Gravewalkers: Dying Time (11 page)

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 thought 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.