From Oblivion's Ashes

by Nyman, Michael E. A.

  Finally, however, in response to Marshal’s expression of gratitude, he cleared his throat.

  “Hey, it’s no problem, Marshal,” he said, speaking in a faint, Mexican accent. “I thought I was dead, until Eric pulled me out from under that ceiling beam. And then, it wasn’t until you and Luca came and got us that I could start believing that we were going to survive. You fed us, took care of us, and now you’re risking your life to make a better home for us. Shit, man…”

  He clapped a hand on Marshal’s shoulder with a grin.

  “You just say whatever you need.”

  Torstein said nothing.

  “You from Mexico?” Marshal asked.

  “So-Cal,” Cesar answered. “Grew up in L.A, but I wasn’t part of no barrio. I got the lingo, but the guys in my neighborhood weren’t no bangers. My mom had a job working at a bank and my dad was a plumber, so we had lots of money. I ain’t the stereotypical Latino.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I got into Goth music,” Cesar laughed. “Seriously, man. My uncle and my grandfather were both trained Spanish guitarists, and they paid for me to take lessons, saying it was some kind of family tradition. But later, in my teens, I discovered Goth music and fell in love with it. All my friends thought I was crazy, but none of them could play for shit, so I didn’t listen to them. While they were all listening to hood music, I was chilling with Bauhaus, the Cure, the Banshees, Sisters of Mercy… I thought I was so sophisticated, you know?”

  He laughed again, enjoying his own story. He seemed awfully happy for a Goth, but Marshal kept that thought to himself.

  “The funny thing is,” Cesar continued, “Goth goes well with the Latin beat. Nobody ever believes me, but Goth music is like ground beef or potatoes. It goes with anything, and makes a new and unique sound wherever it goes. Put ground beef with tomato sauce and noodles, and you get spaghetti. Put it with nachos, and you got a taco. Mix it up with potatoes, gravy, and pastry, and you get Shepherd’s Pie. Goth music is like ghost music, man, and you get different versions every time you add it to something else. So you can have Goth Country, Goth Rock, Goth Punk, and Goth from every country in the world. Why not ‘Latino-Goth’? There’s a whole lot of macabre shit in the roots of Latino culture, you know?”

  “Los Lobos meets Sisters of Mercy,” Torstein grunted.

  Both Marshal and Cesar laughed at this nominal effort by Torstein to join in the conversation, but the dour construction worker fell silent again.

  “Anyway,” Cesar continued, “I was up at this club in Seattle. It was this big Goth-a-palooza type event, and I met the hottest chic I ever saw, dressed in this, like, purple bikini top and floor-length skirt. I was doing my whole Latin-Goth thing on my guitar, and she was feeling it, and the next thing I know, I’m heading to her hometown and moving in with her. Been living up here as a landed immigrant ever since and trying to get my band, the Four Dead Hombres, up and running.”

  “And how was that working?”

  Cesar sighed. “We had a small following, but I was downtown, looking for a more reliable job when the outbreak hit. Goth ain’t dead. It’s undead, but that don’t mean it pays the bills.”

  “Well,” Marshal said, “it’s all moot now. Wouldn’t mind hearing some of this ‘Latino-Goth’ sometime, if you’re up for it. You got me curious.”

  “It’d be a pleasure, Marshal,” Cesar said. Then, he added with another laugh, “for me, at least. Maybe not so much for you.”

  “Where are we going, anyway?” Torstein broke in, sounding aggravated.

  For a moment, Marshal let the silence stretch, still feeling both puzzled and annoyed by the construction worker’s attitude.

  He pulled Crapmobile over to a curb, and rigged a drone up for launch.

  “We’re here,” Marshal said. “The downtown core.”

  “What the hell are we doing here?” Torstein asked.

  “Give him a chance to explain, Torstein,” Cesar said.

  Torstein muttered something unintelligible, but otherwise kept his silence.

