Gravewalkers: Dying Time

by Richard T. Schrader

  “I will prepare the document right away,” Kevin pledged.

  “Is that everything for now?” Jim was ready to leave, “We can go over some ideas for Houston at dinner tomorrow or the day after.”

  “Yes, I think we’re done here,” Bob answered. “If I learn anything new I will be sure to keep you informed.”

  As Jim was leaving, he paused for one thing more, “And Kevin, put on the bulletin that anyone we catch sleeping on guard duty will suffer an unmerciful fate at the hands of their King. I’m also going to start doing surprise checks for medical and weapons inspections. Hatchet will flog anyone we catch with an unloaded gun. People we find with no gun at all, he will flog then put in a cage for a month to heal so he can flog them again. We have gone so long without any deaths; it worries me they might start getting sloppy. After they’ve had twenty-four hours to get the message, you call for spot checks once a week, or more often if you think the situation requires it.”

  “It will be as you say,” Kevin confirmed his instructions.

  Carmen grabbed Jim’s shoulder before he could exit, “Let me see if your gun is loaded.”

  He pulled up his pants’ leg to reveal the small revolver in his ankle holster, “Which one do you want?” He tapped his hip holster, “Or you want to see this one?” He drew another automatic pistol from a concealed holster at the small of his back, “Or perhaps you mean this one?”

  “Just checking,” she smiled innocently.

  “Good,” Jim told her as he walked out in less than a cheerful mood. “It is best if everyone understands that I’m not fucking around. If anyone thinks this is all fun and games, they can go ask that fat kid.”

  Once he was gone, Carmen felt confused about his reaction, “Did I make him angry with me?”

  Critias put his arm around her ready to leave too, “It has nothing to do with you. In fact, I think you made him feel better. He wants us to know he expects the same from himself as he asks from everyone else.”

  She needed an explanation, “Then why is he mad?”

  Critias explained, “I wouldn’t let you toss out that tub-of-shit Danny because you and Jim are alike. You have a moral sense and such dirty business leaves a mark that you don’t soon forget.”

  “But you’re the one who tossed him into the street,” she pointed out still confused. “Do you have a mark on your soul?”

  He pushed her ahead of him out the door, “I’m the First of Thirty Tyrants. I don’t even have a soul.”

  Chapter 10: Leap of Faith

  After the meeting with Bob and Kevin, Critias and Carmen returned to their small room to relax. On the way, they didn’t discuss going to Houston since there wasn’t really anything to debate. Critias would go as a matter of duty and she would follow out of inseparable devotion. If anyone else were to join them, it would only make their quest all that more difficult. Together they could survive almost any number of ghouls by using escape and evasion, at least so they believed. Anyone else would hold them back as a burden and liability.

  Carmen didn’t want to talk shop since she had other ambitions in mind for their evening. His open declaration of love still lingered acutely in her thoughts. The way his fluster over the admission had prompted Critias into the remorseless execution of a worthless lummox only heightened her romantic zeal. It was undeniably true that Jim bore the responsibility for denying the cretin admission into his community, but Critias’ cathartic confession of their love had aggravated the impulsive timing of his prosecution on that warrant. She knew that Critias was a true stoic at heart. He was a man that strived to maintain an attitude of acquiescent dispassion whether it was with his violent profession or his recreational fornications with his proprietary slave. Carmen felt thrilled to be his taboo amour that enflamed him into breaking with his practiced restraint. She loved him so much that even her freedom best served her as a means to prove that she was his willingly enthralled concubine.

  The day had proven to be more than memorable for Critias as well; not only had he admitted to his proscribed infatuation for Carmen, Bob had explained that she was far more than the mere automaton that the bioengineers had so carefully led people to believe. Furthermore, it wasn’t every day that he tossed a person to their death, not that he regretted it. That wretch was a menace waiting to happen just as Jim had wisely decreed. The rescue itself had been venturesome in the extreme with all their leaping about amongst a ghoulish super tribe. Critias was mindful that Carmen’s bodacious audacity had been the foundation of their success and he was man enough to admit that her gift for the work gave him a dram of jealousy. They had only just arrived and the community already recognized them as officers, even paladins of the king as it were. Carmen’s skill had gone a long way into making that a reality.

