Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue #2

by Iulian Ionescu

  "Captain!" of the men called. His voice cracked. "I think you'd better see this."

  I swore. Can't a man get a moment, here? I popped my head out of the tent. "What the hell has gotten into you?"

  The man pointed, his finger trembling.

  Re-sols. An army of them.

  One of them, he must have died somewhere in his fifties because a little gray hair still clung to his head, stood only a few paces away, aiming a rifle right at my head. I could only stand there, stunned, as Travell shuffled over to me and pulled my own rifle from my hands. They led us back to the main dig and within minutes, the entire squad was captured without a shot fired.

  Travell handed me a shovel. The gray-haired re-sol pointed to the graves and mimed digging motions.

  They wanted us to dig up the rest of the bodies.

  Fuck me.

  They kept us in our tents when we weren't digging, which wasn't very often. We'd been digging for five days, and hundreds of corpses were stacked alongside the ditches. There were only four of us left from my squad and a dozen other men, once mountain rebels. The rest of my men had died of exhaustion or starvation. Finally the re-sols had tossed us into the tents to regain our strength. They'd left us a few meal packs, but all the rest of our equipment was gone, dumped by the re-sols into the trash pit.

  "Welcome to the mountains, Captain," an emaciated rebel with curly black hair said to me. The man extended a hand heavily calloused from digging. "Rudolph Halloway."

  "Captain Fitzpatrick. How long have you been here like this?"

  "Almost from the beginning," Halloway said. "A few months."

  "What happened?"

  He shrugged, his eyes almost as gray and hollow as the re-sols. "We thought we were helping the re-sols, sheltering them here in the mountains, protecting them from guys like you. I don't know what changed. A few months ago we found them trying to dig up dead bodies and reanimate them."

  "Jesus," Johnson said. "I didn't know they could do that."

  "We didn't either, but it worked," Halloway said. "They started increasing their numbers. We tried to stop them, but they turned hostile. There were about a thousand of us living in these mountains once. I guess there's only a hundred or so left."

  "Serves you right, you son of a bitch," Johnson told him. "For fighting against your own country."

  "Remember that loyalty when you get a needle punched into your head," Halloway replied. "The only difference between you Reanimator Squads and these re-sols is they don't bother waiting until you're all the way dead."

  "They stick you when you're alive?!" Johnson turned white.

  Halloway just nodded his head in the direction of one of his men, lying on the floor, curled into a ball. He hadn't eaten yet. His buddy crouched near him and held food up to his lips, trying to get him to eat, trying to hide him from the re-sols. It didn't work. Several re-sols edged near, watching. It went on for about an hour before the re-sols dragged him out of the tents, his heels leaving trenches in the dirt.

  "Poor bastard. I knew he wasn't going to last the day," Halloway said. "They usually don't remember to feed us, and when you get too tired or hungry, when you slow down in any way, then you get stuck." He gave us an accusing look. "You should have let them stay dead. They deserved that much at least."

  Johnson was still staring at the heel marks in the dirt.

  There were actually two distinct types of nanomachine suspended in the protein we used. One was designed to repair damaged tissue, but they would be inert when introduced to healthy tissue. The other was designed to form a new neural network in the brain that acted as a command station for the re-sol. It was assumed the brain was no longer functioning when it went to work. What would it do to a live brain?

  We heard the man begging from our place inside the tent, then the begging turned to screams.

  It was a long time before the screaming stopped.

  The re-sols gave us the night to rest, then we were back at work on the graves at daybreak. My squad was exhausted, but I could only imagine what Halloway and the others had been through. We'd only been working a few hours when another one of his men dropped. This time we watched first hand as the gray-haired re-sol produced a syringe and stuck it in its own arm, drawing out some pale liquid.

  The fallen man screamed as the needle punctured his eardrum and the thin spike drove millions of little machines into his brain.

  "Programmed to replicate," our medic said. "Of course."

  "What?"

  "It's how a re-sol repairs damage to itself. The nanomachines are programmed to replicate. It must be what's driving the re-sols. Somewhere along the way they just forgot to stop."

  Programmed to replicate. Jesus.

  Over the next few days, the men fell one by one. I watched Halloway get weaker and weaker until he too was stuck. Soon it was just Johnson and I and a couple of rebels left. None of us would last a week and I was pretty sure Johnson only had a day or two left. I watched him shuffle along as we took armloads of body parts and dumped them into the trash pit. Poor bastard.

  He must have seen it in my eyes. He stared at me for a moment, then started backing away, crying. "I don't want to be reanimated, Captain. Oh god."

  He stumbled over something in the trash pit and landed deep in the gore. He pulled himself to his feet and glanced around, afraid the re-sols would drag him off for tripping. Then he noticed something in the pit and stopped. My eyes followed his.

  It was one of our squad's gear bags.

  Johnson gave a tug on the flap, and I could see some food, several grenades, and the butt of a pistol. Johnson looked up to see where the re-sols were, then glanced back down at the pistol. I knew what he was thinking. One through the brainpan.

  "Johnson," I said.

  Nothing.

  "Johnson!"

