Gravewalkers: Dying Time

by Richard T. Schrader

  “I can’t allow the practice of slavery here.” Jim gestured toward the room that they took the new android to for assembly, “You have already placed the same problem into my lap. If that man is all that you claimed, we’re desperately in need of his abilities. I won’t prevent them from assembling him for that reason alone. Like you, I must walk a very fine line indeed to not end up the villain. If you love Carmen physically then I want you to assure me that you also love her emotionally. If she’s your slave, you can’t stay here.”

  Critias didn’t think he could meet that condition, “Where I come from, she’s not the only android, just the best one. It’s common practice to take your android to bed. For a real person to love their android is as mentally stable as marrying a gunship because it has a feminine voiced talking autopilot. You have my word that her happiness is my highest priority. I’ll never treat her as my slave in even the remotest sense.”

  Jim liked Critias’ answer having read more truth into it than had been intended, “Then at least we won’t have to worry about you getting into any fights over the other men wanting to win the hand of that extremely desirable woman, since as you say, who could ever fall in love with a gunship? Be welcome in my home, Critias, and thank you for your splendid gift.”

  As Critias left, he felt as though Jim had taken more ground in their discussion than he had. It gave him a better idea of why they had made him King. It was only after he was back out in the hallway that Critias realized he had expected to meet a historical god, a prophet, a king who was larger than life. The experience had not been a disappointment. Critias could not solve the riddle if King Louie didn’t deserve his beatific future reputation or if he did deserve it, but he was also just a man, albeit a young one. It was a dilemma that Critias just left unsolved as he went to find his room. He hoped Carmen would not be too long in catching up with him because he missed her already.

  Chapter 7: Sins of the Fathers

  Hatchet took Critias more than a few floors down the Tower to show him a small one-room apartment with some furniture, a functional toilet, and little more. He gave Critias the key, “This place is all yours. When you get your stuff unpacked, you should go down to Funland where you can meet everyone else. You take the elevator down to the lobby and then the stairs down to the basement. From there, you can ask the gate guards for directions.”

  Critias moved his crates and armor into the room then departed with the door left locked behind him. He followed Hatchet’s directions down to the lobby where he encountered an alert guard who watched the front door and kept an eye on the occupied quarantine cells. The stairs took him down into the basement that contained many steel oil-drums and assorted storage for Forager operations. The only meaningful exit from the basement was through a jackhammer-carved tunnel that exited through a wall. That passage had the usual locked gate with another guard to keep watch over it.

  The watchman offered a polite, “Hello,” as he used his key to pass Critias through into his tunnel. That passage ran straight to yet another locked gate that prevented access to a perpendicular utility corridor beyond. The female guard at that gate saw him coming. She let him through with a polite nod then locked back up again after he passed.

  Critias asked her for directions, “Which way is it to Funland?”

  The guard pointed down to the right, “Go that way. Take the first left and then continue on straight. You can’t miss it.”

  Funland was the vast basement or perhaps the underground parking garage of another major city building. It was the place where the inhabitants of Jim’s city took their recreation and ate their meals similar to the Back Hall at Foragers’ Castle. Apart from the many tables and chairs, the room had islands of couches for lounging about. There were dozens of large video screens with libraries of movies and music. The games ranged from the classical board variety to the latest computer video systems. They had billiard tables, gambling machines, and sports activities. Critias suspected they would have had a swimming pool if it had been possible for them to carry one off in the back of a truck.

  A score of children at toddler ages played and chased one another with the carefree joy of better days while hundreds of adult survivors enjoyed themselves in whatever way best suited them. Critias estimated that the numbers of men and women still alive in the city were about equal. More men than women had managed to survive the chaos of the Outbreak, but the dangerous business of long-term subsistence had evened their numbers.

  Fat Jack was at the Captains’ Table across the room at the end with the kitchen. With him, he had George, Tony Banjo, and various other Foragers who drank homemade beer while they chatted merrily.

