Gravewalkers: Dying Time

by Richard T. Schrader

  Just to be on the safe side, Critias pulled his panga-bowie blade then used it to swish off the body’s head clean across the shoulders. He felt bad that Carmen was not there to see how surgical a sword hand he was. He searched about a bit to find a pistol in the belt of the man’s pants, which had rusted to a paperweight, so he dropped it in the garbage can as he went out.

  Carmen went in to see the ghoul and then came back with a perplexed expression, “My logic processor offers a peculiar scenario. I deduce from the bag on the man’s head that he was practicing an asphyxiation masturbation ritual in the toilet while also injecting recreational drugs into his arm to celebrate the homophile homicide murder-rush he got from shooting all the others, resulting in his accidental overdose.” She tossed him a medical vial that she had taken from the body’s pocket. The label read it was a medicinal cocaine solution.

  He tossed the bottle back to put in her pack, “I must say that it disturbs me that I made you a romantic heterosexual, I’m the only man you have ever known, and you came up with that horrendous theory. That bastard was up to something voodoo-bullshit or I’m a cowardly scavenger. If he wanted to be dead, he had a pistol and if he wanted to get high, he wouldn’t have put a bag on his head, so something else entirely is going on here. He shot those other eggheads because they discovered something or they were going to take something away from him. You need to go through their papers to find out what that was. Let’s go back to that video room that was so nice and clean. We can take a break, have a snack, and watch some of their movies.”

  She advised, “We need to go around later to forage all the valuable drugs and chemicals.”

  They went to the pitch-black windowless video room then locked themselves inside.

  Carmen took her portable field generator from her backpack. She explained, “Kevin assembled the capacitors I needed to make better use of this.” That meant they would soon have flowing electricity for the contemporary devices in the room. Carmen set the output voltage then plugged both the video screen and the disk player into sockets Kevin had attached to her power device.

  Once she had the screen and player operational, Critias put in the first disk. The device was similar to a holographic laser disk medium from his own era, so he managed to operate it easily enough. As he pressed the loading tray to close on his selection, Critias said, “Let’s see what everyone was so excited about, shall we? It’s kind of flattering that we get to be the first people ever to know what caused all this.”

  Carmen moved the boardroom table over on its side against the doors. Once she had the floor thus cleared, she spread out the fire-blanket from her pack then stripped herself naked so as not to transfer any contamination onto their clean zone. She finally stretched out to relax and let her skin breathe. Once she was comfortable, Carmen told him, “That diving suit blocks my epidermal gas exchange. I really need to get some air for a while.”

  “I know how that is,” he sympathized being familiar with the confines of his own armor. He pulled up a chair to sit with a perfect view of both Carmen’s breathtaking posterior and the video screen at the same time. He suggested, “You control the fast forward to show us the good parts.”

  She pressed the buttons on the player to search through the footage. Carmen narrated to Critias what she saw that was worthy of his interest, “It seems like this local Mexican archeologist has called a team from here to lend him assistance. The man discovered that sarcophagus down in some underground vault complex. It was already dripping man-eating digestion grossness and he wanted them to tell him what that stuff is.”

  The ponderously careful process of exploring the crypt consumed volumes of video without relating anything of real importance. Disks later Carmen found another point of interest, “Now this is getting exciting; we have one, three, now five armed men who are decidedly unfriendly. They appear to be local tribesmen judging by their manner of dress.” She turned up the sound so they could make out the voices speaking Spanish that Carmen translated. “These local men are saying that the scientists are trespassing on sacred native grounds and that anyone who ever enters the underground tomb suffers the death penalty. This man on the science team says he never went down there so he wants to shoot one of his guilty associates to prove his commitment never to speak of the place or return. Gunmen are herding everyone but the traitor down into the tomb. The handsome scientist has thrown a contaminated surgical probe that he had earlier lanced into a sarcophagus mouth. The lance strikes the traitor in the leg wounding him. Now we know it was that backstabber who will fly off for Mexico City, have himself a prostitute, and trigger the Outbreak.”

