Free Phantoms of the North: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 6) by Mainak Dhar

numbers and weapons
helped them survive the Biters. When we began setting up, they stayed away. He
says word had spread about you and our fighting with Zeus, and they decided
wisely enough not to mess with us. Then the Phantoms showed up a few years ago,
and they started on a new line of business. It began with them trading food or
fruits for Dreamweed, and soon many of them were addicted. Then came the real
offer—Dreamweed and guns for people.’
    ‘Does he know anything more about
these Phantoms?’
    Edwards shook his head.
    ‘He’s seen them only twice and
that too from a distance when they went to drop off their human cargo at the
designated pickup point. Same thing we heard during the attack on the farm—big
men on horses, carrying automatic weapons and fully covered by cloaks and a
mask.’
    Alice turned to Danish, who had
been soundlessly typing away on the keyboard in front of his computer terminal.
    ‘Did you manage to learn anything?’
    Over the last couple of years, the
Internet had been restored slowly but surely, starting with using the servers
captured from the Central Committee and increasingly by putting online old servers.
The days of recreational surfing were long gone, but at least people could now
communicate using message boards, mail and even video chats. That had been the
lifeline between Alice’s forces and Konrath in the US Homeland. It was what had
allowed them to get advance warning of the danger posed by the Snark missile
the Executive Committee had unleashed on Shanghai, and now they were counting
on it to get some information on what they were up against.
    ‘Unfortunately not much. What was
Pakistan was pretty much wasted in The Rising. After they nuked some Indian
bases, they were pretty much wiped out. Nobody knows much about these so-called
Phantoms. As we’ve talked before, it’s perfectly possible some tribe survived
but I still don’t get what they want with people.’
    Alice stepped out to get some
fresh air and found Bunny Ears there, standing in wait.
    ‘Spotted anything unusual, Bunny
Ears?’
    He growled, a low-pitched sound
that Alice had come to recognize as a no. Bunny Ears and his Biters had been
out in force for much of the day, but as Alice had guessed, once news spread of
what had happened to the three bandits they had encountered, bandits had been
very shy when it came to confronting patrols from Wonderland. Alice thought
about the moment she had ordered the men to be bitten. At one time she had
believed, like all other settlers in the Deadland, that being turned into a
Biter was a fate worse than death.
    Better dead than undead.
    Now she knew better. The Biters
were diseased, aggressive and did not always act in line with what people might
consider rational behavior, but they were not supernatural monsters. They were
people infected with a virus or disease that could be vaccinated against, and
perhaps one day cured. Still, being bitten would have been as harrowing for the
men as being shot in cold blood. Alice had done it in the heat of the moment,
angered by the nonchalance of their leader, by the fact that killing and raping
innocents for loot and plunder did not weigh at all on his conscience. Now, in the
cold, sober light of day, she wondered if she should have let them go or
brought them in.
    And then what? Wonderland didn’t
have a penal system. Arjun had taken an old building and made it a makeshift
jail. The rules had been simple when they started out—steal or fight, and you
spent a couple of days in the ‘jail’. Serious assault, rape or murder and you
were cast out into the Deadland, which in the early days had been as good as a
death sentence. Now, with thousands of inhabitants and the borders of Wonderland
spreading fast, they would need to rethink how they thought about crime and
punishment. It was precisely at moments like these when Alice regretted not
having her Dad along. He would have figured it all out. He would have managed
to make