Alice in Zombieland

Chapter 8 The Queen’s Graveyard Croquet-Ground

Alarge gray tomb stood near the entrance of the graveyard. The roses growing on it were twisted, black and thorny, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red. Each of the gardeners was pale-faced and smelled terrible. And each wore one of those strange jeweled collars she’d seen on other dead men. Alice thought this a very curious thing, and she went nearer to watch them, and just as she came up to them she heard one of them say, ‘Look out now, Five! Don’t go splashing paint over me like that!’

‘I couldn’t help it,’ said Five, in a sulky tone; ‘Seven jogged my elbow.’

On which Seven looked up and said, ‘That’s right, Five! Always lay the blame on others!’

‘You’d better not talk!’ said Five. ‘I heard the Queen say only yesterday you deserved to be beheaded!’

‘What for?’ said the one who had spoken first.

‘That’s none of your business, Two!’ said Seven.

‘Yes, it is his business!’ said Five, ‘and I’ll tell him—it was for bringing the cook tulip-roots instead of onions.’

Seven flung down his brush, and had just begun ‘Well, of all the unjust things—’ when his eye chanced to fall upon Alice, as she stood watching them, and he checked himself suddenly: the others looked round also, and all of them bowed low, their loose collars clinking in unison like small out-of-tune bells.

‘Would you tell me,’ said Alice, a little timidly, ‘why you are painting those roses?’

Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, ‘Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here tomb ought to have been covered with red roses, and we put black ones on it by mistake; and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we’re doing our best, afore she comes, to—’ At this moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the windswept cemetery, called out ‘The Queen! The Queen!’ and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen.

First came ten soldiers carrying clubs; these were all shaped like the three gardeners, oblong and flat, with their hands and feet at the corners: next the ten courtiers; these were ornamented all over with diamonds, and walked two and two, as the soldiers did. And they, too, wore the jeweled collars round their stiff necks. After these came the royal children; there were ten of them, and the little dears came jumping merrily along hand in hand, in couples: they were all ornamented with hearts. Next came the guests, mostly Kings and Queens, and among them Alice recognized the Black Rat: it was talking in a hurried nervous manner, smiling at everything that was said, and went by without noticing her. Then followed the Knave of Hearts, carrying the King’s crown on a crimson velvet cushion; and, last of all this grand procession, came the King and Queen of Hearts.

The King was a small man, hardly much taller than Alice herself. He tried to carry himself with greater height and dignity than he actually possessed, which made him rather funny to watch as he hurried to keep up with the Red Queen, who was striding along as if on massive elephant legs.

And it was the Red Queen who Alice found most strangely frightening. Even if she had heard no stories about her cruelty and bloody mindedness, Alice still would have found plenty to be scared of. The Red Queen was an older woman, her dark hair shining with great strands of gray, and her face was broad and unfriendly. Two thin lips seemed to be compressed forcefully at her long mouth. Two beady dark eyes looked out upon the world from narrow peepholes of displeasure. And her broad, horse-like nose, flared open with each angry inhalation. She looked down upon those smaller than herself with a sure sense of arrogant power. And in the crook of her left arm, she carried a small metal box, clutched closely to her wide bosom. In her other hand she carried a long wooden stick. It was notched and stained dark along the thick head, as if it had been used in the past for some bloody violence.

Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought not to lie down on her face like the three undead gardeners, but she could not remember ever having heard of such a rule at processions; ‘and besides, what would be the use of a procession,’ thought she, ‘if people had all to lie down upon their faces, so that they couldn’t see it?’

So she stood still where she was, and waited.

When the procession came opposite to Alice, they all stopped and looked at her, and the Queen said severely ‘Who is this?’ She said it to the Knave of Hearts, who only bowed and smiled in reply.

‘Idiot!’ said the Queen, tossing her head impatiently; and, turning to Alice, she went on, ‘What’s your name, child?’

‘My name is Alice, so please your Majesty,’ said Alice very politely; but she added, to herself, ‘Why, they’re only a bunch of dead cards, after all. I needn’t be afraid of them!’

‘And who are these?’ said the Queen, pointing to the three shivering gardeners who were lying round the tomb; for, you see, as they were lying on their faces, and the pattern on their backs was the same as the rest of the pack, she could not tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers, or courtiers, or three of her own children.

‘How should I know?’ said Alice, surprised at her own courage. ‘It’s no business of mine.’