  When they made eye contact, Jack waved for Critias to come over and join them. He introduced Critias to some of the other Foragers. Jack began with an obviously pregnant woman, “This is Sally Headshot, captain of the Milk Wagon crew. You and Carmen will be taking over for that slot during her maternity leave.” He introduced an African heritage couple, “This is Henry your gunner and his wife Gloria who is the Milk Wagon’s driver and road mechanic.” She was the same woman that Critias had seen before when she piloted the Thunder Child on the river.

  Critias gave them all a polite greeting as he took a seat.

  Jack continued the introductions, “Down there is George’s wheelman and road wrench, Andy, and that’s his gunner Malcolm, the quick-draw kid. Last but not least are Tony’s driver-mechanic Penny and his gunner Wolf.”

  Penny wondered what happened to Carmen, “Where’s the perfect princess?”

  Critias thumbed back toward the way he came, “Carmen is back in the Tower helping Bob put something together. I’ve no idea when she’ll be finished.”

  Tony Banjo could hardly believe it, “Your lovely is helping Bob? She’s just full of surprises then isn’t she? I can’t recall the last time anyone knew enough about anything to help Jim’s mad scientist in his experiments.”

  Jack told the table, “I see fat days coming. Critias and Carmen are not novices to our game. We’ve much to teach each other and from that, we’ll reach ambitiously. Our eyes have long been larger than our hungry mouths, but now we’ll have much sharper teeth.”

  The chief cook brought their table another round of beers, “If you lazy louts spent as much time harvesting as you did drinking, all the storerooms would be full.”

  George found the cook amusing, “Is that you volunteering to come out with us next time? You look ready to me. I know nerves of steel when I see them.” George took his new beer then tossed the empty bottle up in the air.

  Malcolm shot the bottle with his off-duty revolver while at the apex of its flight then he had the pistol holstered before the broken pieces rained down. The noise of his weapon was like thunder in the room. Many people shouted in surprise and the cook shrieked as he dived to the floor to hide under their table. None of the Foragers displayed any alarm and most laughed.

  The cook got up embarrassed as he brushed off his apron. “Very funny,” he grumbled. “Maybe I’ll go learn to be a welder and you can eat soup every night of the week. Gabriella is chomping at the bit to be head cook. You keep shooting at me and she’ll be making the beer from now on too. It’ll go well with her pigeon eggs and rat meat soufflé.”

  “Just calm yourself, Nick,” Jack told the cook. “Your idea of a hard day is burning your finger on a skillet. I bet you have not even finished unpacking all the new supplies yet and you’re already bitching for more.”

  “Sixteen cases of red beets,” Nick complained. “What am I supposed to do with that? I can’t make borscht without sour cream. Where am I supposed to get sour cream, milk Sally’s teats? I keep telling you to stop shooting the damn goats and bring me back some live ones to milk, but no; you keep shooting them.”

  Tony Banjo asked, “If I get you a damn goat will you stop complaining?”

  Nick agreed, “I can’t milk a buck, but we could breed them, so yeah, you get me some goats and I’ll stop complaining.”
/>   “It will be worth it to shut you up,” Tony decided.

  George laughed at Tony, “How are you going to capture a goat? Shooting them is one thing, but grabbing one is another. What are you going to do, wave grass at them until they jump into your truck?”

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” Tony dismissed him. “Everyone will know my crew is the best and can accomplish the most difficult runs.”

  Critias asked Fat Jack, “How many survivors do you have here?”

  “One-thousand-twelve was the last count,” Jack informed him. “It’s been more than half a year since we had any short-wave communication with other outposts. I suppose anyone that far away wouldn’t bother calling for help since there isn’t any way of traveling such distances anyhow.”

  Critias considered that, “What about air vehicles?”

  Jack told him, “We have had two helicopters. A hunter took out one in a crash and the other lost its pilot so we had to leave it behind on the roof of the city hospital. Flying is risky, but convenient enough when it works.”

  “I’m going to take a look around,” Critias took his beer with him as he excused himself.

