by Ryder Stacy
“Name 787,” he said with a look of pride. Reddish drool leaked down the side of his mouth as he spoke. Rockson tried not to look.
“Hanover gives you all numbers?” Rock asked.
“Yes, numbers,” 787 replied. He lost all the balance on one leg suddenly and nearly tumbled over. But Rock caught him and helped him to his feet. He was light, as if most of the flesh had been worked off him. And cold to the touch. The poor bastard even felt like a corpse.
“Before that number,” Chen asked angrily. “Your real name pal, try to remember.” He knew it was important if the dude had the slightest chance of regaining his mind to take him back before whatever hideous brainwashing had been done.
“Before,” the man mumbled looking up at the sky, licking his dry white lips with a bloated gray tongue. “Before. Was, was Ralph. Yes, remember. Ralph and wife, Eldeline, and son . . . Michael.”
“Good man, good,” Rockson said slapping him on the back. Which he realized instantly he shouldn’t have done as 787 nearly tumbled forward again. A coating of yellow dust seemed to float up off his skin. They all coughed and stepped back.
“Hanover,” the zombie-man gritted his teeth hard and said the name over and over with real hatred in his eyes. “Hanover! Me kill General Hanover.”
“How many are there like you?” Rockson asked as he saw the man’s eyes slowly taking on a fractional look of intelligence. Like he at least knew he was talking.
“Are many,” the zombie gashead replied. “Thous—thous—thous,” he couldn’t say it.
“Thousands,” Detroit said mercifully. The man nodded.
“The President, Charles Langford, or his daughter—have you seen or heard anything about them?”
The man just stared straight ahead. Rock’s words seemed without meaning for him.
“I think that’s too complex an idea for him,” Chen butted in. “This bastard Hanover’s really done a number on this guy. He’s probably not gonna be good for anything the rest of his life, even though he escaped.”
“Do you know the way to Pattonville?” Rockson asked, shaking him by the arms so more of the rusty spittle dribbled out. The man’s eyes shook around inside the pasty head like cherries in a slot machine.
“Pat-ton-ville. Know way.” He shook his head with a kind of zombie pride, a goofy smile freezing on his face in demonic exaggeration. “Me take— Not far.” With that, he turned and began walking back the other way. The Freefighters looked at Rockson quizzically. Like—were they really going to take directions from Frankenstein?
“Let’s move, men,” the Doomsday Warrior said mounting. Looking skeptical as the day is long, the others followed, their ’brids moving at a slow gait. Four grizzled Freefighters loaded down with supplies atop three primeval beasts of burden, following behind a lurching groaning zombie who could barely stand up, let alone walk.
Rock wondered: Was this a dream too? Or was everything a dream of the Deity; a dream as real as you decide to let it be? Or was— Oh, hell! The important thing was to keep dreaming interesting dreams!
Seventeen
Though the zombie-man lurched and flailed around like a mummy on qualudes, the bastard knew his directions. They had gone for about twenty minutes back and forth through the mound fields of rotting and rusting 20th Century town debris when ahead they saw it: Pattonville. Rockson halted them all halfway down a hill shaded by thick branched trees as he scanned the place. He’d been shown maps of the little free-city from Rath’s intel unit back at C.C. It looked like the right place.
Pattonville was mostly underground, as were most of the Freefighting cities. C.C. had over twenty-five levels, and Pattonville just five. But it was long, over two miles, and oddly narrow, from fifty to a hundred feet most of the way. It had been a series of army storage depots—the overgrown sheds could still be seen. Back in the good old days it hadn’t been much. But it left Hanover with still usable army machinery, some old ammunitions, equipment of all kinds that had been stockpiled. In short all the things that a good military overthrow and conquest of other cities a planner would need. Rusty bullets kill too. Plus he had gas.
There were clearly marked a number of hidden entrances on the map he carried. Rockson was able to spot two—the odd shaped boulders. But a dozen guards were in front of both. He knew they’d need some kind of ace in the hole to make their way inside—without creating a whole battle scene.
