Free Deadland: Untold Stories of Alice in Deadland (Alice, No. 5) by Mainak Dhar

lest it make her look stupid in front of the older kids.
    'Come on, kids. Grab your handguns and join me.'
    As they drilled, Robert Gladwell sat in the community
center, sipping on some tea and watching his younger daughter jump onto a
platform near the wall, scanning for imaginary attackers. In his hand he had a
single sheet of paper that had been passed onto him by the local Zeus officer.
It was essentially a rehash of the demands that Zeus had been making for years,
and he had no intention of entertaining them.
    Rajiv came and sat down next to him. In the two years since
he had been rescued by Gladwell, Rajiv and his wife Sheila had become an
integral part of the settlement. Having been a Vice President in a bank before
the Rising, Rajiv might not have had a lot of survival or combat skills, but he
had huge organizational and planning skills. Once he had joked that Bob was the
CEO of their settlement, to which Bob's repartee had been that Rajiv was then
the Chief Operating Officer. That was true enough, as Rajiv had taken charge of
planning their resources, ensuring that they had adequate stocks of food and
grain and working out duty rosters so that everyone contributed and also
benefitted from life in the settlement.
    For all that, there was one important issue on which the two
of them disagreed, and Gladwell suspected that it was that very issue that had
brought Rajiv to him now.
    'Bob, are you sure you don't want to think again about the
Zeus offer? We've done well on our own, but how long can we manage like this? I
talked to one of the other settlements, and they said that in the Zeus camps,
they get fresh food and canned vegetables and fruits flown in.'
    Gladwell looked at Rajiv, knowing just how tempting it was
to get back a life of security, one where someone else was in charge of keeping
you free and safe. Where every day was not a battle for survival.
    'Who are these guys? They are a mercenary army, a very well
equipped one at that. Who's equipping them and paying them? What is their
agenda? Why don't we ever hear of who this bloody Central Committee really is?
Here we grow our own food and our labor feeds our families. In the Zeus camps,
they have people work as little more than slave labor. Everyone works the land,
but the produce is flown out to feed whoever Zeus' masters are and people wait
to be rationed food they themselves grew. What kind of freedom is that?'
    Rajiv had no answers to any of those questions, of course.
Still, he wasn't going to give up quite so easily.
    'Their demands are not unreasonable, are they?'
    'Rajiv, I will not sell our freedom for a few cans of fruit.
Have you forgotten when their troopers attacked our kids? Have you forgotten
stories of how Zeus intimidates other settlements who resist them? They don't
mess with us because they know we have the firepower to resist them, and so
they probably figure why bother taking losses in fighting us when there are so
many other settlements out there willing to sign up to be their slave labor,
producing food for their masters in the Central Committee.'
    Rajiv shook his head ruefully. He admired Bob and what he
had managed to achieve in his settlement, yet he couldn't shake the feeling
that they were making a mistake by trying to stick it out all alone.
    'You do know all the reports about them trying to take the
old airport from the Biters, don't you? We've seen an airplane flying around as
well. If they have working airplanes, Bob, they have a base somewhere for them.
That means there is still civilization somewhere, and we're not signing up for
it.'
    'Civilization does not just mean having airplanes or
gadgets. Let Zeus come totally clean on who their masters are and what their
agenda is and we'll talk.'
    Their argument was cut short by a single cry.
    'Biters at the wall!'
     
    ***
     
    Alice heard the shout and ran to the far end of the wall
where one of the sentries had spotted the Biter. She climbed onto the box that
acted as a platform near