From Oblivion's Ashes

by Michael E. A. Nyman

  He drifted off into a thoughtful silence. Angie glanced up at him.

  “Listen,” he said, stepping away from the Terrible Window. “I’m going to be in my workshop for a while. Don’t know how long. I’ve got a few new ideas I’d like to work on. Are you okay here by yourself?”

  On the flat screen, Harry was hearing the whispers of the Basilisk in the walls of Hogwarts.

  “I’ll be okay,” Angie answered, already absorbed by the action.

  With a smile, Marshal snagged a cookie from her stash and headed back to his room.

  By noon, the project was complete, and he went to show Angie.

  In the front hall, Angie gazed in confusion at the monstrosity that sat waiting on the skid lift. Roughly four feet by six feet and almost five feet tall, the rolling skid was held together by posts nailed to the four corners and several loops of twine. Plastic, paper, food wrappers, and assorted junk had been decoratively stapled to the exterior, draping the ground like skirts.

  It looked like what it was: a tremendous pile of garbage.

  “Ugh,” Angie said, pinching her nose. “It stinks.”

  “Yes, well,” Marshal said, “it’s got your old clothing on it, along with anything I haven’t been able to flush down the toilet and into the sewers. Since a clogged toilet would be a disaster, that means most of it. It’s not like I’ve been able to drag it out to the curb, so for the time being, I’ve been stashing it in one of the bedrooms.”

  “Yuck.”

  Marshal shrugged. “We’re getting rid of it today... and more, if what I’m planning works. Because you see, Angie, this is no regular pile of garbage.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Nope,” he answered, holding up a control box that displayed several buttons and a steering wheel. “This is a state-of-the-art, high-tech, remote-controlled pile of garbage, and if I’m right, it’s our next weapon in our war against the undead.”

  “You want to use garbage to attack the zombies?” Angie frowned. “That sounds a bit crazy. Should you even be trying this during a Swarm?”

  “If I’m right,” Marshal said, “then this is the best time for us to test it. It is important that the downstairs hall is empty, however. We don’t want even a single zombie seeing our open lift. Other than that, the presence of the Swarm is critical.”

  “How did it get wheels?”

  “I attached them,” Marshal said with a grin, “along with everything else. Let’s get started. It should be interesting to see what the zombies make of it.”

  “Why would they make anything of it?” Angie asked. “It’s garbage.”

  “It’s mobile garbage,” Marshal corrected her, scanning the monitor. “And that should make all the difference. Look. We’re in luck. The hallway is clear, so it’s now or never.”

  Marshal hit the button on the remote, and the lift began to descend, carrying the wheeled skid down to the first floor with it. In seconds, the lift was down. Without another word, Marshal held up the control box, pushed another button, then gripped the miniature steering wheel.

  Downstairs, the skid moved backwards off of the platform. Angie’s jaw dropped. Grinning, Marshal punched the button on the lift remote, and it ascended to the ceiling once more.

  “You… you’re driving the garbage pile out of here?” Angie asked in amazement.

  “Yup,” Marshal said, pulling out a tablet. “And that’s not all. Check this out.”

  Angie leaned in to gaze at the tablet screen, which flashed on to reveal a clear view of the hallway downstairs.

  “I put a camera on the front,” he explained, “which is even now sending a continuous signal to our WiFi.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “For a couple of reasons,” Marshal answered. “The main reason is so that we can see where we’re going, but also... Look. It’ll be easier if I just show you.”

  He hit another button, and the view from downstairs began to vibrate as the skid rolled toward the wide, back doorway. Right away, a zombie appeared in front of it, flanked by two more, drawn by the noise.

  “Moment of truth,” Marshal said, pushing forward.

  The skid drove right into the zombies at a speed of about four or five kilometers per hour. Grudgingly, the zombies backed away, as if from surprise, and drifted from the tablet screen as the daylight of the back alley flooded the view.

  “There.” Marshal pointed to the flat screen on the wall, which still showed the back alley. On the screen, large and imposing, the mobile garbage skid pushed its way into view, drawing more and more onlookers.

