by John Barnes
The wily Russian mogul, Kutuzov, never trusted any American doctor. So when Kutuzov had deftly acquired his small, forgotten town in West Texas, and transformed it into his privatized fortress, he’d brought along his own emergency medics.
Anton Antommarchi was a dedicated medic. He was very experienced with battle wounds. He was wise, and calm, and would slave around the clock to save a life. Everyone in Fort Lucky admired and trusted him. It had taken Calderon many months to realize that Antommarchi was not a doctor at all, and that his true name had never been Antommarchi.
Antommarchi was a consummate Dark Age survivor. He looked wise, seasoned, even all-knowing, but he lied constantly. Nobody but Calderon seemed to notice that Antommarchi was a superstitious quack.
Since it was Market Day in Fort Lucky, Antommarchi came working his way among all the kiosks, just as usual. The vendors under their cornshuck roofs were happy to see him, and he showed much grave and kindly interest in their Dark Age wares.
Home-grown peppers, squashes, hand-woven straw knick-knacks, bangles made from flattened tin, sandals cut from old rubber tires, jewelry made of spoons and spoons made of old jewelry... Things Dark Age people had, things Dark Age people made, out of hand-me-downs from better times, mostly. Fat, lumpy, handmade candles, oil lamps, cracked and mended twentieth-century pottery, corked herbal bottles pretending to be authentic cactus mezcal. Hundreds of second-hand prescription glasses, with old people trying them on, one by one, blinking and attempting to see. A whole lot of military surplus. Acres of it. That was Fort Lucky.
Antommarchi arrived, with stately tread, at Calderon’s stall. He waited for a pigtailed child to depart with her cartoon. He then took his seat.
“Did you see those drones overhead last night?” Antommarchi said. Antommarchi had clearly learned his quaint, broken English from some quaint, broken British television serials.
Calderon offered Antommarchi a bowl of fried crickets. The crunchy toasted insects were dusted with Mexican brown sugar, and always highly popular with the local kids. But Antommarchi, alas, was old enough to know that crickets were horrible and disgusting.
“Maybe someone important wants to protect us with the drones,” offered Calderon. He’d learned to humor Antommarchi, and to never confront him about objective truth.
At his customary table at the Fort Lucky town market square, Calderon drew his cartoons. If his pictures got a good laugh, that was good. Especially the little kids needed a laugh. There were so few of them.
But Calderon had certain other drawings. Better drawings. Tormented clouds. Towns overgrown with tall weeds. Abandoned factories, bridges caved in... Broken roads. Unlit villages plundered for the last of their metal wire. Shattered reservoirs where long-dammed rivers had torn up thousands of trees and washed them away as tangled flotsam. Some were his own and some were acquired.
As Antommarchi stared reverently at the papers, Calderon tried a sketch of him. The bony, mustached medic had a lean, beaky nose, but his clothing was a mismatched mess of camouflage: a frayed mil-spec shirt, a multi-pocket survival vest with tattered velcro strips, bulky cargo pants in brown and tan desert speckles.
The town of Fort Lucky was part oil-rig, part water cistern, part bomb-shelter. Fort Lucky had no fabric industry at all. Every month, the population got more threadbare.
“I love your drawings so very much,” Antommarchi lied genteely. “You are a major artist.”
“Thanks,” said Calderon. He showed Antommarchi his latest work. He’d drawn General Atkinson, and made the old Texan brute look sharp-eyed, resolute and brave. He’d drawn Anita Atkinson with her children, and made her look pretty and hopeful. Her stairstep tots looked like three happy kids who would grow up just fine some day.
“You are a valuable man to our community,” Antommarchi said. “War art is so commonplace, but your catastrophe art is a rare achievement. Because death in war might be brave and needful, but to die in our general Dark Age, that is so much harder to glorify.”
Antommarchi reached into his shirt pocket and solemnly removed a lint-flecked length of beef jerky.
“This beef is really good,” Calderon allowed, chewing rhythmically. “Where’d you get this?”
“Kutuzov will provide, my friend. Kutuzov controls the surveillance cameras in every street here. Certain satellites above this planet are also owned by Kutuzov. But what to do about those airborne drones last night? Drones haunt me.”
