by Jim Rudnick
What followed was a drill-down onto Ceti4 showing the various continents, oceans rivers, and lakes. Major cities were also marked. Down the sidebar on the view-screen monitor, the display listed that there was a planetary population of almost four billion people, human by race.. The major industries were agriculture, industrial mining and smelting, and advanced manufacturing of commercial goods. There was more information and it scrolled for quite a bit, but Javor had already stopped reading.
Four billion at a 99.9 percent death rate meant that about only four hundred thousand people had survived.
And if the zombies he’d already met up with were four hundred thousand strong, he was in trouble.
He read a bit more, but there was nothing important enough to remember later.
Ceti4. Sounds like a great place to leave, speaking of which—
“AI. I want a full diagnostic done on our space-worthiness. All systems. All equipment. All with your best verdicts on what I will be able to count on. I want your full counsel on whether or not we can lift off, get up off planet, and go to FTL. I want it by end of today, got that?” Javor said, and AI responded, “Yes.”
He smiled.
If he could get the Drake up and off planet and get to FTL, there was a way home. If not, the Ceti4 would be where this old guy would end his days.
“AI, any planetary citizens within, say, a mile of the Drake right now?”
AI computed and said, “Not a single entity at all, Javor.”
He squeezed the last of the tube of yogurt into his mouth and threw it on the floor. Out from under the far wall, a bot appeared and slid over the smooth deck to the tube, which was quickly scooped up. It would be disposed of by AI sometime later, and the bot moved back under the wall sconce.
Javor grinned. That still worked.
He stood and as he thought about those zombies, he went to the small armory off the crew quarters. Once facing the door, he asked AI to open it and had to provide his birth date to get it to open.
“Six, thirteen, twenty-two forty-nine,” he said, and the pocket door slid open.
Inside, the far wall was covered with mounted rifles, carbines, and shotguns of all types. Handguns sat on the wall to the left, and on the right were lesser weapons that had always been included—but some did make him wonder.
He took down one of his favorite shotguns, the combat twelve-gauge shotgun with its twenty-round magazine. He loaded the shotgun, took an extra full magazine of ammo, and then looked at the handguns. He liked automatics—Colts, if possible—so he chose a 9mm Colt Defender and took four magazines full of ammo for it.
He looked at the older weapons too. Bows and arrows. Lances. Spears. Bolos. Blowguns and darts. Slingshots even.
Not today, he thought, grabbed a hip holster for the Colt, and moved out of the armory, which closed behind him.
He smiled.
So armed, he could probably win any confrontation with a pack of zombies. So armed, he’d go into that town below.
He went over to one of the equipment lockers and found the rope ladder, which he would need to reach the ground twenty feet below the ship’s outer airlock door.
He walked through the bridge one more time and requested that AI open the inner and outer airlock doors. Javor hooked up the collapsible ladder and made sure—doubly sure—that the ends located within the airlock were on the rollers provided.
He asked AI to unroll the ladder and down it went. He asked AI to roll it up and close the outer airlock door. AI did that too.
Should be good, he thought as he had AI unlock the outer door and roll down the ladder again. He slowly climbed down the rungs.
Once on the ground, he realized his boots were now covered in what was the few remains of his crew mates, and he swept his boots off on the free grass a couple of feet away. He looked right, then left, and down the valley too. Not a single soul, or zombie or whatever they were, was around.
He looked up under the Drake too. One of the bots had twisted around some kind of tree root and was still using its skills to fill holes, and Javor nodded to himself. Not many more. He wandered almost half the length of the Drake and saw that all the landing gear stanchions were gone. Not there. Missing. The Drake was lucky she sat on top of so many trees and shrubs even though she listed to one side. But without the tripod landing stanchions, the Drake would need to lift off with a degree of speed so she would not fall first. He shook his head. Engineer, sure, but pilot ... not so much.
He went back to the ladder and looked up at the open airlock door.
“AI, up ladder, and close and lock the outside airlock door,” he said, and AI complied perfectly.
He turned, looked down the slope, and grinned.
Time to get that right knee a-going. He slowly worked his way down the ridge line. He crossed some wood lots, then a few glades, and even some cleared land. There was no agriculture, but some kind of land management had been in effect.
He slid the shotgun off his shoulder, clipped it to his brown belt that crossed his chest, and wondered how long it’d take to aim and fire. Didn’t need to aim, he thought, as the shotgun would clean out an alley as usual.
He made sure the Colt at his side was also easy to access, and he drew it a couple of times to make sure.
He walked down the last part of the ridge where it met a small park, and he went out onto the street and looked in all directions. One way, down toward what looked like downtown, some cars were parked along one side of the street, and all the windows had been broken out. Beyond the cars, the street, which had garbage all over the asphalt, slowly turned to the left, and he saw a set of streetlights. Burned out. Not a shining light. Power not on for the streetlights at least.
He turned one hundred and eighty degrees and looked up the street that curled to the right. No cars were parked there, but there was a bus—a big orange bus—that had been burned and lay on its side. Beyond the bus, on the side of the street that faced the ridge, were small stores and shops. Each one had been damaged and maybe looted. Signs were so badly darkened that he couldn’t make out what they might have once said.
