This Broken Earth: Chapter Three by Alex Mastroianni

The 'event' in Los Angeles (This is what it would be called) did draw most of CEM's attention. However, an entity like CEM is hydra-headed, and while the board of directors and research and development were trying to understand and control the event, a whole other organ of Combat Eye Media was bent on capitalizing on it.

Ultra Giga and Rad Lad, the two dueling metas that were killed by the event, were being autopsied already. Surgical implements did exist for the unique problem of invulnerable skin. Observing the autopsy of Rad Lad, from behind leaded glass, was the CEM chief intelligence officer,

James 'Hollow' Point. Point headed the Metahuman Apprehension Corps, the MAC. If someone asked him, and no one would, he would have said that he wasn't enjoying the autopsy. But he wasn't a big fan of Rad Lad's either. Just as the medical examiner was ascertaining that the lead corpse emitted no radiation, Point's earbud screeched to life. "I'm coming" was all he said as he left the operating theater.

The MAC had a most wanted list, and at the top of the list was the maverick meta organization known as the Sick Sick Six. Three members were in custody and one was effectively neutralized. Now Point had a lead on the last two: Ephemera and Meninx.

The event had done more than kill two metahumans; it also nearly killed every meta within a twenty mile radius. At that moment, in a high-end jeweler in Beverly Hills, Ephemera and Meninx were knocked almost comatose by the event pulse. Ephemera is a bodiless intelligence. He makes short lived bodies from organic waste. Dead leaves, skin cells, bugs, dried blood. Meninx used to be an Olympic class gymnast until she broke her neck in a fall from the uneven bars. An experimental therapy, meant to regenerate nerve tissue, turned her entire body into neurons. She is a telepath and prescient of no small measure. Ephemera had slipped through the ventilation of an adjacent shop as a cloud of dandruff. Once inside he admitted Meninx who promptly read the safe codes from the manager’s mind and erased the surveillance tape via psychokinesis. Then she made them all sleep. They were gathering the stones when the event pulse struck. Ephemera was blown to dust, his consciousness barely intact. Meninx, being a telepath, had some defenses against the pulse. Still, it reduced even her to a quivering epileptic. Her last cogent thought was: Why didn't I foresee it?

Point had assembled a rapid react unit and took off in a hoverchopp CEM pound in the Utah desert. Curbing its acceleration to allow for frail human occupants, the craft could over Beverly Hills in eleven minutes. "I want thought armor and a continuous prescience baffling field!" Point hollered to his unit leader, Carlo Venti. CEM was technically not a paramilitary organization, so they dispensed with rank. Rank was there though, it always was. "Ready the tailored containment apparatus for Ephemera, if the event weakened them the way the intelligence suggested it would, we might have the jump on them."

"ETA two minutes, sir."

Point pulled a mask of thick synthetic material over his head. The hood was matte black and had no eye or mouth holes. Shiny black circuitry marbled its exterior. Mind armor.

"Hard hats on, team!" the men under Point's command pulled there own 'hard hats' down over their faces.

The pilot announced they were over the target. The team all checked their gear and hooked onto the drop cables. The floor of the chopp slid away and they slid down weighted cords to the roof of the jewelry store.

Meninx stirred. She wiped the froth from her mouth and swallowed metallic salty blood. Did I have a seizure? Her head was full of cotton and her vision was cracked like a migraine. groggy, she looked around for Ephemera. A small tornado of dust in the corner of the display window bleated psychically. Something had taken both of them out. Hit them where it counted. Just then, Meninx sensed six...nothings on the roof. Some idiots were wearing hard hats. Didn't they know the mind armor made them conspicuous by their absence?

In the state he was in, Meninx doubted ephemera could even communicate telepathically. She stared at the small dust devil of dry skin, its hue becoming a swirl of yellow and pink. behind her, the stones she dropped were putting themselves into her attaché case of their own accord. Actually she was moving the diamonds around to save time. One part of her bagged up the stones, while another tried to assist Ephemera in becoming solid. the pinkish yellow swirls in his forming body were somehow disconcerting, she turned around and one of the jewelers was stirring, her face and neck stripped of fat and skin. Ephemera was utilizing live tissue. She knew this was very difficult and painful to do. Although Meninx was what CEM would label a 'supercriminal', she did not want anyone harmed by anything she did. Part of the reason she broke her contract and went rogue was the colossal loss of life she incurred when engaging other metas.

He's killing her She thought as she watched Ephemera peel the skin from the jewelers face, cell by cell. Hastily, she went behind the counter looking for something in particular and she found it. She tossed the bagged lunch near the dust devil with the psychic message Use this.