  “They don’t look happy,” Angie said.

  “Good,” Marshal said, carefully steering the little wheel. “They’re probably smelling ‘the human’ on it right now. So. Let’s see how far we can get.”

  On the screen, the garbage skid turned left and headed down the alley at a top speed of six kilometers an hour, even as more zombies surrounded it, clustering around like a flock of hungry birds.

  “They’re going to tear it apart,” Angie said, as the skid drove out of the back alley camera view.

  “That’s the plan,” Marshal said, focused on the tablet screen entirely now. “It’s the Swarm mentality. Moving piles of garbage are a new phenomena, right? The Swarm couldn’t have encountered too many cases, so they’d have every reason to be suspicious of them. So, any minute now… Ah. Here it is.”

  The view from the tablet shook violently, and the entire skid heaved. The screen became blurry and the feed had trouble keeping up with the flood of information coming in as the camera was knocked about. Seconds later, the picture collapsed into static and then went black.

  “You didn’t get the garbage very far,” Angie said.

  “No,” Marshal agreed. “But at least we got rid of it. We risked ramping up the suspicions of the Swarm, but not by that much. The entire city is filled with human garbage. Even after almost two weeks, the smell has got to be pretty common by now. But moving garbage… that demanded some investigation.”

  Angie frowned. “They didn’t find anything.”

  “Exactly. In a way, garbage moves all the time. The wind blows it into piles. Buildings collapse into rubble and garbage. There’s garbage everywhere, and the zombies would have learned to ignore most of it. The only thing that made this garbage suspicious was the way that it moved.”

  Angie’s frown deepened. “So?”

  Marshal grinned. “Go back to Harry Potter for a couple of hours. That’s how long it will take before we’re ready for the next load.”

  Angie shrugged, and went back to the living room.

  A couple of hours later, Angie was watching Buckbeak soar over Hogwarts with a wonder-filled Harry Potter clinging to his back, when Marshal reappeared.

  “Ready to help again?”

  Angie didn’t answer, other than to push pause and get up from the couch.

  This time, the hallway downstairs was not empty. Two zombies occupied it. One was lurching towards the Dollar Den, while the second stood unmoving, vaguely facing a wall.

  “Right,” Marshal said. “We’ll have to do something about that. Fortunately, we prepared for this possibility.”

  “We did?”

  He lifted the tablet, holding it up to his mouth.

  “Hey,” he said in a low voice. “Zombies. Can you hear me?”

  Angie stared at him with confusion, but downstairs, the zombies in the hallway straightened up and scampered out into the back alley. In seconds, the hallway was empty.

  “What just happened?” Angie asked in amazement.

  “I put a Bluetooth speaker in the last load,” Marshal answered. “My voice just called to them from the wreck of the last skid we sent. Unlike that time with the singing teddy bear, however, it doesn’t keep going on and on. This time, I spoke just enough to draw them away, but not enough to send them into a frenzy.”

  “Why? Why not just wait until the Swarm is over?”

  Marshal smiled. “Here. Before they r
eturn, let’s get this load downstairs.”

  A couple of minutes later, the second skid of piled garbage was trundling its way out the back door and into the back alley. This time, however, there was no cluster of curious or suspicious undead to surround it, and after the skid had turned the corner with its camera view, they saw the reason why.

  About a hundred zombies were now rooting through the remains of the first skid, hunting for the source of the human voice they had heard. More zombies arrived, as the Swarm devoted more resources, and more intellect to the conundrum. Marshal continued to steer the second skid up to join the first, and by the time they arrived, the number of undead involved in the search had doubled.

  “Better turn around, if I can,” Marshal said, angling the miniature steering wheel. “There’s no space to get around a crowd that big. Let’s just… ah, shit.”

  Before he could back up even an inch, the skid shook violently again, and the camera view went blank.

  “They attacked your second skid,” Angie said. “This load of garbage didn’t get any further than the last one.”