Javor turned to face the closest side street and had to move slightly down the street to be able to see it fully. Ahead of him, the street was empty, but the shells of various stores and patio restaurants lined one side. Tables were turned over, chairs were missing legs, garbage was everywhere, and broken glass from smashed windows littered the ground.
In front of one of the farthest patios, smoke drifted up from within what looked like large oil drums.
“Where there was smoke, and there was smoke right there,” Javor said to himself, “there had to be someone who started that fire.”
He half-grinned as he made a mental assessment that one of those zombies he’d met yesterday couldn’t have started a fire.
No way. Too much skill needed. That made him a bit happier. Another check box on the zombies was checked off.
He made sure to stay in the middle of the street to keep away from any kind of a trap or ambush, and he walked slowly toward those oil drums.
As he approached, he saw a piece of an awning on the street, and he went around it, not really knowing why. But he went on. As he got closer, he noted there were some signs too that had been torn down, and he was glad to see they used galactic English. He smiled as he went by what was once a store that advertised that they’d never close. He wondered what time they’d be opening today.
A bit farther, he slid the safety off the shotgun and put his trigger finger alongside the trigger shield, ready to fire if need be.
He reached the first of the drums and looked inside. It was a simple fire of pieces of wood, and some was unburned which meant that someone was tending these drums.
He walked another half block farther to the first intersection and stopped in the center.
Behind him lay the burning drums and the street that would lead back up to the Drake.
Ahead, the street curved now to the left, and it too was full of shops and wreck
ed cars.
He looked left and saw that the cross street had a solid wall of a warehouse with a series of docks where trucks could back up to take on goods or deliver them. One truck was still there, but its trailer end was ripped open, and Javor could see garbage inside.
He moved along a bit and got past the warehouse. He had no idea why he’d chosen this way, but ahead there was a lineup of more than a half dozen oil drums, all smoking profusely.
He walked carefully still along the middle of the street, and when he was close to the line of drums, he went up on the sidewalk and moved closer. Along one side lay a long wooden ladder, and beside it two corpses, which he knew were zombies. Dead. Not moving which was a good thing.
As he walked over the top of another of those canvas awning remnants, it caved in on him, and he fell backward into the black hole as his shotgun went off loudly. He hit his head and fell unconscious …
CHAPTER TWO
Finn moved the map just so. Making things easier for Vera and the rest of the Circle was what he did best. A smile crossed his thin and narrow face as he looked around the meeting room.
Map with latest intel. Check.
Refreshments—just coffee this time but freshly brewed, and there was real milk for it too. Check.
While tablets were still at a premium, there were notepads and pens ready too in case someone wanted to take notes. Someone other than Maeve who always asked why she was the only one taking notes.
He looked over at the private. Wait. One stripe. Was that a private or a corporal? As long as the young man stood at attention at his post in the doorway alcove, he really didn’t have to know more.
The walls were still holding the latest in the Regime’s current missions and what success had been as yet reached with most of them. He glanced at the closest wall and noted that the tablet recovery mission over in Crandon, the large port city that lay to the southeast of Arlington, was as yet still open. It wasn’t the manufacturing center for the old tablet business company, but the enormous port that was used to ship out—and in—goods like the tablets that were still so very dear. Paperwork from eight years ago could still be trusted, and more than five containers had laid dockside in Crandon on the day the Boathi had attacked.
Five full containers of tablets—needing new batteries for sure—but that kind of swag was well worth the ten-man team sent to the port to see what they could find.
Not that it—as Finn looked up and down the listings—was the only mission that was important.
But tablets would sure help.
He looked at his watch. Ten minutes until the Circle meeting was scheduled to start, and so he went and got a fresh coffee—with milk—and loved the unaccustomed smoothness of the rich flavor. Milk had been a recent addition as the ability to add power to the pasteurization line over on the farms had been on the books for years, and it had just been done in the last two weeks.
“Power. Power is so bloody important,” he said to himself, “that it meant more to the Regime than all the tablets and milk combined.”
He sniffed his coffee. No milk smell but then he guessed that the fresh coffee smell would eradicate what little fresh milk might add. Since the coffee itself was a complete chemical surrogate, perhaps it would always drown out all other smells.
As he took another sip, two women appeared at the door, and after the guard checked them off his list, they entered.
Maeve, of course, went straight to the pile of notepads, and taking one, she glanced at Harper, the other woman.
“Harper, you’ll need one of these, correct?” she questioned, but her tone was more like an order.
“Not in the least, Maeve—you keep the records and logs, and that’s good enough for me,” she said as she grinned at Finn and helped herself to a coffee.
Maeve shook her head. “Eight years of no AI, no records, no logs, and the folks in charge are too lazy to write down what they do—that I just can’t understand,” she said, and she clicked the pen a couple of times to ensure that the tip went in and out.
Finn smiled. “Maeve, please take two if you’d like,” and that got him what he thought was the evil eye from Maeve as Vera, Nixon and Reid, the last of the Circle, entered the meeting room..