Ephemera was working his way through the turkey sandwich when the roof exploded. A high pitched keening filled the room and the almost solid Ephemera exploded into a vapor of organic bits. Meninx was screaming mental commands at the mind armored men, to no avail. One of them used a strange gun. it looked like a flame thrower, with a backpack attached to the gun itself. but the canister on the soldiers back was clear polycarbonate. Meninx levitated a three karat stone and launched it at the canister. It barely scratched it. Ephemera was becoming a meat colored stick figure when the man with the strange gun pulled the trigger. A strange diaphanous energy came out of the barrel and whirled into a parabolic funnel. For a second Ephemera could move, then piece by piece, the thing sucked him into the tank. She could see him whirling around inside the clear canister. More importantly she could feel his absolute fear.

At this, diamonds began whirling around the room. Meninx's eyes welling up with milky spinal fluid tears. One man's hard hat was torn and his cheek lacerated to the bone. Deftly, Meninx's mind crept in through the hole and unplugged the man. he would be okay, in a week or so. Still, the diamond sirocco raged. Misty spatters of blood shot up from every direction. Point watched it all from the roof and, cursing under his breath, knew what he had to do.

Meninx was lost even to herself now. The diamonds becoming a razor tornado,cutting even her. The MAC team huddled behind display cases, all of them bloodied. The whole shop was spattered red. Point,watching from the hole in the roof, reached for a clunky device on his belt--the prescience baffler. he unlocked the safety of a small red button on the device. He didn't understand how, but this switch 'inverted' the field, making the field a ray.He set his jaw and flipped the red switch. It was like a horizontal waterspout was coming out of the baffler.Point jumped down into the shop. The 'ray' was more like a wild snake, the sickly blue whip of light writhed about the shop uncontrollably, every unshielded mind it touched reduced to vegetation, even Meninx. He would lose all the men whose hard hats were breached. They were not telepaths and would be permanently damaged. But he would gain Meninx. The skin monster was a liability, but a telepath they could use, when she woke up in five or six days

This Broken Earth: Chapter Two by Alex Mastroianni

"Did you feel that?" These were not words. Words, spoken ones at least, were useless in deep vacuum. These beings had more subtle means of 'talking'.

How could I not have felt that? Neutronium thought to herself, in the compartmentalized private part of her mind. She responded "I did feel that, Spin. i wasn't paying attention, though. Can you pinpoint its origin." Whatever they just felt, it pulled Oneiroman right out of a dream. Few things can do that. He floated,uneasy. His hand cupped around his chin. The dream powered meta was silent, he felt something he hadn't felt in a lifetime. Fear? Exhilaration?

"I think I can Nute. Like trajectories and rifle reports, no?" Spinstate was arguably the most human and maybe the most powerful of the three. Formerly a young meta from Earth called Qid Quark, he had the ability to observe quantum particles without affecting them as an observer. Where are you? Where did you come from? The pulse they felt was not unlike the psychic paroxysm unleashed by a metahuman upon their power's dawning. This was different, though. It was much more than just another meta. The three of them would not admit it to one another, but all of them were unnerved by the pulse.

Neutronium zoned out again, back to the private world of her pulsar heart. This was here real life. In a cushioned pupa of maximum gravity. My world, my time.

"This, you won't believe" Oneiroman already knew, but still he did not believe. " It came from Earth." The man of dreams was visibly stirred "Which one?" he asked Spinstate, though he knew the answer already too. It came from our earth

"It came from our Earth." The three converged from the dozens of light years away they were from each other. They had not physically been together in a while. Appearances changed.

Spinstate wore a cobalt suit with a white circle over his heart. His hair was longer, almost shaggy. he was unshaven. For a man who could cleave the electrons off of atoms, he did not shave often.
Neutronium had forsaken human appearance for something else. She was like a polished platinum statue. A careful exercise in self- control kept the gravity of her stellar heart from killing her comrades.
Oneiroman-who never liked his name and usually went by 'O'. Was entirely non-humanoid. Apparently he had fallen back to sleep, hatching this proxy self through the veil as it were. He never considered that his friends found this rude. The thing was a ovoid lump of iron as big as a man's torso. Around its thickest point it had several circular slots. At the narrow top was an obsidian black 'eye'. The shell of the egg became a wrinkle of skin around the oil black eye.it even blinked. Below that, was a small cricle of steel mesh. A microphone? O must be working out something complex and many layered to send from Dreamplace such a poorly formed, utilitarian proxy.

"What should we do? Ideas?" Spinstate shurgged as he asked his comrades for their opinions on what could be the birth of a being on their order. neutronium just hovered with her arms crossed. Spinstates own face warped and reflected in her platinum tricep. he stared at here for a good long while and thought Apart from myself, this is the most human thing I've looked at in years.

Oneiro, who was attuned to the emotional and intellectual frequencies of his associates in ways beyond plain telepathy, sensed the longing in Spinstate, and their course of action became clear. The proxy spoke: "We go home. Now."

Spin just closed his eyes. How does he think of everything? Neutronium shook her chrome head gently. "No. I've no interest in returning to Earth." This was not a suprising opinion. The others had long suspected that Nute left something painful back home. What they didn't understand was that in addition to this, her pulsar heart felt and aversion to any large singularity. It posed no threat to a creature of will like her, but the rival gravity provoked an instinctual bristling. nute even avoided other planets, opting to stay in orbit while the other two descended.

