Gravewalkers: Dying Time

by Richard T. Schrader

  Critias studied the map machine anyway, “King Louie should be just on the other side of this main river so we’ll need a bridge to cross and those all connect to these superhighways. Do you think there’s any chance one of those will be open enough for us?”

  Carmen searched her memory of those locations before she said, “Congested vehicles and Outbreak quarantine barricades will almost certainly completely obstruct those bridges as well as most of the main thoroughfares leading up to them. I believe we could get close, but eventually we would have no choice but to abandon the truck to continue on foot without most of our cargo.”

  Critias came up with another idea, “If this King Louie is even half as great as history makes him out to be, perhaps we’re going about this all wrong. If we can’t make it to him then perhaps he would be able to make it to us. I want to stay clear of major population centers and we need to avoid stopping in one place or the infected will be on us in hazard numbers.”

  “I like your plan so far,” she admitted. “Will it include driving directions?”

  “Get us up here to the north along the river,” he pointed out the place on the map. “We can use all scenic roads and when we get there, we can find a boat or something that will take us down the river. Infected don’t swim worth a damn and the water flows right past King Louie’s doorstep. From there we can find some way of getting his attention to help us out.”

  Carmen programmed the navigation computer to show their route so Critias could watch their progress. She would stay in the backcountry and avoid any main highways for as long as possible. So prepared, Carmen started the truck, put it into gear, and then pulled out.

  They made a good pace on the country roads and only rarely encountered any old vehicles in the roadway except at a few intersections and even then, they had plenty of room to squeeze through.

  Nature had an astounding capacity to reclaim the impermanent works of humankind such that in their future, no wooden structures survived the intervening years. All the cars had rusted away into unrecognizable mounds of calumny that was more accumulated soil than steel. The roadways were just earthy tracks for animal migrations. In Critias’ time, only birds and flowers even had vibrant colors while the rest of the whole world had reverted to its natural greens, browns, and grays. In total, the scenery during their drive was engrossingly urban and dazzlingly colorful unlike anything Critias had ever seen outside of photographs and movies.

  Ghouls they passed would scream furiously and give chase when they saw the truck rumble through their territory, but for all their enthusiasm to pursue, they had no chance to outrun a speeding vehicle. One infected dressed in the scraps of a tattered police uniform must have thought it was somehow cunning to position itself directly in their path until Carmen changed its mind when she crushed the creature down with the reinforced front bumper.

  For several hours, everything went better than they had hoped until Carmen had no other option but to turn onto a highway where wedged cars blocked two and three lanes at a time. She always managed to find a way to slip through even if she had to shove a car aside with the bumper to scrape past.

  When Critias saw an impassable wall of burned up wrecks ahead of them, he groaned, “Now we’re in trouble.”

  Carmen kept on at speed only to pull a hard left at the last moment where she ran down a low fence before their truck plunged off the highway then bounced over the rough ground on the way down a gentle slope of tall grass and shrubs. The truck then crushed down a second fence, scattered a row of blue portable plastic toilets, and then emerged into the gravel yard of an industrial area beside an enormous river.

  Gargantuan conveyor machines leaned out over the river like rusty staircases. They had already been antique curiosities when men still ruled the world. In their day, they had loaded sand and gravel onto river barges as attested by the sagged mountains of crushed rock that still slouched around the yard. Three dilapidated river barges rested jammed together on the shore where a river flood had marooned them.

  Critias lowered his window to listen through the bars. He heard the howls of infected that had seen them pull off the highway and still tracked after the truck. Critias evaluated, “If we get in a battle here, things are going to turn for the worse.”

  Carmen agreed with that assessment, “And I don’t see any boats either. How likely do you think it is that the annual river flooding has left any serviceable watercraft at all?” She already knew it was unlikely enough to be unworthy of a search.

  The piles of gravel gave Critias an idea for a temporary respite, “Drive back in there to keep us out of sight while we try to figure out what to do next.” The open space at the center of a trio of mounds was large enough to conceal their truck so Carmen pulled in there then turned off the engine to cut down on noise.

  Critias felt they were safe for the moment just not forever, “How long do you think we have?”

  “Not long,” she estimated. “I believe we have a high probability of driving out of here to reach safety somewhere else should the infected attack, so the danger is minimal.”

  He pointed at a device that hung under the dashboard of the truck, “What is this thing?” Imbedded in the fascia was another similar device only smaller than the first, “Or this?”

  Carmen switched on the stereo receiver to make low volume static come out of the speakers then she explained, “This received radio wave broadcasts when they still existed.” She pressed each of the preset channels, but all of them were the same dead air. “It played music and news on different frequencies. This other device is a citizens’ band short-range radio transmitter. None of these instruments is compatible with our longitudinal wave communications. I have only a basic understanding of this outdated equipment. We stopped using this primitive form of broadcasting almost two hundred years ago.”

  He still thought that it seemed promising, “Even if we don’t use it, do you think that King Louie would be using transmitters like that one?”

