It wasn’t long before he figured it out. The suit had a tool belt. And this belt, one of the sources of Harvey’s complaints, was quite cumbersome in that it stuck out in the back and made it quite uncomfortable to sit. It was this very irritation that had saved him. Somehow the belt got caught on a projecting rock, sparing him from the deadly drop.
He watched the cyborg roll and cartwheel rapidly. For any living creature the trauma would have been fatal. But this was no living creature. Still, the fall took its toll on the machine, breaking off parts, crushing a section of its head, bending its limbs in ways they weren’t meant to bend. Then, in one, final, terminal roll, it came apart into pieces. And when it stopped near the bottom, Harvey saw smoke rising from its midsection, a sure sign the cyborg was out of commission for good.
Harvey didn’t remember much after that. Dazed from the blows to the head, exhausted from hours of constant exertion, he considered himself lucky to extricate himself from his precarious position and crawl to level ground, where he collapsed in a breathless heap.
The sensation of motion awoke him. He didn’t know how, but he’d made it to the rover. Who was driving it? He had no energy to lift his head. His body felt like one big bruise, and the thought of moving sent waves of agony through his mushy muscles. He could only lay there, his blurred vision catching but a glimpse of the brilliant starry sky above.
More movement forced his eyes open. He was somewhere else now. No longer in the rover. The night sky no longer shimmered above. Instead, a cool, damp environment encapsulated him in silent repose. Inhaling deeply, he realized his suit had been taken off, and he smelled a familiar mustiness, heard noises he swore he’d heard before, saw places he knew he’d been.
However, it was all so hazy. His head swam with images of his terrible trip to Mount Mausolus. He felt himself being taken somewhere, and all he could think was the cyborgs must have caught up with him. Now they were taking him underground, most likely to his death.
But he kept noticing familiar sights. Plaques with engraved epithets. Fake flowers and rumpled flags. All the trappings of a mausoleum. Which one, he had no clue. There came a point where he no longer cared. Lea began to dominate his thoughts. He felt a tear well in his eye at his failure. He’d never see her again. He wouldn’t return to her gravesite like he’d promised. He was lost. And he couldn’t shake the feeling she was lost too. In his delirium, he called out her name, hopeful she’d hear him and, one more time, come to him.
But she never came. He dozed and awoke several times, no clue exactly how long he’d been out, and still with no real idea where he was being taken. Darkness was his only companion now. That and a solemn and palpable sense of doom. At any moment the hammer will strike and his life will be over. By some unknown reason, that didn’t happen. Instead of torture and pain and, finally, death, he was treated to kindness, gentle whispers, water, even food, though old and almost unpalatable. Still, it kept him alive. And, over time, the kindness and nursing brought him to a state of semi-consciousness, enough for him to assess his surroundings for the first time.
When he saw where he was, he had to check his own forehead for heat, just to make sure he wasn’t one of the dead. The underground catacombs. He would always recognize this place with its pale white walls and ensconced stacks of bones. And, swirling about in the gloom, were the spectral shapes he’d become accustomed to—the ghosts of Cemetery Planet.
10.
“Rest, Harvey Crane,” a familiar voice emerged from the overall murmuring. Kip Broders. His stern visage formed from the mist. “Rest and get your strength back.”
“W-w-where’s Lea?” Harvey’s throat was scratchy. He felt someone cradle his head as a packet of hydration liquid, quite on its own, drew up to his mouth. He took a large sip from the straw, then asked again, this time much firmer. “Where is she?”
Broders remained silent. A hush pervaded the chamber. Spirit faces came out of the woodwork, literally, all dismal expressions of reticence.
“What?” Harvey didn’t like what he was seeing. “Broders, tell me where Lea is.”
“Don’t worry about that right now, Harvey Crane. You’ve been through so much. You’re not well. You need to rest and recover.”
“I need to find Lea,” he sat up even more. His head was going to explode at any moment. That didn’t matter to him. He was almost on his feet when several pairs of hands guided him gently to the cot again.
“No!” he complained. “You have to let me go! I said I’d meet her at her gravesite! That’s where I need to be…not here!”
“You need to stay, Harvey Crane. Things have changed while you were asleep. The Unspeakable Ones have begun the next phase of their operation, and it’s massive in scale. The best thing for you is to just remain hidden. Let us take care of you.”
“What do you mean, Broders?” Harvey now had the strength to handle his own hydration pack. Downing copious amounts, he demanded answers. “What next phase? What are they doing?”
Broders feigned a breath.
“The reanimation. It’s begun. They’ve started placing their minds into our bodies. It’s just a matter of time until it happens to all of us.”
Harvey had to stop and think. He hadn’t really considered the consequences of the operation, as Broders had called it. Now that he actually let himself go there, what he imagined made him tremble like a child.
“What would that mean for you?” he asked reluctantly. “What happens to your soul when they reanimate your body?”
