Gravewalkers: Dying Time

by Richard T. Schrader

  Daniels led his men in an aggressive roar that signified their readiness for action and then everyone raced as a team to the rapid freight elevator. On the way down dozens of floors, Daniels told Critias, “We have heard of you around here, marshal. My brother Irving was on the Gaoxing when she floundered north of Berlin back in eighty-two.”

  Critias remembered the incident well, “She was a fat boy reclamation freighter that bellied down so hard she broke in half to the keel. Ghouls were all over her looking for vittles like ten thousand pissed off honey badgers. I saw some amazing sights that night. They tapped me for my captain’s bars over it.”

  “Irving is a deck officer on a new freighter now,” Daniels told him. “He serves on the ‘Big Red’ Fred Sanford, thanks to you and your marshals’ rescue team. They only take like kids with no parents, so I worked my way up to Red Rat One to be more like you guys, always in the shit and taking none of it.”

  As thanks to the compliment, Critias answered, “Your brother should be proud then. The biomechanics won’t stew up those mechsuits for just anybody. In the days of King Louie, you would all be Captains’ Table Foragers.”

  The marshals and reclamation personnel were both Foragers in the meaning of the oldest term before that single service of ingenious survivalists had split up into those who specifically harvested resources and the combat oriented marshals who wielded the heavy weaponry for protecting them along with everything else. The Red Rats were scouts and killers rather than scavengers, but still part of the Reclamation General’s considerable reach of power. The lord of scavengers commanded more ships, ground vehicles, and personnel than the Marshal Service did. The Reclamation General even had access to the same heavy weaponry with the exception that he required the Council of Governors’ approval, which he had little trouble coercing. With all the power that the Reclamation General commanded, it was little wonder that he could also call upon his own fully mechsuited equivalents of combat marshals. It was not so huge a step for Colonel Walker to leave the Marshal Service to go work for the Reclamation General, and in some ways, it had been an upward promotion.

  “Been a long time since the days when Foragers collected canned food,” Daniels reflected, “but we need to keep the memory alive all the same.” He kicked open the final door to outside; it led out onto a grated bridge that reached out to connect to the top of the outermost containment wall. Holding the portal wide for his men to pass through, Daniels shouted, “Let’s get fat!”

  As the armored warriors rushed out at a run, they gazed down at the wide breach in the barrier left by the reclamation tank. Many unarmored defenders toting rifles were also down below. They had arrived first to take covering positions from where they could gun down any infected that impinged the security of the compound.

  A dreadful howling reverberated in the manmade canyons around the installation with increasingly frightful volume. The infected made a distinctive sound when chasing food and it invariably conjured up more of their kind. The contagious chorus was always a frenzy of hunger, but became a fanatical quest for mere homicide when humans were available prey. The damned creatures still remembered enough of their former lives despite the passing of inhuman centuries to seek out men as though crazed necessity.

  While the ghouls had all started out as human beings, nearly three centuries of hard living had differentiated them into a variety of monstrous forms. People gave the creatures just as broad a range of amusing names based on their general appearance and degrees of mobility. The infected regenerated their injuries, but it had its limitations that included rampant deformity under some circumstances.

  The first enemies to approach the opening in the defenses were the crawlers. When other infected had first killed them while they were still human or some later misfortune like the collapse of rubble had robbed them of a limb, it rarely grew back; the amputations healed over as permanent losses. Crawlers could no longer run or even walk without functional legs, but they were still entirely ferine as they pulled themselves along in a scramble to get where they were going. Their progress was slow and their ability to initiate an effective attack so greatly diminished that crawlers were the least dangerous opponent their kind had to offer, at least when they operated in the open.

  Colonel Walker’s policy to shoot infected with powerful exploding cannon shells had blown off whole limbs with remarkable efficiency and created thousands of crawlers in the process. Other infected ended up so quadriplegically mutilated that they could never again effectively chase food in any mode, ambulation or otherwise, so instead they would lay in wait as the persistent lurkers, dormant as doormats for years when necessary, until some unfortunate thing blundered close enough for the disabled ghoul to strike at it with some mangled limb from surprise.

  Thousands of jitteringly awkward crawlers clambered toward the gap in the containment wall in an unwholesome wailing carpet of malice-enshrined faces that at times were hideously reminiscent of their former humanity, maledict prisoners of inequitable misfortune more deserving of mercy killing than condemnation.

  The troopers opened fire with their weapons to repel the attack. The infected could not bleed to death, but enough damage could force them into dormancy where they slowly repaired themselves until they awoke once more. When a weapon blew apart their head, a lack of functional brains deprived them of ever regaining aggression, but even headless, their undead bodies would never die. They would lie twitching, taking water from the rain, using sunlight for their photosynthetic organelles; they even consumed molds and fungus that tried to devour them first with no chance of success.

  The soldiers jeered as their indomitable weaponry reduced the crawlers into a lake of shredded gore that gnashed with broken teeth. Their furious defense also prevented the engineering crews from getting up front close enough to make any effort to repair the breach in the main wall.