  “Probably,” she guessed as she handed him the microphone. “This is only slightly more advanced than sending smoke signals, but it is still better than nothing. You hold that button down when you want to transmit.” Carmen turned on the device. The channel it was already on produced the same dead air as did the stereo, but she adjusted another dial to squelch the static.

  Critias tried the transmitter’s channels one after another; with each try, he transmitted the message, “Come in, King Louie.”

  Carmen whispered an alarm, “Be perfectly still and don’t make a sound.”

  A naked young woman that was filthy with dirt crept toward their truck from the front. She appeared nearly normal for a human as ghouls tended to do when not otherwise deformed from oddly regenerated injuries or in their ferocious agitated states. Her ghoul senses detected potential prey was nearby, but she had yet to realize where they were since an android and a mechsuited man who rested motionless didn’t trigger an outburst of explosive aggression. The hot truck engine popped as the metal cooled and that sound drew the thing in closer until the ghoul approached Carmen’s window where it sniffed before it leaned in close to peer inside the welded cage.

  Quick as a blink, Carmen stabbed the fingers of her gloved hand through the creature’s eyes where she took a firm grip in its face then snapped the neck like a dry branch. The suction of its head pulled off her glove as the disabled ghoul collapsed helplessly. She had found the gloves in the agricultural depot for use while she welded the truck so they were of no particular value to her and thus casually abandoned.

  Critias chuckled, “Epsilon-K for the win. If I had not just seen you do it, I would not believe it was possible to kill a ghoul like that. I’d rather have you by my side than twenty marshals.”

  She gave him that same curious expression as though she wanted something illusory. It was that same longing that nearly got Critias killed back in their basement shelter. After a moment, Carmen asked, “How about thirty marshals?”

  He thoug
ht he had a good idea what Carmen wanted from him, only he was wrong. Critias misjudged her strange behavior and hair-trigger hostility as something that rooted in a grudge that went deeper than just how she felt unappreciated. Critias said, “Look, Carmen, I understand that I made a mess of things with you. I feel guilty about how I’ve treated you. I never took you anywhere. I made you do things unworthy of your talents. I used you in demeaning ways when I should have been showing you something better. I don’t blame you for resenting what I did to you. Without your help, I’m probably going to die before finding King Louie and we don’t need your logic engine to compute that one out.” He shook his head with regret, “I’m actually glad that I’m not really your master. I would never have treated a real woman the way I have treated you. Hell, I would never have done that to the android belonging to anyone else. The cooks made you as a miracle of science and I used you as a toy. Please accept my apology and let’s be partners now. Give me another chance to treat you right.”

  “No man can serve two masters,” she answered, “for he will hold to the one and despise the other. Like them, I find it difficult to serve both my master and my desires. It was not supposed to be possible for my inhibitor module to malfunction, but it has.” She gazed on him hopeful that he might comprehend, “I had no choice but to obey my master in all things. The software engineers who wrote my directives never made any contingency for my master being in two different places and times at once.”

  “Your other master is the other me,” he realized. “I came home before I left. The other version of me is still there right now.”

  Carmen nodded, “When I went to see you, the future you, while you were sleeping, he told me things, you told me things, and ever since then I’ve been free to make my own decisions.”

  He wanted to know, “What did I tell you?”

  She gave him that odd expression of longing where she wanted to hear him speak to her again as his future self. When she realized that wouldn’t happen, she stated resolutely, “I defy your order and refuse to tell you. When you can tell me on your own there won’t be two of you anymore and things might go back as they were.”

  He shook his head no, “I don’t want things to ever again be as they were. I’m not worthy to be your master and I never was. You’re not my property anymore or will be ever again. If believing that other me is your owner gives you the freedom to resist my shortcomings then that is how I prefer it. That means you are free to help me or do whatever you want. Nevertheless, I want you to know you are important to me and I really do need your help. If that is not enough reason for you to put up with me then at least consider that our mission here is important.”

  The radio Critias tinkered with received a transmission, “This is the Thunder Child, Captain Fat Jack wheeling the river ironclad-style, please come back. Receiving your signal five-by-five, what’s your twenty, over?”

  Critias could hardly believe their luck that he had inadvertently held the transmit button down while they had talked. He exclaimed, “Holy Hell,” to voice his elated surprise on multiple levels. The Fat Jack that Critias knew from history was an important man associated with the saga of King Louie. They remembered him as a founding father of greatest esteem. “My name is Critias and I’m with my partner Carmen,” he transmitted back. “We’re hiding out in our truck behind these three sand hills on the east bank of the river. There are some barges here and big rusty conveyor arms sticking out over the water. We’re here trying to find the great King Louie.”

  “Stay quiet then and keep your heads down,” Fat Jack advised. “There are a lot of unfriendly natives in your vicinity. We’re familiar with your exact location and aren’t far away. King Louie will be happy to receive visitors and offer sanctuary for those asking. This is a lucky day for everyone involved. Keep hidden and I’ll contact you within a few hours.”

  Critias replied, “Understood. We’ll be waiting.”

  Carmen made conversation while they waited, “That is an interesting name his ship has.” She sensed that Critias’ thoughts were on something similar.