  “I know, I know,” Marshal said, sounding annoyed. “Still. I have plenty of wheels and other parts. Might run out of garbage though. I’m going to have to rip the packaging off of some of the non-perishable items from the dollar store.”

  “What exactly are you trying to do?”

  “What the Swarm learns,” Marshal said, standing up and heading back to his bedroom, “all zombies remember. That’s how they figured out the importance of doors, windows, gunfire, cars, human waste, and a host of other little clues for hunting humans. It’s their most dangerous ability; the Swarm problem-solves, then downloads what it learns into the individuals. But that equation can work both ways, and there is garbage everywhere.”

  Angie shook her head. “It seems like a lot of trouble just to get rid of some garbage. I see why it’s important, but why do it when there’s a Swarm outside? And it’s not like the garbage is going very far from the apartment. Aren’t we drawing attention to ourselves by dumping it so close?”

  “I hope not,” Marshal said, “but again… if I turn out to be right, then none of this will be a problem.”

  “Right about what?”

  But Marshal wouldn’t answer. Instead, he went back to his bedroom and got back to work. With a shrug, Angie went back to her Potter-a-thon.

  The effort was repeated three more times that afternoon, with the battery-powered, remote-controlled garbage cart getting further and further each time. Finally, around 6:00pm, with Goblet of Fire just finishing up, Marshal was ready with the last attempt of the day.

  “This should be it,” he said. “We’re losing the light, and I’m not sure if it helps us to be driving these things around in the dark. Plus, I’m starting to run out of the right kind of batteries, so let’s hope we see some progress this time.”

  “Progress at what?” Angie asked, pausing the movie yet again and getting up from the couch.

  “Just come help,” Marshal said.

  Once again, Marshal was forced to use a Bluetooth-delivered message to lure zombies out of the hallway downstairs. Once again, they were able to send the remote-controlled skid downstairs without revealing the existence of the lift.

  Angie held her breath as the skid rumbled once again into the back alley.

  This time, however, the skid was able to travel unmolested all the way to the Dornack Street exit. Zombies it encountered seemed more interested in simply getting past the moving waste pile. One actually climbed over top, threatening to dislodge the little camera view that was Marshal’s only source of navigation.

  “Awesome,” Marshal said, his excitement mounting.

  “What?” Angie’s voice was tense. “They’re… ignoring it?”

  “Why shouldn’t they?” Marshal asked with an excited cackle. “The Swarm has investigated five of them already and found exactly nothing. It’s a pile of garbage, right? They’re everywhere, and while they may have found one or two humans hiding under garbage in the past, it’s unlikely that they found enough to take any precedent from it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Marshal steered the skid out onto Dornack Street with a growing sense of triumph. The garbage cart pushed its way through crowds of mulling zombies with the gentle nudges, targeting the gaps so as to not make too much chaos as it passed.

  “It means,” he said, “that moving piles of garbage are no longer any concern to the Swarm. Unless we give them some other reason to investigate, like the bluetooth voice message I used earlier, they will ignore any moving piles of garbage they see in the future. And because the Swarm has made that deduction, every zombie will do it.”

  “Really?” Angie said, staring wide-eyed at the tablet screen as zombie after zombie seemed to look into the screen, then lurch away. “So we can drive our garbage further away from the apartment. Cool.”

  “It’s better than that,” Marshal said. “Come on. Let’s go to the window and have a look. We should be able to see the skid come out on the street below us, right through the heart of the Swarm.”

  They went to stand by the window, and Angie pressed her face up against the glass while Marshal continued to navigate by the tablet-cam. Soon, the skid came rolling around the corner, angling its way into view.

  “They’re still ignoring it,” Angie reported. Then she laughed. “One of them got knocked to the ground when the skid bumped him.”

  “They’re strong,” Marshal said, “but unless they’re in attack mode, they have terrible balance. Look at that. What did he do?”

  “Nothing,” Angie said. “He just got back up again and kept walking.”