“Listen, pal,” he said, addressing the zombie brain who stood by a tree staring at the bark. “Is there a good way to get in? Somewhere where there aren’t so many guards?”
The deadhead looked confused for a good ten seconds. Which was something terrible to see as his face got all scrunched up like he’d swallowed a lemon, the eyes grew even more bloodshot and numerous other unappealing expressions. He racked his minimal brain, and Rock and the others half expected to see gunk come out of his ears.
But at last the eyes lit up slightly, from vacuum black to dull gray. He looked at Rockson with that same ingratiating puppydog look that he got whenever he was able to accomplish anything.
“Me take out corpses in—in back of flat boards; roof of city,” he said, his bloated tongue slipping on the puffed cracked lips as he tried to speak.
“Doing good pal, keep going,” the Doomsday Warrior said, trying to encourage him on.
“One guard only, leave door o—, o—pen. Take dead out to swamp. Many dead.”
“Sounds like our kind of place,” Detroit said, butting in.
“Me take. Me know way,” Ralph said with pride on the cadaverous face.
“I want to sight the place up,” Rockson said, “before we do any combat ops. Chen, you’re coming with me. No offense, gang, he said looking at the disappointed Detroit and the equally frustrated Archer who was banging one huge fist into another. “But I gotta be able to move fast and through the shadows.”
“Brother, I’ll move through the shadows better than any white-face man,” Detroit laughed, rubbing his sweat-coated ebony face.
“I need you two to stay back, ready to troubleshoot,” Rockson replied, resting a hand on Detroit’s broad shoulder. “And keep an eye on our tree-crusher over here,” he said, eyeing Archer, who grunted and seemed to look around for food.
“Will do, cap’,” Detroit said as he adjusted the remaining grenades on his twin belts. “But not happily.”
“We’ll leave the ’brids, rip up our outfits, try to look like zombie-man.”
They had already taken off the white jump suits and restowed them in the hybrid’s packs. Now Rockson reached down with his Bowie knife and cut up his sweatshirt and khaki pants, rubbed dirt all over himself as Chen did the same. Archer looked on like they were both mad, scratching his head so hard that strands of hair came out over by the crystal-patch in his skull. Ralph looked mystified himself but kept it to himself. He hadn’t quite re-mastered the art of laughing with his half-rotted mouth. But he did make some squirrel-like noises that were tries.
“Let’s go, Mr. Ralphy boy, 787,” Rock said after he and Chen passed muster. They looked like shit, almost as good as their zombie friend.
Ralph turned and started lurching off up a slope of barbed bushes that ripped at his skin though he hardly noticed. They didn’t see a soul for the first hundred yards or so that Ralph led them through the woods. They got to within about fifty feet from what was clearly the roof complexes of the city below poking out of the earth. Just several feet of the roofs had been built above ground, extending up not more than two or three feet. Above it was camouflage brush and netting. But standing at ground level adjacent to it Rock could see the raised squares that formed the roofs of the long depot.
Just as they were turning around a sharp base of a hill that shaded one end of the city, Rockson caught sight of a whole line of zombies. They all looked like Ralph’s brothers, lurching around, arms jerking up and down, faces twisted and into pained expressions. They carried the dead and the garbage of the city. There was a lot of both.
They dragged them, and carried them on their shoulders, stumbling even further under the weight of the death-debris.
“Come,” Zombie-Ralph said. “This way.”
They walked down a path that meandered several hundred feet and ended at a manmade pond about seventy-five feet across. Here the “waste materials” were thrown into the lye pit, a bubbling acid pool of white foam. It no doubt rotted all that was thrown into it. Body parts floated here and there on the surface bubbling up from below. Even the vultures stayed away. They probably couldn’t eat the diseased waste rotting in the caustic waters without burning their own beaks and innards. A swamp of death.
Rock felt his stomach gurgle and Chen turned to give him a sickened look as well. Ralph kept bumbling on, joining the line of waste-haulers returning into the city. Rock and Chen hopped out of some bushes and did the same thing, out of the line of sight of the only guard.
