Gravewalkers: Dying Time

by Richard T. Schrader

  The slow-moving projectile whistled a shriek and burned with phosphorous. When it skipped off the concrete where the pumps used to stand it ignited the gas fumes into a wall of flames. Those fumes went off with a great harrumph that blew down all the ghouls again and set many of their hairy heads aflame. The brilliant light, the smell, and the smoke was every bit the distraction required to lure all the infected to a spectacle greater than that of the Rhino.

  Unconcerned about the fire, Carmen said, “Don’t worry. The main reservoirs underground probably won’t explode.”

  “Probably?” he repeated. “Well, that’s just fucking great! What the hell do we do now?”

  To answer that, Carmen waved and shouted to all the ghouls below them, “Here we are, you stinky naked devils! Come and get us! Come take a bite out of the tasty marshal!”

  “Alright, smart-ass,” Critias had endured enough of her jesting. “Two can play at this game.” He stopped shooting his rifle down the column to take aim at the half-demolished building. The still-intact left corner of it had a padlocked metal-cage that contained stacks of propane canisters that used to power cooking-grills or camping equipment. He put a hypersonic slug through the bunch of them with the force dialed up high enough that even in his mechsuit the recoil was like an elephant gun. The result was an explosion that blew the remainder of the station to flinders and toppled the throng of infected all over again. A half-meter long steel rod spun up at them to slash a hole through the billboard over their heads.

  Jim called them by radio, “Are you still alive? It sounds like a world war over there.”

  Critias radioed back, “What? Can’t you hear Carmen’s singing? We’re doing well enough. How are things with you two?”

  Jim had good news, “Hatchet backed up our rear hatch to the door of their building. We’re loading the survivors up now. We should be heading back to you shortly.”

  One of Carmen’s radios was a hardware implant that she converted to classic wavelength communications so that she could internally follow the conversation. She transmitted, “Hatchet, come around the side to the diesel depot and we’ll get on from there.”

  “Roger that,” the man replied. “We’re on the way.”

  Critias gazed off to the east where the roof over the diesel pumps was below them and some goodly distance away. “That is pretty far to jump,” he told Carmen. “What makes you think it will even support our weight?”

  She pumped slugs from her pistol down the column to keep the horde from ever reaching their catwalk. “It will have to,” she reasoned. “After I drop these other two grenades, this whole platform is going for a ride. We sure can’t stay here unless you want to go along with it.”

  He told her, “Leave dropping the grenades to me then and you go first. If I can jump as well as you can, I need to see it done.”

  Hatchet plowed through a fence behind the station to reach the pickup point.

  “I’ve never had so much fun even with my clothes off,” she grinned behind her mask to the truth of it. “You come right behind me.”

  “You can believe that,” he answered. “I’m sure as hell not staying here.”

  She took a short run, hopped to the top of the railing, then leaped through the air toward the distant rooftop. Carmen tucked into a roll then hit the roof with an acrobatic tumble so that she came up on her feet sheathed sword in hand that she waved for him to follow.

  Critias popped two grenades then dropped them down the column before he leaped after her. He didn’t tuck into a roll or land acrobatically, but he at least covered the distance. If anything, he had jumped too high and the arc of his flight-path made him come down like a meteor.

  Carmen opened her arms wide and did her best to catch him. She did an admirable job of trying to control his reentry, but unfortunately, the impact punched them both through the roof to fall to the ground below it where the pursuing infected would bury them.

  The two grenades he had dropped went off at the same time that he and Carmen crashed to the ground. Electrical arcs surged like a net of tendrils before the whole column with its billboards spun away through the sky along with the skeletons of thousands of ghouls whose flesh could not contain the velocity of their own ballistic bones.

  Carmen came up with her unsheathed sword, “That could have gone better.”

  “You think,” he said as he switched his rifle to fully automatic so he could spray bullets into the lucky ghouls that had been just out of range of the grenades’ fluxing fields.