Vera nodded to the guard who left the room and closed the door behind him. “Okay, please get a coffee and then let’s get started,” she said, as she poured a cup of coffee.
Sitting at the head of the table, she looked at them all and said point blank, “We have intel on an incoming ship, correct?” and she turned to Nixon who nodded and pointed at the map that lay on the table.
“Correct, Vera. About four days ago, a ship—unknown as to any details on it but still a ship—flew at better than Mach3 through some of the lands west of us and then crash-landed, as far as we know, near the town of Maxwell,” he said and all nodded. That had been known now for days.
“Power grid control noted this, as the ship screamed through our atmosphere, but again all it can tell is that yup, something flew by. We have no records—not that we even have the equipment to be able to detect same—of what kind of ship it is. Boathi? Empire? Someone else? We just don’t know,” he said as he paused.
“But as you know, in Maxwell, we do have a small cadre of followers there. All they can tell us so far from their high-freq Yasu base station is that the ship crashed into a ridge, tore off much of its understructure, and is lying there in disrepair. Seems too,” Nixon added, “that the stench of rotting flesh—corpses—is pouring out of her too. They wonder if anything could have survived the crash, and their noses tell them probably not.”
That got them all talking at once, and after letting it go on for about a minute, Vera smacked her hand down on the tabletop hard.
“Okay, there’s lots we don’t know. First thing, exactly how far away is this Maxwell?”
Finn spoke up first. Details were his strength.
“If you use the most straightforward path—across the Badlands to the old power plant at the Adair Dam, then west via the old interstate highway—it’d be like 225 or so miles. While that way is fraught with both dumb and smart zombies and sects, the normal pace of ten miles a day would mean we could have a team there by the end of the month. Safer way is instead almost due east from Arlington, via the Long Gap through the Gray Forest and then south along the ridge highway system. Less bad guys, less danger, but about twice as long to get there,” he said. He knew which he’d pick if Vera called for a vote, but he had no idea what was coming next.
“Nixon—can we ask our local cadre to investigate more fully? Go and knock on the ship’s door, so to speak. If anyone is left alive inside, surely the fact that a local with a hunting rifle is a lot less to fear especially as they’re a space-faring lot would make a difference?” she wondered.
Nixon nodded. “Yes, I can ask. We can’t order but the offer of a few hundred rounds of ammo generally gets the job done,” he said.
Vera nodded. “Okay, we wait ‘til we hear more. Next,” she said as she sipped her coffee.
Finn nodded.
Maeve would record this and pass it along to the Circle log keepers. He’d add it to the board with the note that more intel was needed, and the Circle moved on to the next item.
#####
As his head began to throb, Javor realized with a start that he’d just fallen into a pit that had been covered with a phony awning tarp.
“Trap,” he said to himself, “I’ve just been trapped. Where the hell is my shotgun?”
He felt around and found his shotgun still attached via the lanyard to his vest. His shotgun had gone off when he fell, and that was surely enough to bring along his captors.
“Audit time,” he said to himself, as he slowly rose up on a hip and looked around. The tarp about fifteen feet above him let in some light, and he wasn’t sure he liked that. Three bodies—three almost totally eaten bodies—lay near him, their corpses dried out and looking long dead.
The body of a dog or something
like a dog was tucked over near one side of the pit. A faint growl sounded, and he assumed the dog was growling at him.
Maybe not, he thought as he slowly rose against one wall of dirt and tubing. He flicked on the light that would shine off his left shoulder and said, “Max bright” at the same time.
The dog appeared unable to back away much, but it tried and hid in the niche behind it.
There were five corpses and he noted that one of them still had an oozing blood trail from a calf and that would mean he was a recent pit capture. He saw nothing else. No ladder up, no rope even—no way up and out.
He had about forty feet of a simple arlon rope with him. If he could grab something up top and use his leverage, he might be able to get up and out.
He took one more audit of the pit and its occupants. He moved slowly out and away from the wall. From his vest top pocket, he pulled out a jerky bar, unwrapped it, and then took a bite. He chewed very loudly and noisily for the effect, and then he slowly tossed the remaining half toward the dog who had eyes for nothing else.
In less than a second, the dog jerked out of his overhang little niche, grabbed the bar, and had it gone before he turned and was back in that niche, licking his chops.
The dog was about a third of his height weighed about one hundred pounds, and had big teeth, but he had much need of grooming. His fur was torn and there was blood splatter on one flank too. Yet he moved quickly and had favored no limb, so he appeared to be healthy—just not a human eater, Javor hoped.
He said, “Good boy,” slowly dropped his shotgun, which had been trained on the dog the entire time, and twisted the strap of his backpack around so he could get to his rope.
As he was struggling with the clasp, a voice sounded above. A human female voice, in galaxy English too.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
And as surprised as he was, he answered automatically, “Yes but pissed off,” and he heard a chuckle.
“Wait, ladder coming down,” she answered, and sure enough that partially broken ladder appeared over the top of the pit and angled its way down to rest on the pit bottom.