Crash Landing: Survival in a Dystopian World (BONES BOOK ONE 1)

by Jim Rudnick

As the sun set, the daytime predators dispersed, heading for their own lairs and dens, while in an hour or two, the nighttime ones slowly appeared, finding the odor of the flesh intoxicating.

  A large carnivorous cat-like creature all in black took over the top of the Drake, lying on the ship itself, which kept the smaller predators at bay. The cat had no access inside the ship, but its presence made sure that no other creature would gain access either. It snoozed and snored on top of the ship, and it woke once or twice to growl and roar to make the smaller predators aware that it was in charge.

  By dawn, the Drake was once again deserted and alone on the ridge. Inside, the devouring of the corpses continued, but that could not be stopped as the numbers of scavengers had increased.

  The day progressed like the day before, and nothing really changed. Instead of a group of humans visiting today, this time it was something else.

  Dressed in torn and dirty clothing, two humans—or what had been humans—appeared on the ridge behind the Drake. As they made their way down the furrow that the ship had plowed, they didn’t talk. Didn’t communicate. Didn’t stop from their direct line to the ship. Once they were below it, they tried to get up and into the ship. But they didn’t seem to know about the airlock door—what it was nor how to open it.

  They sniffed the odor of flesh, and nothing else seemed to matter.

  They circled the ship a few times, looking for access, but not finding a wide-open doorway, they were unable to get to the cadavers that lay within.

  As they circled, they were watched by a twosome of humans who had kept guard over the ship for the past two days.

  As they circled around for the second time, one of those guarding humans nodded.

  Arrows flew, and the two circling humans dropped, dying where they lay.

  Two of the guards walked right up to them, and with what looked like heavy machetes, they chopped off the heads of the dying humans.

  “Heads off is—” one said, as he wiped his bloody machete on the grass to clean the blood away.

  “Always good,” answered the guard beside him.

  “Smell will bring in more,” the first one said.

  “Yeah … maybe we need to dig a pit—these two plus whatever died inside that ship. Will ask at end of our tour,” the second one said, and they returned to sit below the ship, facing upward, and their attention was once again on the Drake.

  As night fell, the twin moons came out as well. One was full and the other was a half moon, fully yellow and bright, and the nighttime sky was lit up brightly.

  And once again, the switch over of daytime predators to nighttime ones occurred, and the guards switched out once too to sit and watch as the Drake lay still …

  #####

  On day three, something happened on board the Drake.

  Ding …

  Something was chiming for human attention, but it went unanswered.

  Ding …

  It chimed again five minutes later and for a full hour, it chimed every five minutes.

  And it was unanswered by anyone on the Drake.

  Except the human who lay inside the chiming robo-doc tank.

  Javor knew that a robo-doc would chime every five minutes for an hour, and until then, it couldn’t be opened from within. To further protect the patient, only the attending crew or medical staff could open it until that hour was up. After the hour, the screen display lit up the OPEN button, and Javor pushed it quickly. He noted on the display that his left arm and elbow were completely healed. The abrasions on his hip and thigh would be fine in two more days. “New grown skin takes a bit longer,” he said to himself, and he slowly hoisted himself up onto one butt cheek and slid his right leg out of the tank.

  His nose immediately reacted to the rotting flesh from the cockpit ahead, and he retched up what little he still had in his stomach right onto the deck. His bare foot was covered, and as he hoisted out his whole body, he had to walk in the slimy pool of vomit that lay to his right.

  He carefully walked to his left and made his way to his bunk in the crew’s quarters area. If he breathed out of his mouth, the smell subsided somewhat but not as much as he would have liked. Digging down into his top drawer he pulled out from under his bunk, he quickly grabbed a clean jumpsuit, socks, and underwear. It took a minute to clean his bare feet, and he struggled to get his socks on—time in a robo-doc robbed a patient of their flexibility for a few days after they said. And he agreed as he bent his leg even more to get that damn sock up and on.