  The Rhino approached them then and Jim cut loose with the military machinegun. The weapon was loud as bombs and each one of its anti-vehicle explosive bullets delivered punishment that put even Critias’ amped-up teslaflux rifle to shame.

  While she covered their retreat with her shogunate blade, Carmen shouted, “Jump to the roof!”

  Critias had to be sure to avoid the heavy gun but he leaped to the top of the Rhino easily enough. He watched as Carmen sliced off the heads of a half-dozen ghouls with precision. She kicked one in the face so hard that it spun through the air. He caught her as she back-flipped up to land in his arms. A moment later, they had dropped down through the roof-hatch then locked it from the inside.

  When safely inside the Rhino, Critias removed his helmet to meet the five new survivors. They were two men, two women, and a boy about Jim’s age. The doughy face of the portly boy was a striking testament to his ample diet. One of the women was young and admirably beautiful despite some obvious lack of nutrition. The other woman was older and well-nourished though not to the point of excess. The two men were lean and hardy in appearance.

  The plump youth was first to speak, “You two must be retarded to run around out there like that.” He had seen part of their dangerous exploits from a gun-port.

  Carmen stripped off her goggles, respirator, and diving hood then shook her violet hair loose. “You’re welcome,” she told the boy with restrained irritation over his insult.

  One of the men studied Critias, “What is that armor you’re wearing? Is that some kind of bionics? I’ve seen some of the better prosthetic prototypes in my day, but nothing nearly as advanced as that.”

  It impressed Critias that the man would know anything about such science, “Where have you seen things like it?”

  “I was an aerospace engineer before all this,” he revealed. “I know a lot about those kinds of things and what you’re wearing is way beyond anything I’ve ever heard of. It almost looks organic.” He offered his hand, “My name is Wernher Hindemith PhD. Everyone calls me Vern.”

  Critias told him, “Someone as smart as you will surely come in useful. I’m Critias and this is my partner Carmen.”

  “Critias sounds like a stupid name,” the tubby lad said with scornful distaste, “almost as silly as her ridiculous hair.”

  Carmen shut his mouth with her glower, “Critias was the uncle of Plato and leader of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens, an evil despot that liked to feed fat little boys to the ghouls for talking too much.”

  “Find your manners, Danny,” the older woman told the youth. “They risked their lives to rescue us.” Her words silenced the boy so that he went back to peeking out a gun-port.

  “My name is Nadia,” the younger woman introduced herself with a mild Russian accent. “I was in Denver at the airport waiting for a flight home when things went bad. I studied classical music in the real world, so I’m afraid I’m not very useful.”

  Jim thought she would be valuable, “Can you play instruments?”

  “I can play most of them,” she said without pride, “but prefer the cello, violin, or the piano.”

  “Excellent,” Jim praised her talents. “Perhaps you would be willing to teach the children. It would be a great shame to lose the fine arts. What’s the point in surviving without music in our world?”

  “My name is Bertram Gray,” the last man introduced himself. “I’m the pilot that got our plane here from the Denver airport. Have you heard from any of the oth
ers who were on the plane with us? There were twenty-eight of us when we landed, but we found the place swarming with shriekers. The five of us filled one of the cars we salvaged. Most of the others also made it into vehicles, but we got separated in the chaos of the escape.”

  “I guess none of them had radios better than yours,” Hatchet commented contemptuously.

  “I don’t think any of them even got out of your airport,” Vern confessed. “It was a miracle we ever found an exit to an unblocked street. Those creatures have little trouble smashing out the windows and then you’re done for. The battery was dead on our radio, but I managed to rig it into the car battery and here we are. I for one am eternally grateful you came out here to help us. You can tell this King of yours that I am forever one of his loyal men.”

  A subtle glance from Jim kept Critias from inviting the man to tell the King himself.

  The chubby youth spoke up and said, “My sister Clara is one of the best organ-transplant surgeons in the world and the only one anymore. You had better treat us with the proper respect if you ever want us to cure you when you get sick.” He spoke of the older of the two women. “That goes for your King too,” he added boldly.