  For all their success, it really amounted to nothing because many more wrawling infected came to replace the destroyed; limpers, stragglers, and hoppers sacrificed themselves to the guns to press their advance ever closer. They assaulted by the thousands and only a small minority did so in direct path of the defensive weaponry. Far more of them encroached along the footing of the intact perimeter wall where they were relatively safe from the soldiers’ super-velocity projectiles spitting from their teslaflux rifles.

  Critias led his team to the top of the main wall from where they could have a controlling overview of the battle. As soon as they were in position, what they saw struck them full of dread, so Critias went straight to his radio, “Colonel Walker, the whole city is coming to wipe us out, and I do mean the whole city, a million of them!” From their view there was not a single street not packed with flowing rivers of the monsters who all screamed the same song of hungry death.

  “There’s a hunter,” Daniels called out in warning as he shot at a giant freak of an infected they so named for being the most lethal manifestation of the World-ender Plague.

  The hunter had once been a man that succumbed to the infection only to then later suffer some catastrophic injury that had regenerated its whole body into a blockish mass of rippling muscle easily four times the weight of a mortal. It was even more agile a creature than it was strong despite the heinously demented physical form. The hunter leaped along window ledges as would a demonic squirrel until Daniels landed the bullet that knocked it off to fall into the pressing mob of lesser infected swarming the street below.

  Colonel Walker broadcasted, “Hold the perimeter so our tanks can plug the breach! This will be our finest hour!”

  “He has gone mad, marshal,” one of the recon soldiers told Critias as if that was not already apparent to everyone who had heard the order.

  The soldier’s words were not wasted because from them Critias knew what had to be done. “This is Marshal Captain Critias,” he radioed on the general distress channel, “by the authority of Grand Marshal Wayne, I am calling an immediate emergency evacuation of the Chicago reclamation cente
r. Any aircraft hearing this will come down and support the evacuation. There are a million infected assaulting our broken perimeter. I authorize you to engage in close air support and give them everything you have. Combat teams will execute an orderly fighting withdraw to the center complex. I order all officers to shoot deserters on sight; the transports need time to arrive so if you just run we all die!” With the message sent, he transmitted a signal to his ship to autopilot to his position.

  Two tanks that escorted six dozers drove into the front lines then unleashed their awesome guns into the ghoul horde. Explosions hurled infected flesh into the sky to rain down in wet chunks and still it was only the weakest crippled ghouls that took the punishment. The main army of fully capable runners had yet to arrive and when they did, they would leap and sprint like the Olympic athletes they could run down and eat.

  Critias and his team could shoot straight down the wall and not fail to hit some snarling aggressor. The situation teetered on the final edge and when it toppled, things were going to be so bad that a full-on panicked rout of defenders would be unavoidable.

  “This is Marshal Erik of the Gunship Predator,” reported a voice on the radio.

  “Bring the thunder, Erik,” Critias radioed him. “Take the paint off the tanks; we’re in trouble down here!”

  “Roger that, Critias,” Erik replied. “I’ll be knocking on your door in thirty seconds.”

  The dedicated fire-support gunship flew at street level down the main roadway that was wide enough to accommodate it. All six of the ship’s rotary cannons sprayed ballistic tungsten slugs into the infected army that filled the thoroughfare wall to wall. Door gunners on each side of the ship swung their swivel-cannons to slash lines of slaughter that just as quickly vanished in the press of the flood. As the ship passed where the outer wall had fallen, a string of dropped bombs annihilated the attackers and covered the tanks in their liquefied filth.

  Critias’ ship came down on autopilot to hover next to him and the men under his command. He transmitted a signal to open the door and then waved for the soldiers to jump aboard.

  So many ghouls charged into their quarter of the city that their screams were louder than the guns that ripped them apart. Explosions and bullets shredded ten thousand of the attackers into slop. The infectious filth splattered every surface and dripped from the plastic suits that protected the personnel. Not even the blasted meat was really dead or any less infective. In time, the bits of tissue would find their way into the soil or the water of the sewers to contaminate the environment indefinitely as if it wasn’t so already.

  Critias leaped into his ship in time to escape the infected that came after them along the top of the wall while down below runners inundated the breach then spread out like angry hornets to pursue the tactically retreating defenders by sprinted leaps.

  As Critias took the pilot’s seat, Daniels asked, “How about we knock some buildings down to make a kind of firebreak? This noise is calling in every infected in the city and the transport isn’t even here yet.”

  Critias replied, “A gunship doesn’t pack the kind of firepower to cut a building in half.” He piloted away from the wall then repositioned to fire his cannons into the breach to stem the flow of ghouls.

  “We know these buildings, marshal,” Daniels told Critias with confidence. “All of them are rusted-out deathtraps on their last legs. That big one there has been completely off limits because it is hanging on a thread. If we hit it in the right place, it will come down. I can guarantee you that.”

  Critias agreed with the plan, “Where is that right place?”

  Daniels pointed out the building he wanted, “Put us inside with some explosives and we can take care of the rest.”