  He turned toward me. "I can shoot you first, Captain. They won't get either of us. I promise."

  "The grenades."

  Johnson nodded, but he wasn't really listening. He already had the pistol in his hand and was working the safety.

  "Johnson," I said carefully. "The grenades. Re-sols burn."

  He blinked.

  "We can get out of here."

  I pushed the pistol down out of my face and reached for the gear bag. Some of the re-sols were noticing that we weren't working. We had to go now or we'd lose our chance.

  I popped the tab on a couple of the grenades. I lobbed one right in the middle of the tents, and the other right in the middle of the re-sols. The searing white light blinded us for a second, then it was chaos.

  Johnson started firing the pistol as the fire blazed along the tents, caught up the corpses not yet reanimated, and started licking its way up the trees. A few re-sols stumbled out of the burning tents, lurching around blindly as flames engulfed them. The other re-sols shrank back.

  I grabbed Johnson and dragged him into the woods. I yelled for the rebels to follow us, but they only stood and watched us run, watched as the re-sols lumbered in pursuit. A few stray shots thunked into the trees near us, then the re-sols were out of eyesight.

  We could still run faster than them. We had that at least.

  "Where's the rest of your squad?" the gunner shouted in my ear.

  We'd run from the re-sols for two days, afraid to sleep, afraid to stop, until we managed to get to our primary extraction site. I shoved Johnson into the chopper ahead of me. He stiffened and resisted, but I pushed him in anyway. When I jumped into the seat next to him, I saw why.

  A re-sol was sitting across from us.

  "Where's the rest of your squad?" the gunner repeated.

  The re-sol shifted slightly in its seat, adjusting its rifle.

  It was just a coincidence, I told myself. It couldn't know.

  Johnson licked his lips. "Dead. Bomb hit us. Nothing left to reanimate."

  "That right?" The gunner looked at me. "Rebels?"

  I glanced at the re-sol but it was staring, expressionless, out into the treetops.
I nodded.

  The gunner shrugged. "Tough luck."

  The pilot turned to say something to the gunner. The gunner nodded and leaned back toward us. "Just heard over the radio. Another Reanimator Squad was lost over to the east. I guess they found a massive grave, a couple hundred thousands or so, then we lost communication. Command wants us to fly out and take a look."

  A couple hundred thousand. Programmed to replicate.

  Fuck me.

  "The war could really change with that many re-sols," the gunner shouted.

  Halloway was right. We should have let them stay dead.

  I clutched the gear bag and looked at Johnson. We still had a couple of phosphorous grenades left.

  Johnson leaned out the helicopter to puke.

  © 2014 by J. Kenneth Sargeant

  * * *

  J. Kenneth Sargeant resides in Ohio, but calls the mountains of Washington State home. When he is not writing, he teaches self-defense tactics and preparedness skills to all ages. Writing and martial arts have been passions of his since he was a child, and he has worked hard to be able to spend his days following his dreams. His short stories have also appeared in Paradox and Strange Horizons.

  A Concert of Flowers

  Kate O'Connor

  The packed concert hall was far from silent. People whispered to their neighbors, fancy clothing rustled, jewelry chimed. In the wings, William Reis waited, the sound of his rapidly thumping heart filling his ears.

  A sharp tug on his collar dragged his eyes down. Emily's pale hands, beautiful still though her skin was wrinkled and growing translucent, straightened his lapels. The charcoal gray suit belonged to her second son. It was tight across the middle and a little long in the leg but he had forgotten that he would need concert attire until the last minute.

  "I'll be in the front row. Don't puke." She wrinkled her nose at him and shoved him gently towards the stage. He clutched the ring in his pocket, making sure it was still there. He thought about asking her then but she was gone before he could unstick his lips. Stomach fluttering, he walked out to his place at center stage instead.

  William watched the house lights go down through the slim inch between the rich red velvet hem of the curtain and the satiny, dark-tinted stage floor. His head spun and he transferred the slender remote between hands, wiping first one sweating palm than the other on his baggy slacks.

  With a ponderous creak, the heavy curtain rose and he was momentarily blinded by the spotlights. They hadn't seemed so bright during the lighting test. He blinked stupidly for a long minute before the uncomfortable rustling of the audience broke through his surging panic. He frantically keyed the initial button on the sweat slick remote.

  There was a soft hiss as the clear casing of the first stasis jar fell open. The slim-leafed plant anchored in its deep pot trembled as air rushed in. Its single bud exploded into bloom even before the casing had touched the table and a note, high, clear, perfectly pure rang through the dark. It brought tears to William's eyes. Almost as good as hearing it for the first time.

  The equipment on his back was heavy and getting heavier by the hour. He pushed up the sleeves of his shirt again, pulling the sweaty garment away from his chest and flapping it a few times. Surveying was a solitary job. One day this field or one like it would by the site of the new spaceport. Ships would come and shops would spring up, followed by restaurants, businesses, and apartments. One day it would be a bustling city.

  Now it was just one more muddy meadow to slog through on one more far-flung colonial world. The climate was pleasantly temperate but there was an odd purplish cast to most of the vegetation. A few scrubby trees were growing to the south, barely more than bushes twisting up through the waist high mauve spotted grass. Lumpy amber clouds were building in the distance, threatening to force their way over the low, rounded mountain range.

