From Oblivion's Ashes

by Nyman, Michael E. A.

  “Thanks, Ted,” he said.

  “Er…” said Ted, looking back and forth between him and Duster.

  “Now,” Marshal said, placing it on the counter beside Angie, “if the two of you can give me some space…”

  There was a pause, as Marshal pulled out Angie’s kit. Then, with reluctance, Duster stepped back and out of range. After a nervous few seconds, Ted followed suit. Marshal pretended not to notice, and instead prepared a single dose.

  “Here it comes, Angie,” he said, injecting her with the insulin.

  “So,” Duster asked, after a few more seconds. “She gonna be okay?”

  Marshal shrugged. “We’ll see. If it works, she could hang on for another two years. Otherwise, she could die tonight. If we want to be sure…”

  He started reaching into his backpack for something else.

  “… then I need to grab her blood sugar-”

  Crack!

  Something hard dealt him a crushing blow across the back of his head, and he fell to the floor in surprise, dragging his backpack with him.

  Ted gawped at the scene. “What… what did you do that for? He-”

  “He was making a move,” Duster growled, holding the hilt of his knife out like it was a hammer. “I don’t know what yet, but it was in his pack. Go and get the machete from downstairs. Hurry up! I’ll keep him down while you go.”

  In his daze, Marshal heard the sound of Ted running off, and once again tried to reach his backpack. A construction boot came down on his hand, causing him to shout out with pain. Another boot kicked his backpack out of reach. He struggled, but a knee slammed into the small of his back, pinning him to the floor.

  “I guess you think I’m pretty stupid, eh?”

  Duster twisted his knee into the small bones, and Marshal's pain turned to agony.

  “Well, it don’t matter. You’ll learn different, even if I gotta break every tooth in your mouth to teach you. We got us a whole new world order, shithead. New rules to live by. You and your woman are part of my tribe now, and I’m chief. Ted’s my Indian, and you?”

  Marshal felt the tip of Duster’s knife against his earlobe.

  “You’re going to be lucky if you don’t make squaw. Now, show me you can be trusted, and maybe I’ll make you one of my warriors.”

  The coldness settled into Marshal’s mind, and instead of fear and confusion, a kind of articulate outrage bubbled to the surface.

  “You can’t be this stupid,” he said, wriggling under his captor’s knee. “This isn’t how we’re going to survive. Our only hope- ungh!”

  Duster’s punched the back of Marshal’s head.

  “You don’t get it, do you punk?” Duster said. “You ain’t making the rules here. These are the end times. It’s every man for himself. Civilization’s dead, and the only hope of getting it back is if we have strong leadership. That means someone who ain’t afraid to make the tough decisions.”

  In his peripheral vision, Marshal saw Duster point the knife at Angie.

  “That piece of gash has maybe a year or two left to live,” he said. “That’s two, maybe three pregnancies before she croaks from lack of insulin. That’s the last hope for rebuilding humanity. The hard decisions, asshole! Can you make them?”

  Duster’s voice curled up into a sneer of mockery.

  “ ‘First of all, she’s a girl, not a woman’,” he said, raising his voice into a nasal whine. “Fucking idiot. She’s a baby machine. And she’s still got all her uses, even if it's on a short warranty. Humanity’s survival depends on a wide variation in the gene pool. Not impregnating her risks losing her genetic variety. So, you see…?”

  The heel of the knife came down on the back of his head again, followed by three savage punches to the side of his face. Marshal’s senses reeled, threatening to black out.

  “She’s whatever age I need her to be,” finished Duster. “After that, the science is pretty straightforward. Whatever it takes, we gotta rebuild humanity.”

  Scuffling on the floor announced Ted’s return. “I’ve got the machete, Duster.”

  “Good. Get over here and sit on this asshole. If he struggles, chop off one of his hands. Hold him down while I get the twine from the top drawer, and then help me get his hands. I want this asshole secure before we start in on the girl. Then, if he struggles too much…”

  The knee came up off from Marshal’s neck, but before he could roll free, Ted’s crushing weight came down on his back.

