Read Alice in Deadland Trilogy for Free Online Page B

the trees. The child the Biter had been carrying was now
feet away from Alice, and looking at its hideous form, with its mangled face
and bloody skin, it was hard to feel any emotion the way one felt towards human
children. Alice was about to crawl away under the bushes nearby and try and
escape, but something held her back. She looked back at the child again, and
this time his eyes met hers. There was no innocence, no love: just the blank,
hate-filled expression that was characteristic of Biters, and while he could
not even walk, he began to crawl towards her, baring a handful of half-formed
teeth. The rational part of Alice's mind told her to run, but she was
transfixed at the sight of this little child who would no doubt bite Alice and
transform her into a Biter like him given half a chance, yet who was little
more than a child. A helpless child.
    Just then, a huge Biter easily standing more than six and a
half feet tall ran over in front of her. He was wearing a floppy hat and much
of the left side of his face was missing. He picked up the child and ran
towards the nearby trees as Alice heard a fresh burst of firing. This time it
was not the distinctive pops of sniper rifles, but the staccato bursts of
automatic weapon fire. That could mean only one thing: Zeus troopers were now
on the ground.
    Alice looked to her left and saw something was which no less
than a miracle: her backpack, which Bunny Ears must have dropped there in the
chaos. She remembered the signal flare that had been there and crawled towards
the backpack, grabbing it before she again retreated behind cover. She unzipped
it and breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the signal flare was still there.
She looked around and saw that Bunny Ears was nowhere to be seen. Now was her
chance. She popped the flare and soon a red light shot up in the sky. She
watched it sail above the treeline and hoped that it would get the attention of
the Zeus troopers and someone would come to get her.
    She did succeed in attracting attention all right, but of
entirely the unwanted variety when she saw two Biters homing in on her. They
were screaming and coming at her with their teeth bared. Alice realized with a
shudder that one of them must have claimed a victim in the fighting now going
on all around her since his mouth was covered with fresh blood that was
dripping onto his muddy and torn shirt. There was no time and no place to run,
so Alice got ready to face her attackers. The first to reach her was the man
with the bloody face, a thin man who was missing his left arm below the elbow
and seemed to have half his hair burnt off. As he screamed and leapt towards
Alice, she went down on a knee, sweeping him off his feet. She had no weapons
with her, but she brought her foot down on the Biter's windpipe in a crushing
kick. It would have killed a grown man, but the Biter screamed and began to get
up again. The second Biter, a tall man wearing a blood stained vest and shorts,
was now almost upon her. Alice ran towards him, dodging his outstretched arms,
and then turned around on her heels to kick his foot from under him behind his
knee. It shattered his leg, but as Alice well knew, that would hardly be enough
to stop a Biter on the rampage. He got up unsteadily on one leg, as Alice tried
to run only to come straight in the path of the first Biter, whose neck now hung
at an awkward angle, but his mouth was open and he lunged at her.
    Alice closed her eyes, bracing herself for the attack that
never came. She heard a loud pop and when she opened her eyes she saw the
Biter's headless body lying just a couple of feet from her. The second Biter,
now limping towards her, met a similar fate as another round slammed into his
head.
    She looked into the trees ahead and saw a black clad man
kneeling, a rifle at his shoulder. He wore the black battle dress of the Zeus
troopers, but unlike the others she had seen, he had no helmet to cover his
close-cropped black hair, which was covered with