Alice in Zombieland

Chapter 7 An Undead Tea-Party

There was a table set out under a spanning and skeletal dead tree in front of the dilapidated house, and the Dead Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a thin, pale Dormouse, with bare patches all over its little body, was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their bony elbows on it, and talking over its head. ‘Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,’ thought Alice; ‘only, as it’s asleep, I suppose it doesn’t mind.’

The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it. All across the table were bloody, overflowing dishes, some smeared with dark fluids that looked decayed and dried too long. Gnawed upon bones lay here and there, and on the ground at their feet. And the smell was nauseating, even to Alice, who was trying to be polite and not notice the stink of death that surrounded the tea party. ‘No room! No room!’ they cried out when they saw Alice coming. ‘There’s plenty of room!’ said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.

‘Have some wine,’ the Dead Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea and the dirty dishes and gnawed upon bones. She thought a bone with some meat on it would be nice, perhaps would assuage her gnawing hunger. But she would not grab one—unless, of course, it was offered. ‘I don’t see any wine,’ she remarked.

‘There isn’t any,’ said the Dead Hare.

‘Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,’ said Alice angrily.

‘It wasn’t very civil of you to sit down without being invited,’ said the Dead Hare.

‘I didn’t know it was your table,’ said Alice; ‘it’s laid for a great many more than three.’

‘Your hair wants cutting,’ said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech. His eyes were hollow and dark; several of his teeth were missing, giving him a smile not unlike a snarl. His hands were digging into the table like claws as he leaned closer to Alice. She could smell a cold decay waft from his mouth.

‘You should learn not to make personal remarks,’ Alice said with some severity; ‘it’s very rude.’

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, ‘Why is a raven like a writing-desk?’

‘Come, we shall have some fun now!’ thought Alice. ‘I’m glad they’ve begun asking riddles. —I believe I can guess that,’ she added aloud.

‘Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?’ said the Dead Hare.

‘Exactly so,’ said Alice.

‘Then you should say what you mean,’ the Dead Hare went on.

‘I do,’ Alice hastily replied; ‘at least—at least I mean what I say—that’s the same thing, you know.’

‘Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter, snarling at her again. A blue tongue snaked inside the dark of his mouth. It made her shiver. ‘You might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!’

‘You might just as well say,’ added the Dead Hare, ‘that “I like what I get” is the same thing as “I get what I like”!’

‘You might just as well say,’ added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, ‘that “I breathe when I sleep” is the same thing as “I sleep when I breathe”!’

‘It is the same thing with you,’ said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn’t much. Just then a murder of crows burst from the tree overhead, shaking down dead leaves, and the noisome birds exploded into the cloudy air, flying off into the distance. She wondered if the Raven she’d encountered a little while before was part of the disappearing birds as they wheeled into the dark clouds above.

The Hatter was the first to break the silence. ‘What day of the month is it?’ he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear.

Alice considered a little, and then said ‘The fourth.’

‘Two days wrong!’ sighed the Hatter. ‘I told you blood wouldn’t suit the works!’ he added looking angrily at the Dead Hare.

‘It was the best blood,’ the Dead Hare meekly replied.

‘Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,’ the Hatter grumbled: ‘you shouldn’t have put it in with the bread-knife.’

The Dead Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, ‘It was the best blood, you know.’

Alice had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. ‘What a funny watch!’ she remarked. ‘It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!’

‘Why should it?’ muttered the Hatter. ‘Does your watch tell you what year it is?’

‘Of course not,’ Alice replied very readily: ‘but that’s because it stays the same year for such a long time together.’

‘Which is just the case with mine,’ said the Hatter.

Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter’s remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. ‘I don’t quite understand you,’ she said, as politely as she could.

‘The Dormouse is asleep again,’ said the Hatter, and he poured a little cold tea upon its nose.

The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, rattling its tiny bones, and said, without opening its eyes, ‘Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself.’

‘Have you guessed the riddle yet?’ the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.

‘No, I give it up,’ Alice replied: ‘what’s the answer?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said the Hatter.

‘Nor I,’ said the Dead Hare.

Alice sighed wearily. ‘I think you might do something better with the time,’ she said, ‘than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.’

‘If you knew Time as well as I do,’ said the Hatter, ‘you wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s him.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Alice.

‘Of course you don’t!’ the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. ‘I dare say you never even spoke to Time!’

‘Perhaps not,’ Alice cautiously replied: ‘but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.’

‘Ah! that accounts for it,’ said the Hatter, leering at her again, his blue tongue licking at his dry, bloody lips. ‘He won’t stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he’d do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o’clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you’d only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!’

(‘I only wish it was,’ the Dead Hare said to itself in a whisper.)

‘That would be grand, certainly,’ said Alice thoughtfully: ‘but then—I shouldn’t be hungry for it, you know.’