  He slowly rose and stood, leaning for a moment on the side stanchion of his bunk area—bunkie they called them on the Drake. Above him was the bunk for the marine sergeant, Nelson, and across from their bunk were the bunks for the other two marines, Binky and Fawcett. Both bunks were empty, and from what he could see, not a corner or an edge of the bedclothes was amiss. “Marines,” he said to himself and then slowly moved up and toward the bridge area.

  Passing through the next large area, the labs, was easy as he was able to use the edge of one of the stainless steel lab tables for support. To his unknowing eye, some things looked amiss, as there were several glass beakers and unknown lab items broken and piled up in corners. He raised an eyebrow at that and wondered, but he kept on sliding along the table as the AI recognized him entering the bridge. He choked and fell to his knees.

  He retched again. And again as the smell and the sight of all of his crewmates’ corpses lay in front of him.

  Something was squirming under his knees, and he jumped to one side as a snake-like thing hissed at him. Around him were other scavengers, and on the corpses themselves, he could see their small bodies working away at devouring the bodies of his friends.

  He looked up and screamed at the top of his lungs—not words but a scream that asked why …

  And he vomited one more time, slowly standing and shuffling through the occasional rat or snake-like thing that lay between him and the pilot’s seat and the Drake’s dashboard. As he leaned down as far away from pilot Nancy Harvey as he could, he quickly saw that AI was on and engaged. He noted that it was set on Alpha1—the highest setting there was. Other variables could still be engaged, but the ship was protected as much as it could be even in the state that it was in.

  He hit the view-screen display controls, and the whole front end of the bridge wall lit up with what lay ahead—the small town in the valley below. But in front of the Drake, about fifty feet away, a bunch of what he’d have to call un-humans was staring up at the ship. There were about twenty of them. They stood apart but were still a group, and everyone looked up at the ship.

  Javor thought immediately of what vids called zombies—but that was unfair. If he was going to look at them using his explorer training, then his check box for them would be they looked plain bad. Some had hair and others didn’t; instead, their heads were covered with scabs and dried blood. Some wore clothing—most in fact—but that clothing hadn’t seen a washing machine in years. Covered in dirt and stains, the shirts were as baggy as these people were gaunt. Thin. Un-shod too, he noticed with a couple that seemed to limp and had more mud on their legs than skin. Some were female and Javor really had to stare in a few cases to see what sex each was as he slowly scanned the group.

  They stood as if they were on guard watching the ship. They did nothing but watch. A few tilted their heads back and seemed to sniff and sniff again. Javor was sure that the horrid odor in the ship could be smelled even at that distance.

  He moved back and away from the dashboard and caught sight of himself in the mirror that hung on the airlock door.

  Six feet tall. Two hundred and twenty pounds. Ex-decathlon champion. Ex-marine after only the mandatory two-year deployment, but he hated the discipline. Ex-entrepreneur but he ended up hating the restaurant business. Ex-college employee who loved to teach, but he hated bureaucracy. Ex-chef to a couple of Empire bigwigs, and now he was the engineer on the Drake.

  Javor continued his self-assessment. Recently healed broken left ar
m and elbow. Old ACL destruction on his right knee, which meant titanium inserts and that alien implant which gave him a great right knee. Old. More than fifty by a couple of years. Gray hair with the mandatory white goatee. Blue eyes. Crow’s feet. Longish sideburns his sister said were his worst feature.

  He knew it was time to open up. He had to get out of there, or he’d continue to toss his cookies, and there was little left to toss.

  He looked at the AI panel, walked over to it, reached down, and made one change.

  Vocals were now enabled, but he ensured it was only for his voice. He also added an override and used his birthday as the PIN. Long ago enough, he reasoned, that no one would guess that one.

  He then said, “Open airlock,” and on the side of the bridge, pointing partway toward the rest of the valley, the airlock panel slid open—as did the outer panel too.