"Then don't come with us." O's directness often uneased the others. Spinstate saw the arguement coming. Nute and the man of dreams clashed about everything. presently the dream proxy folded in onitself. fast as thought Oneiro was there. A man, incongruously pale and dark haired. he whore poorly defined black clothing and his hair was closely cropped. Gunmetal eyes that could unnerve Jovian worlds regarded Spin and Nute.

"You would do this, O?" Spinstate remembered once they agreed to never consciously decide to split up. But there was years between then and now. The dynamic of their relationships had changed.

Nute , a little offended, spoke now, the others detected a flux in the local gravity, which was dilute. "I will not countenance a return to Earth. I will follow you two the Sol system, where I will tarry in Pluto's orbit. Pluto was a small thing and did not rile the gravity aversion in Neutronium's very being.
Spinstate nodded, accepting the situation. They could not expect much more from Nute. "Okay. is there anything you guys need to do before we set out?" The both assured him there wasn't. "How long do you think it'll take us to get home, O?" Spinstate smiled inside. Ask a being like Oneiroman for a 'guess' and you'll get a very precise, calculated answer. "Fourteen days, six hours and twenty-one minutes." No doubt he knows down to the picosecond, thought Spin. You would figure a being that derives his power from dreams wouldn't be so logic bound. But there was code and equations under every seemingly magic thing Oneiroman could do. Spin caught himself when he noticed O was casually staring at him. He long suspected he had more telepathic ability than he let on.

The three joined hands in a circle. They had a tried and true method for interstellar travel. A way to cut their traveling time exponentially. Oneiroman folded into himself, and took Neutronium and Spinstate with him, into Dreamplace.
the now, stood on a grassy knoll, which looked down on a large copse with a path leading into it. Nute and Spin looked at Oneiro quizzically. "I love nature walks." said the man of dreams, and the three enterd the woods.

This Broken Earth: A Serial Novel by Alex Mastroianni Chapter One

The Combat Eyes darted about in the air like softball-sized gnats. They dodged the hurled shrapnel easily, though it moved at bullet speeds. The audiovisual drones were old hands at avoiding destruction.

Below them, in a section of flattened freeway, Ultra Giga launched more car doors and chunks of concrete at the annoying little things. Ultra was your basic type one meta; big and strong and hard to hurt. He considered himself part of the metahuman 'old school' so to speak. He was one of the oldest metas roaming about these days.

Giga was certain that Rad Lad would not have engaged him if the Combat Eyes weren't watching. Combat Eye Media, or CEM, was the only subscription entertainment service that broadcasted meta engagements live. Both Rad Lad and Ultra Giga were under CEM contract. Everyone was now. Every meta.

The word in the CEM chats was that Ultra Giga was losing his edge, and Rad Lad had been spoiling for a fight for a week now. Rad Lad was a young energy manipulator. Apparently Rad Lad was behind in his engagement quota and if he didn't get in a fight by the end of this month he'd be in breach of contract. This would explain why he accosted Ultra Giga, of all people, with almost no provocation. The fight had started in the desert of Nevada. Rad Lad made his 'home turf' an old nuclear test site and Giga, while jumping across America miles at a time, passed right through his turf without permission. A petty reason to fight by any one's standards. But a metahuman in the position that Rad was in could be very dangerous.

Rad Lad took advantage of the fact that Giga was preoccupied with the irksome Combat Eyes and sent a burst of plasma his way. Ultra Giga saw it almost in time and hurled half a car at the ball of fire. Still some of it hit its mark and the giant hollered in pain as the tiny sun singed him. A normal man would have been cremated.

Rad Lad hovered ominously fifty yards away. Ultra was infuriated now. Without thinking he hurled the other half of the car at Rad Lad, who dodged it in the air easily. Rad was laughing now, amused by the rage he stoked. Giga screamed something like "You little twit!' or "You little shit!". His face was very red. Then Giga looked up at the Combat Eyes again. In the CEM chats there was a collective sigh as people thought Giga would begin throwing stuff at them again. CEM subscribers wanted to see metas fight metas. A least this fight was in a densely populated part of Los Angeles. The Damage King-a forum administrator- estimated the collateral at almost ninety million US now. The loss of life was no mean number either, but it was something seldom speculated on. The impact of Giga's meteoric crash landing killed many in the immediate area outright. Anyone still alive would almost certainly contract acute radiation poisoning from Rad Lad.

Ultra Giga stared at the CombEyes for a long minute. His face was no longer red and he appeared to be breathing deeply. he was speaking, no, yelling now. The survivors in the immediate area could add hearing damage to the injuries they incurred today. Giga bellowed like a chorus of metatrons. "Rad Lad! I offer my apology. I did not mean to jump through your land. I'll give you one more chance. Let's make nice and we'll both walk away!"