The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, screamed ‘Off with her head! Off—’

‘Nonsense!’ said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was silent.

The King laid his hand upon her arm, and timidly said ‘Consider, my dear: she is only a child!’

The Queen turned angrily away from him, and said to the Knave ‘Turn them over!’

The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot.

‘Get up!’ said the Queen, in a shrill, loud voice, and the three gardeners instantly jumped up, and began bowing to the King, the Queen, the royal children, and everybody else.

‘Leave off that!’ screamed the Queen. ‘You make me giddy.’ And then, turning to the black roses she went on, ‘What have you been doing here?’

‘May it please your Majesty,’ said Two, in a very humble tone, going down on one knee as he spoke, ‘we were trying—’

‘I see!’ said the Queen, who had meanwhile been examining the roses. ‘Off with their heads!’ and the procession moved on, three of the soldiers remaining behind to execute the unfortunate dead gardeners, who ran to Alice for protection.

‘You shan’t be beheaded!’ said Alice, and she put them behind a large weed covered gravestone that stood near. The three dead soldiers wandered about for a minute or two, moaning and rolling their eyes, looking for them, and then quietly marched off after the others.

‘Are their heads off?’ shouted the Queen.

‘Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty!’ the soldiers groaned in reply.

‘That’s right!’ shouted the Queen. ‘Can you play croquet?’

The dead soldiers were silent, and looked at Alice, as the question was evidently meant for her.

‘Yes!’ shouted Alice.

‘Come on, then!’ roared the Queen, and Alice joined the procession, wondering very much what would happen next.

‘It’s—it’s a very fine day!’ said a timid voice at her side.

She was walking by the Black Rat, who was peeping anxiously into her face, gnashing his teeth and twitching his long black tail nervously.

‘Very,’ said Alice: ‘—where’s the Duchess?’

‘Hush! Hush!’ said the Rat in a low, hurried tone. He looked anxiously over his shoulder as he spoke, and then raised himself upon tiptoe, put his mouth close to her ear, and whispered ‘She’s under sentence of execution.’

‘What for?’ said Alice.

‘Did you say “What a pity!”?’ the Rat asked.

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Alice: ‘I don’t think it’s at all a pity. I said “What for?”’

‘She boxed the Queen’s ears—’ the Rat began. Alice gave a little scream of laughter.

‘Oh, hush!’ the Rat whispered in a frightened tone. ‘The Queen will hear you! You see, she came rather late, and the Queen said—’

‘Get to your places!’ shouted the Queen in a voice of thunder, and people began running about in all directions, tumbling up against each other; however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game began. Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in her life; it was all ridges and furrows and tombstones; the balls were zombie heads, the mallets made up of severed human limbs and parts of skeletons, and the dead soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.

The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her leg mallet: she succeeded in getting it tucked away, comfortably enough, under her arm, but generally, just as she had got it nicely straightened out, and was going to give the gape-mouthed zombie head a blow with its bony ankle, it would twist itself round and try to tickle her nose with its decayed toes that she could not help bursting out laughing: and when she had got it down, and was going to begin again, it was very provoking to find that the zombie head had stuck out its blue tongue and was in the act of crawling away: besides all this, there was generally a ridge or furrow or headstone in the way wherever she wanted to send the head, and, as the doubled-up soldiers were always getting up and walking off to other parts of the ground, Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed. Meanwhile, her hunger, which she thought taken quite care of by the small snack she’d had at that dreadful tea party, was coming on again, and her leg mallet was beginning to look particularly good for a nibble or two. She looked around cautiously, and when she saw no one was watching, she bent down for a bite. But the leg must’ve known her intentions because it began to kick and writhe in her grip and she had to give up the idea just so she could keep hold of it.

The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the wailing, tongue-boosting zombie heads; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting ‘Off with his head!’ or ‘Off with her head!’ about once in a minute.

Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute, ‘and then,’ thought she, ‘what would become of me? They’re dreadfully fond of beheading people here; the great wonder is, that there’s any one left alive!’

Just then one of the dead soldiers began to wail loudly and waved his arms about. One of the other players tried to quiet it down, but before he could the Red Queen was wading through the weeds, shoving aside the other guests, until she reached the disturbance. Without warning, she swung that heavy wooden stick of hers and struck the wailing soldier in the forehead. Blood and brains exploded in a gory shower and the soldier went dead silent and collapsed to the cold dirt.

