Alice Ate the Rabbit

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

– Alice, from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”

Chapter 1: Lost

Palmerston North, Manawatu, New Zealand. 1989.

It happened in a millisecond on a grey September morning.

Until then, Alice Fenton had faced the onset of puberty with the expected trepidation and anxiety.

The typical awkwardness, physical changes and waking hormones all took their emotional toll, especially as Alice’s adoptive mother offered little support.

But the hormonal rebalancing triggered something extremely rare within Alice and delivered a unique revelation.

She discovered the taste of blood to be delightful. Heavenly, in fact.

That morning, her younger brother came off his bike and skinned his knee on the pavement. Alice never had much connection or sympathy for her brother, adopted like her, but from another family. Nevertheless, she rushed over and kissed his knee better, in case mother was watching.

When the traces of haemoglobin seeped through her pursed lips that first time, and the taste blossomed on her tongue, it lit a hidden fuse. The fuse went on to ignite a massive fireworks display within her mind and body. As the detonations spread, they awoke clusters of dormant nerves in her brain. These nerve nuclei sent shockwaves through the synapses of her amygdala and limbic frameworks. Wave upon wave of focussed energy crashed against cellular beachheads. The neural debris that remained forged new connections between two primal systems. One that drove emotion and the other that drove survival instincts.

Connections that should never exist, not in normal humans. Connections that were now permanent. Irreversible. And something else. A deeply sleeping genetic organism, thousands of years in the making, awoke.

She shivered delightfully at the sensations racing through her body. But even while the fireworks exploded, instinct warned her to hide the behaviour. She pushed her lips harder against the boy’s knee and clenched her fists to control the shivers. When they subsided, she looked up to see his bewildered expression.

“You’re a weirdo, Alice,” he said, getting to his feet.

“Takes one to know one.” She turned away before licking more of his delicious blood from her lips.

That night in bed, Alice stared at the ceiling and thought not of boys, music, or homework. Those things had paled into insignificance.

Alice thought of one thing, and one thing only.

Her thirst for blood.

She discovered her own blood didn’t cut it. Her experiment with a craft knife on the end of her thumb yielded a few drops of the mysterious red fluid, but it tasted bland, not like her brother’s. That made sense to Alice. Even at twelve, she could rationalise why it might be. Her own blood coursed through her all the time. It was not special. Not to her, anyway. It was like trying to tickle yourself. It didn’t work.

Soon after that, Jenny, the girl beside her in home economics class, pricked her finger on a sewing needle. Alice had Jenny’s finger in her mouth before the girl had finished yelping. “Ow!”

The scant red droplet ignited a hotter fire in her soul. Whereas her brother’s blood had set fireworks alight, Jenny’s launched a Saturn V rocket to the moon. Alice gripped the edge of Jenny’s desk so hard, the wood creaked as she sucked on the bloody finger. Jenny assumed Alice was being sarcastic, exaggerating the whole thing for some kind of comic effect or tease. She did not realise that, given the chance, Alice would have dearly loved to stab and suck every other finger of hers.

***

A very awkward time at school followed, with Alice appearing on the scene of any accident or fight. She administered first-aid with growing skill and hid her tremors when she stole a sneaky lick from someone’s wound.

And her desire for blood grew more intense as her body developed. Soon there weren’t enough accidents to sate her thirst.

She needed more accidents to happen.

As skilful as she was at masking her urges, it wasn’t long before teachers realised bad things happened around Alice. Something about her made the other students very accident-prone.

Eighteen months later, she pushed a boy through a plate-glass window. The first teacher on the scene reported later that Alice was straddling the injured boy and licking the cuts on his face. When the teacher tried to drag her off, she hissed like a cornered cat.

It took all the willpower she could muster to come down from the high of that boy’s blood and tear herself off him. Her excuse, that it was nothing more than a silly dare, did not wash with school authorities. Their decision to expel her came as no surprise, but her acting performance in the principal’s office at least stopped him calling the police.

Too scared to seek help, Alice determined to take control of herself. She was old enough to realise her affliction was extremely unique. She’d not heard of anyone else with it, and doubted the adults in her life would know how to help her. The resemblance to vampires in movies and literature did not escape her, but she wasn’t going to “come out” at the dinner table, a confused teenager announcing she was a vampire. While there were plenty of support systems if she’d announced she was gay, those programs were unlikely to offer any help for a blood addiction.

She wondered if she’d inherited her problem from her natural parents. To the best of her abilities and limited resources, she tried to investigate who they were. Her adoptive parents, as usual, were no help. The agency they’d used had disappeared. All they could tell her was that she was Eastern European. Another barrier, as those governments were not the best at record keeping. During these fruitless endeavours, she also came to realise that their primary motivation in adopting her was probably the money received through government assistance.