One full second and then the chats exploded with derision. What was Ultra Giga thinking? Even Rad Lad, who was trying to keep his war face on, smirked. Giga was a little long in the tooth, and the older metas tend to get a little weepy and sentimental. Surely they both knew they couldn't just 'walk away'.

Contractually or otherwise, there would be a fight.

"I'm gonna put you down like a lame horse, old man! Apology or not!" With that, Rad Lad began to glow a yellowish green. he was absorbing ambient heat and light, condensing it into something hotter than the tiny sun he fired earlier. Giga hefted a crushed SUV over his head. The body of one of the occupants lolled out of the driver side window, as if it fell asleep while trying to escape. Birds were dropping out of the sky from the fallout oozing out of Rad Lad. His eyes became two white hot suns. "Nnng! You ready to die now? You old bastard!" Rad Lad thrust his arms forward, preparing to launch impossibly hot plasma at Giga. For his part, Giga tensed up, readying to launch the vehicle into the path of the plasma bolt. What neither of them knew is that Rad Lad's plasma, when its as amped up as it is now, can trigger total mass conversion. When the car hit it, the resultant explosion could easily vaporize most of Los Angleles, at a conservative estimate. In the chats, a few people realized this and were trying to let others know, but they were drowned put under the barrage of idiotic cheers and insults. This was going to be big.

Ultra Giga tensed up, and Rad Lad cocked his head back, as if he were channeling energy from the sun itself. "Don't do this kid!" Giga was pleading again.Maybe he knew about the potential for mass conversion. It didn't matter. If Ultra Giga lived through this, his reputation as a hard-ass would not. He was barely audible over the roar of the energy Rad Lad was generating.

Then something completely unexpected happened. Somebody, a child, screamed, they screamed so loud the audio pickups on the CombEyes went out one by one. it was coming from inside the SUV Giga was about to throw. The scream became a supersonic keening, drowning out the roar of Rad Lad's plasma and even Gigas own confused screaming. Then the most unbelievable thing ever happened.

Rad Lad stopped glowing and the color drained from his face. he seemed to turn gray. Then, he fell to the ground,clanking. An anatomically correct lead statue complete with hollow veins and hard, thin wisps of lead wire hair. Giga could not believe what he was seeing. The plasma Rad had absorbed just sort of...fizzled. it was then that Giga made a small, feeble choking sound that was incongruous with such a huge man. His pupils dilated to the point of obscuring his gunmetal irises. He too, dropped dead.



For the first time in years the CEM chats-at least the main ones- were silent. Everyone watched this unbelievable scene.Well, everyone that could afford the hourly subscription. The recovery teams, who seldom had anything but bodies to recover, entered the area of smashed freeway only when it had proven to been somehow scrubbed of its radiation. They wore full safety protocol anyway. Like bulky orange robots, they immediately went to the vehicle that now sat on top of Ultra Giga's corpse.

The driver was dead and so was the passenger. In the back under some sweatshirts was a nine year old girl. She was catatonic, seemingly. The finding of this survivor was relayed to the highest levels of CEM management. Somewhere, not even the metas knew where, a contract awaited the girl's signature.

rapt and rictus

A clutch of topology junkies laid into a ladyboy smoking Planck thyme. They inverted the poor fucker without creating a cuff. The antiquated nanofuzz pulsed a press meme to all the major meat drives. Billions would dream of haunting mugshots and Metatrons booming: 'Have you seen this man?'. The post-mythic deconstructionists sip blood and milk in a Maori cafe, grimacing at the ethanethiol stink of the living dead turning the corner before the zombies do. Quantum uncertainty ghouls. Supplicants of Schrodinger's corpse. The leader carries a caterwauling box with no air holes. Obsolete nanodrive PCs are rendered down to a carbohydrate feed paste for livestock traversing the galaxy. Since Chuck Seven Tusp broke the femto barrier, the near orbit scrapyards won't pay more than fifty thousand terrans a kilo for nanoform media. The rest goes to the dole houses so the poor bastard kids have something to learn on. Very few people alive today know the gut level despair of growing up using outdated media. It does something to one's resolve.



A thought bulletin screeches intrusively through the brains of a North America at the dinner table. A few dozen vacuum adapted belt miners- godlike things who prance through space with no aide- were flung from their silicate bore as its attitude jets misfired. Forever they will float, in the postures of snow angels. Closed biologies that make food from monohydrogen. There faces both rapt and rictus.



The investigation of the attempted assassination of a child who will be president years from now has revealed that he will lose the future election anyway. No one bothered to shift the bullet from where it waits for its victims heart, two decades hence.



What hasn't been made public was who our almost president lost to. Her name is Bluish James, the first president on welfare while holding office. Oh yes. Yes



A boy in First Chicago was arrested yesterday for checking the future to see if he will graduate cum laudi. Charges were dropped since he only observed his graduation. The Travelstone case of Broken Earth Noon provided the precedent. In quasi-Europe the latest fad seems to be world tinting. Cindy Secondsago has mostly reds and pinks and omits all grays and shadows. She does a pulsecolumn on sensourium customizing. Think here to download it.

