Through the Killing Glass by Mainak Dhar Page A

meant Satish and Vince were almost
there, but she could not afford to wait. She had to do something to delay the Biters.
The Red Guard officer was now striding past them, with the Biters following
her, and as Alice watched the Biters began to disperse. If she didn’t take them
out as they were bunched up, it would be almost impossible to track them all
down.
    Alice took out
a grenade from her belt and pulled the pin. She took a deep breath and then
hurled it at the passing group. To her dismay, the Red Guard officer either had
great instincts or was just very lucky. She looked up to see the dark
projectile coming through the air and screamed and dove to her right. The
Biters could not react with such speed and agility and as the grenade exploded,
Alice saw at least three of them go down. It might not have killed them, but at
least they would not move any further. The officer was now shouting orders and
the Biters began to converge on her position. Edwards had his gun out and was
firing, but all he managed to do was to distract them for a second before they
again closed in on them. Alice now had her rifle out and was firing on
single-shot mode. She took out two Biters before pulling Edwards back with her,
climbing a short hill. Her only hope was to hold out until reinforcements came
and to trade space for kills. She saw the Red Guard officer screaming orders
and five of the Biters detached from the main group and came around from the
left. Biters who could follow combat tactics on a human's orders and flank
enemy positions was something Alice had never seen, but clearly this officer
had some such control over them. She knelt and fired again, felling one more
Biter before retreating further up the hill.
    Suddenly she
heard a loud roar and saw dark shapes emerge from a hole about a hundred meters
to her left. Her Biters had got the message and come to her assistance. Hatter
was the first out, followed by Bunny Ears and twenty more Biters. When Hatter
saw the danger Alice was in, he screamed and the Biters following him tore into
the attackers. Alice watched as Hatter caught one of the Biters by the neck and
nearly tore his head off. Bunny Ears had only one good arm, but he and another
Biter wrestled a six-foot giant down. All around Alice, Biters were locked in
hand-to-hand combat, clawing and biting each other to shreds. What was clear
was that Hatter and his Biters were both outnumbered and outmatched. The Biters
who followed Alice had been transformed years ago, and their bodies had all the
damage and wear and tear that came with being a Biter in the Deadland. The Red
Guard Biters, meanwhile, were healthy by comparison, young and fit.
    They were now
too mixed up together for Alice to use her assault rifle, so she handed it to
Edwards and took out her favored combination for close combat: knife in one
hand and handgun in the other. She ran towards the melee and saw a Biter come
at her from her left. A shot to the kneecap sent him stumbling down and another
to the head took him out as she ran past him, barely breaking her stride.
Another Biter came at her and lashed out at her. Alice was momentarily knocked
off balance, but she recovered in a second, going down on one knee to avoid the
next blow and stabbing up with her knife, severing the Biter’s hamstring. As
the Biter stumbled, she put a bullet in his head. Alice's mind was a mask of
concentration, filtering out everything other than the immediate threat in
front of her, and her hands and legs moved as if by their own volition, driven
by years of training and combat experience.
    Another Biter
went down before her and then she saw the Red Guard officer. Alice saw the
officer was armed with a short sword and as Alice watched, she swung it in a
deadly arc, decapitating one of Alice's Biters.
    Hatter was now
behind the officer and Alice saw him grab the officer's arm and bite into it.
Before Alice could see what happened next, a Biter came in front of her. His
teeth were