‘Not at first, perhaps,’ said the Hatter: ‘but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked.’

‘Is that the way you manage?’ Alice asked.

The Hatter shook his head mournfully. ‘Not I!’ he replied. ‘We quarreled last March—just before he went mad, you know—’ (pointing with his tea spoon at the Dead Hare,) ‘—it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing

-

“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you’re at!”

-

You know the song, perhaps?’

‘I’ve heard something like it,’ said Alice.

‘It goes on, you know,’ the Hatter continued, ‘in this way:

-

“Up above the world you fly,

Like a tea-tray in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle—”’

-

Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep ‘Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle—’ and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop. In doing so, a bit of the little thing fell to the table-his foot, and Alice looked at it hungrily, her hand moving slowly across the dirty table toward it. The Dormouse saw it and snatched it back again, tucking it close to its bony chest, sniffing indignantly at Alice.

‘Well, I’d hardly finished the first verse,’ said the Hatter, ‘when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, “He’s murdering the time! Off with his head!”’

‘How dreadfully savage!’ exclaimed Alice.

‘And ever since that,’ the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, ‘he won’t do a thing I ask! It’s always six o’clock now.’

A bright idea came into Alice’s head. ‘Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?’ she asked.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ said the Hatter with a sigh: ‘it’s always tea-time, and we’ve no time to wash the things between whiles.’

‘Then you keep moving round, I suppose?’ said Alice.

‘Exactly so,’ said the Hatter: ‘as the things get used up.’

‘But what happens when you come to the beginning again?’ Alice ventured to ask.

‘Suppose we change the subject,’ the Dead Hare interrupted, yawning. ‘I’m getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know one,’ said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.

‘Then the Dormouse shall!’ they both cried. ‘Wake up, Dormouse!’ And they pinched it on both sides at once, popping off two small dead chunks of its ribcage, which the Dormouse grabbed hurriedly, all the while watching Alice as it pulled them back to its body.

The Dormouse slowly looked around at them. ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: ‘I heard every word you fellows were saying.’

‘Tell us a story!’ said the Dead Hare.

‘Yes, please do!’ pleaded Alice.

‘And be quick about it,’ added the Hatter, ‘or you’ll be asleep again before it’s done.’

‘Once upon a time there was a young queen who decided that all dead things should obey her every whim,’ the Dormouse started slowly, eyes already falling back down in preparation for slumber.

‘Wake up!’ shouted the Dead Hare. ‘Keep going! This is my favorite story.’

The Dormouse jumped in its seat, startled by the Dead Hare’s loud voice. ‘Yes, yes, quite a story it is.’ And it began to doze again.

‘Oh this will never do,’ said the Hatter. He reached across the table and pinched the little mouse until its whiskers flew up in pain and surprise.

‘What did you do that for?’ the Dormouse whined.

‘The story,’ they all three said at once.

‘Oh, yes . . . where was I?’

Alice offered helpfully, ‘The Queen?’

The Dormouse suddenly leaped from its seat and looked around in terror. ‘Where is she? Don’t let her find me!’

The Hatter was able to get the Dormouse settled once again. ‘She isn’t here. She is, in fact, nowhere to be seen. Now get back to the story.’

But the Dormouse was too disturbed to sit still for a moment. It found a half-full tea cup and drained it with shaking paws. When it finished, it smacked its lips and sat back, seemingly calm now. ‘Once upon a time there was a queen . . .’

‘Yes, you’ve already said that,’ Alice said.

The Dormouse gave her a chilly stare and sniffed, turning away. ‘You really should learn some manners.’

‘The story!’ demanded the Dead Hare, shaking the little Dormouse until his whiskers began to fall off.

‘All right, yes, okay,’ the Dormouse shoved the Dead Hare away. ‘The Queen built a box to control them all. The end.’

Alice looked around at the Hatter and the Dead Hare to see if they were satisfied with such an abrupt telling, but neither of them seemed to be listening to the little Dormouse any longer; they were busy gathering up its fallen whiskers, tossing them into their tea cups.

‘That’s it?’ Alice said.

The Dormouse smiled happily and finally allowed itself to look at her. ‘You liked it? Maybe another one?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the Hatter and the Dead Hare at the same time before Alice could ask the Dormouse to finish the first one to her satisfaction.

‘Once upon a time there were three little sisters,’ the Dormouse began in a great hurry; ‘and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well—’

‘What did they live on?’ said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

‘They lived on treacle,’ said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.

‘They couldn’t have done that, you know,’ Alice gently remarked; ‘they’d have been ill.’

‘So they were,’ said the Dormouse; ‘very ill.’

Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: ‘But why did they live at the bottom of a well?’