The terrified player who had been trying to quiet the wailing zombie soldier looked sidewise at the Red Queen, unsure what to do.

But Alice saw the Red Queen had no such hesitancy: she also struck the player in the head and his skull similarly exploded, sending his brains into the air. The stunned player never had time to speak a word in his defense. Alice felt sick to her stomach at such casual violence and turned away to hide her face.

She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself ‘It’s the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to.’

‘How are you getting on?’ said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth enough for it to speak with.

Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. ‘It’s no use speaking to it,’ she thought, ‘till its ears have come, or at least one of them.’ In another minute the whole black furred head appeared, and then Alice put down her twitching leg mallet, and began an account of the game, feeling very glad she had someone to listen to her. The Cat seemed to think that there was enough of it now in sight, and no more of it appeared.

‘I don’t think they play at all fairly,’ Alice began, in rather a complaining tone, ‘and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can’t hear oneself speak—and they don’t seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them—and you’ve no idea how confusing it is all the things being undead; for instance, there’s the arch I’ve got to go through next walking about at the other end of the ground—and I should have croqueted the Queen’s zombie head just now, only it rolled itself away when it saw mine coming!’

‘How do you like the Queen?’ said the Cat in a low voice.

‘Not at all,’ said Alice: ‘she’s so extremely—’ Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went on, ‘—likely to win, that it’s hardly worth while finishing the game.’

The Queen smiled and passed on.

‘Who are you talking to?’ said the King, going up to Alice, and looking at the Cat’s black head with great curiosity.

‘It’s a friend of mine—a Cheshire Cat,’ said Alice: ‘allow me to introduce it.’

‘I don’t like the look of it at all,’ said the King: ‘however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.’

‘I’d rather not,’ the Cat remarked.

‘Don’t be impertinent,’ said the King, ‘and don’t look at me like that!’ He got behind Alice as he spoke.

‘A cat may look at a king,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve read that in some book, but I don’t remember where.’

‘Well, it must be removed,’ said the King very decidedly, and he called the Queen, who was passing at the moment, ‘My dear! I wish you would have this cat removed!’

The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. ‘Off with his head!’ she said, without even looking round.

‘I’ll fetch the executioner myself,’ said the King eagerly, and he hurried off.

Alice thought she might as well go back, and see how the game was going on, as she heard the Queen’s voice in the distance, screaming with passion. She had already heard her sentence three of the players to be executed for having missed their turns, and she did not like the look of things at all, as the game was in such confusion that she never knew whether it was her turn or not. So she went in search of her zombie head, which unfortunately looked a great deal like all the other moaning, rolling heads on the cemetery field of play that she was confused straight away as to which was which.

Finally she did find hers; it was engaged in a fight with another head, which seemed to Alice an excellent opportunity for croqueting one of them with the other: the only difficulty was, that her leg mallet had pulled itself across to the other side of the graveyard, where Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to dig itself back into the ground, using its rotted heel and grasping toes.

By the time she had caught the leg and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the heads were out of sight: ‘but it doesn’t matter much,’ thought Alice, ‘as all the arches are gone from this side of the ground.’ So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend.

As she passed by one of the dead soldiers, she stopped to admire the strange jeweled collar. It seemed to be welded together rather clumsily, so much so that when she reached up to test it, the thing fell off the soldier’s neck and fell to the ground.

Suddenly the soldier began to stumble and moan, his eyes rolling round in his head. His teeth began to gnash terribly and he turned on Alice. She fell back, and the soldier reached for her. But before he could touch her, a small squad of soldiers were advancing on their mate and bearing long sharp axes. A swing, a swipe, and the zombie soldier’s head went flying off to join the other heads gnashing and tonguing at the ground around her. The poor dead soldier’s body fell to the ground next to his collar. The other soldiers gazed at the loosed collar in suspicion.

Alice said nothing and hurried away. Oh, how she hoped the Red Queen didn’t hear about that.

When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable.

The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said.

The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at his time of life.

The King’s argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren’t to talk nonsense.

The Queen’s argument was, that if something wasn’t done about it in less than no time she’d have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.)

Alice could think of nothing else to say but ‘It belongs to the Duchess: you’d better ask her about it.’

‘She’s in prison,’ the Queen said to the executioner: ‘fetch her here.’ And the executioner went off like an arrow.

The Cat’s scraggly black head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had come back with the Duchess, it had entirely disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game.