Mobius

by Garon Whited

  Having drawn the zombies off in the wrong direction with noise and smoke, she re-engaged her mufflers to quiet her exhaust as we circled a long way around, approaching the scene from the opposite side. No zombies were in immediate sight—the searchlight died with the first missile hit—and there was no sign of a fresh horde gathering. We stopped a block or so away from the gym, peeking from a side street. Bronze picked her spot to be near their vehicle, as a courtesy. It was a nice thought on her part.

  Everyone climbed or fell out of the truck bed. Talbot climbed out with dignity and flipped off Bronze. I don’t think he cared for her driving. Bronze backfired a cloud of black smoke—Same to you and your mother, you ingrate!

  “She’s just playful,” I told him. He looked doubtful.

  “The hummer is one street over,” BT announced, consulting a GPS. I cleared my throat and pointed. He looked around the edge of the building and looked sheepish.

  “See? She can be nice.”

  “What now?” Talbot asked me, not commenting on Bronze.

  “I think I’m going to move on. Too many zombies, not enough magic, and I doubt anyone is interested in taking up a collection to keep me fed. Don’t misunderstand. I’d be willing to help, but I suspect your superiors would start poking their noses into things better left unpoked. I might be forced to do some unsavory things due to prejudice. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, and I could tell he meant it.

  I did not add they might ask me to do some unsavory things like nuke a zombie horde. I’m sure it’s not the same as bombing human cities, but I feel a little touchy about the uncontrolled conversion of matter to energy these days.

  “All in all, I think we should end on a high note,” I added, trying to sound positive. “Don’t you?”

  “This is a high note?” BT asked. “I’d hate to see your aria!”

  “The Queen of the Night’s got nothing on me,” I chuckled. Talbot suppressed a smile. At least someone caught the joke. “It’s been interesting,” I admitted, “but I doubt we’ll see each other again. Still, I’ve been wrong before. Entirely too often, in fact.”

  Talbot stuck out his hand. I tugged off a gauntlet and shook it. His hand felt surprisingly human. From his expression, mine didn’t.

  “Thanks for… I’m not sure what,” he admitted.

  “You are most welcome…” I began, and Firebrand helped me out as I pointed at each of them, “Michael Talbot, Lawrence Tynes, Gary Talbot, Thomas van Goth, and Jake Winters. Good luck with the zombies. Remember, the shriekers are the key.”

  “Oh, we got it,” BT agreed.

  “As for the humans,” I added, “I wish I had an answer for you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Watch humans for a thousand years and see if you still need to ask.”

  They watched as I mounted up in the truck bed and took a grip on the headache rack. Bronze rumbled to life and blinked a headlight wink at Talbot. He didn’t know what to make of it. Nobody knew what to make of it as she darkened to a dull black, spun through a tight turn, and disappeared into the night.

  From a safe vantage, I watched them load up and leave. They had only minor trouble with zombies—nothing a combination of firepower and horsepower couldn’t handle. Their maintenance guy wasn’t going to be happy about the zombie gunk in the undercarriage and grille, though. I doubt they regarded it as anything more than routine. They were obviously in their element—talented, well-trained, and experienced. If I ever have a major zombie problem, I know who to call.

  I felt, however, the remains of the horde and I still had business. One of the hunters said something about doing a cleanup after the drone strike. Well, they didn’t get to finish their drone strike, but maybe I could clean up for them. I did a quick headcount and got a number larger than I liked. More were trickling back in my direction even without the light. Somewhere, there had to be a shrieker organizing them into a tight mob again.

  Come to think of it, this might be a good thing. They’re mindless minions. If I grab a shrieker, I can lure them pretty much wherever I want them. I just need somewhere to lure them where they won’t come back.

  Once I thought that far along, the answer was obvious.

  Grabbing a shrieker wasn’t as easy as I hoped. Firebrand blew up a bulker and I subdivided a dozen other zombies before we reached our target. It didn’t want to be a captive, but I insisted. When I put claws through the flesh between its shoulderblades and grabbed it by the spine, it continued to struggle, but it stopped having any say in the matter.

