Gravewalkers: Dying Time

by Richard T. Schrader

  Jim pressed the triggers on the Rhino’s flamethrowers to the front and both sides to give the crews time to close the gate in safety. Once the barrier sealed, Hatchet cleared the truck-rails then turned left onto the main boulevard. He headed east toward Foragers’ Castle. The Rhino rattled noisily on its tracks and belched smoke as it rumbled onward at a slow but unstoppable pace.

  “This is just like my favorite movie,” Hatchet laughed aloud then pressed play on a digital music reader that hooked into loudspeakers outside their vehicle. His laughter became the maniacal cackle of the fearless when they rush headlong into destruction as the music of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ by Wagner blared at high volume.

  Critias glanced to Jim to see if he thought Hatchet was sane.

  Jim gave a reassuring nod that Hatchet was as reliable as men came despite his eccentricities. They were after all driving out into the tainted urban wilderness in an interminably slow iron-plated bombilation of a machine. Should they break down mid-voyage, it was highly probable that it would also be their tomb.

  Hatchet cackled, “Get some!” with glee as the Rhino’s prow scraped aside any ghouls foolish enough to leap into their path. The shape of the cowcatcher invariably tumbled them off to one side since there was only contagious disadvantage when they squashed under the treads.

  Critias tried to contact the survivors with his helmet radio with no immediate response.

  The Rhino advanced at about seven kilometers per hour, which was about one-third the speed of a sprinting ghoul. Hatchet followed open roadway to Foragers’ Castle then turned north up a highway. He kept on with his symphony music that didn’t call in the infected any worse than the creatures’ mad howling or the noisy vehicle already did anyway. The wakeless silence of the dead city let any sound travel far without any competition. It was better that the beasts be irate at the sound of music than conditioned to pursue the growl of combustion engines. One way or another, there would never be any shortage of infected that were aware of their location.

  By the end of an hour, the ghouls that followed the slow Rhino numbered in the thousands, too many for them to all be visible at once. That was when the open roadway ended and the congestion of automobiles increased to true blockage. The Rhino lost nothing of its steady pace as Hatchet plowed down the center of the highway and displaced the vehicles easily to the sides. The cars that didn’t slide athwart had the prow flip them over entirely to stack them one above another. The ghouls that imposed themselves in the Rhino’s way ended up getting a bit of a squishing between the prow and the cars the dozer rammed aside.

  “I smell spilled gasoline behind us,” Carmen reported while she peeked out a rear gun port. “It must be from punctured fuel tanks on all those automobiles. If we use the flamers on the ghouls, it might set fire to half the city.”

  Jim went to check for himself then realized by the reek of spilled fuel that it was true so he switched off the pilot lights and the power to the pumps to disable those weapons. “That’s just as well,” Jim reasoned. “Too many disabled bodies in the roadway behind us would be a problem for our trucks. The stringy meat twists itself up in the chassis. We should avoid causing that problem whenever possible. The solution to our mission today won’t involve killing all these infected. There are far too many for that. We will have to think of something else, some kind of distraction, keep them busy while we make the extraction.”

  Critias cautioned, “When we find the survivors, we’ll be bringing an army of infected right to them.” He took out one of his teslaflux grenades then showed it to Jim, “Maybe we should cut down their numbers a bit. This won’t ignite any gasoline.”

  Jim considered the idea then declined, “Don’t do anything like that yet. It won’t make any real difference anyway. There are plenty more ghouls still ahead.”

  When the Rhino’s path took them to a higher elevation, they finally glimpsed the true number of ghouls that pursued them and it was at least ten thousand. The creatures had no ability to harm the Rhino and they found it impracticable to climb it because the way that they scrambled over each other invariably pulled down any infected who tried to get up. Such was their aggression, the ghouls frequently pushed each other down to have the mob trample them under their steady procession. The march of their chaotic army left hundreds of their own kind strewn behind them, stomped unconscious in addition to numerous broken bones.

