The Bone Puppets: A Hard SciFi Zombie Soldier Story

by Doug McGovern

  Elias knew that the lions were hunting him. No prey animal that ever breathed could pass up a chance at fresh blood. These beasts had been wandering a wilderness where the air itself was caustic and no living thing walked. Elias was alive. His heart beat echoed against the clouds of rust and chalk that made the air thick with powder.

  Elias stumbled and slipped in the many plates that had replaced the flat Savannah. He had been too young for geography before the world went dark and didn’t know that a Savannah was practically just flat grassland. It never occurred to him that these mountains and hills of compact white lime were abnormal for this region. It would have alarmed him if it had. In his ignorance, it came only as an annoyance as he struggled along through spikes of ivory that looked like fingers pointing toward the sky. Long pieces of white stone stood up like broken teeth in a cat’s jaw. Some of these pierced into his already bleeding legs and one even reached to his thigh.

  Making his way up and down an unyielding path, Elias finally stood in a valley. It was white like the arctic yet the poisonous sun shining through the rust-laden air told him otherwise. The metallic snowfall struck against each piece of itself like Zippo switches. The air was filled with sparks. The fire rarified the air. This place echoed in a silence deeper than that of tombs.

  Elias looked back over his shoulder. Out of that silence arose the harmonious piercing shriek of the Wraith-Lions as they moved closer to the fringe of this perilous gap. It started with the same scissor pitch of a cougar’s roar but ascended with an eagle tone at the end. It was eerie, yet possessed a haunting lyrical tone like that of Buddhist mantras. It packed the same force of an old Pride-king, haunted and lonely by the loss of his dynasty. How many of them there were Elias couldn’t say, but one thing was certain. He’d heard this song before. This was the chorus of hunger. The cry to extinguish the faint pulse that had traced its last echo into the domain of death.

  It shouldn’t surprise you, but it’s over. There’s no stopping what comes next. Where will you run? Elias closed his eyes. He swallowed and tried not to breathe the bitter steel-wool air in for just a second. It was useless. His last moments would be nothing but pain.

  A hundred regrets passed through his mind like clouds. Even the idea of vapor made his inwards ache for vital water. There was none to speak of in this place.

  Elias turned back to the path. He looked down at his arms. The rust that clung to the air had shaved the flesh from each wrist until he hemorrhaged from large chunks of flesh. He studied his supernatural wounds for a moment. Even the worst torture he’d ever experienced in his Dad’s self-promoting newscasts had never been anywhere close to the unnatural horror of this wasteland, where magic and science had become intertwined. His arms were turning to sponges. There were billions of little blisters rising from saw marks the wind had left behind.

  Elias felt an impulse move in the dust clouds beside him. His eyes went wide with terror and his stomach contorted in violent inward convulsions at the site of hundreds of skulls, human and animal alike, rolling down the wide-mouthed hills surrounding this valley.

  As he stared into the bitter wind, he felt a cool place in the midst of this chaotic heat. Elias’s horror was heightening his senses to a shark’s honed capacity. Silent, death would not creep up on him.

  Elias plucked his Desert Eagle from his waistband. He cursed. Only when he went to pull the trigger did he realize that the barrel was jammed from the motor oil swamp he’d crawled through back there. This mortal injury was making him careless. He wouldn’t get a second chance to slip up like this. Or would he?

  The shadow stopped. Elias studied him, silently. He would greet death like his equal if he was compelled to greet him at all. It took him a long moment to realize that this was not one of the beasts that plagued this forsaken place. The silhouette was in the shape of a man.

  Elias felt that scalp burning terror that accompanied the approach of a Bone Puppet. He tucked his pistol back into his belt and drew out a pair of Bowie knives. Barking at the shape, he crossed the knives in an X-shape in front of his face. His heart pounded in his ears with all its strength. He never knew death would greet him this hard.

  Bone Puppets were suspended in their intra-muscular animation by high-powered electromagnetic science and also a concentration of supernatural chakra energies. Both of these dispersed high-frequencies. The first sign that one was definitely close to a Bone Puppet was when his or her hair started curling and smoking at the ends. Elias felt the tips of his chin-length golden hair roll back to his earlobes, singed, putting off white smoke before turning the color of rust. The ability to turn hair into strands of rust was something the chakra energies did, defying the laws of physics because they belonged to other dimensions.