‘Take some more tea,’ the Dead Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

‘I’ve had nothing yet,’ Alice replied in an offended tone, ‘so I can’t take more.’

‘You mean you can’t take less,’ said the Hatter: ‘it’s very easy to take more than nothing.’

‘Nobody asked your opinion,’ said Alice.

‘Who’s making personal remarks now?’ the Hatter asked triumphantly. His eyes rolled around in their dark sockets, like wet pebbles, and he gave a half growl, half snicker.

Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and one of the gnawed-upon bones (the cup was rather smeared with blood and other fluids, but she could no longer control her hunger), and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. ‘Why did they live at the bottom of a well?’

The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, ‘It was a treacle-well.’

‘There’s no such thing!’ Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the Dead Hare went ‘Sh! sh!’ and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, ‘If you can’t be civil, you’d better finish the story for yourself.’

‘No, please go on!’ Alice said very humbly; ‘I won’t interrupt again. I dare say there may be one.’

‘One, indeed!’ said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. ‘And so these three little sisters—they were learning to draw, you know—’

‘What did they draw?’ said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.

‘Treacle,’ said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.

‘I want a clean cup,’ interrupted the Hatter: ‘let’s all move one place on.’ He tossed a chipped and bloodied cup to the ground.

He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the Dead Hare moved into the Dormouse’s place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the Dead Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the Dead Hare had just upset the milk-jug into his plate. But it did not hold milk; instead thick dark blood, with chunks of torn flesh swimming in it, clopped to the dirty plate and table. She pushed the plate away with a disgusted grimace.

Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: ‘But I don’t understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?’

‘You can draw water out of a water-well,’ said the Hatter; ‘so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well—eh, stupid?’

‘But they were in the well,’ Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.

‘Of course they were’, said the Dormouse; ‘—well in.’

This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.

As it spoke, its fur was falling in little dry clumps at its feet even as it tried in vain to retrieve the stray pieces and put them back.

‘They were learning to draw,’ the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; ‘and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—’

‘Why with an M?’ said Alice.

‘Why not?’ said the Dead Hare.

Alice was silent, but her curiosity was getting the best of her again. She wanted to hear the story about the Red Queen and how she controlled the dead. She turned to the Hatter, who seemed of the three the least sleepy, and said, ‘If you please, could you finish the story about how the Queen came to control the zombies?’

For a moment the Hatter only stared at her with his strangely distant gaze and then he shrugged, sipping in vain at his empty tea cup. ‘I suppose it would not hurt.’

‘What?’ asked Alice, confused again.

‘The story,’ the Hatter replied. ‘Nothing that isn’t already common knowledge except to newcomers and visitors.’

Alice settled in her seat and waited eagerly.

The Hatter found a small bone with some meat still on it and nibbled at it for a moment, then he began: ‘Some say she came from a world outside of Zombieland, but no one can say for sure, and she certainly isn’t going to say. She was a poor serving girl at a local pub who happened to be serving the night the King himself came to stay while he was traveling to a far away land to meet a witch and a wizard about acquiring a labor force from their diminutive populace of workers.

Alice frowned in confusion; she’d never heard of such a place before.

The Hatter continued between nibbles at the raw meat on the bone. ‘She made herself irresistible to the King and soon they were married. Then one day, our fair land was struck down by some dread disease that caused the dead to rise again and seek out fresh flesh. Before long, the whole land was in turmoil and there were more zombies than living. But the Red Queen had fought long and hard to become the Queen and she wasn’t about to let a bit of bad luck get in her way. She kept her scientists working day and night to come up with some way to control the undead. I’m not sure how it all worked, but I do know that soon the Queen had an army of the undead under her control and she was using them to destroy those she could not control. At first, just the undead. But as her powers grew and she became more angry with her world, she began to take it out on both the living and the undead. Now she walks the kingdom with her zombie army and her control box, keeping us all in line with fear. And no one dares to defy her because she can turn her undead army against anyone silly enough to do so. Do you see?’

Alice nodded silently, unsure how much of what the Hatter said was true and how much was just make believe.

The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: ‘—that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know you say things are “much of a muchness” —did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?’

‘Really, now you ask me,’ said Alice, very much confused, ‘I don’t think—’

‘Then you shouldn’t talk,’ said the Hatter.

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot, and his arm was dangling at an alarming angle.

‘At any rate I’ll never go there again!’ said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. ‘It’s the stupidest and most disgusting tea-party I ever was at in all my life!’

Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the wind-whipped trees had a door leading right into it. ‘That’s very curious!’ she thought. ‘But everything’s curious today. I think I may as well go in at once.’

And in she went.

Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. ‘Now, I’ll manage better this time,’ she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the graveyard. Then she went to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and then—she found herself at last in the wonderfully spooky graveyard, among the tilting tombstones and weeds and decayed crosses.