The Bone Puppets: A Hard SciFi Zombie Soldier Story Read online

  It was a short struggle against the National Guard. With the American enterprise city overtaken and many of the businesses that had founded their headquarters in Atlanta seized, struggling America’s already teetering economy was suddenly bankrupt. Washington was too far into its own debts to act independently of enterprise and make deals with foreign countries. The military had been stripped of a huge percentage of manpower. With leaders’ hands tied and key cities taken, the Crescent’s operatives spread throughout the once-United States and seized control. All major cities were ransacked and had their names changed to ones with more of a “Mesopotamian” feel.

  Reece Walklate had been the Ponzi-scheming psycho responsible for it all.

  Elias looked out across the bleakness of the rusted out, cracked open city. It reminded him of a canker sore opening in the rotting jaw of a dead horse, the way it was shaped now and the stench that rose from it. He could still remember Atlanta. It seemed like ancient history now, but he was only 26. In two decades, this is what the world had become. Elias’s heart might not be as hard as he thought. It could just be numb with shell-shock. The jury was still out.

  “Any day now, Yim.” He rolled his eyes and fingered the old Jericho 941 he’d tucked inside his bomber jacket. Smiled to himself. This job wasn’t without its perks. At least he could find something to grin about in this motor-oil-and-blood-bathed world.

  He heard the revving of the engines. That grin became a full-blown smile. He let go of the gun and punched the bus’s window out, swinging from the frame. His best pal Riff was leading his bike by a choke chain.

  “I added some mods to it so it wouldn’t fry on these bone-paved streets, dawg.” Riff clapped his hands together in one swift applause as Elias hit his Deus Grievous Angel’s seat with a heavy thud.

  “She sounds the same to me. You kept her heart ticking. I owe you for life, man.” Elias spun in a donut shape just to fist bump Riff and the rest of the team in a row.

  “We get it. Best buddies, and all that crap,” said Yim. “Save it for a room sometime later down the road. Where’s my merchandise, Mr. Walklate?” Yim spun her Rocket Roadster in a sweeping crescent and drove it in reverse so she could glare at him behind the iron gas mask helmet she’d made to match the rest of her team.

  “Good to see you too, Meredith.” Elias spat in the dirt, grinning from ear to ear. Sometimes seeing Meredith Yim made him want to unleash that Great American Melting Pot’s worth of anger. Just her haughty expression was enough to inspire homicide in easy-going people.

  “I sent you in with a job to do, Walklate. Did you get it or not?” Yim drove ahead of Elias and revved her engine. The foul exhaust of whatever junk-pile blend of oil she’d mixed up for it came seeping into his nostrils. Elias gagged. That stuff was enough to revive this city of death-masks!

  “Everything but your cigarettes. I told you to quit!” Elias covered his mouth with his jacket, fumbling with the handlebars to keep the bike upright.

  “You son of a—” Yim’s fingers scraped the handle of her pistol. She inspired homicide partially because she was always on the verge of homicide herself.

  “Wait. Yeah, we all know who my daddy was.” Elias tossed his head and threw Yim a small package of Marlboros.

  “Special blends without the filter. See, I’m good like that.” Elias saluted Yim and winked at her. She spun her bike to face the street nose first. Peeling the face shield of her helmet up so that she could see better, she caught the cigarette package between two fingers.

  “Damn, you’re good. See, boys? Even a little wad of crap paper like this guy can put off a bright flame.” Yim tucked the cigarettes close to her heart.

  “Do I get a raise?” Elias knew that joking with Yim could be a bad idea, but he had to keep his humor up or he’d lose his cool. She was notorious for saying cutting things like that. Elias manically denied his inferiority issues, but they were still obvious to everyone around him. He knew this was because of his constant wittiness and fervent protests against his own weakness. He was a messed up little kid and this was a good source of humor to the jackals left in the wake of Atlanta’s ashes. No allies among these thieves. In the end, they were all just wolves sharing the bones of their people. But they wanted fresh blood. The blood of the empire that had replaced their own. Elias clenched his teeth. It was time to focus on that and nothing else.