  By the end of the second hour, the Rhino had a comet’s tail of infected that numbered near thirty thousand. So great of a multitude was behind them that Hatchet feared to ever slow down. If the Rhino ever came to a complete stop, so many infected would engulf them like army ants that the occupants would suffocate inside the vehicle just from the press of their reeking bodies.

  Over the music, the engine, and the hideous screams of the frenzying cannibals, Hatchet yelled, “We’re out of gas!” He then waited to see their expressions before he laughed about his cruel joke.

  Jim asked Critias about his teslaflux rifle, “What can that weapon of yours do?”

  Critias explained, “Carmen could give you a lot of science words, but it’s not that much different than your rifles. It generates recoil, so you can only turn it up so high before it breaks your shoulder, and beyond that, it doesn’t use any chemical combustive reactions.”

  That explanation disappointed Jim in that he had hoped that the futuristic weapon could deliver miracles. “It’s about time we figure out how to get this horde off our backs,” he said solemnly. “We don’t need to do it now, but we need a plan for when the time comes. There’s no chance of opening this thing up to let anyone in while that mob of ghouls is dancing all around us.”

  Critias kept trying to contact the survivors by radio. If they knew exactly where the people were, that information would make their rescue mission that much easier.

  “I know what we’ll have to do,” Carmen offered. “When we discover where to find these people, I’ll get out then lead the ghouls on a merry chase. They’ve always preferred a bird in the hand to two in the bush. If I am sufficiently visible to them, the ones who come for me will lead the rest to follow. You won’t be free by any means, but it should reduce them down enough that you can clean them up with the weapons you have onboard.”

  Jim answered her advice, “I’d prefer a plan that is somewhat less suicidal. I don’t think that feeding you to the ghouls is the right kind of distraction, especially since you just got here. There’s no justice in sacrificing new arrivals in a hopeless mission to acquire more new arrivals.”

  “She wouldn’t advise such a plan shortsightedly,” Critias defended her even though he didn’t think the plan sounded prudent either. He trusted that Carmen cared to preserve her own life and that she would never try such a thing unless she felt confident she would get away with it. He told Carmen, “Give us more details.”

  “I don’t have any,” she shrugged. “It will depend entirely on the terrain I have to work with and we currently don’t know that. I suspect it will involve climbing, running, and jumping, with some grenades here and there. The explosions, fires, and smoke will bring them to me if I don’t already look good enough to eat. While the ghouls are busy with us, Jim and Hatchet can pick up the survivors and then come back for us.”

  Critias was acutely aware that he hadn’t volunteered to go with her, “How did you know I wanted to come with you?”

  “I came with you this morning,” she reasoned. The sexual pun came with an affectionate brow wink and smile.

  The radio in Critias’ helmet received a message in the form of the irritated voice of a man, “I know how to fix it, you stupid bitch. Shut the fuck up already and let me do this!” His signal was clear and strong.

  “I have them,” Critias told the others then he sent back, “This is your rescue team. Can you tell us your location?”

  The man replied, “Yes, thank you, Heaven! We’re in a scrap-yard about a mile west of the river. Mosenthein Island is about a mile-and-a-half north-northeast o
f our position.”

  Carmen checked out a gun-port to see the road signs and mile markers to get a fix on her position then she compared that information to the maps she had in her memory. She advised directions, “This highway we are on runs parallel to the river about a mile inland. We can exit off not far ahead.”

  Hatchet searched his own memory as a lifelong resident of the city and realized where they were going, “I know where that place is! It is just a couple blocks over off North Broadway.”

  “Then that is where we get out,” Carmen decided.

  “You won’t last long out there,” Jim warned.

  Carmen took Critias’ hand then started to sing; she liked to sing when gleeful and the thrill of battle gave her that aplenty, “They say that I won’t last too long, on Broadway. I’ll catch a Greyhound bus for home they all say.”

  Hatchet knew the song and joined in with his indestructible enthusiasm during the worst possible perils, “But they’re dead wrong. I know they are, because I can play this here guitar and I won’t quit till I’m a star, on Broadway!”