  “And nobody else is paying it any attention either,” Marshal said.

  “Wait.” Angie pointed. “Is that Frank?”

  “Yes, it is,” Marshal said, scowling.

  “He’s...” Angie hesitated. “He’s not doing anything to it. Just following it around. I don’t think he’s going to attack it.”

  “No,” Marshal said, “but he’s not ignoring it either, not like all the others. God damn it, Frank, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “He is pretty weird,” Angie agreed. “For some reason, he’s different than all the others. Could he be damaged somehow?”

  “I don’t see how,” Marshal said. “He’s as indestructible as the rest of them.”

  He handed her the remote.

  “Here,” he told her. “Play around a bit if you want, but do me a favor and drive it down the street when you’re done. I’m going to grab some dinner, and then I have to get back to work.”

  “Work?” Angie said, accepting the remote control. “Do we still have more garbage to get rid of?”

  “I hope so,” Marshal said, grinning at her. “But we’re past that now. Rest assured, Angie, mobile garbage skids are not the limit of this idea. When you’re done driving the skid away from here, go back to your Harry Potter marathon. And batten down the hatches of your brain, because I am going to blow your mind.”

  “Okay,” Angie said with a shrug, steering the skid down the street.

  With one last glare at the lumbering giant that was Frank, Marshal turned and left.

  Chapter Seven: Day19: Crapmobile

  “Angie?”

  Asleep on the couch, the little girl stirred, rolled over, and drifted away from consciousness like a puff of smoke riding the wind.

  “Angie!”

  Her eyes opened. Marshal was hovering over her, grinning.

  “Oh, good! You’re awake! There’s something I have to show you.”

  Angie yawned and rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”

  Marshal glanced at the clock. “Seven in the morning. You fell asleep last night somewhere in the middle of ‘Half-Blood Prince’. Are you hungry? I made breakfast, if you’re interested. Bacon and rice again, I’m afraid. But there’s coffee, and I cracked open some of the frozen orange juice for the occasion.”

  “What occasion?�
� Angie asked blearily.

  “You’re right,” Marshal said with excitement. “We should do the unveiling first.”

  “What unveiling?”

  “Follow me! I’ve already rolled it up onto the lift. Come and see.”

  With a heavy sigh, Angie pulled herself up from the couch. As much as she wanted to sleep, she forced herself into a more wakeful state of mind.

  Angie knew she was lucky. Her family was dead. Everything she had ever known had been destroyed. Up until a day ago, she’d been alone, covered in filth, starving, and crawling through the ruins of civilization with a diabetic death sentence hanging on her every breath. On the face of it, really, it could be argued that she was the unluckiest girl alive, and yet not a part of her doubted that she had been lucky to find Marshal.

  She owed him everything. Her life for a start, three times over if she was counting. Even more amazing was the fact that Marshal didn’t seem to feel like she owed him anything. He’d risked his life, come up with a plan to find a source of insulin, then beat impossible odds in obtaining it, and killed two men who’d tried to hurt her. Now, she had her own bedroom, plenty of food, and had gone from crawling through garbage to relaxing on a couch in front of a TV.

  He might be a bit crazy, but he was her Smiling Magician. He made the impossible real, just like the hero in all her fairy stories. Without Marshal, she would be alone again, and that could never be allowed to happen.

  So it was that, with a heavy sigh, she pulled herself from the couch and followed after him.

  Parked atop the skid-lift was another garbage skid. It seemed taller than the others, a little over six feet high, and wider, eight feet wide by ten feet long at a guess, but otherwise, just a pile of garbage. Then she narrowed her eyes as she noticed a few other more subtle changes. More effort, it appeared, had gone into the look of the exterior. Plastic bags bulged like balloons where they were stapled to the outside. Cardboard boxes, ragged pieces of cloth, old pop cans and bits of glass, were all more carefully placed. Down close to the ground, bits of trailing garbage caressed the floor, almost hiding the wheels from view. And - there they were - artfully blended into the façade to look like a continuous trash mound. Cameras.