The Jolo Vargas Space Opera Series Box Set

by J. D. Oppenheim

  He’d heard a few rifle shots coming from down the hall, but suddenly there were more, closer. He looked up and there was Mac firing down the hall, then turning and firing in the other direction. Jolo concentrated on the lower bar, but it wasn’t moving.

  “You in yet?” yelled Mac.

  “No!” Jolo yelled over the sound of Mac’s rifle. Jolo ran out to the entrance and took a peek. “Oh shite!” he yelled. Mac had a pistol in one hand and the rifle in the other. “Give me a few more minutes,” said Jolo.

  “We ain’t got that much time!”

  Jolo ran back to the jet and fired it up, aiming it a little lower than before. He hit the bar again and it moved. He kept banging until it fell through the other side. His clothes were scorched and his hands were burning. He grabbed the back of Koba’s rig and swung the jet around and started pushing it towards the entrance. There were walkers so close that Mac was beating them with his rifle. One got ahold of Mac’s shirt and he yelled out.

  A woman in a blue dress with no shoes on had him by his other arm. She bit down on his hand and blood sprayed out. This sent the horde into a frenzy. Jolo pulled out the Colt and killed her, a big man who first grabbed Mac, and everyone within a few meters of him. Mac stumbled and Jolo pulled him with all his power and the old man slid back into the vault room near the door. His rifle was in the hallway, now swallowed up by walkers. Jolo aimed the jet at the crowd. He instantly smelled burning flesh. He kicked and pushed and fired the Colt, the horde clawing and screaming at him. One woman reached for his leg and put her head right in the path of the jet and Jolo couldn’t look. He scrambled backwards, getting a few meters distance.

  In the vault room he put the sledge hammer into a vertical brace and pulled back. The door cracked open and he and Mac scrambled inside. They both pulled the door shut and fell onto the floor in total darkness.

  Jolo could hear the walkers bumping up against the door. Some moaning. Some crying out. Jolo listened to them as if they might say something intelligible, but there were no words, just pounding and voices. He laid back on the cold floor of the vault catching his breath. “There gonna get in.”

  “Nope. Don’t think so. They’ll slam against the door until they’re bloody but ain’t got brains to pull back. That’s why we didn’t melt the hinges off.”

  Jolo sat up, the warm glow of hope in his heart. Sure enough, the pounding continued but not one got in. Jolo laid back down on the floor and smiled. His plan was still in tact. “Fire up one of your ancient Fed burners and let’s see if we got some guns.”

  Guns

  Jolo and Mac set up four of the little burners for light and were surprised how far back the vault went. Near the door were rows of safety deposit boxes, but beyond that the walls were lined with assault weapons. Jolo grabbed the first one off the wall excitedly but when he took a good look at it he realized it was an early energy weapon. It was worthless against the Jaylens and worthless against anything else because the fuel cells had long since died.

  Mac grabbed one that still showed a charge. “I wouldn’t trust this old piece of shite. These are old Earth tech. The fuel cells ain’t like what we are used to.”

  “They gotta have some older stuff. This was a small municipal police force, not some elite government force.” In the very back of the room were several large wooden boxes sitting atop a bunch of old oil barrels. They were too heavy to put on the floor so Jolo jumped up and started trying to open them up with the sledge.

  Mac looked back at the door. “Probably not a good idea to make noise.” The groans and the pounding on the door intensified.

  “One more whack!” said Jolo as part of the wooden top came off nearly hitting the old man.

  “Well?” said Mac.

  Jolo brushed away some dust and reached inside. He felt cold metal. It was round, but too large to be a hand-held weapon. There were other metal parts inside, but no guns. He proceeded to knock the tops off the other boxes, all the way to the back of the vault. More large pipe-like pieces but no weapons.

  In the end Jolo had broken off the top of every box in the back and he stood staring down at the mess of splintered wood on the floor. No guns. He hit the wall with the sledge in anger and gray dust kicked up and little bits of concrete hit him in the face. He hit it again and again. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Get the guns and go back home. That was the plan.