  Their four connected lanes of highway held a straight course until Hatchet started to turn right to blaze a path down an exit ramp. “Tell them to get ready to go,” Hatchet advised. “The scrapyard they are at is just beyond those trees over there.”

  Critias informed the survivors over his radio, “Our vehicle is almost there. Don’t expose yourselves until they call you on your radio and tell you what to do.”

  Carmen set the Rhino’s radio to the correct frequency then got ready to exit the vehicle with Critias. She watched out a gun-port to study the terrain until she saw what she looked for. “Go right, off through the grass,” she told Hatchet. “I want you to go under that sign over there on the corner of that petrol fueling station.”

  Her destination was a mighty oak of a steel column that rose quite high to support a pair of billboards that passing motorists on the interstate highway would have been able to see clearly. It sprouted up at the corner of a gas station and convenient grocery that had a long carport roof that sheltered its rows of fuel pumps from the weather. There was also a second smaller roof that covered a set of pumps that delivered diesel. It meant that whole area had underground fuel reservoirs capable of eruption into epic conflagration if Carmen provided the proper incentive.

  Hatchet followed her instructions, “I can see a ladder on the pole that starts about halfway up. I can’t slow down without the ghouls swarming over us. You’ll have to jump for it.”

  Carmen and Critias prepared to open the top hatch then climb atop the roof of the Rhino.

  “After we get off,” Critias told Hatchet, “drive right through the front doors of that building then clean out the back. While you are inside, the ghouls will lose sight of you for a moment.”

  Jim triggered the pilot lights and then switched on the pumps for the flamethrowers before he checked the actions on the two heavy machineguns. “Don’t fuck this up,” he urged them as he put on a pair of ear covers to protect his hearing from the deafening heavy guns. “If you two get killed, Jack is really going to be pissed at me.”

  They opened the hatch then climbed up to the roof where Critias shut the lid behind them. He stood up on the rumbling dozer to gaze back at the tens of thousands of infected that surged about the vehicle in a riotous mass that flailed like so many psychotic sports fans.

  Carmen had been right that the ghouls preferred food they could see. The rattletrap Rhino was big and noisy enough to make the infected want to chase it, but it wasn’t at all edible or even vulnerable to their attacks. When the ghouls saw Carmen and Critias, they truly went wild. Their previous lack of success when they tried to climb the Rhino’s armor proved to be due to a lack of proper incentive, which for ghouls meant edible bait. With fresh food on top of it, they went at the task with far greater zeal.

  Hatchet had not yet reached the sign when the first ghouls leaped off the backs of their fellows to scramble up onto the roof of the Rhino. Critias caught the first ghoul by the throat then slammed it down into the second so that both fell back into the trailing mass.

  Carmen calmly moved her blade in its scabbard from her back to her hands. “I should give this sword a name,” she mused aloud as if nothing more important happened around her. “Three-hundred years ago, a master artisan forged this instrument of killing and I came back that much time to wield it against an unstoppable army of foes that can never die. I shall call it Mistletoe, that was the bane of Balder and it came into my possession with a kiss. What can never die shall perish by this.” She watched Critias defend them both for the last few moments before Hatchet got them close enough to the column. “You jump first,” she advised. “Your mechsuit could let you move like I do, but your mind is trapped in the limitations of being a feeble human.”

  He backhanded a leaping infected out of the air then kicked in another’s teeth as it tried to pull itself up. “Since I’m so feeble,” he shouted to her over the howling ghouls, “maybe you could help me keep them off the Rhino!”

  “You can do anything I can do,” she instructed him knowing he still didn’t understand her lesson. “You just have to believe.” Carmen unsheathed her sword in a silvery flash that sent a ghoul’s head flying from the underhanded draw, “Now jump!”

  Critias leaped from the Rhino as the dozer passed under the billboards. He easily reached the lower ladder rungs from where he started to climb up the other half of the column to reach the catwalks above.

