Phantoms of the North: An Alice in Deadland Adventure (Alice, No. 6) Read Online Free Page A

saving lives than he
was at taking them.
    Salil stopped the Jeep and the
truck behind them also came to a halt by the side of the road. As they
dismounted, a man got out of the truck and opened the back. Bunny Ears and a
dozen Biters came out and stood, waiting for Alice.
    Alice had made a deal with Arjun.
Whether or not they went after the slave traders, they would have to ensure the
farmlands they had chosen were free of hostile Biters. If they happened to come
across any bandit gangs then they would deal with them. Arjun knew of course
that Alice would do more than just wait around to stumble upon gangs of slave
traders. He had seen the fury in her eyes when she had talked about the
condition they had found Sayoni in. They had spent a week formulating their
plan, while a few recon teams went out to gather intelligence about the area
Alice had in mind for the farmland.
    Alice walked up to Bunny Ears and
the other Biters. Even after all this time, some humans might have found it
strange for her to talk to Biters. After all, Biters had been presumed to be
nothing more than mindless monsters. Alice, of course, knew better. ‘There may
be other Biters out here. I don’t want to hurt any of them, so if you come
across them, bring them to me and we can make peace with them. If you come
across any gangs, wait for me. I don’t want you to go up against men with guns
by yourselves.’
    Bunny Ears grunted and led the
other Biters off into the darkness.
    ‘Salil, get the boys ready. We
need to clean up our neighborhood.’
     
    ***
     
    ‘Pass me one of those. I need some
Dreamweed too.’
    The bandit lazily passed one of
the cigarettes back to his friend, who was sprawled nearby. As he took a drag
and inhaled, he sighed and rested his head against the rock. He had been taking
drugs since well before The Rising, and the lack of a fix was as bad as any of
the other terrors he had had to endure since the day all the guards at his
prison had abandoned their posts, and he had stepped out, not into the freedom
he had at first anticipated, but into a terrifying new world where the undead
and the living alike preyed on the weak.
    ‘We need to get into a new line of
business. Hardly any people to grab around here, and with what happened to
Bilal and our boys, that yellow-haired witch seems to be coming into our area.’
    Another man, sitting behind a
tree, spat on the ground.
    ‘She got lucky, that’s all. This
is our land, and we’ve done as we’ve pleased here for years. If she comes by
again, I swear I’ll cut off her head.’
    He shifted painfully, his leg
still stiff from the bullet wound Alice had inflicted on him in the attack on
his camp. She had left him alive, and that was a mistake he was sure he would
make her pay dearly for.
    ‘Bilal, what of the folks across
the border? If we don’t get more people to them, they told me they would stop giving
us Dreamweed.’
    Bilal sat there, thinking in
silence. The absence of the drug he and his mates were so hooked on would be
troublesome, but he was far more worried about crossing the monsters they
supplied people to. He shivered at the thought of his last meeting. Despite
still bleeding from his wounds, he had been driven down to the old border,
through a bone-jarring journey over a mountain pass where he had met two of the
cloaked and masked monsters on horseback. They had been clear. If Bilal and his
men did not send fresh supplies, they would come for them. But they had also
offered a deal, one that Bilal was going to take them up on. It was his only
way of escaping their wrath.
    ‘The Phantoms gave me an option.
We give them Biters instead of humans, and they’ll still pay us, though we’ll
get only half a packet of Dreamweed per Biter.’
    ‘I always thought they wanted
people as slaves. What the hell do they want with Biters?’
    Bilal shrugged.
    ‘I have no clue, and I’m not about
to ask them. All I know is that hunting humans has got more dangerous, but
there’s