The Schrodinger ghouls know. They know that forty minutes to the left of winter the far-flung space workers will return, having slingshot themselves around some default moon.

I don't know I'll know how to tell you this, but the vacuum adapted will return changed, like demigods having performed feats.

On the Ceres Manufact there is a dome called Place where its occupants are soaked in time oil and forced into the evolution of every conceivable ecological niche. Already a product is being marketed to the vampire sentients in its walls; Lac. Blood, milk and sugar. Already, recombinant focus groups are now in beta testing for mass production.

You can see them now, can't you? Those far-flung gods. They will make us all monsters. They will antiquate conscience.They will put us through agonizing alterations, and shove us naked out of airlocks. They'll give us horror and altered fluids. And we'll all be the better for it. Sipping blood, milk and sugar, our faces rapt and rictus.

The Weaponized Dead by Alex Mastroianni

He heard it before he saw it. The chorus of electric motors whirring. The broken glass and shards of sheet metal strewn through the streets of the town popped and crunched under tank-like treads. They had never been meant to do anything but mangle the feet of the dead and maybe slow them up. Catterick called them caltrops.

Chet raised his binoculars as the nearing dust cloud grew. They were small vehicles like bobcats, for construction. The lead vehicle was becoming more defined, Chet could make out a small digital camera where a driver would go, and a tall aerial.

He heard them microseconds before their dusty forms became visible. The lunatic, stroke-victim braying of undead hundreds. Chet could feel the color leave his face. he forced himself to peer through the field glasses again and the lead vehicle -- less than two clicks off now -- was ahead of the dust. Mounted on the back of the mini-tank was a huge spool of steel cable- maybe a hundred yards of it. The spool ended in a huge steel ring he could fit his head through. Locked to the ring were four twenty foot steel chains, all a half-inch thick. At the end of each chain, bound in a fashion that did not hinder its mobility but also held it fast, was a fighting, hungry ghoul.

Well, he thought, that's pretty fucking clever. After that Chet was pretty much on auto-pilot,a Buddha of objectivity. Before the death he was a chemical engineer, one of the minority of Americans whose profession was not rendered useless by the permanent state of apocalypse. As a man of science he prided himself on his ability to detach. It was no small thing to say it saved his sanity and his life.

Chet dug his scout's radio out of his pack. It was a cheapo two-way radio. he raised John Catterick, the Cooperatives default leader, on his private band. As he delivered sit-rep, almost certain that whoever was operating those things was listening in, he imagined he could hear the color drain from John's face.

In another life Chet and John were brother-in laws. They had been together when The Death broke out and John never saw his wife again like Chet never saw his sister. The last eight years had made them brothers in the agony of survival.

"Pull in all the scouts." John barked back over the two-way. 'All the scouts' was only Chet and a young girl everyone called Butter. Chet only met her three days ago on scout duty. She was part of a clutch of ragged refugees who somehow made it to the Cooperative camp two weeks ago. "Chet, when you raise that kid, I want you to give her the private band."

"We hardly know her, John. she could be a Municipality mole." John hadn't warmed to Butter. What kind of a name is that? Not falling over himself to trust anybody who came wandering into camp is what kept him alive these eight years. Catterick was the polar opposite. His faith in people was both a strength and a fault. It was what made him a great leader.

"Butter?" Chet spoke into the open channel. No response. he felt stupid saying such a name. "Butter. Copy?" Nothing. "Keep Trying" John barked. he was on the public band now too. "Try spotting her. You know where she was posted? Copy" Chet did know. Se should be west of him about a half click. The encroaching ghoul tanks were a now a click northwest and would come right between him and Butter. An idea hatched in Chet's head. Find the girl first.

Chet raised his binoculars, though now he could see the tanks naked eye, to get a bearing on their progress. A month ago he and John had spray painted huge white X's on the streets of the town at each kilometer from the camp gate. the first tank was nearing the closest X. It seemed they were moving slower than when Chet first spotted them. The tanks were probably difficult to steer without running over the four zombies leashed to it. He could see the whole body of vehicles now. There were about twenty-five of them. That made one hundred ghouls on leashes of a hundred yards each. He imagined those steel cable spools could be let out. He watched the fresh ghouls fight their chains. They pulled at them in a hungry dance. Taut. Slack. Taut. Slack. it looked like all of the dead were runners, which meant they were fresh.

Only the very decayed ghoul shambled about. A freshly flipped body, with a deal of moisture still in its muscles and its motor nerves still mostly functional, could run and climb as well as any living person. Better, in fact, since they did not fatigue or ache. One hundred of them. A sick half-thought nagged at Chet for a second. Something was very wrong, apart from the obvious, that he didn't follow yet.

