The Crocodile's Jaws: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No.7) Read Online Free PDF Page B

avoid Alice's gaze, and seemed ashamed
of what he had done. Alice had seen more than her share of killing and knew
just how difficult it would be for Zohar to come to grips not just with the
loss of his family, but the fact that killing their murderers did not make
things any better.
    She decided to give him some space. She had left the last
man alive to learn more about their attack and their comrades in the vehicle.
The man was lying down, blood crusted around his head and lips. When he had
come to, he had begun shouting, and Alice had shut him up with a blow to the
face. There had been little need to tie him up. Bunny Ears and two more Biters
stood over him, and every time the man stirred, Bunny Ears growled menacingly.
The man had never seen Biters under such control, and was at Alice's feet
begging for mercy the moment she arrived.
    She pulled off his loose shirt and revealed the scales all
over his hands and mid-section.
    'Are you sick with some illness? What are these marks? What
were you injecting into yourself?'
    The man kept his head lowered, not daring to meet her eyes.
    'Don't kill me. I am just a poor man who was given a job to
recover some bags from that settlement and pass it on. They give us odd jobs
once in a while, and pay us in these drugs. I take it to forget all I have seen
and done. Please spare me.'
    Alice was no stranger to what drugs did to men, having seen
the effects of Dreamweed on the bandits who had raided her land to capture
people and Biters for the Khan and his cannibal horde. She presumed there was
another warlord like the Khan who was using drugs to get bandits to do his
bidding. Arjun and Danish had told her that these areas had once been part of a
thriving drug trade, with drugs from neighboring Afghanistan being funneled to
markets around the world, where they ruined minds and lives. Once Alice had
heard of what drugs did and how widespread the scourge had been, she wondered
why people thought Biters were the ultimate horror; it seemed man had enough
ways to destroy himself without needing any help from the supposed undead.
    After a few more minutes of interrogation, it was clear the
man knew nothing more and had no real idea of who had put him and his friends
up to this latest job. The leader of their gang, who might have known more, had
died in the attack on the settlement. Alice finally got up and nodded to Bunny
Ears. As she walked back to Zohar, the man screamed as he was bitten. After
what he had done, Alice could not release the man unscathed, but neither would
she kill him in cold blood. As one of her Biters, he might yet prove to be of
some use.
    She found Zohar sitting there and began gathering her
things.
    'Zohar, I will push on. I will keep going south and see what
else I find. There are men behind this gang, men who use gangs like this to
prey on other settlements. Let me see if there are other settlements who need
aid.'
    As she began walking, she felt a tug on her arm. It was
Zohar, a new resolve in his eyes.
    'I will come with you. I have nothing and nobody to go back
to anyways, and I'll try and help you.'
    With their new companions, Alice and Bunny Ears pushed on
south, where the tire tracks had led.
     
    ***
     
    They walked for more than three days, seeing nothing but
desolation around them. Zohar was quiet for most of the time. Like Alice, he
had grown up in a sheltered little settlement. In just a few days, he had lost
his family and was now coming to grips with the fact that the world he lived in
was a wasteland within which lurked hidden dangers.
    The tire tracks had led to a major highway, which was still
littered with the hulks of long-abandoned trucks and cars. Almost everything of
use in the vehicles had long been stripped off by scavengers, and they looked
very much like the skeletons of a long-vanished race of metal monsters. Bunny
Ears walked a few feet ahead, ever protective of Alice, while the dozen Biters
they had picked up along the way walked behind them.