Gravewalkers: Dying Time (4 page)

He went over to see the
monitor over her shoulder; it displayed live infrared satellite
scans of the Chicago reclamation center vicinity.

“
This band here is the
shredded ghoul-meat obliterated by cannon shells,” she pointed it
out with her finger. “It has all gone into regenerative
photosynthetic dormancy. That makes this whole belt warm and green
as summer where it is getting enough water and sunshine. Therefore,
that means all these dark areas are swamps of infectious offal as
well. Their whole perimeter is pulsating undead entrails like
sloppy beach surf.”

Critias pointed out a
series of faintly visible streams of warmth that were like smoke
would appear on normal photography rather than thermal, “What are
these?”

Carmen had specifically
isolated those images on secondary monitors for his perusal and
riddled her answer with a quote. Her mind contained a vast
repertory of mankind’s collective literature so it was her common
practice to use a reverential form of hermeneutics to buffer her
juvenile mind and generate that meliorism of human behavior. She
did devote sincere effort into making genuine sense of what it
meant to be human, which was an irrational state of being under
most if not all circumstances. She quoted, “And while I stood in
the dark, a hand touched mine, lank fingers came feeling over my
face, and I was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odor. I fancied I
heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings
about me.”

Critias had grown
accustomed to Carmen’s superior vocabulary and even enjoyed the
games she crafted from her endless supply of memorized books. The
story of the Morlocks had always been one of her favorites when
discussing ghouls, so he already knew that much and quickly solved
her riddle. He answered, “So many ghouls are in the basements of
those ruined buildings that the collective heat of their bodies and
breathing is rising out as thermal air columns. Good work, Carmen;
anyone but us would have overlooked that.” His praise deactivated
the master routine that so disgusted her.

“
I believe that to be the
case,” she agreed. “Tens of thousands of individuals are generating
thermal exhaust of that magnitude. I estimate there are seven
hundred fifty thousand mobile specimens within a four kilometer
radius.”

He asked, “Do you think we
could get gunships to clean those out?”

“
I don’t think so,” she
calculated rightly. “They’re too deep underground. You could bury
them under the buildings until they dug themselves out, which they
would in short order.”

Critias ordered, “Mark
those plume basements as targets then transmit the package to the
orbital mass-drivers. Punch those buildings flat and let them dig
back up from Hell.”

Carmen used marshal access
codes to send the firing mission then reported the reply they sent
back, “Next orbital position for firing will be in seven hours
twelve minutes without an emergency retask.”

Colonel Walker had listened
to their conversation; the orders to demolition major standing
structures he planned on reclaiming appalled him. “You can’t be
serious,” he complained. “You’re going to start leveling the city
from space because you’re chasing your ridiculous theory on witches
or is it warlocks? What do you call them?”

“
Watchers,” Carmen
assisted him. “It’s more of a hypothesis than an actual theory;
humans frequently make that mistake.”

The colonel ignored
Critias’ android as though she were nothing but a cheap bimbo, “I
told you that I taught them the price of getting in range of our
guns. The teslaflux cannons have range to the horizon if need be.
The ghouls went underground to stay away from the guns. They have
been harmlessly skulking at a safe distance for weeks, just like we
want.”

“
Well then, nothing to see
here,” Carmen apologized mockingly. “Hannibal ad portas is not the
cause for worry that it used to be.”

“
It means Hannibal is at
the gates, marshal,” Colonel Walker translated the
Latin.

“
I know what it means,”
Critias replied. “Here is one perhaps you don’t remember, cedant
arma togae; it’s the Orphans’ oath to the Council of Governors. The
warriors serve the will of the scholars, not the other way around.
You have not told the Council anything about your ghoul nesting
problems. You are sucking them into this area as if you’re hosting
a chili cook-off. The smart thing to do is to close this place out
and then nuke this shit-hole.”

Walker asked, “Do you have
any idea how many metric tons of copper alone I can get from just
one of those buildings? Do you know how much aluminum? There is
enough construction-grade steel for the builders to frame out a new
habitat. You can’t just implode them,
ne
puero gladium
!”

Critias had learned to
speak Latin in ludus as all marshals did. He glanced over at Carmen
as if to say that he had warned her that Colonel Walker wasn’t
going to be friendly.

“
Do not entrust a sword to
a boy,” Carmen translated anyway with only a hint of a smirk
slipping past her inhibitor barrier. She enjoyed telling him that
much.

Critias continued speaking
with certainty, “I assure you, I both can and will. Colonel Walker,
you are withholding critical information from your reports to
manipulate the Reclamation General and the Council of Governors.
Call your crews in and lock this place down. By the authority of
Grand Marshal Wayne, I hereby order you to evacuate this facility.
You will begin your preparations immediately. Just tell your men
they have earned a short vacation back home. I don’t think it will
take the Governors long to interview you themselves.”

The nervous clerk entered
the control room appearing even more sweaty and timid than his
usual. He said, “Colonel Walker, sir, there is a small problem that
requires your attention.”

“
What is it?” the colonel
demanded.

The man stuttered, “Private
Carlson, sir, he is several hours overdue for his shift at the
pre-sanitizer sorting area.”

Walker took the news as a
mere nuisance, “Is there some reason you did not report this to me
several hours ago?”

The clerk explained, “It
appears his coworkers were trying to cover for his absence to keep
him from going on report, sir. They believe he was drunk last night
and sleeping it off.”

Colonel Walker took the
matter more seriously, “Where is Private Carlson now,
lieutenant?”

The man paled as if he
might feint, “Uh, no one knows, sir.”

The colonel yelled at him,
“Perhaps you should find out!”

Carmen searched the
security camera records by high-speed modem and then put a relevant
video on the main wall-projection display before saying, “Private
Carlson appears to have injured his hand yesterday.”