  “… I want you to cut his fucking legs of at the knees!”

  “Sure, Duster. Whatever you say.” Marshal felt the weight of Ted’s forearm on the back of his neck, pinning him. “Do I take a turn with the girl?”

  “Of course,” came the response. “It’s important that we both get her pregnant in turn, to help spread out the gene pool.”

  “But…” Ted said, “only one of us can get her pregnant at a time.”

  His grip loosened.

  “Yeah,” Duster chuckled, pulling out the twine. “That’s why I get to have her first.”

  Angie tried to sit up, holding the insulin needle in her hand like it was a dagger.

  Duster smiled at her. “What do you think you’re going to do with that sweetheart?”

  She tried to raise the needle, but his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist in an iron grip. The girl whimpered as the needle fell from her fingers.

  "Soon enough, sweetheart,” Duster laughed good-naturedly. “Soon, you’ll have plenty to whimper about.”

  Ted let out a burst of nervous laughter, twisting around to get a better look.

  The cold feeling of absolute clarity was like lightning in Marshal’s veins, and his focus, as crystalline and hard as diamond. Time seemed to slow, and the emotional part that was Marshal stepped aside, allowing without reluctance for the clinical, detached Marshal to grab the wheel. He felt neither fear nor uncertainty, only a cold, razor rage that seemed to shrink the world.

  With a burst of strength, Marshal used Ted’s shift of weight to spin, twisting like a cat. Ted was knocked off balance, and he fell over sideways. In a flash, Marshal was out from under him, wriggling like a snake towards his backpack.

  THUNK!

  The wild swing of the machete missed Marshal by inches, hitting the floor beside him. Duster cursed and, letting go of Angie, unleashed a vicious backhand slap to her cheek. She toppled backwards with a cry of pain.

  Marshal’s hand dove into the backpack, reaching deep.

  “Stop him, you stupid shit,” Duster bellowed. “Cut him! Cut him!”

  “Don’t worry, Duster! I’ve got him!” Ted squealed, wrenching the blade from the floor tiles. He spun around, raising the machete to strike.

  But he was too late.

  Marshal’s hand reappeared from the backpack holding a 10mm, semi-automatic handgun with a six-inch long suppressor projecting from the end. In a blur, he rolled over onto his back, holding the gun upwards with both arms extended.

  Phewt. Phewt.

  The gun made sounds like a loud, angry whisper, as Marshal put two bullets into Ted’s forehead. With the machete still held above his head for another swing, Ted looked confused for a second, then dropped to the floor with a clattering thump.

  Marshal trained the gun on Duster. The man was holding his knife out, frozen with a look of surprise.

  “You really want to be King of the beasts, Duster?” Marshal asked in a cold voice, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth.

  Duster gaped, his mouth opening and closing, without words.

  “Then welcome to the fucking jungle.”

  Phewt. Phewt. Phewt.

  Three bullets punched through Duster’s head, forming a perfect line across the temple, before the man dropped like a sack of stones.

  Marshal staggered to his feet, and discovered he was having difficulty balancing.

  Angie was suddenly beside him, trying to hold him up by the elbow.

  “Are… are you feeling better?” Marshal asked.
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  “I can walk,” she answered. “How are you?”

  “Good, good,” he said, letting her lead him to a counter. “Just another day at the drug store, really. In a few minutes, I’ll be fine.”

  “Where did you learn to shoot like that?” she asked.

  “Friend of mine,” Marshal said. “My brother, actually. Luca. Took me to a shooting range a few times. Told me I was the best natural shot he’d ever seen. Most of the rest of the time, I’d practice on Playstation, you know? Not much call for a sharpshooter in electrical engineering.”

  Marshal blinked. The image of Ted appeared, standing with the dumb look on his face and two bullet holes in his forehead. He shook it off.

  “Listen,” he said, thinking back to the things Duster had said. “Angie. What those men said… I don’t know if humanity has any hope of survival. I’d like to think so, but there are no guarantees. We’re definitely on a precipice of some sort, but what kind is still a little unclear. It turns out that we’re not the last people alive, and that's worth thinking about. But I can promise you this much: No one is ever going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, not while I’m alive.”

