Gravewalkers: Dying Time

by Richard T. Schrader

  “This station is not really so different from being in orbit,” the colonel argued. “We’re on the inside and the danger is locked without. They cannot get into this base or into our reclamation excavators, so there is nothing to fear but fear itself.”

  “There is more than fear to fear, I can assure you,” Critias countered. “Your lack of fear for yourself I might dismiss as foolish arrogance, but for the lives of the people under your command, it is bordering on incompetence. Standard covert reclamation procedures have proven themselves for generations. Your declaration of open war on the infected has also proven itself many times, as the path to destruction. You’re not King Louie.”

  The colonel roared, “This time will be different!”

  A radio message came to Critias through his helmet, “This is Doctor Kine on the Homer. Are you there, Marshal Critias?”

  Critias didn’t know the man when he answered, “Yes, I’m here, doctor. How can I help you?”

  “You are on Earth,” Kine sounded elated. “You’re at the Chicago reclamation center interviewing Colonel Walker.”

  Critias played along in an effort to be respectful to a man of some obvious importance in the science sector, “Yes, I am, doctor. What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing,” Doctor Kine answered oddly though still happy about their conversation. “I just needed to verify your location, that’s all.”

  Critias dismissed the peculiar interruption as inexplicable then returned to his conversation with Colonel Walker, “Now where were we?”

  “We were discussing how the fucking orphanage still thinks they really are King Louie’s blessing to the preservation of all mankind and how they never have to listen to anyone.”

  The Marshal Service took all their membership from orphaned children such was the source of the nickname. The Grand Marshal commanded all the marshals who collectively enforced the regulations they called King’s Law, which the legendary King Louie had set down when he was the original savior of mankind in the first years of the plague apocalypse; that was long before the technology existed to escape into orbital space. In addition to King’s Law enforcement, the Marshal Service also performed rescue operations for downed pilots and assorted stranded scavengers. The marshals by reputation had no secondary loyalties save for the law, the preservation of humanity, and keeping each other on the rigid path.

  “You should see this, master,” Carmen called to Critias. She said master according to her irresistible inhibitor directives that forced her to, a particular barrier to her will that activated when he scolded her for talking too much out of turn. Carmen did her best to sneer when she said it, but it came out sounding sweet anyway.

  He went over to see the monitor over her shoulder; it displayed live infrared satellite scans of the Chicago reclamation center vicinity.

  “This band here is the shredded ghoul-meat obliterated by cannon shells,” she pointed it out with her finger. “It has all gone into regenerative photosynthetic dormancy. That makes this whole belt warm and green as summer where it is getting enough water and sunshine. Therefore, that means all these dark areas are swamps of infectious offal as well. Their whole perimeter is pulsating undead entrails like sloppy beach surf.”

  Critias pointed out a series of faintly visible streams of warmth that were like smoke would appear on normal photography rather than thermal, “What are these?”

  Carmen had specifically isolated those images on secondary monitors for his perusal and riddled her answer with a quote. Her mind contained a vast repertory of mankind’s collective literature so it was her common practice to use a reverential form of hermeneutics to buffer her juvenile mind and generate that meliorism of human behavior. She did devote sincere effort into making genuine sense of what it meant to be human, which was an irrational state of being under most if not all circumstances. She quoted, “And while I stood in the dark, a hand touched mine, lank fingers came feeling over my face, and I was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odor. I fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me.”

  Critias had grown accustomed to Carmen’s superior vocabulary and even enjoyed the games she crafted from her endless supply of memorized books. The story of the Morlocks had always been one of her favorites when discussing ghouls, so he already knew that much and quickly solved her riddle. He answered, “So many ghouls are in the basements of those ruined buildings that the collective heat of their bodies and breathing is rising out as thermal air columns. Good work, Carmen; anyone but us would have overlooked that.” His praise deactivated the master routine that so disgusted her.

