water that was shoved into her room once a day. The room was totally dark all the time and Alice soon lost track of time. She screamed her rage out for the first few hours but then just sat in silence against the wall. She may have been trained as a warrior from an early age, but nobody had ever trained her on what to do if she were captured. It had never occurred to anyone that someone could be taken prisoner by the Biters.
Finally, hungry, thirsty and disoriented, she was on the verge of asking for the Queen and agreeing to whatever crazy prophecy she seemed to believe in. Anything to get out of the room, anything to get a bite to eat or a drink of clean water. That was when Bunny Ears opened the door and pulled her out, leading her to the Queen's room. Alice found the Queen sitting at her desk, chewing ganja leaves and holding the charred book that seemed so important to her. When Alice entered the room, she called out loudly for food, and Hatter came in, holding a hunk of nearly stale bread. As disgusting as it looked, it was the first food Alice had seen in almost three days and she hungrily wolfed it down.
The Queen waited for her to finish and then sat down in front of Alice, the book on her lap.
'Alice, I was wrong. In my anger, I thought that frightening and intimidating you would bring you to my side, but if you are to fulfill the prophecy, it cannot be through fear. It has to be because you believe in our cause.'
Alice, bitter and angry after what she had endured over the last two days, blurted out.
'Yeah, and locking me in a dark room and starving me will make me believe in your prophecy? Or will it be the bloody ganja leaves you gulp down?'
Alice saw the muscles on the Queen's face tighten and once again she saw a glimpse of the rage she was capable of, but she controlled herself as she responded to Alice.
'No, you remember the old quote about the truth setting us free.'
Alice had never heard the quote, but listened as the Queen continued.
'Tell me, what do you know about what you humans call The Rising?'
Growing up, Alice had heard the story many times from her parents, and then it had been amplified and embellished by countless conversations with other kids, so the answer to her was obvious.
'Everyone knows about it. One day, something happened, and the dead started coming to life. Before anyone could do anything, they started attacking others, and those bitten turned into…Biters, I guess. They couldn't be killed other than through a shot through the head, and they soon overran most cities. Then the governments got desperate and bombed the cities after evacuating as many people as possible….'
She couldn't complete because the Queen had got up and screamed, an inhuman howl that shocked Alice so much that she got up from her chair, which clattered to the ground behind her. The Queen was now speaking fast and with such anger that spittle was flying from her mouth.
'It did not just happen. We made it happen.'
Alice wasn't sure what she was referring to and asked what she meant.
'Us. Human governments or at least some elements in our governments. The US government had been experimenting with chemical and biological agents that would transform our troops into super-soldiers, into beserkers immune to pain. At the same time, there was research on modifying these to create agents that would drive enemy troops insane, a rage virus which would transform them into wild animals who would kill each other. We experimented with rats, with monkeys and…..with humans.'
Alice found that hard to believe and gasped aloud.
'No, dear. We did all that. In secret facilities in Afghanistan and other places. We were drunk with our power, imagining what would happen if we could drop one single canister of this agent in the middle of an enemy army division. It would tear itself to pieces without us firing a shot. Then it all came apart.'
'What happened?'
'The Chinese found out what we were up to, and they knew that if we perfected this, we would be invincible. They infiltrated our program, and destroyed our key research lab in the US. We couldn't prove anything-it looked like an explosion caused by a gas cylinder, but we knew who was behind it. The American economy was in deep recession, China was on the ascendant, and this was our last hope in keeping them in check. We had extra stores of the agent the Chinese did not know about, and we decided to teach them a lesson, to show them that we were still