  Critias stretched out on their bed with his hands behind his head while he watched Carmen cavort about in her unimaginatively conventional underwear that he had procured for her with the other wardrobe.

  “I have no need for modesty,” she grumbled. Carmen only pretended to complain about how he insisted that she should dress herself with propriety. In truth, his assertion of dominance captivated her sensibilities.

  “But you do have need for dignity,” he corrected her while he admired the view. “True beauty should be unobtrusive and never vulgar.”

  His reasoning made her thoughtful, “You want me to remember that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life.” She drew upon the meditations of Marcus Aurelius in the belief that it would appeal to his stoicism.

  “Just so,” he approved of her quotation that so admirably mirrored his own thoughts.

  Carmen crept onto the bed to prowl atop him until they were nose to nose. “For your touch,” she purred, “I would cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of propriety.”

  He reached around her to help shed her trappings of formality. “Between us there could be no vulgarity,” he replied. “You are that grace beyond the reach of art.”

  She had been right about the limits of his strength. Carmen failed to get even a single spark from her hair no matter how well he charged her electrocells. They made love till exhaustion then Carmen gave an amazing demonstration of contentment by falling asleep against him even though sleep wasn’t something any android ever required. When Critias awoke in the night, his test to be sure that she was genuinely unconscious caused her to awaken. Carmen had truly been asleep and took his rousing touch as invitation to exhaust him yet further before they passed out once again.

  Kevin had spoken truly that the bioengineers had designed Carmen to appeal to Critias’ subconscious effigy of the perfect companion. Everything about her enthralled his senses, whether it was her scent, her softness, or her excited rigidities. If her capacity for fierce independence coupled with an even fiercer devotion were not enough to ensnare him, she had even found a way to legitimately sleep curled against him complete with an angelic expression that could break his heart if he admired her for too long. Her sleepy cuddling had been adorable enough when she had to fake it. He found her really sleeping doubly so.

  Critias awoke rested a few hours before dawn to discover Carmen was gone and she had taken his mechsuit with her. The suit wouldn’t fit her even if that were her intention and the only person with the skill to do maintenance on it would be Kevin so he had a good idea of where she had gone with it. He dressed in some running shorts and shoes then left their room to jog. Critias took the stairwell down toward the lobby only to find that heavy gates blocked his way to the bottom. There was no guard around to open the padlocks so he just turned around then ran the stairs back up to the top where he used the elevator instead.

  The guard at the front entrance by the quarantine cells offered a friendly wave, “Hey, Critias, you’re up late. You might want to avoid sneaking up on anyone at this time of night to not have someone popping off by mistake.”

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” Critias
emphasized that the guard already seemed to know his name.

  “Kenny,” the guard offered his hand for a friendly shake. “I’m the new midnight to six watch, just started tonight.” Kenny knew who Critias was because of the marshal’s recent heroics on the road with the King.

  Critias got to what was actually on his mind, “You didn’t see Carmen come past here did you?”

  Kenny knew who Carmen was as well, her especially because she was so beautiful. He described her as a demonstration that he understood whom Critias was asking about, “Carmen is the pretty one with the colorful hair. She must still be upstairs because I haven’t seen anyone all night. If I do see her, I’ll tell her you asked about her.”

  Critias asked, “Do you live here upstairs?”