“So,” said Calderon, “will your billionaire friend give me some beef jerky, if I draw his picture?”
“We must not mock our great benefactor,” said Antommarchi, his sad eyes drooping.
“People always say that Kutuzov will come back here to Texas, but I never see the great man around,” said Calderon. “You know who I do see here, messing with Texas now? This guy. ‘The Bone Man.’”
Calderon showed Antommarchi an old magazine clipping, from the back of his sketchbook. It was a photo of a big society wedding, in glamorous Mexico City. The happy young couple were dressed in their Catholic wedding-cake finery. He had a military honor guard. She had a frothy gown full of lace and flounces. They were beautiful, they were celebrities. They faced their bygone, troubled world with appropriate, happy-young-couple smiles.
“Where did you find this?” said Antommarchi warily.
“Oh, no big deal. Just from the local scrap paper guy. He’s got a ton of old Mexican magazines.”
“The Bone Man and his Death Empress,” said Antommarchi.
“They didn’t have scary, unhuman names in the old days,” Calderon said. “He was just a Special Forces colonel, and she was his rich high-society chick.”
Antommarchi lowered his brows. He was painfully loyal to Kutuzov, and didn’t like having his rootless, ruthless global mogul upstaged by some merely Mexican ruthless mogul. “You will wait till these Mexicans come here – to conquer us – and then you’ll draw their portraits for them, eh? A wonderful line of work, fine art!”
“Anton, the Bone Man sent a spy here among us, okay? I don’t like it. The ninja zombies are the Bone Man’s creatures. Why did this Mexican warlord send a spy into the camp of our beloved patron, the rich creep Russian warlord? Why? Do you have any idea? Do you think we might figure that out?”
“The Bone Man is not one bit human,” Antommarchi protested. “You can’t compare him to the great Mr. Kutuzov.”
“He’s not human, but he is not magic, either, okay? He’s just some ambitious Mexican soldier with too much gold braid. He wiped out the Mexican drug lords – but then he turned into a bigger, worse drug lord himself! That happens all the time in Mexico! The only thing that changes is, the damn drugs get a lot better.”
“You don’t fully understand these matters, while I do,” said Antommarchi serenely. “I have medical training, and I am in Kutuzov’s confidence. Kutuzov was one of the great financiers, the top-secret developers, of the famous Russian super-soldier.”
Despite his best intentions, Calderon felt his temper fray. “Russian super-soldiers,” he said. “Superhuman soldiers, did Russia ever win any wars with those, you dumb bastard? Russia is a total wreck! All the national armies lost all their law and order wars. We couldn’t even keep the lights turned on! That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? It’s Kutuzov, and this Mexican general. They’re two narcotics warlords. The roads are broken, the people are starving, and these two moguls are still fighting over who gets the best dope.”
Antommarchi mournfully shook his head. “No, no... that’s a crude analysis. You can’t compare this Mexican’s Third World voodoo concoctions to Mr. Kutuzov’s genetic science research. There’s a great distinction between a mere zombie and a military champion.”
“What difference is there, for God’s sake? Whatever Mexicans did, or Russians did, the American military always did it hundred times better! The Pentagon people were the total high-tech masters of all that freaky neuro, bio, genetic and hormone action... Americans gambled everything on military high t
echnology. We thought we could run the world with that. We lost!”
Calderon flipped angrily through his own drawings. “Look at this sketch, this Mexican post-human superman you’re so afraid of... He’s a dirt-ignorant peasant kid who got turned into a kamikaze! He never talks to us. He’s laughing at us. This is his world now, not ours.”
Antommarchi said nothing. Calderon’s outburst had moved them into an emotional intimacy that Antommarchi didn’t care to have.
“Will you come with me to see the ninja zombie?” said Antommarchi at last. “I saved his life, you see. I treated his wounded leg.”
“Yeah. I also saved his life.” Calderon sighed. “Because I gave him some water. Also, later I sneaked him some corn whiskey and some of my old Meals-Ready-to-Eat snack packs. Anton, why? He’s never going to return that favor for us. He’s not even human.”