  He was definitely in the company of a Bone Puppet. This one wasn’t particularly violent, and yet Elias could sense a greater power emanating from this one than all the others he’d encountered before. Eclipsed by him, Elias felt like he was standing in the presence of a tiger guardian spirit. This being had concealed his rage with discipline.

  The silent form stepped through the rolling clouds of sand. He stopped and stood stone-still. Elias gaped at him. He was unlike all the others. His body was mostly whole, still almost entirely human. Save only for his mouth which had two putrid incisions rising like zippers beginning at each lateral end of his lips and moving up his jawline in a crescent. These foamed with rust and oozed blackened blood that anointed either of his jugular veins and streamed to his shoulders.

  Where his lips could meet they formed a painful grimaced, revealing a mouthful of teeth that were also changed to rust by the alchemic nature of his chakras. His hair had once been a ruddy brown before the rusting set in. Parts of it set off discolored smoke that had perpetually stained his once pale features a blue quartz shade. His large hazel eyes were wide with pain and sorrow. There was no fear. For what did the dead fear?

  He wore a turban over the back of his hair. He reached up with shaking fingers that had long since been singed off their flesh and covered his mouth as best he could. Now only the pale green eyes stared at Elias. Elias studied him, confounded. The clothes the creature was wearing were like an Amazigh man. He had a bullet-proof vest at one time but the elements had made it like sludge against his shoulders. His body rattled together and trembled as if it was controlled by strings. That’s where Bone Puppets had gotten their name. From their convulsive, marionette-like movements.

  “You have no reason to fear me, son of dust. I’m not who you think I am.” The creature tilted his head to the side. His voice was gentle, dry almost like a schoolteacher might sound. Elias coughed and lowered his blades a bit. Never in all his experience had one of the puppets spoken to him. It was unheard of.

  “Well, then…Who are you?” Elias tucked his blades back into his belt. Even wounded, he could take this wasted husk of a thing with just his hands. Never before had he felt such pity for the Puppets.

  “I am Ezekiel.” The creature fingered a long curved scimitar. The lion-song had begun again in the distance.

  “Wait…Your name…You…Ezekiel as in the Final Prophet Ezekiel?” Elias jaw gaped. He was awed to be in the presence of the only man inside the Crescent’s capitol who had ever dared to stand up to their oppressors. Assuming that he could call this puppet a man now. The creature bowed his head. There had been a great price to pay for securing the Earth’s future.

  “Come now, my young friend. You aren’t alone anymore, but that doesn’t exactly mean you are safe.” Ezekiel drew his sword. He beckoned with a frenetically rattling hand, indicating with difficulty that Elias should follow him.

  *****

  Chapter 13

  Elias woke up eyes sealed shut. The entire mass of his body was throbbing with heavy cracking internal motions like he was the impact zone of several explosions.

  He groaned and shifted. Somewhere in the middle of this darkness and chaos, he felt it. This must be where the source for the sky-color came from
. It was a feeling he remembered from blood and oil in the atmosphere but never from a pure source. The feeling of clean wet could only mean…

  Water.

  His amazement was enough to drive his eyes open.

  He laid on what once had been a zebra’s skin. He could see the faint traces of black and white stripes encircling his head in the corners of his vision. It didn’t matter much to him because he was looking straight up into the deeper shade of blue that was midnight.

  It knocked the breath right out of him.

  His whole life the sky had been clothed in smoke. Tonight, for the first time, he saw the stars.

  There were no words. His breath was gone. The first window he’d ever seen into heaven had opened in the middle of a meteor shower. Transfixed in a miracle that may yet have the power to enrapture the rest of his life’s purpose, Elias lay stone still.

  He watched. Never before had he been given the opportunity to be so gravely quiet, so serene. The earth fell away, stripped of dust and shadow. His comatose spirit awoke. Perhaps only then had it been born. He felt its newborn cry in his ears. He let it weep along with the sky as it bled light from one end of the horizon to the other.