  “Uh, dude, there’s nothing left in this world to pay you with other than the stuff you smuggle.” Riff revved his bike to choke out the sound of his laughter. Yim would probably shoot him if he got too carried away again. She hated cut-ups.

  They heard the low bass hum of hover sedans. The Neo-Mesopotamian Police Department came tearing up the street behind them.

  “Ah, hell. Here they come. Use those Choppers, boys. We’re done playing.” Yim tossed her hair out of her face. She plucked a small cherry bomb from her pocket and lit it with the cigarette lighter on her bike. It hit the gas-laced street and kicked up clouds of flames.

  Elias closed his eyes and let it roll over him, crackling in his jacket. The familiar sting barely phased him. He might as well be flame retardant now after all these years of passing through the fire.

  “Ma Deuce!” Riff pulled his Browning up from his bike’s undercarriage and swung it over his shoulder to face the police sedans hovering around them, guided by single wheels, circling in vulture formations now.

  “Got my Chicago Typewriter! This is still America to me, baby!” Elias reached up under his own bike’s chassis and pulled up his ancient Thompson.

  “You crazy fighting with a time piece like that! I fight old school too, but damn!” Trent pulled a 2024 model AK-47 up from his bike’s chassis. Elias shrugged.

  “You don’t know me, man. The street was my nanny. I can make do with a pack of plastic spoons if it comes to that.” Elias tilted his bike to the side, letting himself skid low to the ground and firing on the hover-propeller gears that substituted pistons in the new highway craft of “the Mask Box” as this city had been dubbed.

  The police cars pitched and hopped into the air and back on the ground like toads dancing in battery acid. The rocket launchers they’d mounted never deployed. The small crafts reeled instead and hit each other head-on, exploding in a fizzling pop formation like super-sized firecrackers.

  “Well done, gentlemen. This is the reason you were hired on. You were bred for such a day as this, weren’t you, Franken-boy?” Yim dragged her bike to a stop. Her eyes glittered in the glare of the flames. Her focus was trained with zero-waver on Elias. Baiting his rage, waiting for his dissension. Was he in with both feet? Or would his disinterest compromise the mission? Even Elias didn’t know. He shifted under her gaze.

  “Sister, you’ve got big dreams for when you grow up.” Riff’s mouth was hanging open. Elias swung up and pushed it shut with his open palm. Waiting for Yim to make a move on the kid, Elias gingerly pulled a map out of his coat.

  “The most important thing I scored today was a map of the Hybrid Savannah. We’ve officially got everything (but that damned plane!) we need for getting there and making your hunt for the Altar of Cain happen.”

  Meredith Yim grinned.

  “You haven’t been to all the staff meetings, son,” she said. “The plane is secure. I know people. Knowing people is what takes you places, even in a world where there’s nowhere to go but deeper in the pits.” Yim lit a cigarette, drinking in puffs of smoke like it was the last soda in the desert. She gave a contented gasp and patted her cheek.

  Elias felt like a cannonball had collided with his chest.

  Even if he was undecided about this revenge-seeking quest, it was too late to back out now. This was real. They were finally setting their anti-government rebellion into motion.

  *****

  Chapter 3

  Sleep was where Elias rendezvoused with demons.

  The precise form they manifested were human corpses that had been revived by Intramuscular Suspended Animation, sometimes abbreviated
as IMSA. Most of the lay people just called them Bone Puppets because of their awkward movement patterns.

  Even half-asleep as he was, the young vigilante had to choke down bile at the thought of the Bone Puppets. How it had even been possible for them to exist was mind numbing. The fact that science and the dark arts could cross was something that rattled the black-and-white world view Elias had fostered whenever he could form his own thoughts.

  Elias didn’t want to admit how cracked his brain actually was. That would imply that he had a soul! Which might make him just a bit more brittle than steel.