  “I believe that to be the case,” she agreed. “Tens of thousands of individuals are generating thermal exhaust of that magnitude. I estimate there are seven hundred fifty thousand mobile specimens within a four kilometer radius.”

  He asked, “Do you think we could get gunships to clean those out?”

  “I don’t think so,” she calculated rightly. “They’re too deep underground. You could bury them under the buildings until they dug themselves out, which they would in short order.”

  Critias ordered, “Mark those plume basements as targets then transmit the package to the orbital mass-drivers. Punch those buildings flat and let them dig back up from Hell.”

  Carmen used marshal access codes to send the firing mission then reported the reply they sent back, “Next orbital position for firing will be in seven hours twelve minutes without an emergency retask.”

  Colonel Walker had listened to their conversation; the orders to demolition major standing structures he planned on reclaiming appalled him. “You can’t be serious,” he complained. “You’re going to start leveling the city from space because you’re chasing your ridiculous theory on witches or is it warlocks? What do you call them?”

  “Watchers,” Carmen assisted him. “It’s more of a hypothesis than an actual theory; humans frequently make that mistake.”

  The colonel ignored Critias’ android as though she were nothing but a cheap bimbo, “I told you that I taught them the price of getting in range of our guns. The teslaflux cannons have range to the horizon if need be. The ghouls went underground to stay away from the guns. They have been harmlessly skulking at a safe distance for weeks, just like we want.”

  “Well then, nothing to see here,” Carmen apologized mockingly. “Hannibal ad portas is not the cause for worry that it used to be.”

  “It means Hannibal is at the gates, marshal,” Colonel Walker translated the Latin.

  “I know what it means,” Critias replied. “Here is one perhaps you don’t remember, cedant arma togae; it’s the Orphans’ oath to the Council of Governors. The warriors serve the will of the scholars, not the other way around. You have not told the Council anything about your ghoul nesting problems. You are sucking them into this area as if you’re hosting a chili cook-off. The smart thing to do is to close this place out and then nuke this shit-hole.”

  Walker asked, “Do you have any idea how many metric tons of copper alone I can get from just one of those buildings? Do you know how much aluminum? There is enough construction-grade steel for the builders to frame out a new habitat. You can’t just implode them, ne puero gladium!”

  Critias had learned to speak Latin in ludus as all marshals did. He glanced over at Carmen as if to say that he had warned her that Colonel Walker wasn’t going to be friendly.

  “Do not entrust a sword to a boy,” Carmen translated anyway with only a hint of a smirk slipping past her inhibitor barrier. She enjoyed telling him that much.

  Critias continued speaking with certainty, “I assure you, I both can and will. Colonel Walker, you are withholding critical information from your reports to manipulate the Reclamation General and the Council of Governors. Call your crews in and lock this place down. By the authority of Grand Marshal Wayne, I hereby order you to evacuate this facility. You will begin your preparations immediately. Just tell your men they have earned a short vacation back home. I don
’t think it will take the Governors long to interview you themselves.”

  The nervous clerk entered the control room appearing even more sweaty and timid than his usual. He said, “Colonel Walker, sir, there is a small problem that requires your attention.”

  “What is it?” the colonel demanded.

  The man stuttered, “Private Carlson, sir, he is several hours overdue for his shift at the pre-sanitizer sorting area.”

  Walker took the news as a mere nuisance, “Is there some reason you did not report this to me several hours ago?”

  The clerk explained, “It appears his coworkers were trying to cover for his absence to keep him from going on report, sir. They believe he was drunk last night and sleeping it off.”

  Colonel Walker took the matter more seriously, “Where is Private Carlson now, lieutenant?”

  The man paled as if he might feint, “Uh, no one knows, sir.”

  The colonel yelled at him, “Perhaps you should find out!”

  Carmen searched the security camera records by high-speed modem and then put a relevant video on the main wall-projection display before saying, “Private Carlson appears to have injured his hand yesterday.”