  “You have time,” Fat Jack informed him. “We can’t go back out until the infected have calmed down and returned to their usual bullshit and that’ll be a day at least. Did Jim get you two a room?”

  “Yeah, it’s fine for us,” Critias had no complaints. “We can earn better once we’ve proved ourselves to everyone else.” Critias went to see what other people were doing. Most of them offered a brief polite greeting and a few of the women were a little more curious over the opportunity of a new man on the scene. He missed the Homer and hoped they would be going home soon. As far as he knew, they had wanted him to deliver the science android and he had accomplished that easily enough. He reasoned that if he was leaving soon anyway, there wasn’t much point in him trying to make himself comfortable. What Grand Marshal Wayne had told him still nagged at the back of his mind; it was something about an antigen for the infection and he had yet to see or hear anything like that.

  He wandered in a roundabout way before he returned to his room. There was a different guard than before at the gate to let him through into the basement passage. It was also a different man that guarded the front door in the lobby. As Critias encountered the second guard, he noticed how the man checked in on his radio. It reminded Critias that he needed to upgrade the frequencies in his helmet so he could join the primitive local communication traffic.

  On the way to the elevator, he went into the Foragers’ weapon room to explore. He found the place filled with well-oiled guns of every sort, even some gigantic military cannons. There were man-portable rockets, mortars, and lockers full of plastic explosives. One kind of military assault-rifle in particular was there in duplicate number to the hundreds. He was about to leave when he noticed a cabinet that contained some of the more primitive weaponry; among many stamped-metal machetes, axes, and hammers were a bundle of classical swords. Most of them were junk like the stamped-metal machetes, but among them were genuine antiques the Foragers had salvaged from some collector or museum.

  Critias appropriated two of the weapons for himself and Carmen. He selected a single-edged panga for himself that was much like a giant bowie knife on the scale of a Roman sword. For Carmen, he took a samurai katana that was clearly a genuine heirloom from that feudal period. He had craved a suitable tool for beheading infected to stop any chance of them making a regenerative recovery; to that end, both blades would be excellent for that purpose.

  He went back to his room then sat on his bed to tune the radio in his mechsuit helmet. Critias set it to scan the perpendicular frequencies and lock on to any transmission that it caught. It wasn’t long before he picked up the many guards at their posts and the patrols as they checked in with each other. Jim kept the whole city tightly sectored so that if one section ever fell to ghoul attack it wouldn’t instantly domino into the invasion of all the others. Critias had to admit it was a smart move. He put the helmet on a chair then laid back to listen to the tedious messages between the sentries. As a marshal, the chatter was a kind of peaceful music and its song was one of safety and security.

  A knock on the door awoke Critias sometime later. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep. Critias got up and then opened the door to find Gloria there and she held a dinner tray.

  “You missed supper so I brought you something,” she walked in to put it down on the small table. “Some newcomers are shy about not wanting to seem greedy for groceries, but I assume you had other reasons.”

  “I overslept is all,” he took a seat at the table since he was hungry. “You seem like you’ve something else on your mind.”

  She did, “It was strange of Jack to put you in Sally’s place considering how new you are, so I told him I needed to know more about you if he wanted my cooperation. It is my life at risk too after all.”

  Critias nodded in that he imagined what she would say, “What did Jack tell you?”

  She paused then said, “He told me something unbelievable. If you didn’t have things like that,” she pointed to his mechsuit. “You and Carmen are something called marshals from let’s just say not around here. What is it like there?”

  He described it, “People have gotten comfortable living in orbit, kind of like some of your people who don’t want to think about the outside world anymore. I’ve been down to Earth many times to do my job, but never wanted to stay there, don’t much like the oceanic habitat platforms either.”

  Gloria speculated, “Your partner is a woman so the sexes must be equal in your time. Has mankind moved beyond prejudice and warring on each other?”

