He closed the weapons locker then pulled the lever to open their exit. The door unsealed, slid aside, and then unfolded down to become their stepped ramp. Their destination was the heavily reinforced rooftop of one of the tallest remaining buildings, which construction engineers had admirably reconstituted. Their landing pad was a clean lofty platform akin to an island sanctuary surrounded by a great sargassum sea of rotten geometric fortresses that loomed in waves of grey-green, all riddled with dark cavities like honeycomb that might conceal unbound numbers of patiently watching eyes. Hundreds of years of abandonment, broken windows, and leaky failed rooftops had led to decapitated girder-bristled summits and strangle-vinery clothed lower girths that the cruel passage of centuries had raped of any former constancy. The grandest structures still stood after so many long abuses simply because their original builders had been men of wise circumspection and had generously invested in the over-engineering required for their namesake edifices to hold strong even when other works of men had long since crumpled to abject ruin.
A strong breeze made a twitchy young clerk bow his head against it while he waited to greet them. “Welcome to the Chicago ERC, Marshal Critias,” the clerk shouted a bit too loudly.
Carmen clarified the scope of their mission with Critias, “ERC stands for Embedded Reclamation Center. That means you are here to inspect the daily operations of a long-term stationary reclamation project that maintains all levels of operations at the same location.”
“Not in Marshal Service talk,” Critias corrected Carmen on the true nature of ERC strategy. “We call ERC pure fucking ignorance, better known as shitting your own bed. What part of not crapping in your lunch-tray still baffles these scavengers? Normally, a salvage commander would send down drop rats by recon gunship so they could scout out some new location that contained real cheddar. Once they scored pay dirt, they would radio down a dropship dozer or two that would come in for a fast scoop-and-grab; then everyone flew home. Sitting your whole circus in one place for too long has this real nasty habit of attracting those bomber wrecking goblins in that metaphor we talked about.”
“Gremlins,” she hastily rectified him.
“Yes, I know,” he cut her off, “and a simile; I was teasing you, Carmen. I do pay attention to what you say, far too much I can assure you, because believe me when I tell you that you can really talk up a storm; so from now on, try and conserve yourself to giving me only one lecture per topic.”
The wind that distressed the clerk was no hindrance to Critias in his mechsuit and it was heavenly to Carmen the android; in total, it made the weak man seem even more out of place in the fabulously free and natural environment.
Carmen gushed, “It’s so incredibly big!” All the many birds that thrived in the dead city only added to her delight as she gazed out into the everlasting sky with its global wind that whipped her irregulatory hair like a reddish-blue candle flame. She said, “The planet is so beautiful, Critias. I want to be looking up at this sky at night with all the stars shining down on us.”
Because he lived in orbit, Critias understood something of Carmen’s fascination with her first discovery of Earthly climate when coming down from space. It was an impression akin to something architectural, that the world was really a planetary-sized orbital habitat, which it was, from a certain point of view.
Critias asked the clerk, “Is this supposed to be bad weather for these parts? I don’t see any snow.” It was his way of ridiculing the man for being so timid without sufficient cause.
The man shook his head, “No, sir, this is the nice season here, but still a lot of nature for someone used to better living in space.” He gestured the way, “You should follow me, sir. We should get inside.” The clerk led them to a metal fire door that he opened onto an interior stairwell. As he waited for them to enter, he warned, “You never know when some bird with filth on it might flap into you.”
Carmen shouted, “Wind!” as she spread her arms like wings into the very thing as if she pretended to be one of the many soaring birds. “It rushes about without fans as far as the horizons.” She called to Critias, “Can’t we look over the side? I want to see a ghoul.”
“Go look,” Critias answered without sharing her exuberance. “You don’t get infected by the wildlife.” On a related note, he asked the clerk why he was not carrying any weapons, “You don’t go about armed?”
“No, sir, not usually,” the clerk replied with that kind of nervousness about him that he should self-medicate with more caffeine and tobacco rather than less of it. “You’ll find everything in order here, marshal. We’re perfectly safe inside the defense perimeter.”
“Sure,” Critias commented doubtful of that assessment.
“Infection always gets in,” Carmen offered to be helpful as she peered off the top of the skyscraper to gaze down at the vegetation-shrouded streets below. She took a good measure of the epic ruins with her excellent telescopic vision that was like a soaring eagle that targeted rabbits, and with it, Carmen saw ghoulish humanoid figures as they scurried and skulked amongst the vegetated ruin.
Critias was curious to know what she could see, “What do you think now?”
She answered with a quote from Lord Byron, “He who ascends to the mountain-tops shall find the loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow. He who surpasses or subdues mankind must look down on the hate of those below.”
“That will learn me for bothering to ask,” Critias callously dismissed her answer; he was ready to follow the clerk.
“I will show you the way to Colonel Walker,” the clerk said anxiously as he held the door, eager to get back inside and then soon after be away from them. The way down the inner stairwell went several floors then they parted company upon arrival at the main control center. After the clerk opened the door for them, he stood aside, “Colonel Walker is expecting you.”