  He walked through the forward airlock in three steps and then stood in the open doorway and looked down the twenty feet toward the grouping of those un-humans. He checked and saw no weapons of any kind. In fact each was unadorned by anything other than the ragged clothing they wore.

  All of them moved closer.

  One or two, he noted, licked their lips.

  More sniffed even more as the decaying flesh odor that was all around him poured out of the ship and down toward the town below.

  Javor called out.

  “Can you speak English?” He thought this was a great way to start.

  Not a word came back as the group now stood below him, looking up, and he thought he heard small moans from them.

  Javor considered that, and again, check boxes were checked.

  Able to see that the Drake crashed. Check.

  Able to see that help would be needed—if that was why they were here. Check.

  Unable to talk. Check.

  Unable to answer a direct question. Check.

  Unable to do much more than, well, stare up at him. Check.

  He wondered what would happen next as the group slowly grew larger and came closer.

  Some came over the ridge behind the Drake while others seemed to appear from the town below too.

  As Javor watched, one of the smaller un-humans, who had been leaning on a small sapling, suddenly tumbled over and fell in a heap. In a few seconds, a few of the ones around her were on top of her, biting and tearing the flesh from her body. In moments, she was not thrashing anymore. The group around her grew, and the sounds of tearing flesh and crunching bones reached Javor.

  He flinched and felt that perhaps his first stab at naming these people un-humans had been too non-judgmental, too fair.

  He was sure they were anything but human—they were zombies.

  Flesh-eating zombies lived on this planet, and he’d just crash-landed on same.

  He knew he’d again made a judgment, but as the feeding ones below finished up and looked up at him—their faces now covered with trails of blood and one holding an arm and gnawing on what was left of a hand—he was sure of one thing.

  This was going to be an interesting planet.

  But these things—zombies, he had to call them—ate flesh.

  And behind him lay bodies. Bodies of crew mates—friends in fact. But bodies.

  He shrugged. This would be an answer to one problem. But what other problems might it bring?

  He shrugged again and realized that the next hour or two would be difficult.

  As he jammed his foot against the inner deck plate on the airlock and pulled on the final corpse, he got an even bigger whiff of the stench and gagged once more. Fawcett was a big man and the two hundred and sixty pounds he was dragging was dead, dead weight. As he got the body to the edge of the airlock, he searched the pockets on the marine and threw everything he found into the same laundry hamper he’d found to hold the crew’s personal effects.

  When he tilted the body off the airlock, it fell and hit many of the zombies below that were still feeding on the preceding bodies he’d tilted out of the Drake.

  The pack below had grown to more than a hundred now. They were all fighting to get to his dead crew mates, eating whatever they could bite, tearing flesh from bone, and even eating the weaker ones among them.

  “Feeding frenzy for sure,” Javor said to himself and looked past the furor below him and farther down the valley to the town itself.

  Would have held more than ten thousand, he thought, in the old days. Wonder what she’s down to now. As it was still afternoon, there were no lights to be seen, so he wondered about power. The Boathi had usually bombed all power plants—nuclear, solar, wind, and hydro—as well as dropping the virus, so it was possible this town had no power at all. Or maybe she did. He didn’t know yet, and many more of his check boxes remained unchecked.

  He looked down at the feeding below and noted that most of the bodies now had disappeared into the zombies as food. The word cannibal came to mind too, and as far as he knew, all zombies were cannibals. Least as far as the vids and the few books he’d read always said.

  He half-smiled though as he realized that the zombies had handled one problem—the Drake was now not so encumbered with bodies and the stench of decaying flesh. He’d be cleaning up what was left inside, but for now, the zombies below stood and looked up at him. They growled and muttered among themselves, but it didn’t matter—all of it was unintelligible..

  The entryway to the Drake, via the airlock, was twenty feet above the zombies’ heads and was the final limiting factor for his safety.