  As I hoped, it called for help. Zombies from all over Eatonville came running, which suited me perfectly. I took a few steps to make sure I was standing in the middle of the street. My cloak flowed down to the ground. It pooled around my feet and spread out in a circle, like a wide moat around the lonely tower, me.

  Zombies dropped into it like water down a drain. Even the sprinters fell away into nothingness. They weren’t smart enough to try and jump over what was nothing more than a flat, black place. I’m guessing they couldn’t see it well enough in the night to realize it was a hole.

  Other shriekers, however, approached more cautiously. The first one went in, still shrieking, but the rest paused at the edge. Other zombies kept plummeting.

  Finally, one of the shriekers changed its tune. It sent out a signal to stop.

  Bad sign. They weren’t smart, but unlike their fellows, shriekers aren’t entirely mindless.

  I reached out to the one who caught on—it was at the slowly-spreading edge of my cloak, only twenty feet away—and concentrated on coiling a loop of one tendril through its head. It takes a lot of focus and isn’t something quick enough to do in a fight, but I drew the loop tight, slicing off the forward third of its brain, still inside the skull. It stopped thinking and stood there, silently.

  If I weren’t such a nice guy, I could make my living as a professional assassin.

  The other one started broadcasting the stop signal, though. I repeated my performance, lobotomizing it. I saved my captive for last, since I didn’t want to shut it up. No, I needed it as a transformer or transmitter. Firebrand and I can manipulate a zombie, a mindless one, but only one at a time. By grabbing the psychic matrix of the captive shrieker and forcing it to emit the summon signal, we drew in everything in its range.

  Ten minutes was enough, but we kept it up a little longer to make sure. We ran out of zombies, which is always a good result, and I crushed some shrieker skulls because it had been that kind of night. My cloak folded over the remains. We went for a walk with my cloak billowing behind me and also dragging the ground, like some strange cross between a bridal veil in the wind and a long train. Zombie bits, bones, all sorts of remains—nothing else—simply tumbled away into darkness.

  Now that’s a cleanup.

  What now, Boss?

  “Good question.” My cloak flowed up from the ground and rippled happily in the breeze. The fires were dying down, at least.

  “We’re done here,” I decided. “I’m in no mood for more zombies.” Bronze, parked up the block, rumbled to life and rolled over to park next to us.

  You do enjoy chopping them up, though, Firebrand pointed out.

  “I have anger management issues.”

  So, if we’re not zombie hunting—or are we?

  “We’ll revisit the question when I have a better idea of what I want to do for the next couple thousand years.”

  Seriously?

  “Seriously.”

  Boss, you don’t strike me as the sort to be content to waste an afternoon if you can find an alternative. You don’t handle boredom well. No offense.

  “None taken. And you may be right. Trouble is, I’m still wondering how fate is going to screw with me. I’m supposed to have a village or something in the Pyrenees, I believe, so I can create Sasha. I’m not sure how that’s going to come about, though—and whether or not I want—or dare—to argue the point.”


  Destiny, fate, whatever it is, it’s making sure you come to be, right? What’s the problem?

  “Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe I’m the problem.”

  You usually are.

  “Not helping.”

  And you’re not answering. What do we do now? Not in a thousand years. Tonight. Tomorrow. The next day.

  I had to admit, it was a good question.

  “I think,” I began, slowly, “I’m going to find someplace quiet to spend some time thinking. Maybe, for safety, more than one. Yes. For now, I’m looking for someplace to call home for a while—or, at least, call my lair. After that, we’ll see.”

  Don’t we have one in Elbe?

  “I was thinking something less exposed to zombie hordes.”

  Firebrand was disappointed.

  Elbe, Whatever Day

  We spent a few days sucking up all the fuel we could find in Eatonville and transferring it to Elbe. There was quite a lot still in the underground tanks. Once we were back in Elbe, settled in our home base, I expanded the effect of the Nothing To See Here spell and added a psychic muting effect. I didn’t want a screamer wandering close enough to sense us and drawing a horde.