  “It’s an idea that came to me on the day that we found you guys,” Marshal said, placing the drone in the rooftop cage. “Luca and I were trying to decide if we wanted to squirm into the hole that led to your subway tunnel, when I looked up and saw all the skyscrapers in the downtown core. First Canadian Place, TD court, the Scotia Tower, Royal Trust, and of course, the CN Tower... I saw that they were all still standing. All their windows were smashed, of course, but they were still there.”

  “So what?” Torstein’s voice oozed with contempt.

  “I’m coming to it,” Marshal said, refusing to be offended. He slid the cage closed and returned to his chair.

  “Before the outbreak,” he said, “roughly ten thousand people worked in First Canadian Place alone every day, and it received something like fifteen million visitors a year. Even more interesting, it has a floor space in excess of two and a half million square feet. Think about that for a second while I launch the drone.”

  Torstein looked bored and Cesar looked curious, but neither said anything. Marshal returned to the driver’s seat, punched a few buttons on the keyboard, and launched.

  The camera view from the drone slowly rose, panning monolithic, marble-paneled columns and up, up, up past smashed-in windows and chaotic-looking, abandoned floors. Through the gaping floor-to-ceiling window openings, they saw desks lying sideways and piles of windswept paper, broken fixtures and crumbling walls.

  “Look,” Marshal pointed at the screen. “Not quite abandoned yet. We couldn’t see them from the ground because of the angle of elevation, but there’s still plenty of undead patrolling the offices. See it?”

  He brought the drone to a hover outside the tenth floor so his two companions could see a zombie staggering through the debris, looking for refugee humans.

  “Lean hunting, I’d guess,” Marshal said. “But that wouldn’t matter to a zombie. They never stop searching, no matter how pointless. Let’s keep going up.”

  The drone began to rise again, slowly passing the twentieth floor, then the thirtieth, and still it continued to climb.

  “This could take a while,” he said, focused on the controls. “There’s seventy-two, commercial floors on this building, the tallest in Canada.”

  “I know First Canadian Place,” Torstein said impatiently. “Taking me on a tour of it is kind of pointless. You know, I thought you said you were going to drop me off at this Rothman’s place. Instead, we’re here.”

  “I wanted to come here first,” Marshal explained. “I promise, you’ll understand why in just another few minutes.

  Torstein sagged, and leaned back in his chair.

  “Trust me,” Marshal assured him. “Unless I’m wrong, this will be well worth the wait.”

  “I trust you, mano,” Cesar said, sounding worried. “Come on, Torstein. Give him a chance. It’s his big ideas that are the reason we’re alive. Least you could do is let him use a little of your time.”

  Torstein said nothing.

  The drone was nearing the roof, having caught sight of what must have been its eighth undead lurker. Carefully, Marshal guided the drone up over the lip of the roof and landed it on the gravel surface.

  “Cesar,” he asked, glancing over his shoulder, “would you lift open the roof hatch?”

  Cezar raised his eyebrows. “Seriously? Won’t that, you know, risk letting the zombies in?”

  “There aren’t any within range of the vehicle,” Marshal answered, pointing at the external camera screens. “We should be able to get away with it long enough for me to complete the test demonstration.”

  “What test demonstration?” Torstein asked, stirring as Cesar opened the roof hatch, allowing the sunlight to stream into the cab.

  Marshal tapped out a command, and worked the drone controls. The viewing screen shifted as the drone lifted up off the roof of First Canadian Place. Torstein and Cesar watched the screen as the camera view assumed an elevation twenty fee
t above the rooftop.

  “The drone is now playing pre-recorded speech on its two mini-speakers,” Marshal said. “Should drive any undead who hear it into a hunting frenzy. Each speaker has a maximum volume of 80 decibels, which is roughly the equivalent of your standard alarm clock…. Ah. There we go. Look.”

  The camera was looking down on the building from above now, swaying slightly in the wind, and the watchers witnessed a zombie, still dressed in a tattered business suit, scrambling up the open stairwell leading to the roof. Marshal guided the drone backwards, towards the edge.

  “You’re going to try to lure it off the roof?” Cesar asked with interest. “Get it to fall to its death?”

  “That probably wouldn’t kill it, I’m afraid,” Marshal said. “Might not even slow it down. No, that’s not what this is all about. Just listen for a moment.”