For Alice, adolescence was a miserable time, defined by a lack of identity and a lonely struggle against an unknown disease.

Chapter 2: Found

Bucharest Financial Plaza, Strada Lipscani, Bucharest, 1992

Alexandru unplugged his headset, jumped up from his desk and ran out of the communication centre. The top office wasn’t answering, damn them. The glass elevator crawled up the outside of the tower as he jabbed at the executive suite’s button in a vain effort to speed the ascent. He was far too hyped to enjoy the view of the city’s old-town district spread out below. Or the setting sun that glinted from the tops of the other high rises.

He pushed his way through the elevator doors before they’d opened even halfway, ignored the protests of the receptionist, and knocked urgently on the boardroom door. His courtesy extended to three seconds pause before he burst through. Dour old faces in suits, seated around the elegant meeting table, turned towards the impertinent intruder with annoyed frowns.

“Sir, we think we’ve found her!” Alexandru gasped.

The wizened old gentleman at the head of the table stood and croaked in a raspy voice, “Christa!” The other table’s occupants began packing away their papers and pens. This meeting was cancelled.

Christa, the receptionist, appeared behind Alexandru. “I heard him, sir. Don’t worry, everyone knows what to do.”

The old man coughed and took a silk handkerchief from his top pocket. “They better. Alex, what country?”

Alexandru, impressed that the top boss knew his name, beamed with importance. “New Zealand sir.”

Someone else muttered, “Oh Jesus, that’s at the arse end of the earth.”

A coughing fit ensued, and a middle-aged woman supported the old man until it had subsided, and he’d wiped his mouth. “Lars, you need to take it easy.” She scolded him, “Where’s your inhaler?”

“I don’t need my goddam inhaler,” Lars suppressed another cough, preventing it from making him a liar. “Christa, do we have people down there?”

“Unfortunately, no, but we have a team close by in Australia. They can be there three hours from wheels-up.”

“Well, that’s not so bad, is it? And New Zealand’s a lovely place.” He scowled at the suit that had made the disparaging arse end of the earth comment. “Aotearoa, the indigenous people named it. The land of the long white cloud.”

He shuffled to the door with some help from the woman holding his elbow. In the doorway, he turned back towards his executive team. “At least she isn’t in Russia. This is a blessing, people. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make some calls. Christa, get the cogs turning, my dear. And arrange food and beverages for everyone up here and in the control centre. This building is now in lockdown.”

***

Brisbane International Airport, Queensland, Australia

The Embraer Phenom300 taxied out onto the apron, down the taxiway and held short of runway zero-one-Lima, waiting for take-off permission from the tower. Twilight brought another hot and humid day to a close. The runway lights illuminated heavy rain blowing in from the west and splattering the cockpit windows.

In the command seat on the left, Captain Stefan Minivici, a suave ex-special forces Serbian with a buzz cut and sharp chiselled features. His second in command, Dorin Pantea, a born and bred Romanian with the same hair, but a face only a mother could love. His nose having been broken several times during his stint in the engineer’s Corp of his mother country’s army. A vocation that had also left him partially deaf. He was busy re-checking the flight plan and attempting to get comfortable at the same time. He’d squeezed his large frame into the co-pilot’s seat with no room to spare and his bulging thighs stretched the draylon trousers of his suit to the point of ripping. His left thigh was jammed hard against the trim controls.

“Well, this is going to be a fun flight, no?” Dorin moaned. He adjusted himself for the tenth time, as if he’d find a hidden inch of space somewhere in the seat.

Stefan looked over and frowned. “No it is not. You are correct, Dor’. Especially if I’m constantly adjusting the trim to keep this damn thing flying straight and true.”

The idling engines, spattering rain, and the airport chatter on the radio all conspired with Dorin’s poor hearing to make conversation difficult. Even through their headsets. Dorin shrugged. “Say what?”

“Never mind! Just try not to knock the controls around.” Stefan shouted, poking Dorin in the leg.

The muscled co-pilot grunted. “I wish we had the Bombardier instead of this flying pencil.”

When the tower gave clearance, Stefan taxied them onto the runway, lined up the nose with the white centre stripes on the tarmac, and fed power to both engines. The jet turbines spooled up with a smooth whine and the aircraft quickly gained speed. They reached rotation speed halfway along the runway, and Stefan lifted the little jet into the air. As the altimeter ticked past 1,000 feet, he turned them slowly to the East, heading out over Moreton Bay and the South Pacific ocean beyond.

“It’s going to get bumpy up two thousand metres,” he yelled at Dorin, who grunted again and turned the wipers to their maximum setting. They beat wildly back and forth against the glass, failing to clear much of the rain. But there was nothing to see out there, anyway.

