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

having to babysit their new wards, but now he had no such misgivings.
They were all more than pulling their weight.
    ‘What do you want for your
birthday?’
    The boy’s eyes lit up.
    ‘You know what I’d really like? I
want a sniper rifle.’
    Salil chuckled to himself. That
was not the first time Chris had made the request, and Salil had checked with
Alice. With their small stocks of sniper rifles, it was unlikely they would
hand one out to a kid, especially since there was no imminent fighting to be
done which required such a mobilization.
    ‘I’ll see what I can do. Now go on
back to the farm. I’ll finish my patrol and get there soon.’
    He had been on patrol outside the
farm for most of the day and he checked back with Brittany to see if she had
picked up anything on her side of the farm.
    ‘Nothing. Those horsemen wouldn’t
have come by just for a joyride. Something’s up.’
    ‘I know, but now all we can do is
wait and watch.’
    A few hundred meters away, Alice
was holding a class for kids—both those who lived in Wonderland and the new
arrivals. There were about twenty kids there, all under the age of fifteen, and
Alice was teaching them unarmed combat skills. She still remembered her own
lessons from back in the settlement, when Jones and others had trained her, and
while the war with Zeus was over, she wanted to make sure that her people were
never found wanting if they were called upon to fight again. The horsemen
worried her. It was one thing to fight against enemies like Zeus or the Red
Guards, whose agenda and mission was known. It was quite another to fight
against enemies whose identity, let alone their agenda, was a mystery.
    Two girls were sparring, and one
of them caught Alice’s eye as she deftly threw her opponent with minimal
effort. She had come in with the last flight from the Homeland, and was
reportedly the daughter of a famous resistance fighter who had fallen in
battle. Her mother was a scientist who was working on the farm equipment, and
she had accompanied her over.
    ‘What’s your name and how old are
you?’
    The girl, sweat glistening on her
olive skin, straightened up to look at Alice.
    ‘I’m Teresa.’
    ‘You did well. Now, let’s get some
firearms practice before we call it a day.’
    Teresa grinned at the praise and
joined the other kids as they sat in a circle and Alice trained them on the
finer points of shooting a handgun while on the run. When Alice had been Teresa’s
age, she would have been carrying a sidearm at all times, but now weapons were
stored in the armory and a small batch had been brought out for training.
    ‘When do we get to fire for real?
We just practice here.’
    Alice saw the pout on Teresa’s
face and suppressed a smile. When she had been younger she would pester Jones
and her Dad to allow her to go out on combat patrols, and had even stolen out
of the settlement on more than one occasion, trying to get some action. ‘Teresa,
we train to fight so we can if we don’t have a choice, but I wouldn’t ever wish
for a battle.’
    As she got up to leave, she
wondered if that had been her speaking or her Dad. Alice had always been keen
to get into battle, but now, having seen what it did to people and learned what
it felt like to lose those you cared most about, she had learned for herself
what her Dad had tried to teach her when she had been growing up.
    She found Aalok near the farm,
walking alongside Bunny Ears and Norbert. When they saw Alice, Aalok called her
over.
    ‘I’ve been spending some time with
Bunny Ears, and something struck me. That’s why I got Norbert along for a
second opinion.’
    ‘What’s up?’ Alice could see the
excitement in Aalok’s eyes as he talked.
    ‘I don’t know if it’s all Biters
or just him, but he reacts to things. We used to think Biters had no memories,
but when we were on patrol in the Ruins looking for spare parts for the
factory, we found something and Bunny Ears just sat there, looking at it