  Critias told Daniels the security code to his weapons locker as he flew the ship toward the fragile building. His ship’s rotary teslaflux cannons easily sliced open the face of the masonry to expose the structural steel beams at about the sixth floor; some additional hypersonic tungsten slugs severed the girders then Critias crushed open the remnants using the armored hull of his ship.

  The recon team emptied the locker of flux grenades, plastic explosives, and primer cord. While Critias held the ship in a steady hover, the men jumped out the side door into the building.

  Damage from the tank that started all the problems gave the infected direct access to the motor pool at the heart of the installation. The defenders fell back by that route while the tanks did what they could to give them some cover. The infected already swarmed through the entire area within the perimeter to the exclusion of the core building. They had dragged down and killed at least a dozen personnel, and were hot after the rest.

  Two more marshals’ gunships joined the first to suppress the infected while a large reclamation carrier came down then hovered at the landing pad on the roof of the tower where it began the evacuation of the survivors.

  Critias fired his cannons into the slew while he waited for the recon team to return to the ship. They took longer than he had hoped. He was about to radio them for an update when his ship suddenly rocked from the impact of a massive hunter that dropped onto his front view port.

  “Hurry up, gentlemen,” Critias radioed his team. “I’ve got a hunter crawling all over me.”

  The hunter was nothing like the brute that Daniels had shot; this one was a legless crawler that brachiated like an orangutan on oversize arms strong enough to tear a mechsuit in half.

  “We are on the way out,” Daniels transmitted, “and they’re right on our ass!”

  Critias wanted to move the ship to shake off the hunter, but the recon team was about to jump aboard. The hunter snapped off a radio antenna as it swung from it to one of the projecting teslaflux cannons so Critias triggered off the gun just as the hunter stupidly gripped onto the tip of the muzzle. The round vaporized the creature’s arm to send the rest of its body on a spiraling six-story descent to the street.

  The recon team fired their rifles at a pack of ghouls that chased them through the building then Daniels held the pack off with some grenades while his team jumped into the gunship. He finally joined them at a rifle-blazing leap so Critias could pilot clear of the tower then fly for the rooftop where the evacuees gathered for extraction.

  Daniels shouted, “Scavenger this!” as he transmitted the detonation signal, which caused tremendous explosions that vomited flailing ghouls and debris out many windows. As the bombs deprived the decrepit tower of its last remaining structural integrity, the whole thing toppled forward under its own titanic weight, shaking the earth under an epic tonnage of collapsing wreckage that kicked up a cloud of dust so large and thick that it would be clearly visible from space.

  For the infected, it was worse than darkness within the cloud of dust as it formed mud in their eyes, clogged their noses, and desiccated their throats. They could no longer locate prey and lacked the intelligence to reason their way out of their calamity, so the infected started to savage one another in their blind fury. The collapsed building proved itself to be a miracle for the humans as they escaped from the doomed installation.

  As Critias landed on the corner of the roof, he left plenty of room for the transport to collect evacuees. “Where are you, Carmen?” he radioed his android. “Give me a situation report.”

  “Colonel Walker and I are in the motor pool,” she answered amidst shooting and screams. “The tank crews are the last people still down here and we’re determined to get them all out.”

  He pledged, “We’re coming down to help.”

  An especially loud infected wailed over her radio as though it was right in her face. The sound of thwacking became the resounding snap of thick bone that cut a piercing shriek off short. “Don’t come down,” she insisted. “I’ve got everything under control and we’re already coming your way.”

  Critias exited his ship then waved for the recon team to follow him. “Help get the people onto the transport,” he ordered them before he switched his helmet microphone to a lou
dspeaker, “If you have infected blood on your chemical suits or clothing, throw it away before boarding the transport. Anyone infected on the transport will exit the ship by the airlock into open space!”

  The tank crews reached the roof covered in black soot and hacking up more of it from their lungs. Colonel Walker was in the same condition as he followed behind them.

  When Carmen reached the roof last, her bightstaff dripped infected blood and brains. She shouted to Critias, “That’s everyone!”

  One of the riflemen went to Colonel Walker then showed him the bloody bite mark on his forearm, “I’ve been bitten, sir. I’ll hold the infected off for as long as I can.” With rifle ready, the man ran back down into the stairwell to fight until he fell doing it.

  The transport’s cargo hold was spacious enough to evacuate everyone. Colonel Walker, Critias, and the recon team made sure everyone got aboard until they alone remained outside the ship with the android Carmen.

  “This is Marshal Critias,” he radioed the transport pilot. “Take off immediately! The rest of us will get out on my gunship.” The doors closed on the transport then its teslaflux drive-aura made the air hum as it lifted off. As he headed for his ship with the mechsuit recon team following, Critias shouted to Walker, “Let’s go, colonel!”

  Colonel Walker pulled out a pair of teslaflux grenades, one for each hand; cocking his head toward the stairwell door, he said to Critias, “For the life of me, I can’t seem to remember that man’s name. You find out and write the recommendation for me then render my apologies to the Council of Governors while you are at it.” He turned, ran with a short dash, and then leaped off the roof. Long seconds later, the muffled explosions of his grenades came up from the street far below.