Gravewalkers: Dying Time (21 page)

Critias kept trying to
contact the survivors by radio. If they knew exactly where the
people were, that information would make their rescue mission that
much easier.

“
I know what we’ll have to
do,” Carmen offered. “When we discover where to find these people,
I’ll get out then lead the ghouls on a merry chase. They’ve always
preferred a bird in the hand to two in the bush. If I am
sufficiently visible to them, the ones who come for me will lead
the rest to follow. You won’t be free by any means, but it should
reduce them down enough that you can clean them up with the weapons
you have onboard.”

Jim answered her advice,
“I’d prefer a plan that is somewhat less suicidal. I don’t think
that feeding you to the ghouls is the right kind of distraction,
especially since you just got here. There’s no justice in
sacrificing new arrivals in a hopeless mission to acquire more new
arrivals.”

“
She wouldn’t advise such
a plan shortsightedly,” Critias defended her even though he didn’t
think the plan sounded prudent either. He trusted that Carmen cared
to preserve her own life and that she would never try such a thing
unless she felt confident she would get away with it. He told
Carmen, “Give us more details.”

“
I don’t have any,” she
shrugged. “It will depend entirely on the terrain I have to work
with and we currently don’t know that. I suspect it will involve
climbing, running, and jumping, with some grenades here and there.
The explosions, fires, and smoke will bring them to me if I don’t
already look good enough to eat. While the ghouls are busy with us,
Jim and Hatchet can pick up the survivors and then come back for
us.”

Critias was acutely aware
that he hadn’t volunteered to go with her, “How did you know I
wanted to come with you?”

“
I came with you this
morning,” she reasoned. The sexual pun came with an affectionate
brow wink and smile.

The radio in Critias’
helmet received a message in the form of the irritated voice of a
man, “I know how to fix it, you stupid bitch. Shut the fuck up
already and let me do this!” His signal was clear and
strong.

“
I have them,” Critias
told the others then he sent back, “This is your rescue team. Can
you tell us your location?”

The man replied, “Yes,
thank you, Heaven! We’re in a scrap-yard about a mile west of the
river. Mosenthein Island is about a mile-and-a-half north-northeast
of our position.”

Carmen checked out a
gun-port to see the road signs and mile markers to get a fix on her
position then she compared that information to the maps she had in
her memory. She advised directions, “This highway we are on runs
parallel to the river about a mile inland. We can exit off not far
ahead.”

Hatchet searched his own
memory as a lifelong resident of the city and realized where they
were going, “I know where that place is! It is just a couple blocks
over off North Broadway.”

“
Then that is where we get
out,” Carmen decided.

“
You won’t last long out
there,” Jim warned.

Carmen took Critias’ hand
then started to sing; she liked to sing when gleeful and the thrill
of battle gave her that aplenty, “They say that I won’t last too
long, on Broadway. I’ll catch a Greyhound bus for home they all
say.”

Hatchet knew the song and
joined in with his indestructible enthusiasm during the worst
possible perils, “But they’re dead wrong. I know they are, because
I can play this here guitar and I won’t quit till I’m a star, on
Broadway!”

Their four connected lanes
of highway held a straight course until Hatchet started to turn
right to blaze a path down an exit ramp. “Tell them to get ready to
go,” Hatchet advised. “The scrapyard they are at is just beyond
those trees over there.”

Critias informed the
survivors over his radio, “Our vehicle is almost there. Don’t
expose yourselves until they call you on your radio and tell you
what to do.”

Carmen set the Rhino’s
radio to the correct frequency then got ready to exit the vehicle
with Critias. She watched out a gun-port to study the terrain until
she saw what she looked for. “Go right, off through the grass,” she
told Hatchet. “I want you to go under that sign over there on the
corner of that petrol fueling station.”

