IGMS Issue 17 (9 page)

Sister Jasmine was three miles outside the safe zone when she saw her first zombie. There was only one in sight: a tattered shambler that the disposal patrol must have somehow missed. She revved the Silver Stallion's motor to draw the zombie's attention, and waited for the corpse to stumble in range.

"Hey, hey," yelped Einstein, her K9 Antizombie Unit, as it bounced excitedly in the passenger seat. The robotic dog loved nothing better than a chance to fulfill its original function. "We're going to get you, deadite!"

The shambler cocked its head. If Sister Jasmine hadn't known better, she would have sworn it was parsing through the robotic dog's yaps, trying to identify the words. The thought gave her chills.

"It's looking at us!" the K9 unit said, tail wagging. "Signs of intelligence! Oh boy oh boy!"

"Pray for us now and at the hour of our death," Jasmine muttered as she hit the gas. Einstein wailed with disappointment as the shambler bounced off the reinforced windshield.

"You killed it!" Einstein said. He hopped into the rear seat and leaned up against the rear window, titanium claws clicking against the glass. "No fair! It could have been a smart one, too!" Like most of the later models of K9 units, Einstein dreamed of the day when the Restored UN's fear of zombie tacticians would come true, and give him more challenging enemies to tear and rend. But Einstein was also a creature of the moment. "We killed you!" he yelped back at the corpse twitching on the road. "We killed you good!"

"Eyes on the road, Einstein," the Sister said. "The Lord rewards the vigilant." The Lord also rewards those who keep their weapons close at hand, she thought. Zombies were like pre-apocalypse cockroaches. If you saw one, there were probably a thousand more somewhere nearby.

Where there were zombies, there were also probably wild K9 units, their programming scrambled during the onslaught of the first robot uprising. And then there were the natural predators of the wasteland: radioactive ants; intelligent rat armies; triffids. Even a well-trained nun like Sister Jasmine, armed to the teeth against the byproducts of natural and supernatural apocalypses, knew better than to hang around outside the safe zone.

So she kept driving, making a mental note to set the radio to call in a zombie report. The zombie's look of intelligence might have been illusion, but she didn't want to take any chances.

"Read me the list again," she ordered, and the dog halted its yapping long enough to recite the list of reported supplies. "Wal-Mart, three clicks northeast," it said, in the dry tones of the Mother Superior. "Investigate and collect: crossbows; canned food; medical supplies; diagram of light bulb."

Sister Jasmine sighed. She didn't know what Our Lady of the Serpent's obsession was with the collection and illumination of electrical diagrams, but hers was not to question why.

In the old days, back before the zombie plague and the attack of the mitochondrial nanobots, back when Sister Jasmine had been merely Jasmine Brown, yoga instructor, she'd hated going to Wal-Mart. It was the kind of place her parents shopped at because it was cheap, and which Jasmine refused to enter because of its politics. She recalled telling her father that mega-corporations like Wal-Mart were going to ruin the world. Ironic, she thought, that nowadays the Wal-Marts of the earth might be its salvation.

But who could have anticipated any of this? In the old days people had -- maybe -- worried about one apocalypse. At most, two. Global Warming
and
an ice age. Vampires
and
zombies. Nobody had expected all of the apocalypses to happen at once. They got them all anyway.

So when Sister Jasmine pulled into the starkly empty lot of the Wal-Mart, she was on the lookout for a multitude of apocalyptic troubles. The road had been ominously clear on the way here, a sure sign of robot scavenging. And the dim interior of the former bastion of low prices could be a perfect haven for everything from vampires to sadomasochistic Australian biker gangs.

"Anything on the scanner?" she asked.

Einstein obliged by shifting the dish antenna. "No signs of life," said the dog. "I hope there are zombies."

Jasmine pulled out her case of supernatural weaponry. As a post-Vatican V nun, she had some distinct advantages in this area. She opted for a heavier weapon, the modified M4A1 carbine with holy water and napalm capacity, and holstered her Glock. She tugged her silver crucifix to the outside of her robes, and made sure her Star of David was also in place, in case any Jewish vampires got too friendly.

Most religiously-minded supernatural beasts tended to falter at the sight of a well-armed nun. The Glock would do for the atheists.

She sent Einstein in to scout. When the dog sounded an all-clear she followed him inside, trying to brush off her growing sense of unease. A Wal-Mart run outside the safe zone was never a cakewalk. For a brief moment she wondered if lack of overt dangers was a good sign, if maybe it meant that the world beyond the safe zone was getting safer. But she dismissed the thought. It was dangerous to speculate; better to assume that this Wal-Mart, like every other one in the Wasteland, sheltered hidden dangers. Zombies in the freezers. Vampires in the basement. Cockroach hive-minds plotting beneath the compost in the produce aisle.

For the first few minutes, everything went smoothly. The dusty linoleum was strewn with cans, and while Einstein trained his shoulder missiles on the occasional corpse, nothing moved. They were alone.

It was the light-bulb diagram, of course, that caused the problem. Wal-Mart didn't exactly sell light-bulb diagrams. The Mother Superior's report had come from a bearded peddler who claimed he'd seen one in the corner office while sheltering from a radioactive sandstorm. But as Sister Jasmine edged along the wall, she realized that the man's tip was probably too good to be true. Who nowadays would recognize a lightbulb diagram? Something was wrong.

She halted, feet away from the door, and took it all in: the empty mega-mart with canned food strewn invitingly across the floor; the closed office door.

"Einstein," she said quietly into her comlink. "Retreat."

As she turned and sprinted for the entrance, the trap sprung. Shadowy figures dropped from the ceiling. Jasmine ducked under an overhanging shelf and reached for a flash-grenade.

"Ninjas!" howled Einstein from a corner. "Awesome!"