  His commentary made the woman nervous, “I told you to shut up!”

  “Our new friend Kevin who just arrived is also a talented surgeon,” Jim referred to his new android that could repair human bodies among his many other skills, “but I’m sure the King will be pleased to have another medical officer to tend to the sick.”

  The news made Danny frown as he sensed his advantage slip away.

  Carmen eyed Danny’s fat ass, “Why did you leave this Denver place? It seems to me like you had enough food to just throw it away.”

  “The bunker there under the airport was a better place for some than others,” Nadia commented darkly, as though she had been part of the latter. She gave Critias a sorrowful expression as she asked, “Will I have to let your officers fuck me if I want to eat clean food?”

  Her question shocked Critias until Carmen shot him a harsh glance that reminded him that he actually could imagine how such cruel relationships could come about. “That will absolutely not happen,” Critias assured Nadia. “We all eat and have the same inalienable rights under the King’s Law. You never need fear anyone treating you like that again.”

  Their honest way of life shocked Danny, “Your King lets the whores eat with the important people? President Blieberman would never have allowed that.”

  Jim wanted to hear more from Vern, “President?”

  “Yeah,” Vern nodded seriously, “the President of the United States of America and what is left of the Federal big-wigs are all down in their secret city under the Denver airport. Maybe half the food is gone, but far from all of it; some people are really living it up in fact. The President and his soldiers decided to stop feeding everyone else any of the real food unless they can find some way to pay them for it. One of the military officers staged a coup. It started with words that quickly progressed into all-out war, gun against gun. After the President regained control of the base by driving his enemies out to the surface, things worsened to well beyond barbaric. There’s no word for some of the sadistic-shit going on down there unless rape-stew is your idea of an evening on the town. Some of the saner people from both sides grouped up then flew out here to your airport. We heard a radio show some time back, about a great man called King Louie that was here rebuilding civilization.”

  “Let me guess,” Carmen offered a cynical observation, “Clara, and her brother Danny were on the side of this President Blieberman.”

  Nadia began to cry on the border of hysteria as all the iniquity of her existence overwhelmed her. “Just look at her brother!” she sobbed. “I sold my body for scraps of garbage rather than starve to death or eat other people!”

  Clara saw that everyone gave her distasted glances. “I have a valuable skill,” she condoned herself. “I took care of myself and my family. It’s not my fault that Nadia’s only talent was for being on her back.”

  Carmen looked at the ceiling as she orated as Cassius when he spoke to Brutus. It was a quote from her endless memory of humanity’s books that constituted her android’s soul. The more life she lived rather than read about, the more the words took on real meaning for the first time. “Shall we now contaminate our fingers with base bribes and sell the mighty space of our large honors for so much trash as may be grasped thus?” At that, Carmen spun about to seize Clara by the throat then squeezed so that the woman’s eyes bulged, “I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon, than such a Roman!”

  “Stop this,” Critias put his hand on Carmen’s shoulder, which felt solid and immovable as a statue. “Of these two women, you prefer punishing the one over comforting the other.”

  “Perhaps in death both needs shall be met,” Carmen answered with a cock of her head as she increased the pressure so that Clara was on the verge of passing out. Carmen could casually kill the woman in an instant, but preferred it to be as slow and terrifying as possible.

  “If you care about me you will stop,” he beseeched her with the only tool he felt worthy of his cause.

  Carmen instantly released her hold and then returned to sitting idly. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “I wanted Clara to know what it feels like to be powerless before the whims of someone stronger.”

  Critias admonished her, “It comes easy, doesn’t it?” He shifted his gaze to Danny who had not made even the least effort to help his sister, “In that book The Merchant of Venice, what did Shylock say was the value of a pound of flesh he wanted from a man?”

  “It would not earn him any respect nor could he trade it for money,” Carmen answered with a paraphrase of Shylock.

  “Then it is nothing compared to the starvation of others required to put a pound of flesh back on a man,” Critias reflected.