  “Stop that you fool,” said Mac, who’d been on the other end of the room near the door. Jolo noticed his mouth was still moving after he stopped talking. He was chewing on something. Suddenly Jolo felt a dark, painful hunger in his belly. When was the last time he’d eaten? He thought back to the hotel and the old woman with the plate of food. He was a fool and should have eaten it, he thought.

  “What you eatin?” he said.

  “Nothin, and mind your own business. You got your rations. Eat some of that green nonsense you Fed boys like so much.”

  “I gave my last bit away.”

  “Gave it away! To whom?”

  Jolo jumped down onto the floor and sat down. He motioned with the sledge for Mac to do the same. “I come too far for it to end now.” He banged the sledge on the floor again.

  “Ain’t over. Who’d you give your food to?”

  “A walker. He talked to me.”

  “Fool.” Mac put another piece of something in his mouth and started chewing again and Jolo reached out and grabbed his hand with all of his strength. The old man yelled out in pain, the bite wound from earlier wrapped with cloth and still bleeding. But Jolo squeezed until a piece of dried meat fell onto the floor. Jolo let go of his hand and the old man scampered back rubbing his wrist. Jolo held up the thin sliver of meat and brought it up to his mouth. Mac yelled, “No!”

  Jolo had it up near his lips but hesitated. His last shred of self-control holding him back.

  “Please, don’t. You don’t need to go where I’ve been. Where I live. There is still hope for you,” said Mac.

  “What the hell are you going on about?” Jolo eyed the meat and licked his lips.

  “Here. I know it ain’t great but it’ll keep you going.” The old man held out a chunk of the black and Jolo shook his head.

  And then it hit him.

  “You know I didn’t see no dogs in this shitehole of a city. Ain’t seen a dog since we crashed down. You lying about everything. A cook don’t say to whom? Higher ups talk like that. You got a stash somewhere.”

  “No stash.” Mac ran his fingers through his white hair, his eyes on the floor.

  “If there ain’t no stash and this ain’t dog, then what is it?” Jolo put the meat up to Mac’s face. “What is this shite? Huh!?” Jolo threw it at Mac and wiped his hands on his dirty pants. “Please tell me it ain’t what I think it is. Please tell me you ain’t doin’ that old man.” Jolo pulled out the Colt. “I’ll take you out of your misery right here and now. Please tell me you ain’t. That’s against our human nature. We don’t do that. That’s not right!”

  Suddenly Mac stood up his face red and angry. “Not right? Not right!” he yelled. “What do you know about not right, Boy?” Jolo holstered the Colt and stepped back. “Not right I got stranded here with 287 souls on board. Not right we lost eight boats and one of them was the biggest thing in the core at that time. Not right I had to watch them all die. They all died.”

  Jolo felt ashamed for pulling out the gun. He sat down again and the old man sat down, too. “Tell me your story old man. I got no right to judge. But how ‘bout the truth this time.”

  “I came on the Arcadia many years before in search of the Exeter. I wasn’t the cook.”

  “Officer? Were you on the bridge of that big boat?”

  “Doesn’t matter. We went in after our scout boats never returned. It was stupid to go in and Trant should have known to stay away. But the fool went in. He was a little too cocky.”

  “What happened to Trant? I know his grandson.”

  The old man looked up at Jolo with big eyes.
/>   “You know Marin? He was a good boy.”

  “Ain’t no boy. And he’s in jail for killing Silas Filcher.”

  “Must’ve been a good reason. The Trant men have always been honorable.”

  Jolo clinched his teeth when he thought about Marin Trant running away in his gunboat when the Persephony was under attack. But he held his tongue. “Did you know Evinrude Trant, the captain of the Arcadia? What became of him?”

  “He died like the rest of them. We lost a quarter of the crew to a hard crash landing that tore the big boat in two. Then we lost more when the big Cruisers came. Most were hauled off and sent to work camps. I don’t think they were quite ready for such a big group of ships to come. But even so, they got things under control pretty quick.

