The Bone Puppets: A Hard SciFi Zombie Soldier Story

by Doug McGovern

  “I don’t—I can’t…” Elias felt his brows warping with confusion. Ezekiel giggled, rocking back and forth as he blew smoke rings into the smoke and poison diluted sky.

  “Don’t trouble yourself, or stoop so low scraping for an answer! Not everything you seek is in the jaws of dead beasts, or else perhaps you are seeking the wrong things. Yes, my choice is whole. It holds great righteousness to it. You could bring an answer. You could make a reason. Because you’re alive, Elias. You are alive and whole and young. That alone is a reason to try to save you. Yet there are many things to add to your merit. Far many more reasons to save you from the desolation caused by Sedition’s Author. ” Ezekiel coughed and eased himself to standing pacing in a circle.

  “One such reason is your affinity to kindness. You said my name. That’s reason enough to call you my friend. There’s nothing much left of what I was…I forgot the rest. Truth be told, I forgot everything. But one thing is certain. I’m going to help you. It may mean my final ending…But I am at peace.” Ezekiel hauled a fistful of leaves and brambles into the fire.

  They fell silent watching the smoke ascend into the meteor shower. In one small way, heaven was meeting with earth. They could rise above it all, if only in the shadow of this imperceptible hope. If smoke, if fire, and if clean water were the only straws they could grasp at when looking for a reason then they were reasons alone.

  Elias slept peacefully for the first time in years that night.

  *****

  Chapter 14

  Climbing the broken tree had been a paramount effort on both their parts. Ezekiel had eased Elias to standing and had held his back as he inched up the tree’s stone body. Although the squat Joshua tree was only 12 feet high at the most, the two men wrestled with the effort to scoot into its branches as if they fought with a giant’s wrist.

  “Ah, yes. I am sorry for the pain I’ve put you through, young friend. But you see, you must be far from the ground when they come. Their feet seep the blood of many nations. Blood and fire…Vapors of smoke. I am not human therefor I will feel no hurt. But you, child…You have lungs that can still bleed. Rest…It will be a while before we see our herds on the horizon.” Ezekiel smiled.

  Elias watched his face, judging each minute expression. Everything that Elias had ever imagined might be an attribute of a father was reflected on this creature’s face. In his protective behaviors. In the way that he prepared him for his quest, like a father sending a son off to find his own life’s fortune.

  As Elias sat vigil, legs dangling the poisonous air, wounds throbbing in their dry sockets, he entertained all sorts of memories and dreams about hunting with a real father. Beneath him, he heard Ezekiel rustling the bushes, moving aside the altered Savannah grasses to lie in wait for elephants. He smiled. In a small way, his boyhood dreams of a suitable paternal figure were being fulfilled in this moment.

  Ezekiel had insisted that they had a dire need to hunt down a herd of the Bone Elephants, an altered species that had descended from the friendly zoo animals people had so loved in the world before. Elias was not certain why, but he knew that the Prophet’s every action was a pursuit of deep meaning. He knew why. That was enough. The young rebel chose in the instance of his dire circumstance to trust him like a child would his father.

  Father. That was a word poisonous to Elias’s ear for all his days. Yet now, at the dawn of his destiny, at last, he had made peace with the concept of “father”. For he had found a fatherly figure in this strange sub-human creature.

  As Elias sat staring into the ghost sky, the gears of his constant situational analysis began turning. He had heard many stories, many legends surrounding the Final Prophet of Earth. How many of them were true?

  Who is this guy? Elias’s soul ached to know.

  This mystery was actually more unnerving to him than wondering if Riff was fairing alright out there in Yim’s claws.

  Riff had only known the latter-day Ezekiel. He’d had no knowledge of the little kid that had grown up to be him. He’d spoke of a family. How many of them had there been? What was his relationship to them all? How had the choice to protect them brought him to such a horrific ending?

  Still, if Ezekiel had been abandoned in the Hybrid Savannah of all forsaken places, then it probably meant he’d committed some serious insurgency. Daring to take a stand was an extremely gutsy feat on its own. But daring to do so from the inside?