  Critias had his doubts, “How could the sarcophagus be here if the science team is dead before they take it?”

  “True enough,” Carmen agreed. “Their cavalry has arrived.” A group of commandos in paramilitary black rushed out of the jungle to save the scientific team by using accurate maschinenpistole automatic fire to kill the native gunmen. Carmen laughed after she listened, “The traitor has successfully talked his way out of his treachery. He says he was only stalling for time, pretending to collaborate so their security forces could arrive to deal with the situation.”

  “He never went down into the tomb and he is a backstabbing whore.” Critias deduced the situation, “He must be their lawyer.”

  Carmen searched through stacks of documents she had collected from anywhere she saw them. “This is important,” she handed the page to Critias. “There’s a man inside that sarcophagus and he’s a dormant infected.”

  After she sifted through many pages, Carmen found a whole folder of special interest, “They learned about the Mexico City Outbreak from seeing it on television while working here on this project. It seems that the police headshot patient zero then gave his name on the news broadcasts. He was running around biting people. Even though the scientists here were fully aware that they had the specimen that was the source of the plague, they refrained from informing the civil authorities; instead, they worked diligently on creating their own vaccine.”

  That news astounded Critias, “Are you saying there’s a vaccine here?”

  “Nope,” she answered as she studied more documents. “This says they kidnapped a homeless person then deliberately infected him for studying the progressive stages of transformation; successfully I might add. They managed to isolate the cause of the cannibal psychosis and from that determined how to prevent the condition from occurring. So in short, they claim to have discovered the secret to biblical immortality.”

  He had to ask, “What is the secret to eternal life?”

  “This research indicates that when a human being is in the early stage of infection and experiences systemic hypoxia in conjunction with high doses of tropane alkaloids, they will gain all the physical advantages of the ghouls with a mind intellectually and emotionally intact. The cocaine solution that man on the toilet injected into himself would be a suitable agent for this purpose, as would other questionable drug practices of this era, such as Ritalin or assorted other chemical agents unfamiliar to you.”

  Critias thought he comprehended what she had said, “If you get infected and overdose on cocaine while wearing a plastic bag on your head, then you will eventually wake up as one of the zombie nation only with a functional brain.” From that, he understood even more about what was going on. “The populace in general that had this Ritalin in their system, cocaine, or one of these other drugs you mentioned, they ended up smarter than the average brain eater; and if by some freak improbability they also somehow managed to drown themselves or suffocate, like crashing their car into a lake, they might even wake up talking.”

  “Or whispering,” Carmen added, “maybe they even ring bells to call their trained hunter off before he got himself killed.”

  “Hell,” Critias used his favorite curse. “We’ve been getting our asses kicked by crack-heads.”

  “It seems so,” Carmen agreed with his assessment. “I suspect more children than adults ha
d the Ritalin, but as a rule fewer kids escaped being devoured entirely, to then be able to regenerate afterward.”

  “Send all this to Kevin,” he instructed. “Jim will be mighty pissed if he finds out we didn’t tell him this stuff as soon as we knew.”

  Carmen play-saluted him then transmitted to Kevin. She sent Critias' message along with a full sensory copy of her entire mission experience that included the videos and all the research documents, as well as anything else she had thought, heard, or seen.

  He assumed she was finished when Carmen put her head down a moment as if she lost consciousness and then sat back up. Critias asked, “How much did you tell Kevin?”

  She answered honestly, “He knows everything I know and will make much better use of it than I can.”

  He asked about an unrelated topic, “Could you disable his inhibitor chip?”

  She surmised, “Traveling back in time would have caused Kevin to have the same division by zero internal navigation-clock error that I did, so I don’t think he has directives anymore. Kevin is just a cunning liar and thinks I’m not smart enough to know. I assume he thinks you don’t know either, but I’m not as dumb as he thinks and I believe you must also suspect it.”