  Me and a small group made it to Macon. That was before the BG blew up the bridges, before the walkers patrolled in such great numbers. All the other ships suffered the same fate. That bastard Hazuki and his ground force, plus the Cruisers, gave us little chance.”

  “I thought the boats didn’t work.”

  “They launched after ours went down. Nothing flies when the Queen flips the switch.”

  “Where’s the power coming from?”

  “I searched for it, thinking if I could destroy it I could get a boat off this rock. But it just isn’t here.”

  “What happened to the people you escaped with?”

  “We found shelter not too far from here underground. Nothing remains up top, but a few bits of the world that was here before remained.” Here Mac stopped, fumbled with the piece of jerky in his hands, then put it in his pocket.

  “We were happy to be alive at first. Full of fire and hope. Like you. There was a supply ship that went down on our side of the ravine that the BG hadn’t taken yet, so we horded all we could. And we lasted for almost two years. During that time we’d send out little recon missions to find the power source, to find another food source, or more human survivors.” Mac stopped again, took a deep breath. “We stopped that after awhile because we found nothing. And we kept losing good people. We found a few weapons, but finding ammunition was another story. We wondered if the BG knew we were there. I think they did. But they didn’t care. It’s as if they were just keeping us. When the food ran out people started eating the black.

  It was okay for awhile even though it tasted like shite, but after a few months they started to change. First they’d forget things, then they’d lose their speech, their mouths and tongue all black. In the end they’d just wander off into the dust. There were only about eight of us left when we encountered the first group of walkers. One of our women, Macy, ran up to greet them. We were overjoyed to see other humans.

  She ran right up to them and they tore her apart and ate her. She deserved better. A Federation officer. We had no weapons so we ran home and cried.

  So we knew the black stuff was poison but there was nothing left to eat. We all got skinny and hungry and desperate. I had gotten close to a woman, Morgana. She’d been a server in the officers mess on the Arcadia. Her first trip on a Fed boat.” Mac shook his head slowly. “She started eating the black again and I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t want to watch her go the way the others went.

  So one night I slipped out with a short-handled axe and went hunting. They weren’t hard to find. The difficult part was taking one down without alerting the others. Some of them were old meat. They didn’t bleed. But there were some more fresh. The ones that bled proper. I got to where I could tell which was which. The first time I cried when I did it, and I cried when I cooked it up over one of them dang burners. But I ate it. And I didn’t feel that bad because I’d seen what those things were capable of.

  A few days later I told the group. I begged Morgana to eat it, but she refused. None of them could do it. They were weak. All the strong ones who might have followed me had died on our ignorant recon missions in search of a power source that didn’t exist. After that the group looked at me like I was an animal. No one would talk to me, not even Morgana. That’s when I went out to the road and found shelter in the old ship.”

  They slept in the vault that night. Jolo brushed the wood splinters off to the side and laid down in the back. Mac stayed up near the door. It was mostly quiet except for the occasional moan or a bump from the walkers outside the door.

  ……

  Jolo dreamed of Katy that night. He wanted to be with her. But in the dream they were on the Argossy and he’d get close to her and she’d just vanish. He woke up with his stomach grumbling, and his mouth dry. Hope had faded, replaced with an urge to beat the shite out of everything in the vault with the sledge. They could hear the walkers still milling about outside so Jolo didn’t care about making noise.

  “We ain’t getting out of here you keep banging away like that,” said Mac.

  “We’ll be dead of starvation soon enough.”

  “Yeah, but if there’s a high concentration of walkers in one area the patrols will come and check it out. We need to get out of here and lay low.”

  “Patrols?”

  “Resupply every few weeks. Where do you think the food for the women they keep in the breeding program comes from.”

  “I’ve never seen a patrol.”

  “You haven’t been here long enough. Every two weeks.”

  “But they’ll leave the women, right?”