  Once she felt assured he was safe, Carmen jumped after him only she went all the way to the very top. She grabbed the catwalk railing one-handed to vault over then land upon it. She waited at the top of the ladder to take Critias’ hand. Once she had it, she casually lifted him up the final way. “Cover the ladder,” she told him. “I’ll get them away from the Rhino.”

  Every ghoul within a kilometer could see them high up on the walkway and an army of enraged infected surged in at the base to try to climb up after them. At first, the ghouls couldn’t scale the steel column because it was so broad and smooth, but as they packed in tighter, they began to climb each other to reach ever higher. Once they had formed a hillock of their own bodies, the first of them took hold of the base of the ladder and from there shot upward with ease.

  Hatchet kept on going with the Rhino right in through the front doors of the gas-station grocery shop. Thousands of infected stayed in pursuit of the vehicle while many thousands more stayed behind. The latter preferred to eat Carmen and Critias who were more assailable.

  Slugs from Critias’ teslaflux rifle cleaned the ladder down to the ground with single well-aimed shots. Each projectile passed through many ghouls before it buried itself in the pavement under their feet. So many infected tried to climb that they often pulled down those ahead of them, but when that ghoul could hold tight the one that followed climbed right over him.

  While Critias kept any ghouls from getting so high that they reached the catwalk, Carmen popped the fuzes on two teslaflux grenades. She tossed the first one under the weather-roof that sheltered the line of gasoline pumps. The second landed outside the front doors of the building that Hatchet had driven inside of to hide the Rhino.

  Carmen warned Critias just before the first grenade went off, “Hold on tight!”

  The first grenade detonated a micro-fission charge that powered a teslaflux field generator similar to those that levitated their futuristic aircraft. It lasted only a millionth of a second before it annihilated in its own atomic energy. The pulse of energetic particles that resulted transferred a deep-differential charge along the surface plane of the earth within a confined radius. The only visible effect was an instantaneous web of arced electrical discharges as the ambient static in the air formed ball lightning that leaped to nearby ghouls, the pumps along with its roofing, and anything else above the surface of the earth in an effect like a mad scientists Vann de Graff laboratory. The ground itself thumped like an atomically fueled electromagnetic drum that
rebounded in a negatively charged shockwave of epic proportions. This magnetic explosion repulsed positively charged matter and flung it away with brutal rail acceleration. Most objects went straight up, which was especially true of metal chunks of shrapnel, which would have to rain down somewhere. Most soft materials found themselves pulverized into granules.

  When the second grenade went off a moment after the first, it blew the front half of the convenience building clear off the earth. The reflected pulse obliterated it like so many loose playing cards arranged around dynamite. The material clouded the sky like confetti from a popped balloon. Neither detonation contained any thermal component that ignited fires.

  The shockwaves rocked Carmen and Critias as primarily a windy and essentially harmless sandstorm of pulverized matter. Critias did his best to shield his visor while he faced away because he knew that if the blast of grit damaged his helmet screen he would never get the scratches out.

  Carmen looked down to admire her handy-work. The shockwaves had knocked down all the ghouls not already annihilated. Their stunned incapacity didn’t last long. The surviving ghouls leaped back up to return to the fight. In addition to having obliterated all of the infected who had gathered there, the first grenade also erased the pumps and most of the roof above them as well. The concrete deck there was still intact with little trace of what happened apart from an appearance as if someone had used a broom to sweep it clean. The grenade’s effect had sheared off at the ground all the pipes and wires that used to feed into the pumps. There was no noticeable liquid fuel from the underground tanks, but the scent of concentrated fumes hung heavy in the air.

  Carmen loaded a signal-flare round into the chamber of her marshal’s pistol as she prepared to fire it into the gasoline fumes.

  Critias shouted at her, “Hey, just wait a second now! What do you think you’re doing?”

  She sang another song from memory, “This love of mine it’s my one desire. It’s gonna set my soul on fire.” She aimed the pistol by instinct while looking only at him, “It’ll never grow cold!” She pulled the trigger.