  “Forgive me…It’s more than evident. You’ve never seen the stars before…” Ezekiel was sitting next to him, leaning over a rifle. Only now did Elias realize his wounds had been professionally sterilized, cauterized, and bandaged.

  “No…” Elias sat up. He gasped as the harsh chainsaw biting feeling of his wounds echoed through him. Thank God for the tree he’d been pushed up next to. He leaned his back against it and closed his eyes.

  “If we could only breathe them. Maybe the air would be thinner here. Maybe we could walk together and just be people…” Ezekiel’s voice startled Elias out of his almost-sleep.

  “What?” Elias was startled by the depth of the Prophet’s every thought. He’d never dared to think much about a world beyond the one he’d been thrust into. He’d boasted about a world to come, yet it had always seemed to be a pipe dream. Here in the quiet wilderness, it was a reality. Eternal. He didn’t know how to process that kind of information.

  “It puzzles you, does it? Rest assured, young friend. It puzzles everyone. Are you thirsty?” Ezekiel stood slowly up, sloshing a drinking gourd.

  “I, uhhh…You want me to drink that? Is it safe?” Elias shook his head, shying away by nature. He’d never drank pure water straight before.

  Ezekiel laughed.

  “If you don’t drink it, you will die. Sometimes even in fear, you must have faith.” He stretched the gourd out. Elias leaned up, wincing and groaning from the pain. He took a long drink.

  Elias flinched, splashing water on his chest. There was a shriek across the Savannah, an animal’s voice as loud as thunder.

  “Don’t be so fearful of the night. Sleep is something you must take on faith as well. The beast is gone. He won’t come again for a while. He’s afraid of the water, I think. Most things that are dead fear Life, same as those that are alive dear Death. I fear nothing, for I am neither…” Ezekiel paused. He was just as confused by this statement as Elias was.

  “The sound came from Raptor-Hyenas. I’ve no idea how to describe them to you.” Ezekiel pulled a thick blanket woven from strips of oil-slicked nylon rope off his shoulders and wrapped it around Elias to stop his teeth chattering.

  Elias gaped. This creature’s compassion was beyond what he could even guess at. Ezekiel swallowed and looked down, brows twisting in confusion.

  “I have answered many of your questions, brave young friend. Answer one for me now. Why have you come to this terrible place?” Ezekiel laid a hand on Elias’s shaking kneecap. Power surged through Elias’s whole body. He could now lay still.

  The question hung in the air for a suspended moment. The glare of the warm fire and the bitter taste of real water distracted Elias for a moment. He swallowed and shook his head.

  “We were looking for the Witchdoctor’s Hollow. Hoped maybe we could learn the secrets to making Bone Puppets so that we could reverse the curse.” Elias felt ashamed to admit that now. Why he had no idea. Wasn’t a rebellion against a corrupted apartheid regime something to be proud of? Elias couldn’t tell now. He had never felt deeper despair than at this moment where he lay ripped to ribbons by the claws of beasts. His vain efforts lay before him. All of his mother’s hopes and his brother’s safety laid away in obscurity. He had no idea what had become of them. He may never know.

  Ezekiel’s whole body shook as he shuddered.

  “I see…You have chosen to seek the power of the darkness, to comprehend it. What you fail to see is that no darkness ever changed obscurity. Only light can do that.” Ezekiel smiled. Elias was transfixed by his eyes. He was amazed by how long the look of living faith had remained on his skin, even though the first time he’d seen him he’d been rotting openly before the poisoned sun.

  “You weren’t always here, were you? Or did you just spring up out of the dirt one day?” Elias tried to laugh. The tormented hermit looked up, eyes haunted. Humor was long gone from his mind. So was emotion. He was hollow.

  “No, child. Once I had living breath, strong bones and flowing blood much like your own.” Ezekiel shifted and shook his head. He took Elias’s hands, studying his eyes intently. Elias held his breath. This creature’s gaze was ancient. He wondered if this is what it would be like to fall under a grandfather’s careful surveillance.