  As he returned inside the Drake, he told AI to close up and seal the airlock, and the sound of those chimes meant that he was safe inside too. He asked AI if it could change the air completely throughout the ship at once for fresh, clean outdoor air and received a positive. Moments later, the smell was just about gone.

  He asked AI if it could seal the various holes the Boathi projectile weapon had made. The AI responded, “Wait … computing” and then responded in the affirmative. AI would have the exterior bots plug all the holes it could find and work on, but spaceflight might determine that some had been missed. It urged—as much as any AI could, Javor thought—that this issue should be considered before any attempt at leaving the planet it would be noted in the logs.

  He went back to the cleaning station in the lab and found disinfectant, soap, hot, hot water, and cloths. He began the cleanup of the blood trails and body fluids that lay on the deck, the chairs, the dashboard, and the bench in the lab. He scrubbed. He washed. He sprayed the disinfectant and let it evaporate as it cleaned, and the Drake soon looked better.

  Two hours later, the smell of decaying flesh was gone.

  Bleach wasn’t better but at least it meant that the Drake was now livable.

  He listened to the scrape of the exterior bots as they moved around the hull, and he put it on screen to see what they were doing. Plugs of some kind of alloy were being inserted into the holes, which was then attached to some kind of an electrical cable attached to the bot. There was a flash, and that plug turned molten to fill the hole completely and provide an airtight plug to that hole. One more filled and the bot moved on.

  Shouldn’t take too long, Javor thought, and suddenly he was hungry. He went back to the mess area and dug down in the freezer until he found some lamb. He liked lamb, so he put the MRE into the micro and said, “Start.” The AI cooked the meal and chimed when it was ready. That gave Javor enough time to change—and to toss his dirty clothing into the disposal.

  “Laundry hamper,” he said to himself, and he went back up to the cockpit to get the one that held his ex-crew mates’ personal effects and hoisted it up onto the big table in the mess. He dumped it, spread out the items, and went through them one by one, as he chowed down on the lamb stew.

  He drank water with it, but after a bit of math, he realized he had more than fifty dozen beers on board for him and him alone, which got a smile … that much beer could make for a great party—as long as he could find someone to share them with … no zombies allowed �
�

  #####

  As he woke from a deep and peaceful sleep, Javor slowly turned toward the open side of his bunk.

  “AI,” he said, “time—local time, please?”

  “Seven hundred point twenty hours, Sir,” AI answered.

  Hmm … Javor thought, gotta fix that.

  “AI, my name is Javor—the Drake Engineer—so instead of using sir, can you please call me by name—and let’s lessen off on name use too, shall we?” he commanded, and AI said, “Sure.”

  He got out of bed, took a shower, toweled himself dry, and dressed quickly.

  In the mess, he grabbed a squeezable yogurt breakfast tube, and as he walked back up to the bridge, he thought about the planet and its past eight years.

  If the Boathi had bombed the planet with their virus bombs, then most had died. From what he saw of the town below, it had experienced some destruction over those decades. So what was left besides the zombies whom he’d already met?

  He sat in the co-pilot’s seat, sucked on the tube of yogurt, and spoke to AI.

  “AI,” he said, “can you get Gallipedia up and running here?” He waited while AI seemed to work on this command.

  “It is not possible to connect from here—there is no satellite linkage for the Drake to use. We do, however, have some archived materials available, Javor, as we assume you want to know more about this planet?” it said.

  Javor nodded. Up on the huge view-screen, the Gallipedia logo appeared first, the silver wreath of laurels surrounding the big blue sun, and then the normal search function window came up, but a new screen that read Archive in the top left-hand corner quickly replaced it.

  Beneath that header lay a system—this system, Javor assumed—as a G-class star shone in the middle of the screen. Eight planets surrounded the star, but the fourth one was circled in red for his attention. It also stated up in the top right corner that this information was now eighty-three years out of date. Something to remember, Javor thought.

  On the screen, it was labeled Ceti4, which Javor presumed was its name before the Boathi had attacked.