  Doubt was beginning to fade from Elias’s mind. This was the fastest he’d ever allowed himself to trust anyone. It had taken longer with even Riff was his own brother.

  “Here they come. Be ready! You don’t earn an elephant’s trust by being idle. Use the leaves. A veil for obvious human features is a way to engage the remnant of the original species’ docile, curious nature.” Ezekiel’s whispering voice interrupted Elias’s pondering. Flinching a bit, he reached and wrapped the branches around his face like a bride’s veil of green. Any minute now altered creatures of this tormented plain would emerge from the oil and mud pits and broken forests.

  He’d been expecting them, but he couldn’t prepare for the shock of their actual presence. When Ezekiel had said “elephants” Elias had imagined something like he’d seen on Discovery channel whenever there was reruns in the “newsroom” for him to wile the hours between tortures away with. These creatures drug their heads with an air of ultimate exhaustion. Their bodies were encrusted with so much bone dust that they looked like they were made of stone.

  “Now, my young friend! Put your hands to the ropes and guide him. He will follow the warmth of your spirit. The spirit is never fully snuffed by the cold of death.” Elias scrambled up the tree. Elias flinched as an elephant came near the tree and lifted his head. His eyes burned with a human sadness. He lingered in a dull undying caused by humanity’s negligence. Elias saw the past mirrored in the color of the old elephant’s eyes. Somehow he knew that the creature could remember the world before. Before when the ground lived and drank and green grassed clothed the earth with beauty.

  Ezekiel idled up next to Elias. He took the ropes and twisted them around Elias’s hands and arms. Carefully, Ezekiel guided Elias’s listless body like he was a mannequin. He lassoed the ends of the rope over the elephant’s broken tusks.

  Together Prophet and young vigilante guided the old elephant close to the tree. Like sand in the center of the tide, they swept back and forth. Elias caught on quickly. Ezekiel was hypnotizing the old, sad beast.

  “Mm, yes…That’s how you use them for passage through this miserable place. They must sleep walk. Only the sleeping can pass through this valley where the shadow of death must reign.” Ezekiel moved his hands like a puppeteer from the rafters.

  “Aha! There…Now we have a team of loyal servants to carry you on your quest. It’s wonderful. Even in death, the earth has provision enough for all of us.” Ezekiel clapped Elias on the back, laughing.

  Elias collapsed. He laid in the wild grass looking at the sky, mud-slicked against the back of his hair. What had actually just happened?

  “We just wrestled a whole herd of wild, death magnetic elephants?” Elias realized with a feeling that was both sinking and affirming that he had soared into a new realm of insanity.

  “The gift of light’s power is to make a man the master of his wilderness. You just conquered this savage land for your use. Be proud of that, my son.” Ezekiel laughed as he tugged the elephants by makeshift grass reigns.

  Elias sat up, spitting blood into the sludge. He smiled. Ezekiel had called him “my son.” It was the first time in all of his life and most likely the last time a man had called him son.

  *****

  Chapter 15

  Elias was amazed by how at peace Ezekiel was with the earth and sky, even as it was. He seemed untroubled by the shaking ground. Unconcerned with the hysteria of nature. Why should he be? When he entered the ecosystem of the Bone Savannah, the beasts knew his presence. The wilderness fell tranquil, ready to dispense and make a passage before t
he Prophet and his companion.

  Rounding up the Elephants was only the first step of preparing for their Bone Safari. They still had to gather all the provisions that would last on a haul across the desert. They would have to make natural medicines from this supply of resources to stave off the development of septic blood in Elias’s wounds. Then, they would have to select from the weapons cache left around the watering hole the best munitions for dealing with the Hybrids across this damned plain.

  “What is this place, Ezekiel?” Elias paused, shaking on his weak knees. He had walked too far away from the litter and he knew it. Ezekiel turned, his cape catching fire in the wind. The flames died down as he stood still, studying his young friend.

  Ezekiel had urged the Elephants downhill on a sidelong path that rimmed the watering hole. Descending now from the steep cliffs that had formed by shifting human remains, the Prophet, and the Rebel found themselves in a hermit dwelling.