  Critias remembered what Jim had said about the androids being slaves and what Carmen had said about how she felt he had raped her; before that, he would have answered yes, but he no longer believed it. “In my time they make artificial people and use them as slave labor and prostitutes, though it never seemed that way while I was there. They evolved so gradually that I guess we never noticed when they became better than we are. Also, people are not as physically different as they are here.”

  She thought she understood, “There are no people of color like me?”

  “No, not in the way you mean. Not enough humans survive your era to maintain the identities in centuries to come. Don’t get the impression that it was by any choice or that it’s some kind of improvement. It didn’t make everyone more special only less interesting. If you could go back with me, you would find everyone shares a kind of incestuous conformity. Here you may be just another person. In my time, you would be a famous fashion model for being interesting enough to recognize. I never realized that either until I saw all of you in Funland. I never realized many things before coming here. If you look out the window sometimes and feel like precious things have been lost forever, they have.”

  Gloria’s expression changed from fascination to abhorrence as she put the pieces together, “You came here alone and Carmen, that hair, her flawless skin; she’s your artificial person prostitute slave.” Gloria became so angry that she was on the verge of slapping him, “You rape her and beat her like a dog?”

  Critias pushed his tray away having lost his appetite, “I used to do a lot of bad things where Carmen was concerned, but I’ve never beaten her or inflicted suffering on her. She’s been the jewel of my life since she first opened her eyes. If you’re asking if I have treated her in ways that were less than she deserved then the answer is yes. I dressed her in a generic laborer’s suit as her only possession. I kept her shut away unable to socialize with anyone but me until I had some use for her. I never gave half a damn what she wanted or how she felt about it. Carmen was a point of pride to me that I valued highly, like my job or my gunship. She was the best of all possible Forager perks.”

  She cursed him loudly, “You are one unbelievable bastard!”

  He gave her a wounded expression, “You don’t need to worry about Carmen; getting he
re stripped out all her electronic shackles. She can do as she pleases and kill whom she likes, including me. I count myself lucky she spared my life at all when I found out she was free. I had it coming and we both knew it. If the malfunction had never happened, I surely would still be keeping her as a slave. I treated her like shit and I’m ashamed of it. It will never happen again.”

  “If Carmen is so disposable,” Gloria reasoned, “what makes you think your bosses care enough to ever bring her back? It sounds to me like it would be less expensive for them to just abandon her then build another one.” No sooner had Gloria finished her sentence than she saw Critias’ color drain away as he realized she was probably right. Why would the governors send King Louie the scientist android as a gift but not give him the soldier android too? Gloria didn’t mind kicking him when he was down since he deserved it, so she added, “That’s assuming they care enough about saving you either.”

  He challenged her lofty moral reasoning, “I followed orders the same as you. I got the nicer apartment and the better food just like you. Honestly, Gloria, do you really think you would have been any different if Jim offered you the best possible everything? You already do live a better life than many of the others here. My job was dangerous, the same as yours; that’s why they send people like me to places like this. You’re better than they are; you can do a dangerous job the others can’t, and when the little people are cleaning your toilet or cooking your dinner, you don’t feel any pity for them at all.” He sneered at her, “Do the math, Gloria. Where do you think we came from? We came from you. We are you.”

  She threatened, “I’m going to go tell Jim and make sure he does something to keep Carmen away from you.”

  Critias calmly cautioned her, “I did you a favor telling you about Carmen and it will hurt her if you spread it around. She doesn’t want your pity or everyone to think of her as less than a person as you do now. Try to understand that Carmen doesn’t answer to anyone anymore so hope she has some religion because she has no restraints other than moral virtue. That pistol of yours couldn’t penetrate her armored skull from point-blank range. She could kill you, this whole city, and probably even me wearing my armor, and nothing could stop her. She’s more than tough. Carmen is an expert with every weapon, her bare hands, and she has the tactical intelligence that none of us would ever know she was coming until it was already too late. She doesn’t need your protection. The truth is that you need my protection from her. If you hurt her in the wrong way, I have no idea what she might be capable of doing. If you want to help her, be her friend. She doesn’t need another keeper.”