  Critias nodded, “No offense, princess, but if he’s so much smarter than you, I find it hard to believe you could ever accomplish anything like that and he couldn’t.”

  “We may never know,” she rolled over onto her back to stretch into an accidentally erotic pose; then she flopped over onto her side with a yawn as if she planned to take a nap.

  He guessed, “Did Kevin send you a new laziness upgrade during your uplink?”

  “It must be working,” she confirmed his powers of observation. “I wanted to try it out and it does feel wonderful, makes you wonder why anyone does anything.”

  He got back to their mission, “So the guy in the toilet with his head in a bag is a what?”

  “Decapitated for one thing,” she chuckled somewhat amused. “If their research is correct, he’s the same man he was before he infected himself, only now dehydrated, immortal, and still entirely contagious.”

  He asked, “Do you think he could talk?”

  She smirked at the notion, “I could read his lips I suppose, if you watered him like a plant for a while. He won’t be doing much talking without lungs; I’m pretty sure of that.”

  He wondered, “So how do we know that he’s not the specimen we need?”

  She shrugged only it came off like a sexy sort of squirm, “Take his head with you. It’s not like you’ll have to chop it off a second time, and it is a convenient size for carrying.”

  If he was going to take the head, he still had a larger issue to deal with, “So you have any ideas for taking the man in the box?”

  Carmen considered that, “We wrap him up in sheets or whatever and then you carry him home on your back.” She stretched again then eyed him sleepily, “You’re strong enough to manage it I think.” Carmen yawned then put her head down where she fell asleep.

  Critias removed his armor to sit beside Carmen on her blanket to have a picnic meal. They had plenty of time before sunrise to make it back to the plane so Critias decided to let her rest while he watched the action parts of the home movies again and smoked a smoldering cigar.

  When it came time to collect the specimen, Carmen volunteered to do the dirty work. She left all her possessions safe in the conference room while she dressed in a scientist’s plastic clean-suit. Carmen tiptoed through the goo on the floor of the containment room then lifted a nude male human body from within the sarcophagus. The ancient ghoul had the same coating of turquoise slime like everything else. Carmen carried the well-hydrated healthy-appearing body out to lay it on a stainless-steel examining table where she wiped it clean with paper towels then wrapped it tightly inside some of the abundant white sheets. By weaving in more sheets, she fabricated a pair of secure carrying straps to make the whole package into a sort of Andean crouched mummy backpack.

  After she had changed back into her regular clothes, Carmen looted up all the transportable valuables. She found many unspoiled drugs and exotic chemicals that she stuffed into her backpack. She broke open all the computers she found around the laboratory to remove their data storage drives then take those too.

  Critias stuffed the severed head from the toilet man in with the body then carried them downstairs as Carmen followed. From the front doors, they didn’t see any particular infected activity. During a clear moment, they headed outside then locked up the building behind them. They reached the transformer station without any difficulty and then climbed back up to the transmission wires. Critias needed a minute to get his burdens comfortably balanced on his back before they set off to return home.

  Their escape was uneventful until they were a kilometer from going back to ground again near the airport. That was where they overtook a great herd of longhorn cattle that wandered up the firebreak where only the steel towers stood at regular intervals like Roman mile-castles that stretched down the wide strip of grassy plain.

  A pack of a dozen ghouls were there too as they stalked the cattle. They remained cautious about attempting to approach the gigantic bulls because of those animals’ sweeping horns and merciless temperaments. Just one of the mighty bulls could accidentally slay a man just by him being too close when it shook its head to disperse some annoying flies. In anger, they were mighty opponents worthy of respect.

  Critias stopped at the transmission tower above the conflict of cattle and beefeaters. He signaled for Carmen to join him when he made a shooting finger gesture down at the ghouls. It was his stated intention that they should destroy the infected. The ghoul pack was obviously intent on a female calf that they thought was small enough to be vulnerable to them. When Critias saw the ghouls’ intended prey, he changed his mind about protecting the cattle just on principle because he wanted to steal the ghouls’ target before they got to it first.