Antommarchi shrugged delicately. “Ah well.”
“Anton, why did you save his life? Can you level with me about that?”
“I don’t know,” Antommarchi lied. “Maybe it was just my old habit.”
“Well, I saved his life. Now I’m supposed to go into the county jail and torture him with my tattoo rig,” said Calderon. “I promised to do that, but I’ve been putting that off. I don’t like using my art to torture people. My art is already dark enough as it is.”
“The ninja zombie did not talk,” Antommarchi said. “Torture will never persuade a super-soldier. He said nothing to me – or to you either, I take it? – but perhaps the two of us, together...”
“You want to negotiate with him, somehow?”
Antommarchi shrugged.
“Negotiating with superhumans... isn’t that just like negotiating with terrorists? I mean, it’s just bound to make more of them, right?”
4.
CALDERON FOLLOWED ANTOMMARCHI’S lead, to the jail. They crossed the market plaza together, past the old town bank, which had become a brothel. The old town law court was an arms depot. The old town saloon was, of course, still a saloon.
Fort Lucky’s red-brick jail was a two-story edifice of surprising Edwardian elegance. The jail was central to the interests of the rulers of Fort Lucky, so it always had electricity, computation, security, water, light and food.
Beneath its stony sun-porch, the jail’s black iron doors were firmly sealed shut.
Calderon showed the intelligent jail door his face, then his thumbprints. Nothing happened. He pressed his left ear to the cold steel jail door. Inside, machinery hummed.
The jail doors creaked, then yawned open. A young blonde woman stepped through into daylight. She wore a jeweled hat, mirrored sunglasses, lipstick, emerald earrings, and scoop-necked, filigreed gown.
This vision of elegance carried a pair of red high-heels in her left hand. Silently, she stalked between the astonished Calderon and the frowning Antommarchi. She swayed down the jail steps, and across the dusty market plaza.
The heavy jail doors began to shut automatically. Antommarchi quickly grabbed Calderon’s arm and hauled him into the jail. Calderon almost lost his drawing pad as the heavy doors hissed shut.
“We’ll be safer in here,” said Antommarchi. “Things just got much worse.”
“Was that who I thought it was?” said Calderon.
“That was Mrs. Kutuzov,” said Antommarchi sadly. “She did not say hello to me... And I knew her so well. I loved her.”
Calderon had never expected to meet a ninja zombie that looked gorgeous. Somehow he’d expected all ninja zombies to look shabby, sunburned, naked and wounded, like the zombie he had already drawn. The idea of chic, fashionable, even sexy ninja zombies was bewildering.
“How long has Mrs. Kutuzov been one of them?” said Calderon.
“When did we catch the ninja zombie? Six days ago? There must have been more than one.”
“Shouldn’t we rush out, and stop her somehow?”
“No one will stop the wife of Kutuzov. This is Kutuzov’s own fortress.”
“You mean... She can just walk all around the town, doing anything she wants to us, just because she’s dressed up like a rich girl?”
“Yes. Of course that’s what I mean.”
“We are helpless,” Calderon realized suddenly, leaning under the wall by a security vidcam. “We are serfs. We are feudal slaves. We sold ourselves to anything that looked like protection.”
Distant, muffled shouting came from down the prison hall.
Smith was a ranger. He was a local mercenary, which accounted for his nom de guerre, ‘Smith.’ Smith had battle-scarred hands, tiny blue eyes, a bullet-like head, and an alcoholic’s red snout. Smith looked like a Texan javelina pig that killed and ate rattlesnakes by his nature.
“Howdy there, Mr. Calderon,” cackled Smith, smiling and gripping the sleek and stainless bars of his cybernetically-sealed cell.
“You’re in the brig again, Smith?”
“I kicked some ass,” Smith bragged. “But you’d better let me out now. The jailer’s not gonna do that, and some real hot work needs getting done.”
“What happened in here?”
“Well, this sexy chick dressed in red came in the back way. She spat right in the jailer’s face, he went down like a truck hit him... Then she took an old car-jack to the cage of the naked unfriendly.” Smith pointed to the bent distorted cage of the ninja zombie. “He wiggled right out, and he went down those stairs. She went right out the front.”