Chet swung his binoculars west-ward to scan the rooftops for Butter. There. She was on the laundromat waving her radio above her head with her left hand. this was sign for a broken radio. Something inside Chet's stomach turned to liquid nitrogen.

"John, Copy. Her radio is down. Copy." panic was edging its way into his voice. "Shit, Chester. I need her." This puzzled Chet. She was just some raggedy-ass kid. "Why, John?". Catterick didn't aswer right away. "Chet, you weren't there when we found her."

The camp was less than a kilometer off. It was probably them who painted these huge white X's in the street. her throat was beyond dry. Die or make it to the camp. There's always a choice. Something in the alley, between the deli and the pizza place. The people she had happened into had no noise discipline, just as she was turning , index finger on her lips, they exploded from the alley. Seven fresh ghouls, their blue hungry lips cracking over wide open jaws. They went for a middle-aged woman, who was limping slightly behind everyone else. They dog piled on her and began taking chunks out of her back and shoulders. She took one out with her .32 Beretta, right in its left ear. This drew the notice of the other six, their last meal already dead and flipping.

The rest of the group? Shit. They bugged out for the camp gates. Two ghouls flew by, blurs of gray and red, pursuing the shrieking runners. Another slug for the middle-aged women, her eyes wild with altered death as she just began to rise. The dead paused in a coiled pounce. One charged her and she pulled the trigger to a hollow click. Time became like glue as the ghouls closed the distance to her, running in an adrenaline molasses. She was acutely aware of the full clip in her jacket pocket. How could she let that happen? With perfect timing she sidestepped the first runner and kicked the back of his knee. It went down hard on the back of its head. It didn't die, but the dead are as susceptible to concussions as we are and the bastard sure as shit wasn't getting up too fast.

She pivoted and ran for a close dumpster, on top of it in one jump. She got the clip in her hand and reloaded the Beretta so fast she did not even recall doing it. She spun on a possibly fractured ankle and opened up with the pistol. She knew she caught three, before the other three's heads exploded. Instinctively, she jumped down off the dumpster, making herself as small as possible. Someone was firing on the ghouls besides her. This didn't mean they wouldn't fire on her. It seemed like a year passed before she heard a faint foghorn, or loudspeaker, bleating in staccato:

Long, short, long, short.


Long, long, long.


Long, long.


Short.

Morse code: COME. It repeated twice. A ploy? Hesitantly, she rose from the compressed crouch she was in, her left ankle aching but maybe not broken. She chanced a look at the direction of the camp. between her and the camp, a man waved a 30.06 Rifle over his head. he was on the roof of a not yet visible building. Was she safe? And what happened to her travelling companions? A nanosecond of malice flashed through her brain. She recalled the image of them running while that woman was savaged. The thought to stay and fight occurring only to her.

" So she can shoot. Big deal, John." Catterick's quick-to-trust mentality always irked him. especially, for some reason, with this kid. Who was she? Chet thought. According to Catterick, who watched her handling of a pack of dead two weeks ago, the girl could handle herself better than most. That's it! Chet realized what was bothering him about Butter. "John. She obviously has military training. She almost certainly, from what you told me, is Municipality. The Gray Berets, or whatever." The Municipality was a group of government and law enforcement remnants that, over the past five years, have been trying to consolidate their control of what was the United States. The Gray Berets were the crack ghoul suppression squads of the Municipality. It was said they also brought autonomous clutches of survivors to heel. The Cooperative was the largest of such groups. Chet Waters and John Catterick would say they didn't found the Cooperative. They'd say it founded itself, it evolved. After the first real bug-out, isolated groups of survivors linked only by short wave radio began to clear out the corridors of ghoul infested in-fill between one another. Eventually this became the Cooperative. The nation of disenfranchised survivors who stayed while the military, their neighbors, and the rest of America ran like hell when the dead began rising eight years ago.

"She is ex-municipality, Chet. She's an insub." Chet could not believe it. An insubordinate was a Gray Beret that refused to fight survivors. They were founded and trained as ghoul hunters, not shock troopers. "John, how could you? You endangered the whole camp. Nine thousand people! I'm not going along with this, I say we shut her..." Chet's radio exploded in rage. "You'll say shit Chet! Now get to her and get to the gate. I'm watching, Chet. I need her to get me one of those ghoul tanks intact! And you're gonna help her!" Jesus.

"Okay, John. okay." Chet shouldered his pack as he talked into the radio. At the same time he puzzled out how he would accomplish the taking of a ghoul tank. "I'm leaving now. And John?"
"Yes Chet?" he signaled Butter with a series of hand signs. Meet me at the camp gate on the double. "If i survive this. I'm questioning the girl. Not 'we'. I'm questioning her alone."
"Christ, Chet.." Chet wanted to relent. He hated going head to head with John Catterick.
"You want this done?" The radio crackled while Catterick held down the 'Talk' button on his end. "Okay, fine.". Chet looked at the roof where Butter was and saw she was gone. She is pretty fucking fast. He dropped a rope ladder down the side of the building and was on the ground and running fast. He could feel the engines of the tanks through his worn sneaker soles. They were less than click away, the braying of the dead audible over the engines, the crunching and popping of road debris, over everything. Chet had a theory about ghoul moans. How was it they could always be heard over anything else?