  Kenny thought it was odd that anyone would think he could live there, “Me? Nobody lives here but the King, Tinker Bob, and the adrenaline-junkies who let ghouls chase them around town. Some of the exterior-gate and Foragers’ Castle support-crew leaders have worked their way up to an apartment here in King’s Tower. I suppose those support jobs are kind of the same thing. The drivers bang up the vehicles and get those edges sharp as knives, just one scratch and you’re a freak. That’s not for me. I used to be a welder’s assistant, but I can’t weld any good, so I switched over to guard patrol. I live in the rapid deployment barracks in the Customs House.” He pointed through the wall to the right of facing out the front entrance, “That’s the other building over there where you’ve seen Funland. Many people like me live upstairs. There are some real nice apartments people have put together, but I don’t mind the barracks.”

  Critias checked his watch, “You only have a few more hours, don’t fall asleep.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Kenny guaranteed his long-lasting alertness. “Jim would have my ass in a sling.”

  Critias jogged on down through the Tower basement. Another guard let him past the gate there and then he ran on to Funland before he circled back to the King’s Tower. After a hot shower in the lobby decontamination area, Critias took the elevator up to Bob’s laboratory to find Carmen.

  Hatchet waited outside the elevator door in his pajamas and he looked hackneyed, “Don’t you two ever sleep?” His annoyance proved that Carmen had come that way.

  “Sorry,” Critias offered as apology. “I don’t know what made her come up here so I came to find out.”

  Hatchet waved for him to follow then delivered him to Bob’s workroom where Carmen and Kevin messed with his mechsuit on a table. They currently used airbrushes to paint the exterior.

  “Come and tell me what you think,” Carmen summoned him obviously pleased with herself over her accomplishment. “Kevin gave it a complete maintenance check too.”

  They painted the suit with a combination of flesh-tones and dirty browns in the patterns of tattered clothing to appear as though he was some kind of brutish hunter ghoul when he wore it. The helmet especially apart from the visor had the appearance of a monstrously deformed face with goggling eyes on the forehead and rows of teeth around the visor as though from a shark.

  Critias was aghast that they had defiled his pristine and much beloved armor.

  Carmen expected praise, “What do you think?”

  “It’s positively hideous,” he answered honestly. “The first guard I pass is going to shoot me in the head. It was beautiful and now you made it look like a filthy stink-wafting zombie.”

  “Perfect,” she nodded in satisfaction of a job well done. “That’s exactly what I want the infected to think. In combination with the kinetic response upgrades Kevin installed, this is going to work like a charm.”

  “You ruined my beautiful suit,” he complained. “It was ceremonial, ideal in both regulation and tradition. Now it looks ghastly.”

  Carmen educated him, “It has to look ghastly for walking among the infected without them attacking you, silly. With the changes we’ve made, you will even sort of move like one so long as you keep it slow. My costume is not as nice as yours, but I’m a much better actress.”

  He ruminated on what she said to be sure it was as insane as he suspected, “You want to go outside and walk around among the ghouls as though one of them and you expect them to just ignore us like we’re part of the family?”

  “Yep,” she answered with a confident grin. Carmen reminded him, “Remember when we sat in the truck by those sand hills and that one walked right up to the window to sniff us? This is just the same thing, but we can move around. What Bob said got me thinking, tactically I mean; if my body and your mechsuit are biological cousins to ghouls, then we just need to look like them too and they won’t know what hit them until it’s too late.”

  Critias had his doubts, “Or on the other hand, they think we are ridiculous as this sounds and tear us to shreds.”

  Carmen quoted at him, “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” She added a flash of her raised eyebrows, “When has Carmen ever led you astray, my love?”

  “This disaster comes to mind at the moment,” he indicated his armor. “Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t there some part of that story where the armor painted in the lab today gets cast into the oven on the morrow?”

  She countered, “Houston might very well be an oven since you mention it and we’re going anyway.” Carmen made a presentational gesture toward the armor, “At least like this, if we get caught in a tight pinch we will have other options.”

  He struggled to come up with a good example of Carmen being wrong, but he couldn’t think of anything worth mentioning, so he said, “You were wrong about your hair sparking?”

  “Not for lack of trying,” she laughed since it was true.

  “On the topic of your neurotic malfunctions,” Kevin interrupted speaking to Carmen, “did the new sleeping program function to your satisfaction?”