  William stopped on a slight rise, shrugging off the shoulder straps and easing his equipment down. He fumbled through setting it up, hurrying a bit as he tried to keep half an eye on the weather. Tulandra was his second assignment and his first solo job.

  The leg of the theodolite tripod slipped just as William finished calibrating it. Cursing loudly, he kicked at a patch of sturdy, indigo-green plants. Their thick stalks rebounded easily and one of the baseball sized buds burst open, stunning William to silence as a clean note rang through the open field. He had never heard anything like it. Cautious and disbelieving, he nudged another bud with the mud caked toe of his boot. The plant trembled and the blossom opened, unfurling crimson petals as it added its note to the no longer desolate air.

  Easing away from center stage, William pushed a couple of buttons. Two tones rang out together, wavering delicately as they adjusted to each other and found balance. As he keyed the next sequence, the sound swelled. William watched as a series of jars in front of him collapsed and the plants within burst into salmon and ruby and violet bloom.

  The singing flowers of Tulandra had two notes each. One when their petals opened for the first time, the hollow pistils sucking air all the way to the plant's roots and vibrating the tiny filaments inside the stem. The second came when the stem's integrity was compromised and the stored air rushed out. Each leaf had microscopic protuberances that caught the frequencies emitted by the other flowers. The invisible vibrations would cause the plant to tighten or relax the internal filaments, adjusting them until its note matched the harmonics of the flowers around it.

  "They're called harmony lilies, son. They're everywhere this time of the rotation." The farmer's lips twitched as he poked at the bruised, drying samples spread on the heavily stained bar. William bit the inside of his cheek, trying to ignore the smirks and shared looks the watering hole's few occupants were exchanging. Galactic Survey's guidebooks were notoriously incomplete. William didn't know anything about the local flora and fauna beyond what was supposedly edible and what might be poisonous.

  "What makes them sing like that?" William pressed on, squinting a bit in the dim light of the dilapidated bar. Being the butt of the joke would be worth it if he could just learn a bit more about the strange plants that had kept him company on his long survey circuit.

  "Dunno." The farmer shrugged and turned back to his drink. William scooped up the remains of his carefully collected samples and walked out, leaving his untouched drink sitting on the rough wood of the bar.

  "You made an intergalactic call to tell me about flowers? Seriously, Will, this must be costing you at least a week's salary." Emily's disbelief came through the static with perfect clarity.

  He huffed in annoyance. Calling her might have been a dumb idea. Her husband hated him — mostly because of how easily Emily talked to him — but she was the only one who might possibly get it. "Look, I know it's silly. It's just…" he broke off, not sure how to put words to his jumbled up feelings.

  "It's caught your interest." Emily filled in for him. He could picture her curled up in the faux leather chair in her bedroom, the phone tucked between chin and shoulder while she folded laundry or skimmed through clips on the latest fashions. "Nothing catches your interest. Tramping around all those different planets and all you see is how similar everything is to everything else. Except for this. So now you don't want to leave. That right?"

  William grunted an affirmative. It sounded stupid laid out that simply but he couldn't exactly deny it.

  "So don't leave." Classic Emily solution.

  "No money." William shifted uncomfortably. He didn't like the little thrill of excitement that shot through him when he thought about staying on Tulandra. It was too complicated. There were other things he wanted more. One other thing anyway.

  "Hah. You have enough to call me but I get the drift. So make a few more credits off of Survey and then go back. Better yet, get a degree or something so they have to pay you to go back."

  "It's just a plant, Em. Not worth changing my life over."

  "Then why are you still talking about it? Besides, you don't like your life anyway. I
f you like this, even a little bit, it's better than what you have now."

  "You might get bored without me." William smiled as he said it. Boredom had been Emily's chief complaint forever.

  "I'll have Charlie and the baby to keep me occupied."

  "You're pregnant?" And just that simply his daydreams of earning enough money to come back and sweep her off her feet went out the window. A husband she wasn't quite happy with was one thing but this meant she would have a family of her own. That was different. "Con-congratulations."

  "I'm not naming him after you." She laughed, sounding relaxed and happy.

  "You should see it out here, Em. I found a whole field singing all at once. All the flowers were shooting pollen into the air and with the sun shining through everything sparkled. You've never heard anything like it, like the entire world is trying to tell you something." His chest was tight. He didn't want to talk about her new family.

  "Send me pictures. I couldn't stand to be that far from the nearest flushing toilet, especially these days." She was waiting for him to laugh but he couldn't manage.

  "I'm going to find a way to stay."

  "Good for you. You'll make it work." There was a question at the end. She was wondering what was wrong.

  "I'm out of time. Talk to you later sometime. Bye, Em." For once, he didn't tell her he would miss her.

  William couldn't see the faces of the audience but he felt their anticipation with each flick of his fingers. He thought he could just hear the rush of gasped breaths and the crinkle of hands clenching programs under the music of his lilies. They wouldn't have seen anything like this before. There had never been something like this. He was the first, the only.