Private Carlson wearing a
plastic splash-suit had been sorting through piles of reclaimed
metals fresh off the unbelievably filthy trucks when a jagged spur
stabbed through his glove like a needle. Carmen followed his
movements from the records to show Private Carlson frantically
washing his injury, to then later return to his quarters where he
tried to sleep, but only tossed restlessly. Eventually the man got
up from his bed lurching drunkenly to wander the passageways where
various people observed him staggering past without any of them
bothering to interact. He ended up in the motor-pool area where he
had climbed into a main battle tank and then locked himself inside.
Surveillance footage confirmed that up to the current moment he had
never exited the vehicle.

“
He has locked himself
inside one of your tanks, Colonel Walker,” Carmen informed him of
the visible fact. “He’s either infected or in belief that he is; in
either case, he is now in possession of a vehicle capable of
leveling this entire building.” She considered her deductions then
added, “Or perhaps he wanted a quiet place to sleep away from the
screaming of the damned. According to my notes, it has been known
to be demoralizing.”

Colonel Walker commanded,
“Patch me in to that tank’s audio!” Then he shouted into a
microphone, “It’s time to wake up, soldier! Your shift began three
hours ago!”

The terrified private
cried, “Oh God! You’re coming to murder me! You want to do to me
what you did to Finkler! He kept telling you that you were bringing
in too much too dirty!”

Critias looked to his
android, “Who is Finkler?”

She replied, “The friendly
fire accidental death was named Adrian Finkler.”

Critias turned on Colonel
Walker, “This Finkler got infected, so you shot him and covered it
up to protect your sterling reputation.” It wasn’t a
question.

“
The Governors might have
shut me down if they heard of it,” the colonel admitted his guilt
in the conspiracy.

“
Get some lab teams to his
bunk and have them test for traces of infection,” Critias ordered
the colonel. “Tell your guards to interview anyone who came into
contact with him since he injured himself. If you have a tactical
team on standby, tell them to storm that tank or to disable it by
any means necessary.”

The colonel was out of
arguments and did as Critias wanted. When he was finished sending
the orders, he told Critias, “The assault platoon needs five
minutes to get into position.”

Critias went to the
microphone for communicating with the tank, “This is Marshal
Critias. I want you to listen carefully, Private Carlson. The
medics tested your bed sheets and your sweat was negative for
infection. You’re not infected. When you injured your hand there
was no infected matter present. It’s just a minor laceration and
you’re not infected. Exit that vehicle and return to your regular
work shift. Colonel Walker is not going to discipline you. I give
you my word on that.”

The private howled, “You’re
lying! You’re all damn liars! You want to murder me just as you did
Finkler! I’m not a ghoul! I’m perfectly fine, but you still want to
kill me. You’re never going to do to me what you did to
him!”

Carmen reported, “Records
show that tank is in for engine repairs which the mechanics
completed yesterday. It has full ammunition onboard and is fully
mobile.”

The tank powered up with a
fearsome growl readily audible through the security feed. The
revving turbine was a menacing roar of unrivalled power.

“
Take the tank now!” the
colonel ordered his assault team. “Take it now! Shoot it with a
fucking missile if you have to!”

It was fortunate that
Private Carlson sorted trash instead of driving tanks for a
profession because he found starting the engine much easier than
figuring out how to make it go somewhere.

Carmen had a ready
solution, “I will override the controls through the remote
transponder interlink.” She found her access to the weapon systems
to be fully functional and disabled them all with Marshal Service
override codes. When it came to the rest of the vehicle, she
discovered that the colonel had installed a secondary firewall to
prevent anyone outside his command from monitoring the tanks
activities. “I have disabled the weapons,” she reported, “but I
can’t gain access to the primary drive controls or the auxiliary
systems. There is an unauthorized secondary firewall. I believe it
was Colonel Walker who ordered this illegal modification to
circumvent Marshal Service observations of his
activities.”

Critias told the colonel,
“That may soon become an expensive decision just because you wanted
to be a secretive jackoff.”

A team of soldiers leaped
onto the stationary tank then used a special key to open the locked
hatch from the outside. One of the men fired his rifle down into
the open hatch to kill the driver. After his projectile went
through Private Carlson’s collarbone, but only served to make the
desperate man more agitated, the shooter yelled, “He’s
infected!”

The tank tilted wildly
nose-down as the treads spun in full reverse, spraying up shaved
concrete like a pair of turbine-powered diamond chainsaws. The
mighty machine raced backwards across the motor pool, shaking off
the besieging soldiers to send them rolling across the
floor.

In his rapidly growing
alarm over their worsening situation, Colonel Walker demanded, “Man
every weapon to destroy that tank! I want it melted into
slag!”

Carmen followed the tank
with the cameras to show it crush a lighter vehicle flat and then
punch through a wall to continue at speed. After it demolished the
wall, the tank plowed through several layers of defense barrier and
crossed some shallow trenches.

Various teslaflux
machinegun positions peppered the tank’s armor unable to inflict
any harm upon it. One massive concrete bunker proved strong enough
to block the tank’s progress when the vehicle hung up on that
obstacle then spun its treads. Several rockets streaked in to
splash molten flame across the tank’s hull. The rocking impact of
the explosions turned the tank slightly so that its treads found
new traction, which pulled it free from the obstacle, and then the
tank set off once more. A few remaining barriers fell under its
weight before the tank reached the outer perimeter wall. That last
defense crumpled under the tank’s impact to leave the reclamation
center fully exposed to infected attack. The last camera filmed the
tank as it rumbled off into the ruins of the city where it finally
foundered then sank down into the dark basement of a building it
had penetrated.