“You mean,” said Calderon, “the ninja zombie is still in the jail? He didn’t escape?”
“Oh, no, the ninja zombies never do that ‘escaping’ stuff,” Smith advised. “He’s gonna destroy the jail.”
“How? He’s naked!”
“Oh, he’ll find a way. Ninja zombies aren’t human, you know. They destroy all the works of mankind. That’s their basic tactics.”
“I must see to the casualty,” said Antommarchi, and left.
“Let me out of the cell,” Smith commanded.
“Sure, fine,” said Calderon. “How does your cell door work?”
“It’s electronic.”
“Fine. How do I open it?”
“Don’t you know that?” said Smith, puzzled. “You always struck me as a pretty electronic-looking sort of guy, Mr. Calderon.”
Calderon was an artist. He knew absolutely nothing about high-tech, encrypted, wireless, high-security jail technology. He stared at the cryptic lock. It was nothing but a speckling of black and white squares.
The ninja zombie appeared at the end of the hall. He was using a fire axe as an impromptu crutch. He had a crude, stinking rag-torch in his left hand. A raw billow of smoke arose behind him.
The ninja zombie limped methodically past Calderon. He said nothing, and Calderon and Smith said nothing to him. He reached the end of the hall and slowly went up a flight of stairs.
“They’re not as tough as people think,” said Smith. “Soldiers who understand small-unit tactics can take ’em out. They’re just not human, so they never get scared or tired. But we can shoot them. We can bomb them. Once we kill them, they stay dead.”
Antommarchi appeared. His crisp British voice was shaken. “The jailer is convulsing. She dosed him with some terrible fluid – I think this whole building is contaminated.”
“Never mind him,” Smith advised. “A jailer is a goddamned screw! You should never touch a jailer anyway. Just let me out, and I’ll teach y’all to zombie-hunt.”
Calderon shook the adamantine jail bars. “I can’t open this lock! I don’t know what to do!”
Muffled screams came from overhead. “He just found the political prisoners,” said Smith, grinning. “They always had it easy up there, those sissies.”
“I suggest we flee,” said Antommarchi to Calderon. “A disaster of this scale is not within our competence.”
“Running away?” Smith scoffed. “And leave me here in a cell? All this time, I’ve been fighting so hard to protect you people! I should have been a ninja zombie myself! Hell, I�
�m on the wrong side!”
There was fire in the basement of the prison, and the jail’s software had stopped working. Outside the jail, attracted by the smoke, an excited crowd gathered. Eventually, they stormed the prison, using tow trucks to rip out the doors and windows. They were so eager to attack the ninja zombie that they destroyed the jail to get him.
5.
ANTOMMARCHI WAS GOOD at managing in a mob, and despite the crazy tumult, he had somehow saved Calderon’s outsized drawing pad.
“Hey, thanks,” said Calderon, wiping at his eyes. “I have a lot of good work in here.”
“We must go to my office now,” said Antommarchi, “for we must take medical precautions. The ninja zombie was not infectious, but Mrs. Kutuzov is a biological attack vector.”
“I don’t think I want to do biological attack,” Calderon said.
“But we must. We were both exposed to a contagion.”
“I don’t want any drugs or needles.”
Antommarchi looked at him wide eyed. “Why not?”
It was because he simply did not trust Antommarchi, but given what they had just been through together, Calderon did not have the heart to just say it.
“Listen,” Calderon said haltingly. “If this is some vaccine you want to give me. Or an immunization... Go save little kids. Don’t save me. I don’t care. Really. I’ve lived long enough. I know I’ve lived through all the good times that I will ever see. I used to live in a world with art and science. From now on every step gets darker.”
“You don’t understand me,” said Antommarchi. “I am not protecting you. I am protecting the other people from you. It’s you who are the vector now, Calderon. You were directly exposed to that Mexican handiwork. You got too close.”
Since Antommarchi was his landlord, the two of them shared a building. Going to Antommarchi’s office was a simple matter of walking upstairs. There was a power blackout in Fort Lucky, and the sound of scattered gunshots, too, but those were getting more common.
