The faces. They weren’t faces. Not complete. Some had skin, for the most part. But others, the vast majority, were mere skeletons with protruding clavicles and cheek bones. The lack of flesh around the eyes created a harsh stare with wide pupils and rounded orbs inside deep sockets. The teeth were mostly visible due to the regression of lips. Noses, sunken and sagging, were typically missing.
They wandered aimlessly, these wretched creatures, these corpses returned to the living by some terrible alien technology. Harvey stayed down and kept quiet as the train’s airlocks slid open, and a small herd of walking cadavers meandered inside. He heard one of them issue a garbled moan, and that’s when it really hit home to him—the magnitude of it all. These beings, these barely functioning and severely decayed beings were once under the ground, once considered permanent residents of this gigantic graveyard. Now they were alive, more or less, with some kind of evil larvae inside them. He couldn’t bring himself to understand how the Unspeakable Ones would want to live like this. There had to be something he was missing, yet, in the end, he really didn’t care. Lea was all he cared about. She was all he saw, and to find her, Harvey would shed every ounce of terror and rise to his feet. In one quick dash, he exited the train, eluding the cluster of undead curiosities by slipping behind their backs.
On the train platform he had to be quick, and hid behind the reception kiosk to avoid being seen. The wandering dead wore shabby clothes that at one time had certainly been neat and clean. Men in bow ties and women in fancy dresses. The formal wear of the deceased, so many centuries old, the fabric ripped at the seams and disintegrated at the frayed edges.
They seemed innocuous, yet Harvey saw the wickedness in their eyes. Something was there. Something driving them. Something not at all natural or human. An uneasy smoldering inside his guts flared like a supernova at the sight of these disfigured beings. They were aberrations.
Throughout the entire train terminal, and the entire transportation wing of the visitor station, Harvey kept to the hidden spaces. Behind autoserve bins and interactive map displays and even under the moving walkway by means of an underground scaffold. Being the caretaker, he knew of these secret passageways, and utilized them well.
The concourse swarmed with the undead. They seemed dazed. Arms jerking irregularly. Feet shuffling and stilted. Heads bobbing and weaving on rubbery necks. They seemed almost helpless. And they would have been comical if not for their numbers. Vast numbers. Frightening numbers.
Harvey shuddered at the ugly sight of all those bodies. Human bodies. Various states of decay. A ghoulish parade. He also shuddered about something else. In order to reach to mausoleum, he had to leave the safety of his hidden viaduct. He had to walk among the dead.
Every natural instinct and shred of common sense issued stern prohibitions against such a move. However, there were forces at work that superseded logic. It was love. He burned to see Lea. Would have died to find her. He’d promised to find her, and that was what he would do.
So, with a deep breath, after waiting for a moment when no one was near, he stepped out of concealment, closing the viaduct’s access panel. When in Rome…he thought, and committed to acting like the others, mimicking their behavior, limping and loping, head on a spring, arms dangling and swaying as if he was learning how to use them. He got so good at it, he even scared himself. And, more importantly, he seemed to be fooling everyone else. It was working! He managed to stumble all the way to the mausoleum, to the escalators. But that was where he ran into trouble.
Three fossilized corpses. An elderly man and two middle-aged women. Harvey walked straight into them, and, for a brief moment, saw his plans come unraveled. Protruding eye sockets and decayed stares. It was like being scrutinized by three demons. Circling, prodding, and ogling him up and down. He nearly broke from character, nearly gave up the languid ruse and gave in to the impulse to run away screaming. Somehow he maintained his composure, and somehow the trio of living lead decided to move on, shaking and wobbling, two of them supporting the third.
Harvey had an epiphany. These beings were like newborn babies, and were learning how to operate their human bodies, which to them probably quite alien. He imagined living for centuries as a maggot and then, suddenly, having the gift of arms and legs. It must have been bizarre.
He didn’t want to dwell on such things for too long. His one and only goal was Lea. And, being so close now, his whole body tingled with anticipation. Just two levels up, two quick levels and he was there, on the third floor. From there it was only a short dash to section C-6.
He reached the end of corridor C-5 and when he came around the intersection to section C-6, his feet stopped suddenly, though his heart kept right on pounding.
Lea. He saw her standing next to her grave. Her holomemorial must have been working better than ever. It produced a sharp, high contrast image seemingly indistinguishable from the real thing.
“Lea!” he shouted, but she didn’t react. She had her back turned. Her long, dark hair shimmered in the electric glow from the ambient light. But, as Harvey approached, he noticed her hair didn’t shimmer with vitality, but bristled with coarseness. And when he touched it, several brittle and dead strands broke off in his hand. Then he noticed her gown, once white and pristine, now stained and tattered. Ravaged by the cruelty of time.
He stepped back as she spun on her heels to face him. He stepped back again when his eyes met hers. Only her eyes were sunken in deep, dark cavities. Mummified skin, missing in large places, stretched over a gaping jawbone, brownish teeth grinning ceaselessly. Every kilogram of youth and beauty had gone. Only decay remained. The body standing before him was no longer Lea. Yet it was her. She’d returned from the grave.