“There’s been considerable debate about that,” Broders said over the sudden nervous chatter. “The consensus isn’t very optimistic. Most of us are among the belief that the soul, though released from the body at death, will become once again bound to its corporeal state when the body is reconstituted.”
“Bound to the body?” Harvey shuddered at the thought. “While the Unspeakable Ones have control of it?”
“Exactly,” said Broders. “Now you’re beginning to understand why we’re so concerned. We would be made prisoners in our own bodies, forced to watch as the Unspeakable Ones commit act after act of savagery.”
When Broders was finished, the mood in the room had dampened considerably, which was a significant feat given how melancholy things were already. Harvey wondered if all the hopelessness wasn’t misplaced.
“But that’s not going to happen, right?” he studied the grim faces, then returned to Broders. “The Unspeakable Ones won’t get the chance to take it that far, right? I mean, where are the Guardians? Aren’t they coming? I activated the beacon…where are they?”
A great hush settled in, this one even more bleak than the last. Harvey searched each and every man, woman and child for a glimmer of optimism where none was to be found.
“What’s going on!” he demanded. Many of the ghosts, frightened by his outburst, dissolved into wisps of particulates and jettisoned away from him. Many others remained visible, calm and indifferent, and stared either at him or at the stone floor. “Why isn’t anyone saying anything!”
Finally and mercifully, Broders raised a hand, gesturing gently for him to quiet down.
“The beacon,” he said. “We don’t believe it got through. It didn’t work.”
“Didn’t work!” Harvey shouted. “How did it not work? I activated the alarm. I swear I did—I swear.”
“Something must have happened,” Broders shook his head. “Something that cut off the transmission before it could get out.”
Harvey’s blood turned ice cold. Could it be?
“If the beacon wasn’t activated properly,” Broders confronted Harvey with a serious tone. “We need you to go and try it again.”
“I wish it was that simple,” it hurt Harvey to say what he had to say. “Something did happen. A cyborg destroyed the beacon just as I was activating it.”
The whispers and murmurs were never more agitated, never more riddled with anxiety and despair. More than despair. Bottomless, infinite loss.
“Then that means there’s no stopping them,” Broders added to the din of desperation. “And there’s no hope.”
“I’m going to find Lea,” Harvey managed to get up. This time no hands tried to push him down again. The souls were lost in mourning. He heard whispers of the Unspeakable Ones, their cruel rituals and sacrifices to their dark gods. Harvey cringed at the images being thrust forward through the synergetic cloud of human consciousness. He didn’t allow them to change his mind, though. About one thing he remained resolute. The universe could come to an end, or be taken over by a race of real-life devils for all he cared. All he wanted was Lea.
“Wait!” Broders hovered closely as he made his way out.
“Don’t try to stop me, Broders,” he waved indignantly. “If Lea’s in danger, then I need to go help her.”
Broders looked more despondent than ever.
“If you insist on going, just be careful. You’ve been recovering in here for quite a while. Things have changed on the surface since you’ve last been up there. Terrible things.”
11.
Harvey had grown to hate the overstated architecture inside Mausoleum One. Old world charm his ass. Too many frills. Too much confusion. Curved archways and elaborate cornices and tray ceilings as far as the eye could see. He longed for the simple refinement of the new mausoleum in the visitor station. He longed most of all for Lea, and no power in the universe would stop him from finding her.
Initially he didn’t see what Broders was talking about. No cyborgs. No reanimated corpses. No evil takeover of the galaxy. He did see caskets out of their niches and stacked haphazardly this way and that. The wood scratched and the brass oxidized. The lids left open and the plush liners exposed. But no bodies. All the caskets were empty, at least the ones he dared to scrutinize.
He began to notice the number of caskets taken from their slots, extricated from their resting places, ripped open unceremoniously, and robbed of their occupants. It should have terrified him, the sheer volume of devastation.
The place had been ransacked, leaving nothing behind but chaos. And silence. The silence preoccupied him more so than the tangled piles of coffins. No longer were the corridors serenaded by the industrialized clamor Harvey remembered hearing the first time he’d wandered these halls. It unnerved him terribly, and when he reached the point where he spotted the giant stone and metal door that led outside, he was thankful for two things: he was closer to finding Lea, and he could say goodbye to this place for good.
He located his suit in the exact spot where he’d left it, and, once he got it on, found the batteries and air supply to be at satisfactory levels. The door he managed to open by rewiring the security lock, using his extensive background as a repairman and an elaborate system of trial and error.
Once outside, he took his bearings, fully aware that anything could happen. Something could spring from the behind the large crumbling monuments and end his quest for his one true love. But the graveyard was undisturbed. Not a sound. No ghoulish activity had taking place here, and for that Harvey was utterly thrilled.
He hastened on a return course through the large shrines to where the headstones became more modest and reserved. There he reunited with his trusty steed, the PMD, which had been waiting for him with another message—the train was at the nearby terminal. He almost cried when he heard those words spoken aloud by the computer. It wouldn’t be long now. A short PMD ride to the train, a not-so-short train ride back to the visitor station, and he’d be with Lea again.