  We also encountered a surprising number of zombies on our trips to the lair. I presume they were initially attracted by the searchlights or the psychic screaming. Whatever the reason, they did not enjoy the meeting. We encountered several groups of them as we made fuel-stocking trips. The road is pretty much clear of zombies, now.

  Bronze has some new dents in her grille, but those are popping out. She’s moved some metal around in the truck to reinforce the front end. For reference, a bulker is the only thing she won’t hit head-on and instantly kill. Just looking at her truck, I know I don’t want to be hit.

  On our last trip—my personal gas station’s underground tank was almost full—I decided to detour by the school. I don’t know what I thought I might find. Zombies around the ruined searchlight? An intact generator? My shrieker-containing helmet?

  What I did find was extremely interesting. Someone duct-taped a large manila envelope to the remaining doors of the gym. The envelope had my name on it.

  I checked it carefully. No wires. I looked all around. I saw no surveillance, and I did remember to check above, since I know they have drones. Seeing nothing untoward, I slit open the envelope without removing it. There was one sheet of paper inside. Apparently, I didn’t make too bad an impression on Mike Talbot. He was nice enough to go to the effort of writing me a thank-you note, and I appreciated it. He even offered to buy me a beer.

  Nice guy, that Talbot. I wasn’t sure how he would ever be able to call me and set up this hypothetical beer, but I liked the sentiment.

  Come to that, how would I set it up to let him call me? A mirror wouldn’t do, not on its own. They don’t normally reach across universes. I could combine a micro-gate with a mirror, though… but magic obviously scores high on the local freak-people-out-o-meter.

  Back at my base of operations, I sat down carefully, put my feet up, and considered my new iridium ring. It had a tiny hole in the rim, suitable for a mini-gate, so I could spy through it. True, when looking through a gate with a scrying spell, the image gets distorted and blurry the farther the sensor goes from the gate. If I only want to look around, though, I can put my magical eyeball practically on top of the gate and spin it in a circle. That should work perfectly. So I can use a much smaller gate.

  With the largest intact mirror in the house, I set up a scrying link and tested my idea. We only looked into the next room, partly because it was cheap in power terms, partly because I didn’t want to accidentally hit daylight. It worked.

  Maybe, if I set up a communications mirror with a special frame… If the frame has a tiny hole, enchanted to be a gate and attuned to my ring’s micro-gate, it would be a simple matter to have this mirror call through the gate to my mirror. No, if I were using my ring’s micro-gate to spy regularly, Mike would fail to make contact. Unless I put more than one hole in the iridium band, one for me, one dedicated to the micro-gate in the mirror?

  On the other hand, it might be worthwhile to find something more, ah… technological. For peace of mind. An old cell phone, for example, with a specially-installed micro-gate might be better. That could call my Diogephone. The Diogephone was more than capable of managing such a call. It wasn’t a mere mobile phone, but an advanced communications device designed and built by Diogenes. If I set up a cellular phone, synced it with the Diogephone, and wired the gate and a power crystal into the speed dial…

  I drew all the shades and curtains. Tomorrow would be a busy day.

  Elbe, Searching, Day One

  I spent a lot of last night thinking about where I want to go. I really want someplace with decent rocket technology because I have an Orb to grab and flush down the cosmic toilet. On the other hand, I need to set myself up comfortably before I can start so complex a project. Which means I need two things. First, a lair to hide in—a secure lair, not my temporary shelter here in Elbe, nor my abandoned mine shaft in wherever-it-is. Second, a nice place to live where I can work undisturbed.

  Why both? Because when the local humans track me down and interfere… when the local mages track me down and interfere… when the local vampires track me down and interfere… when the local angels track me down and interfere… when the local mummified were-rat zombie cyborgs track me down and interfere, I have somewhere to go, regroup, and try again.