  “I… I thought they were going to kill you,” Angie said.

  “Might have, if you hadn’t tried to stab Duster with that needle,” Marshal said, picturing Duster, looking stunned, before Marshal had put three bullets in him. “What were you thinking? More to the point, how did you get so brave? I was practically crapping my pants!”

  No, he thought. That was a lie. He’d been ice cold and rational. He’d just killed two men, and he’d done it without so much as a split second of hesitation or doubt. No ‘Step away from that girl!” No pause to reconsider. Just… pow, pow! You’re dead.

  He looked over at the bodies with a growing sense of horror.

  “I just thought that they were going to hurt you,” Angie said, “and I got really, really mad. And then he hit me.”

  He examined her face. “Yup,” he agreed. “You’re going to have one first class black eye tomorrow. But hey, guess what? I think it makes you look tough.”

  He looked down to see that she was hugging him again, and blinking away some water that had somehow gotten in his eye, he hugged her back. “Anytime, kid. Besides. Now I can look forward to kicking your ass at Call of Duty. You’re talking to the King, by the way.”

  “You wish.” She let him go.

  Still feeling rattled, Marshal reached down and grabbed his backpack.

  “We gotta get as much of the insulin as we can take,” he said. “We made great time. Even if we take our time getting back, we should still have the cover of night and the rain to help us slip back into the apartment before dawn.”

  He looked around. “But we also gotta come back here. Solar power. Refrigerators. A hidden trapdoor in the floor that the zombies can’t find. And there’s more medicine on the shelves than we could possibly carry back with us in one trip. There’s no telling how important this stuff could turn out to be. And to think these losers were using the coolers for beer.”

  Ted with two bullet holes in his head, looking puzzled before he died. Duster, uncomprehending, but still laughing all the way to the grave.

  "We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “Come on.”

  They loaded up the insulin, then found bags from the drug store and stuffed them with as much antibiotics, pain killers, flu remedies, and cough medicines as they thought they could carry. The rain was still pummeling the ground outside, which would make transport difficult, but if they could get it all back, then it was a cargo worth more than diamonds.

  Loaded down, they put their blankets back on, and slipped into the rainy darkness.

  Preoccupied with unwanted images of Ted and Duster dying, Marshal wasn’t paying attention. It wasn't until Angie’s hand on him gave him a hard tug backwards, that he awoke to the danger.

  A zombie approached the storefront, lurching out of the darkness. It staggered past them, not fifteen feet away, seeming to sniff the air as it walked.

  For a moment, Marshal’s entire world stood still.

  The zombie was Frank Sabbatini.

  He’d… he’d followed them? But he hadn’t left the streets outside the apartment in over fifteen days!

  “Nnnnnggh!” Frank moaned, catching the scent of blood on the air, and picking up speed. In a flash of darkness, he disappeared into Rothman’s, knocking over a shelf from pure eagerness.

  Inside, he found the bodies of Ted and Duster.

  The gruesome sounds of flesh and bone being chewed and swallowed reached their ears, and Marshal signaled Angie. Now, it was definitely time to leave.

  It was three in the morning when they crept back into the apartment, and closed the lift behind them.

  Chapter Six: Day 18: Battery Powered

  “We’re gonna rebuild humanity,” Ted informed him in a sad whisper. The two bullet holes in his forehead oozed like sweat. “We share everything.”

  Marshal rolled awake. Shirtless, he sat up on the side of his bed and numbly rubbed his forehead with both hands. It was morning? Almost 7:00 am.

  Although it was the largest of the four bedrooms, Marshal’s room had a feeling of ‘less-ness’. It was also his workshop, with a small bed tucked into the far corner facing a flat screen. The main floor space was dominated by a 10x5 foot table, which had various projects spread out across its surface like so many afterthoughts. Walls were lined with shelves, which were themselves lined with filing tubs and trays, each containing a different kind of connector, port, switch, component, and so forth. Big, powerful lights bombarded the center of the table with illumination.