  “You’re a wiser man than you let on, Critias,” Jim observed. “You speak truly and I dare say would perhaps make a fine King yourself someday. What a pair of scorpions we agreed to carry on our backs across the river in their time of need. These times have always been the ones I most despise. Now you will see why the crown is so heavy. I’m not the frog; that is my people, so how could I sit idly by and wait for their sting?”

  Clara rubbed at her bruised throat, “What are you talking about?”

  “I am King Louie, as was my father before me,” Jim revealed, “while you madam are a treacherous witch; that is beyond all doubt if one only looks upon this toad of a familiar you have created. Nevertheless, as with all things, I need but look unto its nature. You won’t hesitate to secure your own prosperity at the expense of anything. So long as I keep you fed and safe from the ghouls, you will not do anything to endanger your meal ticket. Your brother however is an ill-begotten lout of no value whatsoever. For him I won’t spare so much as a cracker from the mouths of those I love, to feed so loathsome and inconsiderate a brute as you have raised.”

  Danny cursed him, “You are no king!” Spittle flung from his thick lips, “You’re no older than I am!”

  Jim commanded him, “Be silent!” He looked to Vern, Bertram, and Nadia, “If I have misjudged these two, speak up now before you become party to a desperate act that falls on me as my duty to all.”

  “She is a medical doctor,” Vern confirmed, “but I’ve seen many die for being unable to feed that piglet of hers in exchange for her services.”

  Bertram nodded in agreement, “She preyed on everyone like a vulture, everyone but the President and his men who she treated freely in exchange for the protection of their armed goons. If she wasn’t personally involved in the torture of their enemies, I’d be surprised.”

  Nadia looked up with her eyes red from tears, “Denver was a dungeon and there were so many desperate people, so many who would have done anything at all to survive one more day. Clara was no worse than many others were. I hate to imagine what I might have done myself if the opportunity had been available to me. I did do thin
gs that make me ashamed. Unless you’ve been that afraid, that hungry, you would never understand. I bear no grudge against them I would call actionable. I want to forget it ever happened and have a new life.”

  Jim faced Clara, “Only because of Nadia’s noble heart and for no other reason I will spare your life if I have your word you will never have your hand in another cruel deed. If you will offer your skills to anyone who is in need of you and do so freely in good cheer, then I will welcome you as one of us; decide quickly.”

  “I promise to join your community in good faith,” she pledged.

  Danny squeaked as he trembled in terror, “What about me?”

  Jim confronted him with an answer, “Your sister at least thought of protecting someone, her own family in fact, and I find that a difficult matter to reproach. As to you, my fat little friend, you seem to care about nothing at all, not even her. You happily piled the resentment of others on her shoulders so you could stuff your face like Henry the Eighth.”

  The boy blubbered, “You can’t just kill me for being fat!”

  Jim wondered aloud, “Is there some greater sin in this age than being fat off the misery of others? I think not. Carmen and Critias went outside this vehicle to lead an army of ghouls away so that we could collect you and you were not in the least grateful. When Carmen struck your sister, you did not so much as whimper a complaint. If it were Vern or Bertram whose heads were on the block, I doubt very much you would have shed a single tear for them. I considered taking you to my city then disposing of you quietly, but I see no reason to burden all my people with your mysterious fate. I am King and so on me alone is any guilt for your miserable misfortune. The crown has a will greater than my own. Because of her great knowledge, I will risk the likely treachery of your sister. She is at least capable of loving something besides herself, which is more than can be said for you.”

  Danny begged her, “Please, Clara, don’t let them kill me!”

  Jim turned to her, “If I didn’t already have a surgeon more skilled than you, and I promise you that is no lie, you could threaten me as you have done to so many others. It would have even worked. To provide my people medical care they could not get otherwise, I would have no choice but to submit to your extortion. Here and now, you are a mere luxury that if lost will not be sorely missed. You can join him or join me, but I will not feed this monster of yours so much as a dead rat; that I swear to you.”