Lewis Carroll - Alice in Zombieland

‘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.