  This isn’t anything big…Sleepwalk, idiot! Walk it off, that always works. Move. Elias’s hands itched as he tossed about in his sleep. Trying to obey himself was a Titan effort from time to time.

  In this world, he couldn’t afford to be anything less than bulletproof. Not even in private could he let his emotional guard down and just feel like crap. Not even to the mirror, which he feared and despised because of the thin scars that ran like streaks of war paint up his cheeks. Everything was a reminder of the horror story his life had been. There would never be a domestic future for him at all. He despised his hideous, torture-mutilated body. All it was good for anymore was Yim’s constant showcasing of the boy who had survived the televised torture sessions that Atlanta’s Judas was so well known for broadcasting.

  There would be no denying his emotional vulnerability tonight in the midst of this dream. Elias was a lucid dreamer. He would be confined within the illusion that he was in the past and yet his adult mind would always be balking at it. The feeling of the tiny spiders, rats, and snakes that he was constantly entombed with as a boy were not real. For Elias Walklate, dreams were a virtual reality. He had full control over his schizophrenic tendencies. The voices in his head were all versions of his own voice, mimicking the verbal abuse of his tormented childhood and he knew it.

  Take a good look at you, rough shot. See, what the world needs is a kid with your stature. You’ve got the bones to build a nation. My bones…They’ll catch on, buddy. You’ve just got to play your roles. All of them… Elias felt his father’s voice echo off the walls of his skull. He’d never wanted to play his roles. His “roles” had been ingrained in him, carved and forced until schizophrenia descended on him. The taunting call toward madness was where Elias’s torture had never ended. This was the first time he’d slept at all in six days. A good fight had its down times. He’d bounce back, given his second wind. He was not crazy, after all.

  Partially awake, he felt the tent flaps beaten open by the wind and dust of what had once been the Eastern seaboard of North America. His teeth chattered and his hands knotted in his bedroll. The overpowering fumes of bleach stung his nostrils. How many times had he been soaked in bleach as a child? He’d lost count. Ritualistic bathing in many obscure chemicals had been his life as far back as he could recall. If he was ever carbon-dated, he was sure traces of household cleaners would show up on the test from the beginning of his days.

  “Go back to Hell, Reece. Just go back…” He gnashed his teeth. His moments of near-conscious stupor always circled the general six feet of his sleeping space like a vulture coming in for a landing. Then he would be plunged directly into the throes of one of his psychotic suspended memories. There was no escape. Denial became anger and anger became bargaining. He reasoned with himself that he could talk his way out of this one just like he talked many buyers and sellers down in the Underground that Yim had needed to consult with on the journey of her great quest.

  In his sleep, Elias was always nine-years-old. Still standing on that red clay cliff in Georgia, looking down at the burning trees, debating on whether or not he should jump. His father’s riflemen were coming for him from every corner of the poplar-and-chemical-smoke-scented fog of the forest behind him.

  If he had memories, they were always trees and fire. If he saw faces, then they were crumbling like wax in the kiln, twisting in all the expressions of master clowns before the light left their eyes.

  The Bone Puppets really hadn’t been in charge of him until he was almost a teenager, but in his dream, they were the ones that burst out of the forest. Elias felt his Nikes’ rubbery heels melting to the sandstone, adhesive now against this tottering perch. He jutted his chin out, balled his miniature fists up in defiance. He could see himself in his dream’s viewfinder. The smoke stuck to his pale face, staining it the color of used charcoal.

  He huffed and lifted his face, forcing himself to look at them.

  He’d known most of them. The one in the center had been his principal in elementary school. The only female one in the mix used to work at his local McDonald’s, off of Cascade Road. He’d always had a crush on her because she reminded him of his favorite girl rock star. The smaller one at the edge of the clearing had been his buddy in first grade. His name was Austin Terrance. They used to play basketball together.