Her destination was a
mighty oak of a steel column that rose quite high to support a pair
of billboards that passing motorists on the interstate highway
would have been able to see clearly. It sprouted up at the corner
of a gas station and convenient grocery that had a long carport
roof that sheltered its rows of fuel pumps from the weather. There
was also a second smaller roof that covered a set of pumps that
delivered diesel. It meant that whole area had underground fuel
reservoirs capable of eruption into epic conflagration if Carmen
provided the proper incentive.

Hatchet followed her
instructions, “I can see a ladder on the pole that starts about
halfway up. I can’t slow down without the ghouls swarming over us.
You’ll have to jump for it.”

Carmen and Critias prepared
to open the top hatch then climb atop the roof of the
Rhino.

“
After we get off,”
Critias told Hatchet, “drive right through the front doors of that
building then clean out the back. While you are inside, the ghouls
will lose sight of you for a moment.”

Jim triggered the pilot
lights and then switched on the pumps for the flamethrowers before
he checked the actions on the two heavy machineguns. “Don’t fuck
this up,” he urged them as he put on a pair of ear covers to
protect his hearing from the deafening heavy guns. “If you two get
killed, Jack is really going to be pissed at me.”

They opened the hatch then
climbed up to the roof where Critias shut the lid behind them. He
stood up on the rumbling dozer to gaze back at the tens of
thousands of infected that surged about the vehicle in a riotous
mass that flailed like so many psychotic sports fans.

Carmen had been right that
the ghouls preferred food they could see. The rattletrap Rhino was
big and noisy enough to make the infected want to chase it, but it
wasn’t at all edible or even vulnerable to their attacks. When the
ghouls saw Carmen and Critias, they truly went wild. Their previous
lack of success when they tried to climb the Rhino’s armor proved
to be due to a lack of proper incentive, which for ghouls meant
edible bait. With fresh food on top of it, they went at the task
with far greater zeal.

Hatchet had not yet reached
the sign when the first ghouls leaped off the backs of their
fellows to scramble up onto the roof of the Rhino. Critias caught
the first ghoul by the throat then slammed it down into the second
so that both fell back into the trailing mass.

Carmen calmly moved her
blade in its scabbard from her back to her hands. “I should give
this sword a name,” she mused aloud as if nothing more important
happened around her. “Three-hundred years ago, a master artisan
forged this instrument of killing and I came back that much time to
wield it against an unstoppable army of foes that can never die. I
shall call it Mistletoe, that was the bane of Balder and it came
into my possession with a kiss. What can never die shall perish by
this.” She watched Critias defend them both for the last few
moments before Hatchet got them close enough to the column. “You
jump first,” she advised. “Your mechsuit could let you move like I
do, but your mind is trapped in the limitations of being a feeble
human.”

He backhanded a leaping
infected out of the air then kicked in another’s teeth as it tried
to pull itself up. “Since I’m so feeble,” he shouted to her over
the howling ghouls, “maybe you could help me keep them off the
Rhino!”

“
You can do anything I can
do,” she instructed him knowing he still didn’t understand her
lesson. “You just have to believe.” Carmen unsheathed her sword in
a silvery flash that sent a ghoul’s head flying from the
underhanded draw, “Now jump!”

Critias leaped from the
Rhino as the dozer passed under the billboards. He easily reached
the lower ladder rungs from where he started to climb up the other
half of the column to reach the catwalks above.

Once she felt assured he
was safe, Carmen jumped after him only she went all the way to the
very top. She grabbed the catwalk railing one-handed to vault over
then land upon it. She waited at the top of the ladder to take
Critias’ hand. Once she had it, she casually lifted him up the
final way. “Cover the ladder,” she told him. “I’ll get them away
from the Rhino.”

Every ghoul within a
kilometer could see them high up on the walkway and an army of
enraged infected surged in at the base to try to climb up after
them. At first, the ghouls couldn’t scale the steel column because
it was so broad and smooth, but as they packed in tighter, they
began to climb each other to reach ever higher. Once they had
formed a hillock of their own bodies, the first of them took hold
of the base of the ladder and from there shot upward with
ease.