He hoped Butter was making for the gate. he hoped Catterick schooled her in the scout hand signs. His eyes stung. There was a visible hovering of dust in the air, kicked up by the treads of the encroaching ghoul tanks. Running, he turned a corner too fast and stumbled onto the main avenue leading to the camp gate. getting up, he looked behind himself to see that he was now in the direct path of the tanks. The lead one began to veer to the right. All the tanks cleared away from the middle of the street. The ghouls of one tank saw or smelled him and began fighting their steel harness even harder, they surged in front of the tank they were tethered to. The chains the were leashed to gave them just enough distance to get in front of the tank. In their frenzy, they were pulled under the tank treads in an explosion of gray meat and decomposition gasses. The sight froze Chet where he stood. he screamed inside his head for his legs to move. Why am I so terrified?

Just then a hand came down on his shoulder. Chet spun and drew his pistol, a Canadian P14-.45. It was Butter. She didn't even register that she had a .45 in her face. "Chet? Let's go. Her gaze went over his shoulder. No quite out if his panic torpor, Chet followed her stare. The tanks seem to have picked up speed, and most of them were hugging the sides of the avenue. Now they saw why.

It had to have been in the center of the pack. The dust kicked up by the other tanks hid it. It was no larger than its companions, but on the front of it was a cylinder of seven foot pieces of rebar welded solid. It was probably filled with rocks and metal. The end of it had a manhole cover with six inch cuts of rebar welded on the striking surface. at the business end a small axle with two tires held the thing up. The tank it was attached couldn't hold a huge iron spike the diameter of a manhole by itself. spray painted on the manhole was a red 'M'. Fucking Munies, thought Chet.

Butter slung her short-barreled M1 Carbine with a scope off of her shoulder. She seemed to be taking aim. "Butter!" Chet was yelling over the ghouls now, they were that close. "Let's get to the fucking gate." She ignored him and fired. The battering tank was about 100 yards off. Chet could barely see that she had disabled the small coaxial camera used by whomever controlled the thing.What a fucking shot! She glowered at Chet. "My name is Joan Butterfield. Stop calling me Butter, all of you."

The tank still had its aerial and could still be controlled , albeit blindly. It began to veer to the right, where the heavy steel gate, made of office doors welded together by a grate of steel pipes, met a masonry wall made of mortar and chunks of building debris.

Chet was frozen, like he was staring down the careening tank; playing chicken. Unhampered by chained zombies, it was moving pretty fast. Joan grabbed his shoulder, and they both dived out of the way. Even the other ghoul tanks had stopped, their far away pilots watching the drama through camera lenses. Chet, Joan, and the other defenders amassed along the wall's ramparts watched the tank meet the right door of the gate and a two foot thick stone wall in surreal adrenaline slowness. This, thought Chet, This will drown out the ghouls.

He was right. Chet and Joan were only twenty feet away from the impact. Chet was knocked out cold by a chunk of concrete foundation that was mortared into the wall. He came to in a frenzy the hands gripping him felt like the grabby gray hands of the dead, and he fought them wildly, concussed. Somebody slapped him in the face and he opened his eyes. They were full of blood and he saw double a little, but he could make out Joan and some of the wall defenders. He looked around and saw the right door of the gate hanging jagged and ajar. A good chunk of the wall was gone but it still met the hinges. The door could be dragged closed, but the wrecked tank blocked its action. As Chet came to, he heard the engines of the ghoul tanks come back to life, their passengers- able to see their quarry now- fought their chain harnesses wildly. The smashed gate would not let a tank through, but a crowd of leashed ghouls could pile in easily. Close up the gate. Chet was thinking on how to do this when somebody on the wall rampart called his name. It was Catterick.

"John! Get the cars that're inside the camp to block the open gate. Maybe that short school bus could cover it on its own!"

Catterick was frantic, barking orders aloud and into the radio, Chet observed. This was the man he would follow to hell. This cool and collected leader quelling panic and organizing a defense all at once. Then Chet heard a sound that could curdle spinal fluid.

It was like one hundred cell doors slamming home in unison. The spools of steel cable were all released simultaneously with a loud clank. The tanks themselves had stopped ten or so yards from the front gate. The tethered ghouls closed the distance fast, a gray and crimson crowd trailing clinking chains. Chet was paralyzed by the wave of dead coming right at him. Still dizzy, he stumbled as Joan pulled him inside the gate. The wall defenders were waiting for them to get inside to open fire.

The braying of the ghouls and the engines and the clanking chains drowned out the rifle reports, to Chet it looked like dead craniums were just spontaneously exploding. "Joan, we need to set up an enfilade right here at the gate, forget sealing it up if we can.."