  The fact that they were bloated from decomposition and graying didn’t bother him. The fact that their guts had been forced to their outside by their protruding ribs and were swarming with flies wasn’t what got to him. Their yellow eyes that seemed to bleed from their head and roll like they were having a post-mortem epileptic seizure still wasn’t what had done it. Even the fact that air was being forced up through their rotting lungs, making their larynxes quiver and emit a sound like a goat bleating wasn’t the final straw.

  It was the horrible, contrived spasming in their arms and legs that did it. They moved like spool puppets, shoulder blades and thighs bouncing like Slinkys out of their joints as they twisted in slow, whirring rotations of electric convulsion to bring around their tactical rifles. They couldn’t tell him to halt and they wouldn’t need to. The image of them was enough to freeze the Devil with horror and remorse.

  Elias always woke up at this part. The rest was just too graphic for his mind to handle, even for all the things he’d endured in his adult life. His father deserved to rot in the final circle of Hell for betraying his city. He’d let those murderous things torture his own child on live TV for three days, too, which for Reece was just a bonus sin in a life filled with the worst kinds of violations.

  He sat up, Damascus Bowie knife drawn. It took him a few seconds of blinking to realize that Riff was leaning over him. The stubble he was beginning to grow along his chin had been peeled off and a hairline scratch was bleeding down his neck. He’d been shaking him to try and wake him up out of the horrible dream.

  “Hiya, buddy. Thanks, I needed a shave.” Riff’s catty smirk was enough to calm Elias down by powers of 10.

  “Dude, I could have killed you.” Elias sagged against his bed, rubbing his nose. Riff shrugged.

  “I’d be dead if you were really trying. Relax, man. No puppets around these parts. I checked and rechecked like five times.” Riff held up his hands, then opened a beer and handed it to him.

  “Mm, this. Did you score this?” Elias felt his eyes popping wide open with pride.

  “Yes, sir. With no help from anyone.” Riff pressed a hand to his heart and nodded, proud of himself.

  “Training you well, kiddo.” Elias chuckled and sat up. The dreams he had caused physical pain in his muscles but that was almost gone now. Riff’s presence had some kind of healing factor to it. He could never verbally acknowledge it, but secretly he noticed and deeply appreciated.

  Silence passed for a minute as Riff started attempting to cut into a half-melted MRE. Elias rolled his eyes and swatted the Bowie through it.

  “Yeah, so you’re good for a few things around here anyway.” Riff poured the food into his mouth like a greedy vulture come up on roadkill. Elias studied him. It was unforgivable, all that society had done to one another. A good kid like Riff was always animal hungry, always on the run.

  “Remind me where ‘these parts’ are again?” Elias rubbed his groggy eyes. His memory problems were becoming a great nuisance.

  “We’re just outside of the Blood City. Yim says it used to be Baltimore.” Riff shrugged an
d opened the small plastic canister he kept his drinking water in.

  “Blood City? Isn’t that where they keep the hangars full of those ‘Street-sweepers’? Hangars…Ah, okay, that must be where the plane is stowed. God, I wish Yim would give us a little heads-up before she makes these fool plans.” Elias tossed his head and laughed to hide the fact that the thought of this freaked him to royal living hell.

  “You mean those like carrion-glider-human hybrid things? I guess you could call them vampires. Honest, I have no idea, man. They don’t tell me jack around here, yeah? I seriously thought those things were a myth, but now that I know the Puppets are a real thing…All I’m saying is, the age of skeptics is over.” Riff shrugged and took a long drink.

  “How’d you find out anyway? ‘Cuz you’re right. They don’t tell you squat.” Elias leaned forward. Riff shrugged

  “I eavesdrop?” Riff scratched his neck, avoiding Elias’s eyes.

  “She’ll kill you, you know.” Elias clenched his fist. The kid wasn’t stupid. He might have a death wish, though. Elias and Riff didn’t talk about things like wishes and feelings, so it wasn’t evidently clear if the boy was on the cusp of suicidal tendencies or not. Exposure was enough to do that to a person, but Riff had his secrets, and had flirted with revelation every now and then.

  “She’s gonna kill me eventually no matter what I do.” Riff splashed some of the water on his face.