Critias walked into the control room with Carmen quick on his heels, like man’s old best friend she had replaced. The windowless chamber had the usual banks of projected video displays with some technical staff to monitor them and six guards with rifles holding posts all around. Colonel Walker stood in the middle of his people where he kept his unwavering eye on his scavenger operation.
Colonel Walker came about to greet Critias with his offered hand, “Welcome to Chicago, Captain Critias.” He was pleasant enough considering he didn’t appreciate the Marshal Service intruding on the affairs of his Reclamation General’s department. As a former marshal himself, the colonel didn’t desire advice from another, especially a younger man of lower rank, even if Critias did have field service decorations more prestigious than his own.
Critias opened his visor in a retrograde gesture that had birthed the military salute then he shook the colonel’s hand, “I’ll try to keep this inspection as brief as possible, colonel.” In an effort to ease tensions he added, “Grand Marshal Wayne sends his respects.” Only after he said it did Critias realize it would have been better not to mention Wayne at all. Colonel Walker had never been any admirer of the man, especially after Wayne had attained the great seat. Their old rivalry had slammed to an abrupt end when the Council of Governors tapped Wayne to be the next Grand Marshal. Colonel Walker had chosen early retirement rather than take orders from so disdained a personal enemy. Wayne went up to host the Captains’ Table where all things Forager feasted while Walker went down to the Scavenger General to beg for a new job, and he sure did find himself a big one, with dropships, excavators, and his own personal army of laborers.
“I have a quota to keep;” Colonel Walker informed Critias dismissively, “more monotonous regulations from pontificating amateurs on high will only bite into my bottom-line. If we must indulge this vindictive farce being perpetrated by the Grand Scaramouch, let’s try to make it extremely brief.”
Carmen interjected a comment to be amusing, that being mostly to herself, “Marshal Captain Critias is expressing his professional concern about how it will be the infected that bite into your
bottom line, by snipping you shorn at the curly hairs.” Her attempt at pertinently sarcastic humor only earned her a pair of disconcerted frowns that silently suggested that she keep her ignorant android mouth shut before it got her into trouble.
“That is my personal android, Carmen,” Critias introduced her sourly to the colonel. It was by no extra particular rudeness that he hadn’t named her sooner except that it was common practice for real people to treat the simulated without any unnecessary courtesies.
Colonel Walker’s tone bordered on jealousy when he asked, “Is that the Epsilon-K variant I’ve heard rumors about? The Reclamation General said we might be getting some of them one day in the not too distant future.” While he talked, the colonel admired Carmen’s flawless skin, prideful cheekbones, and her taunting hips that urged him to seize them as he might the steering wheel of a performance racecar, making him taste his upper lip. His lusty appreciation shifted from jealousy to rapacious android-beater misogyny, “That stew is the new hunter-buster drop rat, the one they boned out all in milled titanium, that Epsilon-K?” He choked on his angry sexual disgust that Critias had so prestigious and mandatorily compliant a plaything. Walker had to shake his head to wave away the nausea over how his career had gone so wrong.
“Yes,” Critias confirmed it all with pride, “that’s my Epsilon-K hostile environment companion. She’s all they promised; though, sometimes I wonder if the bioengineers didn’t use some spare parts. She has the ass of a leisure model with the mouth of a technical, with all her big-worded smartass lip-service.”
Such criticism coming from her own master cut deeply into Carmen’s pride. “I’m not loquacious,” she complained resenting the insult. “My commentary is always witty and usually ironically pertinent even when anecdotal.”
“Yes,” the colonel agreed while he stared at Carmen’s ideally combat-modest breasts through her flight suit. “I see what you mean, on both counts.”
Carmen secretly frowned in silence because the override directives in her inorganic parallel brain intervened to turn her expression upside down. The inhibitor module made her smile with charming innocence. Both her real and false expressions were equally intent to refrain from further levity.
“So, tell me, colonel,” Critias asked, “What have the infected population figures been like since your arrival?”
“Sustained reclamation activity attracts them as always,” the colonel stated as a routinely expected consequence. “Our vehicles are as impervious to them as is our defense perimeter. They are no difficulty at all aside from all their screaming, which can be unnerving to the new arrivals, at least until they get used to it.”
Carmen struggled to control herself, but in the end, she couldn’t resist opening her mouth to say, “Marshal Critias, should I be taking notes on these clues in your investigation? You may need to report to the Grand Marshal that you’ve discovered evidence that the insanely tormented shrieks of the immortal cannibal damned can be detrimental to scavengers’ sleeping patterns and thus adversely impact their overall morale and bottom-line productivity.”
Colonel Walker mistakenly assumed he had seen the sharpest edge on Carmen’s tongue. “People call us reclamation engineers,” he scolded her in a cold tone, “not scavengers.” He added a scowl over her mocking insults, “The infected don’t sleep, only lurk, scream, and hunt for food.”
“Fascinating, colonel,” she replied in unsubtle sarcasm. “This should also go into my confidential report to the Reclamation General. I’m strongly considering the working title, ‘Observations on the wondrous advantages of embedded reclamation strategy’.”
Walker assumed more than he actually heard; her favorably named confidential report to his boss, the Reclamation General, would nutrify his career immensely.