  I don’t have Rethven. I don’t have Karvalen. I don’t have the city. I don’t have my pet rock. I don’t have Apocalyptica and the residence silo. I don’t have Diogenes. I don’t have Amber, Tianna, or Tymara. I don’t have the Big Three. I don’t even have my altar ego.

  I have Bronze. I have Firebrand. I have my cloak and my shadow. And that’s it.

  There is no one else I can turn to. This not a good feeling.

  The temptation to hang around in Zombie World was strong. Talbot was a vampire. We could compare notes. He was dealing with humans successfully, but I got the impression my presence would cause… complications. There was also the zombie population problem. I’d be delighted to help out with it, but getting deeply involved didn’t seem a good idea. Talbot certainly didn’t think so. What did he call it? Taking me back to base would be like taking a fistful of sparklers into a fireworks factory? Something like that. Maybe it’s better if I stay out of it, or at least stay on the edges of it without being involved involved.

  Still, I found an old Nokia brick—excuse me, an old cellular phone—that still worked, once I gave it a charge. Finding precision tools wasn’t much harder. I opened it up and fiddled with it for a few hours, experimenting. I ruined it, but there were more unused phones to be had. I effectively destroyed half a dozen while I explored the circuitry. Eventually, I figured out how to mix a little magic with the technology. If you call the only contact, it triggers a tuned micro-gate. This made a connection to the Diogephone and click!—I have a phone call.

  Delivering it was simpler.

  I sent my mirror’s scrying sensor up high, getting a good look around. From the radio conversation, Eatonville was fifty-one miles from their base. A little math and a map gave me likely locations in Bremerton, Seattle, or Bellevue. I checked Bellevue first, on the basis they were a little crazy, but it wasn’t their home. With a little searching, finding the base from high altitude wasn’t all that hard. Finding Talbot, on the other hand, was trickier. I looked for him, but I had no idea how to find him.

  Finally, I gave up and used a gate. I restricted it to this world and found a jacket with “Talbot” on the breast. With this as a clue, I opened a micro-gate and discovered his quarters. Perfect! I transferred the connection to a larger gate, dropped the phone into a jacket pocket—tied in a bright-red ribbon!—and considered it a win.

  Now, with that out of the way, what did I need to do?

  My first order of business was to find somewhere to put a lair. Somewhere people wouldn’t interfere with
it. Preferably, somewhere people wouldn’t even find it. If they don’t know it exists, they can’t bother it—or me. Then we can think about going into more complicated arrangements where I buy stuff, build stuff, and launch an Orb into oblivion.

  Why am I so worried about people bothering me? Maybe because I’m about to be forced into a situation where I’m supposed to save Sasha by sacrificing myself. I am not pleased about the implications. Maybe I can dodge the bullet—I have some thoughts on the subject—but what if I can’t? Who am I going to complain to? Me, for getting myself into this? The Orb, for starting the time-travel shenanigans? Let’s not be silly.

  It still pisses me off, though.

  So, where will I be left alone? Where’s a safe place to put a vampire lair?

  I checked several worlds with some post-apocalyptic criteria. Some of them are moderately promising, but most of them are utterly uninhabitable. Nuclear winter, radiation, horrific storms, you name it. The better ones are only that—better. They’re still not what I’d call nice places. Worse, the ones I’d be willing to visit still have people. People are not a bonus feature for a world where I want to hide. People are worse than cockroaches. They get in everywhere.

  On the other end of the scale, there are worlds earlier in the timelines. Great Depression? People. Old West? People. Victorian England? People. Age of Sail? People. Iron Age? People. Bronze Age? People. Stone Age? People. The big-brained, shaved apes get curious about strange things. I’d establish a lair and leave, then drop in after some fiasco in another world and find someone living in my house. Worse, they might be living in my house from the Stone Age right up to some postmodern technological period if the timeline shoots forward far enough.

  “Sorry, but this is my place. I built it ten thousand years ago.”

  This conversation is not going to go well.