"A bottleneck! Okay." She waved a few defenders to where the wall met the wrecked gate and they got the idea pretty quick. Ghouls were coming through the wreckage of the gate and the smashed tank packed shoulder to shoulder. Chet and Joan were at ground level and were taking them out point blank as the wormed through the wreck. For the briefest of moments Chet allowed himself to think he would survive this day. We got this!

Then something unanticipated started to happen The slack steel cable and felled zombies were piling up. Combined with the totaled tankand the rubble of the wall, this made a gently sloping ramp up to the wall. The breached gate was clogged with undead meat, and the hill of metal and corpses was like a welcome mat to the remain ghoul dozens. One was on the wall and then twenty were on the wall. Some were falling over into the camp. It's a bad ratio thought Chet. He had, years ago made up an equation of sorts. If the oncoming ghouls are swarming faster than you can clear a jam or reload, survival is unlikely. "Shit!" he grabbed Joan's sleeve and they fell back to get a better view of the havoc on the wall. Blood.Bodies. Rifles clutched in hands that forgot how to use them, being newly undead. "Clean off the wall, I've got to find Catterick" Chet took off looking for John Catterick. I may never see that girl again.

Joan was a killer shot. when she didn't hid the head, she hit the neck, severing the spine. But even an ex- Gray Beret couldn't juggle this mess. The wall defenders were reanimating, and the lack of living people on the wall was making the dead jump down into the camp in search of a meal. One got within a yard of her while she cleared a jam. They were coming faster than she could take them. Dammit. A ghoul, one of the wall gunners, got hold of her ankles, she had not seen it. It must have broken its legs dropping from the wall onto the paved lot at the edge of the beach and then dragged itself to her. She stumbled and went down, cursing the ankle she sprained weeks ago. She put one in the ghoul but had to spend time braking its fingers off her ankle. She looked up to see a dozen more fall of the wall and hit the ground running, all locked on her. She was about to put the barrel of her .32 under her chin when their heads began exploding. She rolled over prone to avoid crossfire to see about twenty ten or twelve year old boys and girls with .22 hunting rifles mowing down the ghouls. Behind them she could she Chet and Catterick.

There was a lull in the onslaught of the dead, and a young boy helped her up. Why did they stop coming? Before she could answer her own question she heard the dragging of chains. The tanks were pulling back, Their ghouls all downed.

Joan jumped to her feet. "Chet! Chet! the tanks, they're falling back!" They ran and began to scale the mound of bodies and wreckage at the broken gate.Joan caught a chain in the shoulder as it snapped, the corspes too piled up to be reeled back in by a winch.The chains were giving out. But the tanks had some way of releasing the spools of cable, and one by one they just fell off the back of the vehicles. In unison the turned on their treads and, unencumbered by raging zombies, hightailed out of there.. They both looked at eachother and thought the same thing, oh no you don't, fuckers.

Even with a bum ankle she caught up to the last tank, Chet having shot out its camera as she ran up on it from the side. She jumped atop the thing and pulled out a hunting knife, cutting the wire leading from the aerial to the controls, the tank jerked to a halt. There was nothing inside the thing that a person could steer it with. The tanks could only be radio controlled. panting, Chet came running pell mell around the huge spools of cable and felled ghouls.Catching his breath, he finished a thought he had at the start of this thing "Why did they do this, Joan? Why not just hit us with artillery? You were with'em, you know they have it. And where would they got so many fresh..."

"Intimidiation. Where do you think they got so many fresh ghouls? Chet, the fuckers infected people delibrately!" The implication of this felt like ice in his chest. "I knew they were doing something. the Municipality has this R&D ranch, and they had us Grays taking survivors alive. we were ordered specifically to take them alive. I didn't know then what they were doing but I suspected something horrible. Maybe I was shutting out the obvious." Her eyes were welling up. Something in Chet's throat ached. "I never imagined this." She swept an arm at the havoc around them in the street. "Joan.." Chet began "I'm sorry I suspected you of anything. I'm not like John, I can't see the good inherent in people, and after this, well..." He looked her in the eyes square. "I'm sorry".

For a full minute the two of them just stood there, fighting down sobs."Don't go all estrogen on me, Chet." They both laughed. The two of them laughing, surrounded by rot and horror. "This was just a warning, Chet. Make sure John knows. the Munies were just dipping a toe in the water.The 'll be back and it will be worse" Chet looked off at the dust cloud of the retreating tanks and a shudder went to his core. We must've lost thirty people today.

"Okay, lets get something to tow this fucking tank. And don't tell anyone I cried" Joan smiled knowingly. "Likewise."

Short Fiction by Alex Mastroianni

This blog is called SF Purgatory. On it you will find some of my short , loosely SF stories. Coming soon is a zombie fiction story called "The Weaponized Dead".

see you a round
-Alex M. Mastroianni
Brooklyn 2008