  Private Carlson wearing a plastic splash-suit had been sorting through piles of reclaimed metals fresh off the unbelievably filthy trucks when a jagged spur stabbed through his glove like a needle. Carmen followed his movements from the records to show Private Carlson frantically washing his injury, to then later return to his quarters where he tried to sleep, but only tossed restlessly. Eventually the man got up from his bed lurching drunkenly to wander the passageways where various people observed him staggering past without any of them bothering to interact. He ended up in the motor-pool area where he had climbed into a main battle tank and then locked himself inside. Surveillance footage confirmed that up to the current moment he had never exited the vehicle.

  “He has locked himself inside one of your tanks, Colonel Walker,” Carmen informed him of the visible fact. “He’s either infected or in belief that he is; in either case, he is now in possession of a vehicle capable of leveling this entire building.” She considered her deductions then added, “Or perhaps he wanted a quiet place to sleep away from the screaming of the damned. According to my notes, it has been known to be demoralizing.”

  Colonel Walker commanded, “Patch me in to that tank’s audio!” Then he shouted into a microphone, “It’s time to wake up, soldier! Your shift began three hours ago!”

  The terrified private cried, “Oh God! You’re coming to murder me! You want to do to me what you did to Finkler! He kept telling you that you were bringing in too much too dirty!”

  Critias looked to his android, “Who is Finkler?”

  She replied, “The friendly fire accidental death was named Adrian Finkler.”

  Critias turned on Colonel Walker, “This Finkler got infected, so you shot him and covered it up to protect your sterling reputation.” It wasn’t a question.

  “The Governors might have shut me down if they heard of it,” the colonel admitted his guilt in the conspiracy.

  “Get some lab teams to his bunk and have them test for traces of infection,” Critias ordered the colonel. “Tell your guards to interview anyone who came into contact with him since he injured himself. If you have a tactical team on standby, tell them to storm that tank or to disable it by any means necessary.”

  The colonel was out of arguments and did as Critias wanted. When he was finished sending the orders, he told Critias, “The assault platoon needs five minutes to get into position.”

  Critias went to the microphone for communicating with the tank, “This is Marshal Critias. I want you to listen carefully, Private Carlson. The medics tested your bed sheets and your sweat was negative for infection. You’re not infected. When you injured your hand there was no infected matter present. It’s just a minor laceration and you’re not infected. Exit that vehicle and return to your regular work shift. Colonel Walker is not going to discipline you. I give you my word on that.”

  The private howled, “You’re lying! You’re all damn liars! You want to murder me just as you did Finkler! I’m not a ghoul! I’m perfectly fine, but you still want to kill me. You’re never going to do to me what you did to him!”

  Carmen reported, “Records show that tank is in for engine repairs which the mechanics completed yesterday. It has full ammunition onboard and is fully mobile.”

  The tank powered up with a fearsome growl readily audible through the security feed. The revving turbine was a menacing roar of unrivalled power.

  “Take the tank now!” the colonel ordered his assault team. “Take it now! Shoot it with a fucking missile if you have to!”

  It was fortunate that Private Carlson sorted trash instead of driving tanks for a profession because he found starting the engine much easier than figuring out how to make it go somewhere.

  Carmen had a ready solution, “I will override the controls through the remote transponder interlink.” She found her access to the weapon systems to be fully functional and disabled them all with Marshal Service override codes. When it came to the rest of the vehicle, she discovered that the colonel had installed a secondary firewall to prevent anyone outside his command from monitoring the tanks activities. “I have disabled the weapons,” she reported, “but I can’t gain access to the primary drive controls or the auxiliary systems. There is an unauthorized secondary firewall. I believe it was Colonel Walker who ordered this illegal modification to circumvent Marshal Service observations of his activities.”

  Critias told the colonel, “That may soon become an expensive decision just because you wanted to be a secretive jackoff.”