  He threw on a bathrobe and went out to the main apartment. Angie was awake and sprawled out across Marshal’s big couch, hip deep into her second year at Hogwarts and a couple of nearly empty, apple-turnover cookie packages.

  Marshal brewed coffee. He had plenty of coffee at the moment, though he could already imagine a future where that might change. He closed his eyes. A dystopian future where humanity survived in the form of leather-clad, biker-babes, and the two greatest champions met in front of 50,000, screaming, Thunderdome super-fans, in a death match over who gets the last sealed tub of grounds.

  “Good morning, Marshal,” Angie called out from the couch.

  “Morning, Angie,” he called back, making his way over to the Terrible Window while the coffee brewed. “Feeling better, I see.”

  The rain had stopped, though the sky was still filled with gray-white cloud cover. Down below, the streets were clogged with loitering undead, as the Swarm entered its third day.

  “I’m better,” Angie said. “I hope you don’t mind I ate two bags of cookies for breakfast. Heating them up made them smell like they were fresh-baked and it’s been so long…”

  “Sounds delicious,” Marshal said, still engrossed by the Terrible Window. “Smells delicious too, if not especially nutritious. But no, I don’t mind. Just so long as you keep a close watch on your blood sugar, then you can eat whatever you want. Of course, the booze is off-limits, right?”

  Angie made a crinkly face. “Definitely.”

  The smell of coffee dragged him away from the window, and he went back to the kitchen to fill his mug. It didn’t last. As if pulled by gravity, Marshal felt himself drawn back to the Terrible Window.

  He took a deep sip of coffee, and an unexpected feeling of profound pleasure overtook him. Memories of their desperate run through the rainy abyss the night before, the heightened danger, the sense of certain death, replayed in his mind. He remembered Angie lying on the cold dark pavement, choked with tears over her inability to keep going, and the enormity of their victory took on a new level of significance. Safe and sound in their hidden fortress, the success resonated with a heightened satisfaction and pleasure that he hadn’t felt since before the start of the outbreak.

  “We kicked your ass last night,” he told the horde of undead below. “You can be beaten, you sons of bitches. A li
ttle bit of rain, a bit of subterfuge and darkness, and we beat you. More than that, it’s been three days of the biggest Swarm I’ve seen you pull, and you still haven’t found us. You know what this means? It means we can fool you again and again and again. How’s that feel, you punk-ass bitches?”

  He took another sip of coffee and relished the moment.

  “Marshal?” Angie’s voice sounded uneasy. “Are you talking to the zombies?”

  “I am,” Marshal answered. “Best I’ve felt in weeks.”

  “You shouldn’t do that,” she said. “It’s dangerous. You could call them down on us. It’s like in a movie, when they say ‘What could possibly go wrong?’, and then everything does. My Mom used to say that the world listens when you say things like that. And my Dad, he used to say that a saying your plans out loud is a good way to hear God laughing.”

  Marshal snorted. “Famous last words.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What you’re talking about,” Marshal said. “Words and expressions made famous by the fact that they get said before every catastrophe in the history of the world. If you believe there’s such a thing as luck, it’s the idea that you shouldn’t taunt fate, just in case there’s some kind of cosmic joke to life, waiting for a punch line to summon it into action. Another term for it is Murphy’s Law: If anything can go wrong, it will, and at the worst possible time.”

  “Right,” Angie agreed, already bored and turning back to the movie. “So that’s what I’m saying. It’s bad luck to tell the super-strong, human-eating zombies right outside your window that they’re too stupid to catch you.”

  In spite of himself, Marshal laughed.

  “All right,” he said, taking another sip from his mug. “I’ll hold off from offending the great god Murphy. But I won’t drop it. We accomplished a miracle last night, and on top of that, we learned a great deal.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well… first of all, we learned that there have to be other people out there still clinging to survival. Duster and Ted can’t be flukes. If someone found a place to hide for the last two weeks, then they could still be alive. We also learned that the zombies can be fooled. Rather easily, in fact.”