  “I want that calf they are gawking at,” Critias told Carmen. “How do we capture it alive?”

  She considered the task carefully, “I should be able to take it for you.” She removed her backpack so she could prepare a hypodermic syringe and a vial of drugs from inside before she shouldered it once more. “This chemical will tranquilize the calf long enough to get it home, but obviously, I will have to go down there to get the calf after we shoot those ghouls. Once I have it, you follow me from above and provide some covering fire. My hands will be too full to defend myself. Once you join me on the ground, we can run across the airport while you use thermal ranging to shoot any of them you see at a distance. We fly home where you can be the milkman hero and everyone will love you almost as much as I do.”

  He had no doubts, “If anything on this Earth can grab that calf then get away with it while a dozen ghouls are scared to try, it’s you, sweetheart.”

  They set their semi-silenced maschinenpistoles to three round bursts then emptied a clip apiece down into the ghouls’ heads. The infected couldn’t comprehend what happened to them as each member of their pack toppled one by one from headshots. Critias was proud to demonstrate a shooting accuracy comparable to Carmen’s considerable skill since she was a technology-driven exhibition sharpshooter.

  The cattle heard the muffled burps of the weapons, but didn’t do more than get restless over it. The deaths of the ghouls that they had been nervously aware of eased their tension soon enough. Once the animals were calm, Carmen climbed down from the tower then casually walked into the herd of cattle. Her nonthreatening demeanor seemed to assuage the beasts because they made no response to her benign presence. A moment later, Carmen dashed out with the calf over her shoulders amid a surge of the panicked animals.

  Critias chased after her along the wire for a kilometer until he climbed down to join her. They retraced their path at speed back across the airport in the dark. With his thermal vision, he could see the ghouls at greater distances than they could see him back. Any ghoul unlucky enough to obst
ruct their path got a bullet in their brain from his MP5. Even as ghouls died, they continued to run.

  As they crossed the tarmac, Critias saw that the fire he had set still spread with the wind. There was a chance that in time, he might burn down the whole city. Critias and Carmen would be long gone in their plane before they would ever find out what became of it.

  Once inside the Greyhound aircraft, Carmen opened the ramp for long enough to bring in the unconscious calf then put it on the trunk of their car. Within minutes, she had the engines powered up then got them into the sky headed for home.

  Critias had a live calf, the infection prime, and a talking head, so he said, “I call this a job well done. Radio Kevin and have him tell Jim we will be knocking on the garage door in a few hours.”

  Chapter 13: Ascension

  Jim and Hatchet welcomed Critias and Carmen home at the garage. In their company was a team of armed guards and another crew from Decontamination Services. Carmen backed in the Betty with the calf tied across the trunk lid. That captive animal had just started to come out of its tranquilizer sleep.

  “Look what we found,” Carmen told them with pride as she climbed out of the car. “We also have his specimen in the trunk.”

  Jim was both delighted and impressed with their return home, “We’ll take care of everything for you while you two get decontaminated and take your showers.”

  The decontamination crew took all their possessions to dress them only in shower sandals while they scrubbed them down on the spot. After that preliminary cleaning, the guards offered them a pair of clean automatic pistols to carry with them as they headed off for the showers in the King’s Tower lobby area.

  After their decontamination, Carmen was about to dress in her usual taste for utility, but Critias interrupted her, “How about you try something more elegant. I want everyone else to see you the way I always do.”

  His attempt at being romantic made Carmen smile and happily agree to participate in his inspiration. By judging his subtle reactions as he watched her search through the immense wardrobe, Carmen picked out those garments that pleased him most. Critias preferred a not-too-daring short dress that she slipped on around a pair of thigh-high stockings and panoptic-coverage undergarments whose translucence and lacework made titillating. Her choices combined into an outfit similar to what Penny Welder might wear in her more glamorous leisure moments.