Hatchet kept on going with
the Rhino right in through the front doors of the gas-station
grocery shop. Thousands of infected stayed in pursuit of the
vehicle while many thousands more stayed behind. The latter
preferred to eat Carmen and Critias who were more
assailable.

Slugs from Critias’
teslaflux rifle cleaned the ladder down to the ground with single
well-aimed shots. Each projectile passed through many ghouls before
it buried itself in the pavement under their feet. So many infected
tried to climb that they often pulled down those ahead of them, but
when that ghoul could hold tight the one that followed climbed
right over him.

While Critias kept any
ghouls from getting so high that they reached the catwalk, Carmen
popped the fuzes on two teslaflux grenades. She tossed the first
one under the weather-roof that sheltered the line of gasoline
pumps. The second landed outside the front doors of the building
that Hatchet had driven inside of to hide the Rhino.

Carmen warned Critias just
before the first grenade went off, “Hold on tight!”

The first grenade detonated
a micro-fission charge that powered a teslaflux field generator
similar to those that levitated their futuristic aircraft. It
lasted only a millionth of a second before it annihilated in its
own atomic energy. The pulse of energetic particles that resulted
transferred a deep-differential charge along the surface plane of
the earth within a confined radius. The only visible effect was an
instantaneous web of arced electrical discharges as the ambient
static in the air formed ball lightning that leaped to nearby
ghouls, the pumps along with its roofing, and anything else above
the surface of the earth in an effect like a mad scientists Vann de
Graff laboratory. The ground itself thumped like an atomically
fueled electromagnetic drum that rebounded in a negatively charged
shockwave of epic proportions. This magnetic explosion repulsed
positively charged matter and flung it away with brutal rail
acceleration. Most objects went straight up, which was especially
true of metal chunks of shrapnel, which would have to rain down
somewhere. Most soft materials found themselves pulverized into
granules.

When the second grenade
went off a moment after the first, it blew the front half of the
convenience building clear off the earth. The reflected pulse
obliterated it like so many loose playing cards arranged around
dynamite. The material clouded the sky like confetti from a popped
balloon. Neither detonation contained any thermal component that
ignited fires.

The shockwaves rocked
Carmen and Critias as primarily a windy and essentially harmless
sandstorm of pulverized matter. Critias did his best to shield his
visor while he faced away because he knew that if the blast of grit
damaged his helmet screen he would never get the scratches
out.

Carmen looked down to
admire her handy-work. The shockwaves had knocked down all the
ghouls not already annihilated. Their stunned incapacity didn’t
last long. The surviving ghouls leaped back up to return to the
fight. In addition to having obliterated all of the infected who
had gathered there, the first grenade also erased the pumps and
most of the roof above them as well. The concrete deck there was
still intact with little trace of what happened apart from an
appearance as if someone had used a broom to sweep it clean. The
grenade’s effect had sheared off at the ground all the pipes and
wires that used to feed into the pumps. There was no noticeable
liquid fuel from the underground tanks, but the scent of
concentrated fumes hung heavy in the air.

Carmen loaded a
signal-flare round into the chamber of her marshal’s pistol as she
prepared to fire it into the gasoline fumes.

Critias shouted at her,
“Hey, just wait a second now! What do you think you’re
doing?”

She sang another song from
memory, “This love of mine it’s my one desire. It’s gonna set my
soul on fire.” She aimed the pistol by instinct while looking only
at him, “It’ll never grow cold!” She pulled the trigger.

The slow-moving projectile
whistled a shriek and burned with phosphorous. When it skipped off
the concrete where the pumps used to stand it ignited the gas fumes
into a wall of flames. Those fumes went off with a great harrumph
that blew down all the ghouls again and set many of their hairy
heads aflame. The brilliant light, the smell, and the smoke was
every bit the distraction required to lure all the infected to a
spectacle greater than that of the Rhino.