  Ezekiel folded his arms, scrutinizing his young companion’s poor judgment.

  “Young friend, you are ill. You must rest. Please, welcome to my home. My after-home. All that you see is the reward of prophecy. Meager, I agree, but mine nonetheless. You are safer here than you will ever be again. I pray you enjoy what little peace I am able to give you, for a time.” Ezekiel motioned his hands in a beggar’s gesture. Elias collapsed to his knees. He nodded. This creature was trying to be helpful, but with his own limited mobility, it was difficult to assist Elias. He wouldn’t be able to prevent his injury on the count of his own stupidity.

  The smell of clean water made Elias feel high. It encompassed this place. It was an oasis in a world where the most enrapturing place a person could imagine was the capital Imperial City, in the center of the Neo-Mesopotamian Crescent, somewhere local to where the country of Syria once had been. That was the biggest collection of chiseled, altered mountain landscape and effervescing fountains of human blood that had ever been contrived, in any human’s horror landscape.

  This place was a glorious afterlife. The last stretch of green trees and pure water and dark soil. Elias felt his breath stolen by the song of a brightly colored toucan. He looked to Ezekiel with wide eyes.

  “This is the Earth. Or it used to be.” Ezekiel smiled and waved his arms around.

  Elias felt his whole body jerk and turned to see a giraffe calf walking at the edge of the water.

  “Is that…That doesn’t look like the other hybrids?” Elias jabbed a shaking finger in the creature’s direction.

  “Around my home, a few natural animals still live. Granted, this number is a very few. But they remain. It seems that you are not the only life that managed to survive the end of the Earth as it was. I hope with all that remains of the heart in me that you will not be the last.” Ezekiel nodded toward the young giraffe.

  “The transportation I made for you, was bound by the power I told you about. The power of light and of peace. This power…The power you must seek. It comes from a source deep in the heart of this wilderness. It is called the Kilimanjaro Sacrament.” Ezekiel clung to Elias’s shoulder. He trembled as the suppressed rottenness of his curse overtook him again. His eyes were pleading, as if the last of his hope rested on him.

  “I believe you. You’re the only source of reliable information I’ve had in this game…Only, how Ezekiel? I’m just one man. Not really the best candidate either. I mean, you’ve spent time with me…You know how messed up I am.” Elias swallowed. By now, he’d come to accept his traumatized behaviors as evident and crippling to all those who knew him.

  “You have the strength of spirit to do this, Elias. And these tools” Ezekiel held an XM-2010 toward Elias. He swallowed and took it.

  “So, they use the classics too, huh?” Elias smiled and ran his hand up and down the body of the rifle, wondering about things ahead.

  “It’s all they know…” Ezekiel licked his lips and looked around at his feet. He smiled and hit his knees again, scraping up dust clouds like a dog searching for a stashed bone.

  “We have many tools that were left behind by the others…” Ezekiel held up a Carl Gustav rocket launcher.

  “Okay, if this won’t work on the Bone-Critters then we have problems.” Elias fingered it and held his breath.

  “I must agree with you. Now that you know about our tools, this Safari is off to a good start. Now, I’ll have to show you the rations I acquired out of whatever little human need remains. Rations were harder to come by as most of those who were sent to this place, were already dead. Still, I found the rations of those few living officers that deigned to come here…That were destined to die here. I picked up MRE’s and all sorts of things along these forsaken highways. There’s more than enough fuel to my curiosity there. You will be well fed on your journey.” Ezekiel continued to chatter about food and medicine and the necessaries.

  Elias sat dumbfounded by his new weapons. This Arthurian quest of finding The Witchdoctor’s Hollow had gone from pure fantasy to doable in just a matter of hours. All by the grace of this chance meeting.

  For the first time in his life, Elias felt he could believe in miracles. He knew that this feeling wouldn’t last for long. But for just this moment he was going to revel in it.

