Free Through the Killing Glass by Mainak Dhar

main building.
The first thing he noticed was the stench, and he brought his fingers up to his
nose. He saw that Hu had put on a mask covering his nose and mouth.
    'Comrade
General, do you want a mask?'
    The last thing
Chen wanted to do was to offer Hu the satisfaction of seeing any sign of
weakness.
    'Comrade
Commissar, I have spent enough time in the Deadland to not be bothered by a bit
of the smell of death. But I do wonder why a Red Guard base has been piled up
with dead bodies?’
    He could hear
Hu chuckling as he went deeper into the building, which seemed like a warehouse
with what appeared to be prison cells lining one end of it. Heavily armed
black-clad guards wearing the insignia of the elite Interior Security Service
stood guard. There was not a single Red Guard conscript in sight.
    'Come, Comrade
General. Let me introduce you to the new shock troops of the Red Army who will
help us win this war and bring the Deadland back into the fold of our
revolution.'
    Hu guided Chen
towards one of the cells, and Chen struggled to keep himself from gagging at
the intense stench. When he was in front of the cell, a decayed hand with two
fingers missing reached out to grab him. Chen recoiled back as a bloodied, torn
face slammed into the bars.
    There were more
than a dozen Biters inside the cell, and many of them began screaming and
banging their heads and hands on the bars. Then, just as suddenly as they had
started, they stopped screaming, and to Chen's disbelief, they went down on
their knees. Hu tapped him on his shoulder.
    'Look this way,
Comrade Chen. The Red Queen is here.'
     
    ***
     
    'Arun, please
listen to me. We need to talk, otherwise we will have more deaths.'
    Even after
explaining the situation to Arun and pleading with him, Alice still faced an
uphill struggle.
    She had managed
to get Danish to convince Arun to come to the Looking Glass. That part of the
job had not been difficult at all. One of Arun's hobbies was getting time in
the Looking Glass from Danish and spending hours on the radio. He had been a
ham radio operator before The Rising, and while there were few people to talk
to, he had actually produced a couple of very interesting connections in the
short time he had been at Wonderland, including a couple of young people from
the Chinese Mainland who were risking certain death or deportation to labor
camps by using radios to get in touch with the outside world. From them Alice
and the others had got an invaluable glimpse into what was happening inside the
Mainland. They had learnt about small demonstrations and disturbances in cities
like Shanghai and about how some young men had refused to be drafted into the
Red Guards to be sent to the Deadland and been punished for it.
    But getting
Arun on the radio had been the easy part. Actually getting him to listen to
what Alice had to say was proving impossible.
    'Alice,
thirty-four innocent people are dead, including more than twenty children. All
killed by Biters, some of whose bodies we found. All this talk of Red Guards
flying in Biters is fantastic but why would I not look closer to home and ask
why all the Biters in the Reservation disappeared after the attacks?'
    'I asked them
to hide to avoid a bloodbath till we could clear things up.'
    There was a pause.
When Arun next spoke, Alice knew she had already lost.
    'Alice, we got
everyone together and had a snap election. We cannot be leaderless in this time
of crisis, and I am now Prime Minister of Wonderland. I now bear the
responsibility of taking care of all the thousands of people who depend on me,
and I cannot act with the impulsiveness of youth that has perhaps led us to
where we are.'
    Alice heard
Satish snort in disgust, but the last thing on her mind was bothering about
barbs thrown her way.
    'What if you
are wrong? Do you want to risk more deaths?'
    'We have
strengthened our security. I have ordered all of the recon units to come back
within Wonderland’s borders just a couple of hours