  “Perfectly,” she congratulated him. “It’s every bit the intimate bonding experience I was hoping for, so much better than playing possum. There are moments when I almost forget I’m not human.”

  “What a tragic thing for any android to say,” Kevin sighed.

  She looked to Critias, “Suit up so we can get some jumping practice in. It makes me feel bad watching you hop around like an old granny.”

  He swallowed his pride and his retort to put on his mechsuit with her assistance. Once he was ready, he checked his reflection in a mirror. As he approached, he noticed his carriage was somewhat simian.

  Kevin joined him with a handheld instrument that he manipulated, “I have greatly improved your mechsuit’s involuntary kinetic reflexes and gyroscopic balance. You will also find that I have upgraded your visor’s targeting display to calculate vault trajectories.”

  Critias used eye movement to control the visor interface displays. The upgrade Kevin had installed informed him about how far or high he could successfully leap and what his ideal flight-path should be. It prompted Critias to ask, “This thing can really cross thirty meters?”

  “At your maximal sprinting velocity that is approximately your uttermost dependable distance,” Kevin confirmed. “The new reflex processor will require some time to graduate, but I’m certain you will acknowledge a significant melioration.”

  “You could jump thirty meters if you had the balls to try,” Carmen translated. “You need to practice a bit for the autopilot-thingy to get to know you before it will blow your mind with how sweet it makes your moves.”

  He had newfound enthusiasm for her designs, “Where can we test it out?”

  “Just follow me,” she headed for the door.

  Carmen led Critias to Funland and then up the stairwells from there all the way to the roof of the Customs House. Various guards who stood at gates or walked patrols saw them on their way. All displayed the same silent astonishment at the ghoulish character of his mechsuit.

  They walked out onto the roof in the thin light of the approaching dawn. Agriculture enshrouded the flat surfaces of the roof, which included the tops of elevated outbuild
ings and the narrow ledges that projected from some of the upper floors visible down from the roof edge. With the food crops occupying so much of the area, the roof was not suitable for any sort of training practice. It was difficult just to walk the narrow paths without them disturbing any of the plants.

  “You picked a bad place to play,” he told Carmen with some satisfaction that she had made at least a small miscalculation. “I guess you weren’t expecting to find a farm.”

  She gave him an annoyed glance, “I wanted to come to this roof. I never said I planned on staying here.”

  He went over to glance off the edge, “We’re much too high for getting down from up here.”

  She pointed east at an office building at least a third taller than the structure they stood on, “Is that so?”

  The nearby building that she indicated may have once been valuable realestate, but its current condition appeared as though it had been the scene of an Outbreak survivor gun battle. Most of the exterior had been panes of dark safety glass and at least half of those were missing or shattered. Birds flew in and out of the openings, which promised that the interior would be in equally tragic condition. The building was also on the far side of a city street at least thirty meters away.

  “You can’t be serious,” he challenged even though he already knew that she meant it.

  Carmen lectured, “Lao Tzu said that being deeply loved by someone gives you strength. He also said that loving someone deeply gives you courage and I’m betting he was right about that too.” Carmen did not wait to hear what he thought; she just ran for the edge of the building as fast as she could then leaped off.

  Critias didn’t hesitate to sprint after her. There was no way he could let her go off outside the barrier alone with nothing but her pistol for protection. He reached the edge in time to see her tuck into a ball then disappear through a windowless opening in the office building a floor lower than she started from. His visor display locked her entry point as a target and told Critias he could make the jump too even while his own brain screamed for him not to try. Critias didn’t pause to reconsider. He just leaped off the edge of the roof to fly in pursuit of Carmen over the street far below. The processor that translated signals from his nervous system into commands for his mechsuit went a step further as it gyroscopically controlled his orientation. He went off the building in a spread-armed dive that carried him across between the buildings and then through the same window to land in a hands-first tumble that he rolled out of onto his feet. The thrilling act totally transformed his confidence in himself and his mechsuit.