They walked within the line, their arms outstretched, filthy coated faces rigid in looks of horror. The guard barely glanced up as they made their way past him into the darker world of Pattonville which lay ahead. There was a ramp that slanted down, and a lot of the slaves seemed to have trouble negotiating it properly. Walking was one thing, but having to do it on a funny angle, that was a different story.
Chen and Rockson imitated the zombies around them, doing whatever strange sideways walking, bumping into walls, that the others did. It was kinda fun, actually.
They passed through several checkpoints as the line headed back into the main inner dump chamber of the city. Several guard stations were here as well, but none seemed to take any notice of the three who had jumped the line. They all looked the same to the troopers, like shit.
The smell was atrocious as they rounded a bend and entered the first of the underground supply-depots.
It was a madhouse of motion, both men bringing in raw supplies, mostly what seemed like scrap metal and empty gas canisters, and carting out filled canisters, presumably filled with gas. They had a regular full scale factory city going here too, Rockson noted with alarm.
Pattonville had never been like this when he had visited it years before. It now rivaled C.C.’s own industrial capability. That was clear just from the sheer volume of traffic. Hand carts, wheelbarrows, fork-lifts, skids, the works. And all of the work done by a zombie labor force, followed everywhere by teams of heavily armed guards. They were the mules of the place, that was for damned sure. No task too small for some gas-created slave to not be sent to carry it out. Rock and Chen made their way in past the inner guard check where two of Hanover’s lieutenants looked over the moving masses with bored expressions. Who wants to look at such ugly things too hard?
“Come on,” Rock hissed to Chen as he detached himself from the line and headed stiff-armed up what appeared to be the main corridor that led to the rest of the city. The deeper they went in, the more concerned Rockson grew. Gas factories to the right and left churned with mechanical action. Conveyor belts with loaded canisters stretching in long piles, slave-men loading up the cannisters onto dollies and into crates.
Further on, they came to a wide room with shelving that went floor to ceiling. It was filled with ammunition, more gas canisters of every size, plus regular weapons, and uniforms. The whole place was a munitions and parts depot par excellence.
“Hey, you three!” a voice yelled as they walked closer to one of the shelving units. “No gasheads allowed here. Move out. Back to your functions.” He went to raise his rip-whip pointing back out toward the moving lines a few hundred feet off.
Before he knew what hit him, Chen’s index finger drove into the man’s throat like a dagger. Red gushed from the wound as the martial arts master pushed the dying guard back into shadows behind a small concrete wall along a rampway.
Ralph looked on with sheer amazement. The idea of killing guards had not really occurred to him, it seemed. Now that it did, it made him smirk, like it was a nice subject to daydream about. After all that they had done to him, it was time to kill!
“Where is Hanover?” Rockson asked as they walked on like the Three Mummies from Seville. “Did you ever see him?”
“General Hanover,” Ralph mumbled, gritting his teeth together in slow burning rage. “Yes, I see. Fingers that kill is good! Me take to him.” The two Freefighters followed the man who actually slowly seemed to be getting a small trace of his brain back. Maybe when they weren’t dosed with their next shot of gas on time, they started coming out of it. Rockson prayed that it was true. To have to live in those twisted bodies and minds for the rest of their lives would be too horrible a fate for any man.
They passed several more guard stations, but after glancing at them the troopers figured if the three zombies had made it through the previous checks they were okay. There were always slaves carrying out odd-cleaning jobs, errands and what not for the upper echelons. There were squads of troopers inside the next depot chamber. This one had been turned, it appeared, into the brass’s personal chambers.
“Five towns today within thirty miles,” Rock heard one of them say to another. “And the general’s set to get another ten towns by the end of the month. We’re moving fast now.”
“But they’ve bumped off half the towns,” a second trooper said, not completely impressed. “Used death-gas, not hypno-gas.”
“They’re just having a little trouble with gas quality-control,” the first replied. “Level ones and threes and twos all mixed together. It’s a labeling problem. Shit happens, is all.”
