Alice in Deadland by Mainak Dhar Page A

were starting to rise against the elite who seemed to get richer even as common folks lost their jobs and got poorer. The rumors said that these elites were seeing their grasp on power slip away and so they had a long-term plan to wipe out much of the population and start afresh. That's where people like Zeus come in- they could not rely on the Military to do all their dirty work, and that's why in the last few years before The Rising, Private Military Contractors were getting so prominent and powerful.'
     
    For Alice, this was all too incredible to believe. Secret private armies, human elites trying to re-engineer the world and so on. What she had grown up knowing was so much simpler, and it was tempting to believe the simpler version than even consider such a possibility.
     
    'If that was their plan, they succeeded, right?'
     
    The Queen looked and Alice saw the hint of a smile on the corners of her lips.
     
    'We came in the way. They had never bargained for just how.....contagious this turned out to be, or indeed the fact that so many of us survived by going underground into sewers and bomb shelters. They thought we would be mindless animals who would wander around and get nuked, but I led so many of us underground and then we emerged.'
     
    Alice now asked the question that had been on her mind from the beginning.
     
    'Excuse me, but what happened to you?'
     
    'As things unraveled, and I found out more about the possible conspiracy behind all this, I got very disillusioned and angry and started reaching out to people. One of my sources told me that there were elites in the Unites States who were colluding with elements in the Chinese government to orchestrate all this. They tried to kill me twice with the Zeus thugs and I went into hiding. But when the chaos took Delhi, I was attacked and bitten. I had two doses of the vaccine on me, and I injected myself seconds after being bitten. I was unconscious for several hours and I woke up the way I am. I don't understand it entirely but perhaps the combination of being bitten and than taking the vaccine within seconds left me this way. Many aspects of me were transformed, but I could still think like a human, and I was furious at what we had done to ourselves, and what we had allowed to happen.'
     
    'What about the other Bit...'
     
    'I saw them for who they really are. Yes, they are very unlike the people they were as humans. What the virus does, especially as it mutates over time, is activate the most primitive parts of the brain- so you get no sensation of pain, hyper aggressiveness and an almost reflexive desire to reproduce- in this case, bite others to increase their numbers.'
     
    Alice refused to think of the Biters as just innocent victims.
     
    'Wait a minute, I have seen so many innocent settlements and groups massacred by the Biters. They aren't just scared innocent animals.'
     
    The Queen sighed, a gesture that made her suddenly seem much more human.
     
    'We are all animals. We all experience fear, and when scared, we lash out. That's what you and the other human survivors have been doing. I can't make them understand everything I know since their brains have regressed a lot, but they are in awe of me because I am like them yet I can speak and can think more rationally- I helped save thousands of them by bringing them into these underground shelters.'
     
    'What about this prophecy of yours?'
     
    The Queen now had the book in her hands again.
     
    'Oh that is very real. I found the book when I had lost all hope, and in that fevered dream, I saw you. I saw us finally reclaiming the world from the evil men who made this happen. I saw us and humans stop fighting each other.'
     
    'It was just a dream.'
     
    'Every prophecy is a dream, but if we believe in something, we can make it happen. The powers behind this conspiracy have a vested interest in keeping this war alive. Have you considered how they keep those helicopters flying? How do they get those weapons,