When they’d cleared the turbulence, Dorin unbuckled his three-point harness to enjoy at least some relief from the restraint. He ignored Stefan’s protests and lecture on safety protocols.

When the pilot had finished nagging him, Dorin asked, “Did you get a briefing update? Are we still only supposed to watch her?”

Stefan levelled the plane off at ten thousand feet and set the autopilot to take over. “Yep. No contact with her whatsoever. Establish and maintain 24/7 surveillance.”

“What? Take her to a seven eleven?”

“No, you deaf bastard. Look, forget it. We’ll talk when we land in Auckland.”

***

RNZAF Airforce Base, Ohakea, Manawatu, NZ.

The secure hotline rang so loudly, a dozing Stan Watson nearly fell out of his chair. Any call during the night watch was rare, let alone a call from Defence Headquarters in Wellington. He shook his head awake and picked up the red handset. The woman on the other end demanded that he first identify himself and recite his security clearance passwords. Satisfied, she delivered his orders and made him repeat them back. By now, he was wide awake.

“Yes ma’am. Await contact from an incoming Embraer twin engine jet, callsign Victor November three zero five. Turn on the ILS beacons and runway lights and give them clearance to land. Once they’re safely down, direct them to whatever free hanger space I’ve got. And shut everything down again.”

“And?” the woman prompted.

Stan rubbed his tired eyes, remembering. “And call you back for a debrief. And I’m not to make any other calls in the meantime.”

“Correct. Thank you Seargeant Watson, that will be all.”

Seven hundred kilometres away, Stefan flicked the radio over to Auckland tower and requested permission to start their approach. Instead, he received an updated flight plan. He rolled the plane sharply to the right, knocking Dorin’s head against the side window.

“What the fuck was that about?” Dorin shouted into the mic, rubbing his temple.

Stefan plugged new coordinates into the navigation panel. “You weren’t listening? As usual. We’ve been given an alternate airport. One of their air force bases. It’s much closer to her and will save us a long drive south from Auckland. Also, we can avoid customs.”

“Wow, ok. She’s definitely the one.”

“It would seem so.”

They touched down ninety minutes later without incident and taxied off the runway and into a service hanger as instructed. When Dorin lowered the stairs, a lone figure stood beside the plane, his hand raised in a salute.

“Welcome to New Zealand, Sirs.” Stan said, dropping his salute when both men had returned it.

Stefan counted the stripes on Stan’s shoulders before answering, “Thank you, Seargent. As a professional courtesy, I should inform you we’re both carrying.” He lifted his suit jacket to reveal a Glock 9mm pistol tucked into his waistband. Beside him, Dorin did the same.

The Kiwi Seargeant nodded. “Thanks for the heads up, sir. Be aware that our country doesn’t have open-carry licenses, so please keep those concealed, otherwise you’ll attract a lot of attention. Even our police don’t carry guns.”

“Duly noted,” Stefan nodded. “The plane also has spare ammunition and other sensitive cargo.”

“No problem, we won’t be looking inside. You have full diplomatic immunity. If you’ll follow me, a vehicle has been arranged for you. It was coming up from Wellington but should be here now.”

After they collected bulging duffel bags from the plane, Stan led them out to a black Mercedes 560 E class parked in front of the administration building. Its engine was still warm and ticking, the keys in the ignition.

“These aren’t diplomatic plates.” Dorin pointed out, popping open the boot to load their bags.

“No, but they’re government issue. Don’t worry, you won’t be stopped. I believe this car usually carries our minister of finance.”

Dorin took the wheel. He slid the driver’s seat all the way back, adjusted the mirrors to his liking and applied gentle pressure on the accelerator to avoid an obnoxious wheel spinning departure. The 5.5 litre German engine purred.

“At least we’ve got decent wheels,” he commented to Stefan, who was busy entering an encryption code into the satellite phone he’d retrieved from his bag.

The gates of the airbase slid open as they approached. At a T-junction with the main highway, Stefan pointed right, while he chatted to someone on the sat phone. Dorin accelerated to what he felt was a reasonable highway speed and readjusted his seat some more. Compared to the cockpit he’d spent three hours in, the Mercedes was luxurious.

After saying “Ok, understood.” Stefan hung up the phone, putting the large handset in the glove box.

“Follow the signs to Palmerston North. You can’t miss it. The house is on the far side of the CBD. We’ll do a quick reccy while it’s still dark and then go find a decent hotel. Tomorrow we’ll get the lay of the land, establish our surveillance routine. They’re saying we might be in for a long haul, so don’t make any travel plans. “

Dorin nodded. “There are worse places to be stuck. And anyway, it’s her, so…” he trailed off, but gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

“Yep.”

— — —

(more chapters will follow if there’s enough interest. This small novel is complete, at 54,000 words.)