He had no power to react. All he could do was glance at her desecrated casket, then at her, or the corpse that had come out of the box, the eight hundred year old body of the woman he loved. He had to believe, deep down, that maybe it was her.
“L-L-Lea?” he said by instinct. “Lea? Is that you?”
The living corpse stumbled backward, and Harvey sensed fear—as much as Harvey was feeling, maybe even more. The thing raised its arm, struggling for control, and pointed a shaky, withered finger at him as it released a hideous howl. Though Harvey didn’t understand the language, he understood the shrill tone. It was a cry for help, a cry of warning. An intruder was in the midst. Harvey Crane was an intruder on Cemetery Planet.
PART IV
1.
Shock. Stunned disbelief. Sheer terror.
Lea, Harvey’s best friend. His only friend. Lea, the love of his life. It never mattered that she was one of the deceased laid to rest on Cemetery Planet. He didn’t mind that she’d died eight hundred years ago. He loved her, and she loved him. Yet this…thing, this shrieking, hissing, spitting thing raking its long, sharp fingernails at him—it was not Lea.
He lost all control, yet somehow by instinct innately dodged the savage attack. Lea, or the thing she had become, pursued him relentlessly. Biting with yellow, bent teeth. Clawing with stained, sharp nails. He cringed at her sour complexion. Most of the skin had been regenerated miraculously, only it had a pallid hue with wrinkles of dehydration around the mouth and eyes. She backed Harvey into a corner before he knew it. Then, from both sides of the corridor, he saw more of them coming.
Without thinking, he tore a synthetic bouquet of flowers from a grave shrine and pitched them at Lea’s face. He hated doing it. Hated the thought of doing anything violent to her. But it wasn’t her, and inside he’d already accepted it. She reeled away, just for a moment. The slim window he needed.
The Unspeakable One occupying Lea’s body displayed remarkable dexterity and fleetness of foot—control most of the others hadn’t yet achieved. It still wasn’t enough. Harvey slipped past its outstretched arms, only to be confronted by another walking corpse, and another, and another. He pushed, he punched, he even bit one of them, receiving the desired reaction—a sharp howl. So they felt pain. Good to know.
>
Praying for forgiveness from the people who originally owned these bodies, he kicked and jabbed and shoved his way out of the mausoleum, down to the lobby, where he encountered more and more undead wanderers, saucer eyes afire with emotion, with anger, with a sedulous desire for murder.
Harvey ran past the concourse with its giant vista overlooking an ocean of tombstones, passing the food courts, where it seemed the vast majority of the possessed had congregated, straight to the auditorium, where he hoped, even expected, the place would be empty.
Wrong.
Every seat in the circular theater was filled with lifeless bodies. Every bloodshot, decrepit eye was glued to the holographic presentation—a gigantic, three-dimensional view of a planet of graves—as the announcer said his piece.
“Thanks to the wonders of the ionic stream, relocating the graves to this sparkling corner of the galaxy became a very real alternative…”
Harvey forgot about the steep decline and stumbled down the aisle, catching himself on the handrail. Behind him, rolling in like a tide, the pursuing mob created a stir in the otherwise torpid audience. Quickly they awakened to the panic, reacting to the alarm as if all of one mind, all of one thought—capture and kill Harvey.
Though uncoordinated and sluggish, the ghastly horde outnumbered him infinitely, and used their numbers to cut off his every means of escape.
Trapped, he confronted his pursuers. The faces of the dead. His people. His ancestors. The residents of Cemetery Planet. At one time he was their keeper, his sole responsibility to care for, watch over, protect them. He ruminated over the completeness of his failure, seeing it reflected back to him in dozens of empty stares.
He huddled against the wall, expecting the worst. Then, just within arm’s reach, he spotted the ladder to a maintenance shaft. His prayers were answered.
One giant leap and he had the bottom rung. Below him, a collective sea of seething anger and murderous intent. Stretching hands, reaching and almost scraping him, though none had the body control to stop him from climbing, hand over hand, to the service duct. To safety.
On all fours, he took a right, then a left, then a right, not knowing or caring about his destination. With every meter he put between himself and those primeval monsters, his fright subsided a bit more. Soon his energy ran out. His body wouldn’t move another centimeter. He collapsed somewhere in the bowels of the maintenance core, thanking God for his tiny slice of good fortune.
2.
He stayed in one place longer than he’d wanted, accompanied only by the relentless pounding of his own heart. That wasn’t altogether true. He had another companion—his despondency. How could he ever forget Lea? Never, even if he lived a thousand years, would he forget. Even if her body had been taken over, even if her soul was trapped inside, watching in horror, he’d never forget. And he’d never give up. But the way forward seemed so bleak. No prospects. No ideas. No grand schemes.
The cold metal rescued his blistering cheek. He worshipped that service duct, and stayed there, resting, recuperating.
Scratching, subtle, almost nonexistent, pulled him from his slumber. He listened, swallowing his heart, as the scratching gained strength and repetition. It grew into a scraping, sliding sound reverberating along the narrow shaft.