  “They’ve got cities all over the planet. They move people all the time. You been making trouble so I imagine they’ll send a few mechs to clean up.”

  Jolo sat down and tried to count the days he’d been there. When the Queen nearly got him and Greeley they were maybe three days in, but how many days were they with Riley and the wild boys? And then the underground parking lot, then the trip out here.

  “I been here ten days,” said Jolo.

  “By my count the resupply will be here in three days. I think the Arcadia was doomed because we crashed down on a resupply day and there were Cruisers and mechs already on the ground waiting. If we’d have landed a day later we might have survived.”

  “I gotta go. Now,” said Jolo. He pulled out the Colt and grabbed the sledge with his left hand.

  “They’ll kill you before you get to the hoverbike, Jolo.” Mac stood between Jolo and the door. “Let’s come up with a plan.”

  Everything was falling apart. Jolo threw the sledge across the room as hard as he could and it put a big dent in one of the oil barrels.

  “Great, just go ahead and throw a tantrum. That’ll help!” said Mac.

  “My people are out there and need me and I’m stuck here with some old fart in a worthless vault and can’t get out because 300 of the Fed’s finest want to eat me. Oh, and I’m hungry. Really hungry. And being hungry makes me cranky!”

  Mac looked Jolo dead in the eye and said coldly, “You have options.”

  The vault went quiet as Jolo pondered the unthinkable. He could hear them brushing up against the door, whispering odd human sounds that didn’t equal words.

  “I can’t.”

  “You just can’t make the tough decisions. One day it’ll come down to living or dying and you’ll have to make a sacrifice. How far are you willing to go?”

  “I don’t eat people.”

  “You’ll do worse before it’s over! You just haven’t been properly tested yet. You don’t know what it’s like to lose good people!”

  “Yes I do! I’ve lost people before and I remember all of them.”

  “I’ve lost so many I’ve forgotten their names.”

  “You’re just a friggin’ cook, right?”

  “I am Evinrude Trant, captain of the Arcadia of the Federation.”

  Jolo dropped the sledge on the floor. Silence again.

  “The Trant’s were always good at lookin’ after themselves.”

  The old man pushed Jolo back into the barrels angrily but Jolo didn’t fight back.

  He picked up the sledge and hit the barrel again. The noise echoed off the walls of the vault and the murmurs and noise
s outside turned into wails and crazed screams. Again and again Jolo beat the oil barrel until the round top came off. “If we’re gonna die here then let’s go out in style. Make some noise, get a big crowd of walkers outside, then wait for a BG Cruiser to come.” Jolo grabbed the top of the barrel and tipped it over. Black oil spilled all over the floor and Mac jumped out of the way, but Jolo just stood there and watched the floor turn black in the dim light of the stupid little Federation burners that Mac used to cook humans.

  Jolo closed his eyes and stood there taking deep breaths. He was Jolo Vargas. How could it have come to this?

  He opened his eyes and Mac was pointing to the barrel with big eyes. “Jolo, look!”

  Something hard was sticking out of the barrel. Jolo reached down and pulled out a big gun. It had a magazine to hold bullets. He held it up and ran a check against all the guns in his internal computer database. United States Marine M-16. There were eight machine guns in the barrel.

  “Why didn’t I think of it?” said Mac. “They call that pickling. An old weapon like that will last forever in oil.”

  “I’m gonna get the rest of the guns. You figure a way out of here.” So Jolo proceeded to pop the tops off the rest of the barrels. An hour later they were ankle deep in old thirty-weight motor oil but Jolo had found 74 M-16 machine guns and 6 grenade launchers. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout!” yelled Jolo. He smiled for the first time in days. He picked up two of the machine guns, one for each hand. “Let’s go.”

  “Not like that.”

  “I’m leaving. I got people in town that need these guns. I gotta get there before the BG come and take my people.”

  “You can’t just stroll out there and load the guns with the walkers waiting for you. But I think I can clear a path for you if you trust me.”