  They went quiet for a few seconds.

  “I can’t hear anything,” Torstein shrugged.

  “Just the breeze,” Cesar added.

  “Exactly,” Marshal said. Then he pointed at the screen. “But they sure can. We’ve picked up another two zombies. With all those open windows, it must be as clear as a bell. Now, keep listening.”

  He eased the drone back over the edge of the rooftop, and started a slow descent down the wall.

  “How about now?”

  “I… I’m not sure,” Cesar said. “I still can’t hear anything.”

  “Neither can I,” Torstein said.

  “The wind up there is pretty constant,” Marshal said, “and the floors have had all their windows smashed in by the undead. The open gap in each floor is absorbing a lot of the downward-traveling sound waves. Now, check out the camera screen.”

  On the screen, the undead were going crazy, charging towards the open windows like overexposed investors on Black Monday. There were now substantially more of them than they had witnessed during the ascent. They didn’t leap out into empty space, as Cesar had hoped, but instead followed the voices by climbing down the wall headfirst, hand over hand like human-sized cockroaches.

  “That is one scary-ass sight,” Cesar breathed. Torstein murmured agreement.

  “Hear anything yet?” Marshal asked. “By my count, we’ve reached the halfway point. Thirty-fifth, thirty-fourth...”

  “Still nothing,” Cesar answered.

  “Thirtieth floor,” Marshal said, tapping some buttons, and the camera view spun. “Check out the floors on the Scotia Tower.”

  “Shit!” Cesar exclaimed. “There’s gotta be at least a dozen freaking out over there. They must be able to hear the drone.”

  “Can we close the hatch now?” Torstein asked, his eyes wide.

  “Not yet,” Marshal answered. “This is about getting an idea of how high up the drone has to be before we can hear the noise it makes down here. Twenty-fifth floor... Twentieth...”

  “I’m pretty sure I can hear something,” Cesar said uneasily. “It’s faint, but... Look, are we good now? Can we close the hatch?”

  Marshal hesitated, and then nodded.

  Cesar closed the hatch as quickly as he could.

  “So what did we manage to prove?” Torstein demanded.

  “I’ll explain in a few seconds,” Marshal said, still focused on flying the drone. “I’ve got about twenty or thirty undead on a leash right now and I want to lure them away from the immediate area. Meanwhile, think about what we learned.”

  “We learned that you’re a fucking, grandstanding asshole,” Torstein snapped, “and that we’d better stay the fuck out of these office towers.”

  Marshal said nothing, caught up in steering the drone.

  Torstein glared at him, then turned away, disgusted.

  “What were we supposed to learn, Marshal?” Cesar asked.

  “In a minute.”

  Silence filled the cab as they watch the drone-cam swoop down to ground level and veer westwards down Adelaide Street, trailing a growing pack of undead in its wake. The faint vibration of multiple feet shook the vehicle until the crowd had passed. Gliding above the broken cars and littered streets, the drone whipped past Church Street, then Jarvis.

  “That should do it,” Marshal said, hitting a button that turned off the recording. He performed a quick maneuver, and the drone was headed back to base.

  When the drone was back in the cage, he turned to face his audience.

  “All right,” he said. “The first thing we learned is that, if the three of us were on the roof of First Canadian Place, we could play our music as loud as we liked. We could walk around out in the open without being seen, heard, or smelled from the ground.”

  In the silence that followed, you could practically hear the mental wheels turning as the ramifications percolated through the recent scare.

  “We learned that this effect travels all the way down to at least the twenty-fifth floor,” he continued, “and that, despite this, we can lure any existing undead down to the ground with very little effort. Four, maybe five passes per skyscraper is about all it would take to make every upper floor of the downtown core completely zombie-free.”

  “Wouldn’t they just go back again?” Cesar asked.

  Marshal shrugged. “They don’t appear to be territorial, so they shouldn’t feel any particular need to go back. Over time, the answer would be yes. They wander around everywhere at random, exploring and then re-exploring every square foot they find. But how long would it take for them to randomly find their way all the way back up to the top of the tower? Days? Weeks?”