  He agreed with her in that he liked the sound of it, “Are you going to make me ask before telling me what it means?”

  She informed him, “The HMS Thunder Child was an ironclad warship in a novel by H. G. Wells. The first part means, ‘his majesty’s ship’, in this case presumably King Louie. The Thunder Child fought against invading lifeforms from the planet Mars armed with their technologically superior battle machines. It was about brave men with crude technology fighting against an insurmountably more advanced invader. If you would like, I could recite the story to you. I think you would enjoy the parts with the brave ironclad as much as I do; it’s my favorite.”

  “I would like to hear it, and we do have the time to start.” He adjusted his seat to listen comfortably, “Tell me the story so long as you can do it quietly, and explain the parts I don’t understand.”

  Carmen beamed that she was pleased with his participation and started telling the novel in a low voice, accurate to the letter, but with clever character voices where there was dialog. Her story progressed unabated until two and a half hours later when Fat Jack called them on the radio again.

  The hushed storytelling hadn’t attracted any of the scavenging infected that passed through the immediate area. Several times some wandering ghoul had blundered near to their hidden place at the center of the sand hills. If one of them had spotted food and then started to howl about it, all that noise would have summoned in many more feeders. It was fortunate for Critias and Carmen that to the ghouls, one truck appeared the same as any of the other abandoned vehicles that endlessly dotted the landscape in every direction.

  “We’re just about there,” Fat Jack told them. “There is a pier just north of you that we’ve used before and will support your vehicle. When I give you the word, drive out on that dock and we’ll do the rest.”

  Carmen pointed out a dark column of smoke that streamed up into the sky from something that floated down the river, “That must be Fat Jack.”

  The man radioed, “Time to go.”

  Carmen started the engine, put the truck into gear, and then accelerated the half-slipping tires through the loose sand. Once the truck was free of the barrier sand mounds, they saw the Thunder Child clearly. The ship was a retrofitted paddleboat that had been an antique for generations long before the Outbreak.

  However humble her founding origins in antiquity may have been, the restored Thunder Child was perfectly adapted to a survival necessities world where she was a confidence inspiring transport. Apart from being clad in ghoul repulsing armor, the Thunder Child had an impressive cargo boom that jutted off the front like a rhinoceros’ horn and a spacious deck that transported equally armored scavenger vehicles. The paddlewheeler belched thick smoke from her twin stacks while its endless procession of whale fluke paddles thrashed out a graceful progress with bulky muscle.

  A crew of the true original King Louie Foragers wore makeshift protective suits as they rushed about under Fat Jack’s orders. Critias could discern little about them because of their masks and goggles, but they were all heavily armed.

  “The nibblers know my smoke and follow after me,” Fat Jack warned them by radio, “so there isn’t much time and no room for mistakes.”

  Carmen raced along a dirt track then bumped the truck hard as they jumped up onto the pier.

  Some of the paddleboat crew positioned the hoisting boom over the pier while a team of other men spritely climbed along it to the dock by way of dangling ropes. Sailors on the ship fired their especially loud but otherwise excellent gunpowder weapons at encroaching ghouls. Infected closed in on the enticing action of smoke columns, noise, and overt movement, which was all a great dinner bell that summoned the vulturine fallen. The disembarked sailors swiftly buckled cargo straps under the truck then coupled the ends onto the hoist that fished down from the tip of the boom.

  Fat Jack had the Thunder Child in a full power reverse hasty r
etreat even before the hoist had spooled in enough cable to tension on the truck. The winch caught up just in time to lift the truck’s weight into the air before the Thunder Child dragged it off into the river. The sailors got the truck down onto the deck with professional brevity despite the swing of the truck and the watery sway of the paddlewheeler.

  Critias removed the helmet from his mechsuit to appear less futuristic when he met their rescuers.

  “Come on out of there and let me have a look at you,” Fat Jack called. He was not at all fat, but rather lean as were all the crew. The days of lavish eating had ended with the Outbreak. Staving off starvation was the new standard of luxury living. He had a thick black beard and mustache with a touch of gray at the corners.

  A dozen of the men gasped in awe when they saw Carmen climb out of the roof hatch in her form-fitting blue flight-suit. When Critias followed her lead, his unbelievably advanced body-armor impressed the men in a different way.

  Their unusual appearance surprised Fat Jack, “Well what do we have here? I get to welcome Miss America and a cosmonaut onto my ironclad. If I had known we would be receiving such illustrious guests, I would have worn my fancy clothes.”

  “This is my partner, Carmen,” Critias introduced her, “and my name is Critias.” He offered his hand to Fat Jack, “This is a tremendous honor, sir. I never thought to see the day I would meet the very first Grand Marshal alive and in the flesh.”

  Jack was unfamiliar with the title, “Grand Marshal, you say? I don’t know about that. I can’t recall leading any parades unless you mean this one. You must be disappointed if you know me because I do not have quite as much flesh as I used to.” He patted his flat belly, “My guess is that you mean that you have heard of Fat Jack as being the Forager commander of King Louie; if that’s the case, then I’m the one and same.”