  *****

  Chapter 16

  Elias and Ezekiel mutually agreed to travel toward the Kilimanjaro Sacrament. By all Ezekiel’s calculations, it was on the road to the Witchdoctor’s Hollow. Elias was suspicious about that. It might be only because he was suspicious of everything, yet somehow he knew that the Witchdoctor had a direct hand in that. Of course the only power that could counter his evil would be on his own hell-scaped highway.

  “Yes, I agree with your suppositions, my young friend,” said Ezekiel. “It seems the Witchdoctor had a hand in so much more than the deformity of the Earth. He placed the only seed of hope on the ground of his sedition. Did he hope to bury it there? Did he not know that burial of the light only leads to resurrection?” Ezekiel paused in the path. He clicked to the elephants and they came in check. Elias shifted in the litter. He had a feeling that it was time for this man to teach him a lesson.

  He called him man. Elias had come a long way from his initial fear in the Bone-hills. Even as he’d grown to trust Ezekiel, he’d continued to refer to him as “creature” in his mind all this while. Yet he knew in his heart that this was not the right thing to do. For the Prophet had overcome the sedition of this wretched plane. In that right, he had proved that he was a man of indomitable character. Not the brass of the streets, but real, insurmountable strength. Elias would call this man father no matter what became of either of them in the end. Somehow he would be like him.

  “Wait…I feel it, young friend. It’s close.” Ezekiel held up his hand. His eyes watched the skies. In this world, there was never a deficit of ravens. Yet here there were none.

  Elias watched the sky, looking at the

  “You have questions, son of dust.” Ezekiel stepped up onto a stone. He looked out over the wildlands, waiting for the approach of the tormented elephants that lingered as puppets themselves in this wasteland.

  “Funny. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re the first person to be considerate of my inquiring mind. You’re not even human yet you’ve shown me more humanity than all the rest.” Elias smiled. Ezekiel turned around. His mask was slipping. He flinched, readjusting it over the horrible, rotten wound that made up the greater percentage of his face.

  “How could I take it any way at all, young man? I have no life to be injured in any sense. That is liberating for me, but troublesome for you, in that you would benefit from my flesh and bone. If I could bleed for you then I could die for you. That kind of fraternal loyalty is what you long for in your desert places.” Ezekiel’s mask twisted into the shape of a smile.

  Elias was taken aback. He took a step to the side, trying to hide the emotions that he felt racing over his face.

  “I know…You have a little brother... Bone of your bones, living blood,” said Ezek
iel. “That is what makes you run, into the mouth of Hell. Into the open hands and yawning chasm that is the Witchdoctor’s place of worship.” Ezekiel straightened up. The wind picked up from behind, carrying the stench of death with it. It lifted his cloak off his bowed shoulders. Elias froze. He could see beneath the cloak Ezekiel’s clothes torn open. The marks of his dying remained on his person. He had been scourged and impaled by the Crescent leaders.

  “You are a wise man.” Elias took a step closer. Ezekiel shook his head. He turned to look into the poisonous wind. Elias followed his gaze. They watched and listened to the tormented trumpet shriek of the Bone Elephants as they came marching forth from the ashen tree line.

  “I was, son of dust. When I was a man…Something with purpose.” Ezekiel folded his arms. Thunder rolled far away.

  Elias looked up as motor-oil laden rain began to fall. The sparks that were constantly teasing the air shot forth in constant streams, wrapping around their heads like schools of sun-fired fish swimming through the airways.

  “This earth is poisoned by their greed. By their lust…Anger seeded the ground. The tares arose. It choked all green life that remained. All of this was caused by the powerful, dreadful cruelty of the man called Cain. The man who would become the Witchdoctor you hail with such reverence. The man who slew his brother in the name of his pride, in the heat of his rage.” Ezekiel opened his arms. A circle of ravens floated above his head like a halo of despair.

  Elias watched, mesmerized by the clockwise rotations as more and more of the ravens gathered from the backs of the skeletal pachyderms. From the cycle of the birds, shot an isolated bolt of lightning. It struck Ezekiel in his upturned face, coursing through his wounded teeth. His rottenness was scorched away. His body took on a celestial glow. He was alive again for one moment.