Harvey froze, trying to process this newest turn of events. He thought the Unspeakable Ones weren’t in full command of their host bodies. He could have sworn they were so inept at even the simplest of physical demands that they would never be able to reach, let alone climb, the ladder in order to get into the ductwork. What he saw next blew that notion to nebulous dust.
On hands and knees, crawling from an intersection, was Lea. She moved with the fluidity and grace of a cat. Harvey’s surprise was matched only by his terror. Terror when she caught his eyes with hers. Terror as she glided through the small passage with keen coordination and skill.
Thrusting his knees, swimming with his arms, he propelled himself forward as fast and as far as his exhausted state would allow. Lea was quicker. Soon she was right on his heels, and he had nowhere to go.
Then he found a way out, an access panel leading to the caretaker’s living quarters. He bypassed the ladder altogether and fell onto his side. A three meter drop. Ribs on fire, he staggered to his feet and stumbled five steps into his room. He hit the control screen to close and lock the door and…nothing. A quick glance told him the reason—Lea, standing in the entryway, head low, a peculiar look in her eyes. The safety mechanism was engaged, keeping the door from sliding shut.
“You,” Lea said. Only he knew it wasn’t Lea. It was the monster inside. “You’re…you’re Harvey.”
Harvey’s emotions ran the full gamut. Elated at the prospect that, maybe, Lea had pushed her consciousness forward and she was controlling her own body. Frightened it was a hoax designed to draw him out, trap him with his own sentimentality. Despair that he was correct on the latter, and now he would pay the price for his love.
“I…I can hear her,” the possessed body stepped forward and the door closed. “I can hear…Lea.”
“Why?” Harvey asked meekly. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”
It gazed out the porthole, seemingly captivated by the expansive view of Mount Mausolus.
“She loved you,” the monster made eye contact again. “And you loved her.”
“Yes,” he cleared his throat, feeling a surge of courage in his statement. “Yes, I loved her. And I still love her…there’s nothing you can do to change that. You can take over the galaxy, destroy everything in your path, scorch the stars to oblivion and you’ll never change it!”
It stared outside again, leaning Lea’s head as if hearing something from far away. Then the door crashed open. It didn’t slide like normal. It broke down the middle and a sea of undead heathens poured in like water. The habitat had only one way in or out, and Harvey, suddenly, was surrounded. He saw the thing inhabiting Lea, looking on sullenly as her brethren closed in. The sudden stink made his knees weak. Dozens of dead bodies, thousands of years of accumulated decay packed tightly in his living quarters.
He felt all kinds of hands on him. Pushed and pulled in fits and starts. He was being torn apart. Mercifully, one voice rose over the general din of the hunt, putting a halt to the madness. An alien language. Harvey knew what the word meant by the instant reactions from the masses.
A path opened. Putrid, possessed bodies stepped aside, making room for the issuer of the command. Amid the stale breath and soiled garments stepped an imposing figure. A familiar figure. Harvey had to clench his eyes closed and open them again just to ensure this vision was not some terrible illusion. It was no illusion. He knew it, and cried the name out loud.
“Broders! Thank God it’s you!”
Broders stopped in midstride and regarded Harvey curiously. Clothes unkempt. Hair a mess. Flesh missing in several crucial chunks. But Harvey knew it was Broders by the commanding presence, the cool gray eyes, and emotionless demeanor. Like Lea, though, he learned quickly that, despite all outward appearances, this thing wasn’t who he once remembered as Broders. It was an Unspeakable One, and, ironically, it seemed to be a leader just as Broders had been.
A sharp blow to his cheeks. Broders jutted his fingers into Harvey’s face, jamming his jaw and seizing him with a clamp-like grip.
“You are the caretaker here,” the thing inside Broders croaked. He sounded like he had mud in his throat. “Come with me…I have something for you to do.”
3.
The journey went slowly. Down, down, down. Hundreds of walking dead clogging the route made the going cumbersome and tedious. The thing inside Broders commanded a group of a dozen or so who seemed to have full control of their hosts. Lea was one of them, or the maggot inhabiting her corpse. He kept forgetting that. Even seeing her in such a horrifically semi-restored state, it was so easy for him to forget.
He had no time to contemplate any of this. Once they passed through the service basement, Harvey had
to catch his breath at the surprise he found.
Massive construction. Tunneling. Building. Work on a scale unlike anything Harvey had seen. And to think, it was all right under his feet. Flooding the corridors were untold numbers of rancid, listless, wandering corpses. Alive but not alive. Dead but not dead. The stench was unbelievable. Worse was the overwhelming and terrible sense of callousness, uncaring evil. Pure. Unrestrained. Unrelenting. The sensations Harvey perceived flung him into a state bordering on madness.
Harvey laughed at what Broders had said earlier, when he was a spirit and not a possessed fiend. Broders had once called the Unspeakable Ones devils, and Harvey now found that quaint. He suddenly found the whole concept of heaven and hell quaint. These things—they weren’t devils. They were worse.
As he had these thoughts, the titular leader of the group—the monster inhabiting Broders—halted unexpectedly, turned, and faced Harvey.
“You think you know who we are?”
Cemetery Planet: The Complete Series Page 14