  “You must seek the power of light. Only then will you truly understand the darkness you also seek. Only then will you truly be able to defeat the darkness that has encroached upon your world…” Ezekiel gave Elias’s hands a firm shake. He rose and went to the fire. There or blazing sticks, Elias saw that the Prophet was cooking roots for him.

  Elias sagged against the tree. Perhaps there was nowhere but this wilderness and no roads leading to anything other than the constant decay of a society without compassion. Tonight he was honestly okay with that. He had lived to see the stars. It might be the only time, but it had chanced to be. In that knowledge, he would be alright.

  In that knowledge, Elias knew too that Ezekiel was right. How on Earth he would succeed in the pursuit the old Prophet had commission him too was impossible to tell. If he had the faintest chance in hell

  “I wish I had life in me to understand your urgency yet. You must reach the Witchdoctor’s Hollow and soon, yes?” Ezekiel’s voice cracked with fathomless sorrow.

  “I have a kid brother that I’m pretty sure will die if I don’t.” Elias hung his head. Those words hurt more than his wounds.

  Ezekiel nodded. His eyes shone in the dark, with his wonder. Elias felt like this should be violating and creepy, yet it wasn’t. The strange prophet whose body was only semi-reverted to puppet form had an aura, even in unnatural death, that exuded peace.

  “You are to be amazed many times more than you can ever hope to reconcile, thinking you can possibly understand the effect little brothers can have on our souls. Our minds…See, even I was not always burdened with such a terrible weight as I carried in life. I had a reason for pursuing freedom, the same as you. Ironically, it was my brother. A child, a boy with purest faith. I did not believe in divinity, but he did. His faith was enough to lead me to the light. The rest is as you see it now. I would have it no other way.” Ezekiel smiled. Elias stared at him. Took him in, with all of his martyred glory. In an obscure way, he aspired to be like him.

  Elias knew how the cards would fall. Riff had been made immune through alchemy but the jury was still out on Elias’s fate. If he approached the raw evil of the Witchdoctor’s ancient power, there was no telling what he could become.

  There was silence. The prophet stood up and heaved dried sticks into the fire. Sparks shot up into the night. Far away some tortured bird howled and clucked. Elias remembered all the stories he’d heard on the streets as a kid growing up. Funny stories about castles and vampires, witches and goblins. Things that belonged to softer nights than the world they inhabite
d. Fairytale fluff where monsters and men could be friends and free range the world well-adapted to their plague. The cry of the bird was musical, like all the stupidity of those teenage gossip yarns. It made Elias wish there had been some truth in them. That the dream was real and that there was an answer. That there could be peace.

  “I will help you get there.” Ezekiel’s voice jarred Elias out of near sleep.

  “What?” Elias sat up. It was no real surprise. Ezekiel was the author of the rebellion, after all. Still, wounded and world-weary, and highly overdue on promises he owed, Elias was stunned by the resolve in the old prophet’s voice. The confidence in his eyes, even in death, was beyond what Elias could wrap his mind around.

  “The Hallow… You must go there. It cannot be helped. The Lord of Perdition cannot be dissuaded by any other force or means…” Ezekiel slumped to sitting again, chewing on the end of a stick. He had lit the tip of it and wrapped it in dried Joshua leaves. Elias realized with a soft chuckle that this mesquite style fix was the creature’s sole means of feeding a smoking habit.

  Elias felt his ears ringing.

  Ezekiel turned to look at him, dark eyes the color of brass in the fire’s glare. He smiled. It was a bit unnerving. This was the smile of a man that had nothing to lose and wouldn’t care if he did.

  “You must question my motives. What do I have to gain from it now, as my fate is sealed? Or then again, and think long and carefully about this, my young friend. What have I to lose from it? Nothing. So there is nothing to gain and nothing to lose. How could I have any motivation?” Ezekiel held up a finger, amused by the look Elias felt flash over his own face.

  “When it comes down to a reason, it’s not at all the one that you’d expect, I assume. It isn’t a profound one maybe. It very well may not be the most pragmatic one. But I can attest that, to my conscious, the object of my motive is wholesome enough by its own virtue to stimulate the delayed response of my deceased psyche. My choice…My reason is you.” Ezekiel pressed closer to Elias. Elias shook his head, feeling his heart in his fingertips.