“It should go in that report,” Carmen continued, “but then again, no one ever asks a gabby technical-mouth like me to write special reports. Even if the Reclamation General did ask me to write such a report, after this latest research, I’m more partial to naming it, ‘Unbelievable Fucking Ignorance: ERC Strategy is to shit your own bed for lunch, one real marshal’s observations’.”
Colonel Walker slipped into a rage over having Carmen taunt him with a dream opportunity only to have her cruelly reverse it to flames. Part of his anger sprang from the knowledge that much of what she said had come from having overheard Critias’ own private commentary, which meant his inspection would end in written repudiation no matter what else happened. The colonel unleashed his resentments on Carmen, “When human beings reveal their presence anywhere in ghoulish feeding territory, the humans can’t avoid attracting unwanted attention. Our defenses are utterly unassailable; ghouls run around out there, rob bird’s nests, pursue rats, dogs, or cats, and oh yes, they howl crazily in the night like baying animals, just as they have always done, all very dramatic, but otherwise overrated.”
“Legend is they would rather eat reclamation engineers,” Carmen retorted unflinchingly, “but as you say, colonel, that time is long past since they ran out of people to chew on. Now the ghouls are more like scavengers, if that is the proper use of the term, meaning they are dirty gut-buzzard vermin feeding on the decaying refuse. Even for all of those obvious faults, I assume even ghouls are smart enough not to defecate in their own nests.”
“Lucifer’s balls!” the colonel cursed on the verge of striking her then turned his spite on Critias. “What a delightful virago of an assistant you have earned yourself, captain; it truly never does shut its face. It’s such a tragedy that I’m too busy to socialize with you two all day long. Unfortunately, I need to get back to work maintaining my unbroken record of exceeding expectations.”
Critias was far from finished with his interview, “That’s something of a coincidence then, Colonel Walker, because I also never fail to exceed lofty expectations. Grand Marshal Wayne personally ordered me to come here and do this inspection of your operations and he will not be disappointed in me for any lack of due diligence. According to the reports I have received, you have had zero infections, an impressive list of damaged vehicles, one accidental death, and thus far delivered some seventy kilotons of clean premium salvage into orbit. You have indeed exceeded your quotas impressively, colonel. I am just here to make sure that you didn’t purchase your successes by cutting corners from the safety regulations. The little people do the dying when the big people get drunk on ambition.”
The colonel sustained his irritation, which was an accomplishment, “Once the Council of Governors approves this operational strategy, I’ll be ready to duplicate this type of installation in capital cities all over the planet, so it’s critical that we not lose pace. My output figures have already won the blessing of the Reclamation General.”
Critias cautioned the colonel, “It’s more critical that Grand Marshal Wayne approves of your operation for it to ever even enter debate at the Council of Governors. Lack of cooperation may require me to recommend that the Grand Marshal put your entire show on hold while a dozen marshals perform a proper inspection.”
The colonel threw up consolatory hands, “That won’t be necessary. I’m prepared to cooperate in any way that will facilitate your confidence that operations here are being administrated by me with the strictest professionalism and regard for safety.”
Carmen was about to open her mouth again, but Critias cut her off with a pointed finger to shut it. He commanded, “Access the computer records; see if you can find anything out of the ordinary.” It was an order, so she was powerless to disobey.
“Perhaps one of my technicians would be better suited to help you with the data records,” Colonel Walker offered. “It may be beyond the skills of your thuggish prostitute.”
“I am most certainly not a pillow-bot,” Carmen complained. She let the thuggish part slide in that she was rather proud of her combat-grade-five titanium skeleton.
Critias ordered, “Go! One more outburst and I’ll unplug you.”
Carmen went over then propped her bi
ghtstaff aside so she could sit at a computer terminal to do the job. She could access all the computer records by internal modem, but much preferred doing it slowly by presenting herself as a regular human person with an office job, a person who could perform far better than any one of them ever could. When sitting comfortably, she grumbled, “You of all people should know that I don’t have any plug, master, not like you had any trouble finding my input sockets your first day.”
Critias made sure she was occupied with her task before he asked Walker, “Tell me about your one accidental death, colonel. How did it happen?”
“Friendly fire,” the colonel answered with a sour expression for the unfortunate mishap. “During an operation where we were culling the numbers of the infected along the perimeter, teslaflux-cannon shrapnel struck one of my men in the head.”
Critias saw no wisdom in such a strategy, “You use cannons on infected along the perimeter? Does that mean that the shredded bodies of ghouls are painting your entire fence-line in contaminated filth?”
The colonel shrugged over that minor detail, “It means the infected are in fewer active numbers on my perimeter. If your pillow-bot is still taking notes, have her record that infected don’t get smart, but they can learn they don’t like being shot to shit.”
Critias reminded him of the obvious, “Their wounds heal. I’ve seen this all before, so let me guess - every time it rains, their scattered body parts start to twitch and pulsate with all their old hunger and the ones that crawled off came back freakishly regenerated and even more dangerous than before. Where they once wandered stupidly into your cannons, now they have learned to avoid them, but they never stopped watching you.”
Gravewalkers: Dying Time Page 2