  The two men considered this information.

  “And that’s only if we let them,” Marshal added. “Once we have them out, it’s well within our means to keep them away. Lining the ground floors and surrounding streets with cameras and speakers would be a big undertaking, maybe even take a couple of weeks, but once it was done-”

  “Wouldn’t anybody on the top floors be trapped?” Torstein demanded. “What happens if you’re on the roof and zombies are climbing up the building, looking for you? You’d be trapped with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.”

  “Yes,” Marshal agreed, “but that’s part of the whole scheme too. Even if, by some fluke of bad luck, the undead were able to spot us up there, it would still take them at least five or six minutes to arrive. And even that is at full speed, straight up the walls, in attack mode. But with the right surveillance system, we’d still have plenty of warning.”

  “We could get under cover,” Cesar said.

  “Exactly,” Marshal said.

  “Where would we hide?” Torstein asked.

  Marshal grinned. “Our resident construction team builds us hiding spots. Then, once we’re hidden and they don’t find us, we lure them back down again. But really... that’s just the contingency plan, a safety net in case of emergency. The whole point of all this is that we don’t ever let them get that close. If we do it right, we don’t even let them into the downtown core, let alone on any of the upper floors.”

  “Are you sure we can do that?” Cesar asked.

  Marshal shrugged. “They’d have no reason to even suspect that we’re up there. Any undead we’d have to deal with would be in search mode... slow-moving and easily manipulated.”

  The two men considered this.

  “The surveillance network would have to be absolutely perfect,” Torstein said.

  “Definitely,” Marshal agreed. “Walls and stairwells. Elevator shafts. Plus several layers all over the ground floor. That would be enough to start. Again, we rig the surrounding streets and alleys, so they don’t get into the neighboring buildings without us either. If they ever try, we use the drones to clear them out again. In the long run, of course, we put cameras and speakers on every floor, but short term-”

  “It solves almost every problem we have,” Cesar murmured.

  Torstein glared at him. “How do you figure that?”

  “Space, mano. It gives us space.”

  “Space?”

  “Two and a half million squ
are feet in First Canadian Place alone,” Marshal specified. “Or... two thirds of that, if we decide to quarantine the bottom twenty-five floors, which we might as a safety precaution. And all of it, safe, invisible, and protected. If we seal up the windows with insulated, black-painted plywood, they’ll still look smashed out from the ground level, but inside we could have the lights on, the noise blasting, all without the slightest worry of being discovered.”

  He looked back and forth between them.

  “Just think about it. Aside from a place where we can operate machinery again, we’d also have somewhere to store and preserve salvage. It’s all well and good to find twenty skids of canned goods at your local Costco, or machine parts, or precious materials, or Rembrandts, but where do you put it all? It’s also a safe space to build our hydroponics fields, or even just regular farms, factories, games rooms, kitchens, or just about any project you could imagine. Then there’s the raw potential for solar power generation. Best location in the city, and we’d be able to maintain them without ever exposing ourselves to danger. Or water recovery, in case we can’t get running water operating again. The run-off from any one of these buildings could replenish my entire water tank in one day. But the best thing about all of this is that we’d have a failsafe stronghold capable of sheltering thousands of people.”

  For a moment, Torstein was so caught up in the possibilities, he seemed to have forgotten his own bad mood. Cesar was shaking his head and smiling.

  “And that’s why I brought us here today,” Marshal said, “and especially you, Torstein. We’re going to visit the top floor and do some reconnaissance, just so we know what we’re dealing with.”

  “How are we supposed to get up there?” Cesar asked. “And also, how can any of this work if there’s no power to the elevators? I’m a fan, mano, but I can’t carry no skids up seventy-two flights of stairs.”

  “That’s why I brought this,” Marshal said, pointing to the object sitting in Crapmobile’s storage area. “It’s a fully-charged electric engine from one of the two remaining Teslas in Luca’s auto yard. I should be able to hook it up to the electric motor that powers one of the elevators and get it up and running again, at least temporarily.”