  A team of soldiers leaped onto the stationary tank then used a special key to open the locked hatch from the outside. One of the men fired his rifle down into the open hatch to kill the driver. After his projectile went through Private Carlson’s collarbone, but only served to make the desperate man more agitated, the shooter yelled, “He’s infected!”

  The tank tilted wildly nose-down as the treads spun in full reverse, spraying up shaved concrete like a pair of turbine-powered diamond chainsaws. The mighty machine raced backwards across the motor pool, shaking off the besieging soldiers to send them rolling across the floor.

  In his rapidly growing alarm over their worsening situation, Colonel Walker demanded, “Man every weapon to destroy that tank! I want it melted into slag!”

  Carmen followed the tank with the cameras to show it crush a lighter vehicle flat and then punch through a wall to continue at speed. After it demolished the wall, the tank plowed through several layers of defense barrier and crossed some shallow trenches.

  Various teslaflux machinegun positions peppered the tank’s armor unable to inflict any harm upon it. One massive concrete bunker proved strong enough to block the tank’s progress when the vehicle hung up on that obstacle then spun its treads. Several rockets streaked in to splash molten flame across the tank’s hull. The rocking impact of the explosions turned the tank slightly so that its treads found new traction, which pulled it free from the obstacle, and then the tank set off once more. A few remaining barriers fell under its weight before the tank reached the outer perimeter wall. That last defense crumpled under the tank’s impact to leave the reclamation center fully exposed to infected attack. The last camera filmed the tank as it rumbled off into the ruins of the city where it finally foundered then sank down into the dark basement of a building it had penetrated.

  Colonel Walker slammed his fist down on the crisis alert button to sound the alarms everywhere in his base. All of his people rushed to arms to repel a mass invasion of infected when it arrived.

  Critias told him, “This is still your base, colonel, and you’re evacuating if ghouls are coming or not, so do what needs to be done until transports can arrive.”

  The colonel sneered at that suggestion, “This is Earth, and we are men! The infected have not taken this installation yet and they’re
never going to.” He went to his microphone to bark orders, “Concentrate all firepower at the breach in the defenses! All engineering crews are to get a new barrier up as quickly as possible. I order you to sacrifice any vehicles or materials you require to close up that wall immediately.”

  “I want in on this,” Critias told the colonel. “We marshals are not the sort to stand by watching a fight. If our situations were reversed, you would expect the same.”

  “Leave the android with me.” Colonel Walker pointed to an exit, “Take that door and go up one floor. I’ll call ahead and tell them you’ll be their new acting commander.”

  “Do anything he asks I would approve of,” Critias ordered Carmen as he rushed off to follow the directions. Upstairs in an outfitting room, Critias encountered ten men in mechsuits as they gave final checks to their weapons. Their ‘Red Rat’ insignia patches identified them as members of first platoon in the already elite ‘Reconnaissance Armature Teams’.

  Their Reclamation General sent out such men in mechsuits to find worthy harvests. In the trade lingo of the old Foragers, an armature meant a mechsuit and recon meant built for sly speed rather than intense battle action. In total, the applied meaning was that they were team player covert shooters that scouted premium salvage locations then hunkered down as mushroomed forward-observers while the reclamation excavators collected the pay off.

  To get all ten men straight in posture and formation, the leader shouted, “Form up, you dogs!” He informed his men, “You’ve all just volunteered to become deputized members of a marshal’s posse!” He pounded his chest to spark them all to a Roman salute to Critias, done potently and perhaps best by men in armatures. The name over the heart of the lieutenant in blazoned reflector gold read, ‘Lt. C. Daniels’.

  Critias joined their proud salute saying, “Things have really gone to hell and I only just got here. Some private suffering the brain-fry has hijacked a tank and crashed it through the whole defense perimeter clear to outside. My android tells me there are three-quarters of a million screaming freaks near about in the local warren. Our situation is moments away from nose-diving off into total disaster. We need to slow up their attack until some major transports have time to come pick us up. So who’s with me?”