He greeted the train with a smile, and did the same with his favorite seat in the center of the upper deck. One thing he didn’t think he’d be so keen on greeting was the wide open vista of gravesites. Normally he would have done all he could to keep from staring out into the necropolis. On his long holomemorial test runs, he’d sleep, he’d play games, he’d eat—anything to keep his focus away from the graves. This time he wanted to search the rows of slabs and statues. He willed his vision to get lost in the infinity, in the madness of it all.
He knew the madness could have swallowed him into its orbit if he stared too long. But it had to be done. He had to see if what the spirits told him was true. Were the Unspeakable Ones and their cyborg slaves about to revive an entire planet of corpses? The very idea instilled him with equal parts intrigue and disgust. But mostly it left him with the stale taste of skepticism. Still, he peered across the landscape, in all directions, looking for signs of nefarious activity, but found nothing.
Not for long.
Zipping along at nearly a thousand kilometers an hour, the maglev train traversed Zone 6 in a matter of minutes, taking him quickly into the neighboring zones. With the bird’s-eye view, Harvey had a singular vantage point and could see far off in every direction. Soon, what he saw disturbed him.
Large, ominous shapes in the distance. First he spotted only one. Then another. Soon he was losing count. Monolithic structures, they seemed stationary, yet he swore he saw one moving, slowly, among the graves.
As the train continued its journey to Section 1, Harvey continued spotting the distant, dark objects. He did some estimating and concluded they must have been machines. Robotic probably. Gigantic certainly. They looked much bigger than even the gravediggers, some of which could resemble elephants in their mass.
The gigantic, mysterious machines began to take shape as he got closer to them. At least twenty meters tall, with spindly legs and wheels so they could traverse the headstones. Big, flat-topped contraptions with loads of crates attached to their massive underbellies. More inspection proved his worst fear—the crates were coffins. The machines were robbing graves.
Then he saw gravediggers, near enough in proximity to the train for him to pinpoint them in dusty swirls kicked up by the goings-on. He knew what he would see next—cyborgs. And, a hundred kilometers before the train arrived at the visitor station, they were thick as ants. They worked side-by-side with the diggers, which in turn worked in tandem with the massive transports. That was the name Harvey gave to them when he finally saw them up close. The transports were the hearts of the operation. All activity surrounded them, with one goal in mind—to strip the ground of each and every grave.
The cyborgs and gravediggers and transports became so numerous that Harvey began to fear one of them would take notice of the train. The vacuum tube offered a bit of protection. Kept down the sound. Provided a barrier between him and the outside. But a train speeding by at near the speed of sound is hard to miss. His only consolation was that the trains often ran automatically, and it was possible the robots were used to this.
That was his only hope—that in their haste, the robots wouldn’t notice the maglev train streaking across the landscape. And with each kilometer, Harvey beheld another wondrously terrifying sight. The transports, now thick as skyscrapers, patrolled like giant cleaning bots, rolling over the open graves and literally sucking the caskets from the holes. They were so numerous and so large and the sight was so foreign it almost didn’t register to Harvey. Immense dark rectangles, dotting the landscape in every direction. Black cubes becoming black dashes becoming black dots. A truly worldwide operation.
None of it mattered to Harvey. The Unspeakable Ones could have the planet, for all he cared. All he wanted was Lea. Find her gravesite. Fulfill his promise. So he ignored all the robotic machines. Gravediggers and giant transports and cyborg workers. It was like traveling into a city of them. But that was nothing compared to the shock he got when, for the first time, he caught a glimpse of the visitor station.
Lights. He saw lights. It wasn’t much, and at such a distance, barely perceptible. But Harvey knew. Too many lights. Something was happening at the visitor station.
He decided it prudent to climb down, stealthily, from his normal perch on the train’s observation deck and find a place to hide. Something told him to get ready. As the train got to within a few kilometers, it slowed dramatically. A low whine from under his feet signaled the magnets were about to power down. The station lo
omed large, a sprawling complex with a domed courtyard, a massive mausoleum, an arched concourse with a multilevel food court, and a towering space elevator. All with view portholes, some of them quite extensive, allowing Harvey a view inside.
What he saw stopped his pulse.
People everywhere. Standing in the portholes. Shuffling down the halls. Staring at the train.
He hunkered down in the PMD bay, a small section cordoned off from the seating area. His only hiding place. He couldn’t trust his own eyes, and had to peek again. Sure enough, he wasn’t hallucinating. It was real. The population at the visitor station had just gone up. By a few hundred.
These were no normal visitors. He could see it in the way they walked. Sluggish. Deliberate. Milling about while colliding clumsily with one another. He saw things he wished never existed, even in the bleakest of nightmares. But he couldn’t shake this one away.
Cemetery Planet: The Complete Series Page 13
