Alice in Zombieland Read Free

little golden key and hurried off to the little door.
          Poor Alice! It was as much as she could do, lying down on one side, to look through into the garden with one eye; but to get through was more hopeless than ever: she sat down and began to cry again. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ said Alice, ‘a great girl like you,’ (she might well say this), ‘to go on crying in this way! Stop this moment, I tell you!’ But she went on all the same. But the bump to her head had really started the blood flowing now and soon she was shedding gallons of warm, red blood, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep and reaching half down the hall.
          After a time she heard a little pattering of feet in the distance, and she hastily dried her eyes, wiping the blood from her face (strangely enough she no longer felt any pain at all; it was as if that last bump had settled the matter of whether she must feel pain), to see what was coming. It was the Black Rat returning, splendidly dressed, with a pair of white kid gloves in one hand and a large fan in the other: he came trotting along in a great hurry, muttering to himself as he came, ‘Oh! the Duchess, the Duchess! Oh! won’t she be savage if I’ve kept her waiting!’ Alice felt so desperate that she was ready to ask help of any one; so, when the Rat came near her, she began, in a low, timid voice, ‘If you please, sir—’ The Rat started violently, dropped the white kid gloves and the fan, and scurried away into the darkness as hard as he could go.
          Alice took up the fan and gloves, and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking: ‘Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!’ And she began thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them.
          ‘I’m sure I’m not Ada,’ she said, ‘for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all; and I’m sure I can’t be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! She knows such a very little! Besides, she’s she, and I’m I, and—oh dear, how puzzling it all is! I’ll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate! However, the Multiplication Table doesn’t signify: let’s try Geography. London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, and Rome—no, that’s all wrong, I’m certain! I must have been changed for Mabel! I’ll try and say “How doth the little—”’ and she crossed her hands on her lap as if she were saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and she felt oddly cold and hungry (but hungry for what? she wondered), and the words did not come the same as they used to do:
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      ‘How doth the little crocodile
      Improve his shining tail,
      And pour the waters of the Nile
      On every golden scale!
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      ‘How cheerfully he seems to grin,
      How neatly spread his claws,
      And welcome little fishes in
      With gently smiling jaws!’
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          ‘I’m sure those are not the right words,’ said poor Alice. She could hardly think of anything but how she was ravenous for something she could not name. And her eyes filled with tears again as she went on, ‘I must be Mabel after all, for she eats and eats all the time and hardly has time to play, and I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to no toys to play with, and oh! ever so many