A black object struck Sister Jasmine on the face and she collided with the wall. Her flash-grenade fell uselessly from her fingers. Spitting blood, she scrambled to her feet in time to see the silver K9 unit go down under a barrage of black forms.

"Hey!" yelped the dog as its red bandana was torn away by unseen hands. "No fair! Give it back!"

Somewhere in the space between Sister Jasmine's anger and her utter despair, a thought formed.
Blood. Use it
. Glancing downward she saw the drain beneath her feet.

"Mary, Mother of God," she whispered, and before she could even complete the prayer she was pressing her hand into the broken glass that clung to her radiation habit, watching the dark droplets fall toward the earth.

And somewhere down in the drainage systems beneath Wal-Mart, the vampires responded.

Their earsplitting screeches gave even the ninjas pause as they turned to face a new set of enemies. Knowing how little time remained, Sister Jasmine stumbled toward one of the darkened panels of glass at the end of the aisle. "Einstein! Parking lot!" she yelled, not knowing if the dog would have enough time to respond.

Behind her she heard howls of fury as the undead burst into the room. Ninjas might be quick, but vampires were quicker. And they were also one of the few wasteland creatures that would not attack a nun on sight.

Sister Jasmine's 9 mm Glock took out the window, and she threw herself into the dazzling sunlight of the parking lot. There was no time. She pressed a bloody palm to the touch lock and pulled herself into the driver's seat.

Despite her training, she did not pull her Stallion away from the store. Not immediately. She waited outside the dark hole of the Wal-Mart for seconds longer than was necessary, listening to the shrieks inside. But there was no sign of Einstein.

A few minutes later she was on the road again, blazing a path back to the safe zone, a med-sponge pressed to her bleeding hand. She had no idea why ninjas would try to capture a member of the Weeping Orders, but it didn't really matter. She'd lost her supplies and her dog. In the finest tradition of her holy order, there was going to be hell to pay.

Sister Jasmine recited her sins before the green glow of the Badger Grove auto-confessional. She could not, of course, be forgiven for her violations of the fifth commandment: she was not genuinely remorseful, and given the perils of the wasteland travel, she would probably kill again. Nor could she genuinely repent of her anger and grief over Einstein.

But she
had
entertained impure thoughts; she had taken the Lord's name in vain; she was proud. If she died in the pursuit of Einstein, she wanted her soul to be as light as possible.

The priest on the screen dispensed her penance. As always, Jasmine felt a certain sense of relief as the burden of her sins was partially lifted. She made the Stations of the Cross, kneeling at the ash-gray foot of each bronze marker on the Road of Penance. Then she got back in the re-fueled and weaponized Silver Stallion, and went forth to bring the pain.

The information provided by the Whispering Orders suggested that the Wal-Mart attack had been masterminded by the so-called "Daimyo of the Wasteland." The man who now held Einstein was a rumored telepath who had first entered the wasteland five years ago, and had since built up a cult following among the victims of cell-phone-induced madness. He had, the Whispering Nuns reported, been recruiting large numbers of the afflicted to dig for him in the Chicago Crater. A shantytown called New Tokyo had sprung up around the La Grange ridge of the crater.

Officially, Jasmine's mission was simple: Infiltrate the New Tokyo settlement, determine the nature of the Daimyo's interest in the Weeping Orders, and react appropriately. But unofficially, Jasmine wanted her dog back. She prayed that whoever had Einstein had yet to dismantle him. If they had . . .

Jasmine floored the gas pedal. The Silver Stallion raced along the remains of I-65, weaving in and out of the burnt hulks of cars and the half-stripped carcasses of giant robots.

At the Rensall exit, the road became impassable, and she had to switch over to tank treads. Jasmine fought free of the carnage of I-65 and turned the Stallion toward the burnt plains of the Rensall desert. The occasional cluster of cornstalks still thrust their way up through the night-black soil of Rensall, but mostly the horizon was clear of vegetation, save for an ungainly pack of triffids lurching across the horizon. The carnivorous plants seemed to be pursuing something. She hesitated, then turned the Stallion toward the triffids.

There had been times in the past when Jasmine had seen situations unfolding and decided it wouldn't hurt to investigate. She was usually wrong. In the wasteland, investigation almost always hurt. But it was her moral duty; she couldn't just pass by the scene of a triffid attack without checking to see if a human was in danger.

The Stallion rolled over the remains of a wall, and as the windshield lowered, Jasmine saw that the triffids were now circled around the twisted trunk of what had formerly been an apple tree. A tiny human figure stood in front of it, waving a small object at the approaching plants.

Jasmine shoved the Stallion out of tank mode and gunned the motor. There was a satisfying shredding sound as the first triffid went under the wheels in a splatter of green and yellow. The other plants turned, lashing out at the car with their whip-like stingers. One of the stingers slapped against the driver's window, but the greasy venom trail it left behind was surprisingly thin.
They must have exhausted their poison sacs elsewhere,
Jasmine thought. The human by the tree was still standing, still alive.

Jasmine pulled up as close as she could and threw up the door release on the passenger side. "Get in!" she yelled through the Stallioncom.

The girl by the tree hesitated only for a second, then launched herself at the Stallion. She managed to scramble inside even as another snakelike stinger whipped against the doorframe.

"Ow!" the girl said. Then she turned to Jasmine. "Thanks a lot, Mrs. Nun!"

Up close, Jasmine could tell something was off about this girl. She wore a purple backpack and looked about twelve years old; her face was framed by carrot-red pigtails that stuck out in opposite directions. A splash of freckles decorated improbably bright skin. She grinned at Jasmine, displaying a chaotic herd of white teeth barely kept in check by the metal fence of braces. Her patched blue T-shirt was wet with venom.