“Here, be general’s quar—quarters,” Ralph grunted, stopping as they came alongside a geometric-patterned steel-chrome wall that ran about two hundred feet down the chamber and up to the concrete ceiling some fifty feet above. It was armored everywhere, with bulletproof windows looking down from near-top, and gunports poking around the thing like a porcupine. Clearly it was the good general’s abode—and armed to the teeth. He surely had nightmares about these zombie hordes coming to get him, if he lived here!
“Don’t stop,” Rock hissed, as their friend Ralph raised an arm and pointed at the quarters. The place clearly had a shitload of guns aimed on them. Rock knew men inside were ready to fire if they made a false move. “Keep going Ralph, good man, keep going—we want to see the next depot,” Ralph got the message and turned stiffly away like Robby the Robot who hadn’t been oiled in eons and walked on past the place.
Ralph led them through three more steel-chambers, all part of the immense warehouse that had been laid down for nearly two miles. There was a lot to see, all of it bad news. They were challenged at a few more points, but managed to bluff their way through. As long as the guards didn’t look too close, a few grunts of, “Me lost—you point.” worked.
They passed through more materials depots, then reached the giant vats where it was obvious the gases were being made and packaged.
The smell was strong the moment they walked through the thick plastic seal curtains that cut off the chamber. Ducts rose up overhead and sucked out many of the gases with giant vent fans as big as plane propellers. This was where they made the hellish substances that had deprived Ralph and so many others of their minds.
They had used huge amounts of gas in World War I, Rock knew and in the Middle East in the late 1980’s—before it was outlawed by all parties concerned as being too difficult to control. Apparently these guys had gotten a hell of a lot more control over it. Rock wondered about how.
And then Rock saw something terrible. Something he wasn’t prepared for, even with all the misery he’d seen today: The zombie-making plant.
A group of about twenty more or less normal men were lined up on one side of a low aluminum hut about thirty feet long and with a curved roof. In the harsh arc-light, guards prodded them through the opened doors with the word PROCESSING over it as the men cursed and screamed and carried on. These weren’t normal Free-City dwellers. They were tall, bearded men, maybe trappers.
Must be outsiders, Rock realized, who had wandered into town�
�and didn’t come out again. That’s why the city had been able to hide it’s deadly activities for the last six months or so, how they had gone unnoticed. They had just swallowed up everything and everyone that came along.
The last few men screamed and resisted, trying to keep the doors open as the guards closed them. They smashed away on the prisoners hands until the fingers were bloody and they pulled them away. Rockson and Chen could hear the fists pounding on the walls, rising crescendos of screams of sheer terror.
The troopers doublechecked both sides of the processing-hut and then turned on four faucets at each end. Gas hissed powerfully into shower nozzles that had been fitted up on the walls, out of reach of the flailing hands below. Now the screams were very loud, and coughing and smashing with heads and fists against the walls. Anything to get out of the place. But they weren’t getting out.
Rockson and Chen watched with a rage that burnt to such a level that both feared they’d rush forward, and they had to restrain themselves. They couldn’t just blindly attack. Not in here. Not yet.
So they watched. Watched as the gassing continued for a good five minutes. Then the outer doors of the hut were opened and the zombie creatures that had been humans just moments before walked, stumbled out. More pals for Ralph and his ilk. No more screams, no more pain. And more slaves for General Hanover’s nightmarish army. Rockson vowed something at that moment. That no matter what the cost, he would get the slime responsible for all this. Would take down Hanover, if it was with his dying breath. The man was going to pay.
Eighteen
“Son of a—” Chen growled as he saw the stumbling results of the gas chamber. Men who were no longer men, just things stripped down to sheep-mentality. Which were words Chen shouldn’t have uttered to Rockson. For two guards lounging nearby had been eyeing the odd trio for a few minutes. It was unusual to see the zombies acting intelligent, or conversing, or reacting to anything.
Suddenly Chen sensed them first and turned in a blur with Rockson just behind him. Two guards were standing over them with huge Liberator Combo .9mm/.12 gauge units, aiming down at their heads. To add insult to injury, Rockson thought with disgust, the weapons had been produced in C.C.’s own plant. He should know—he’d been on the committee that had helped design the weapon for combat over six years before. And now one of his creations was aimed straight for his eyeballs.
