Тим Пауэрс - Free Stories 2018

She didn’t say no, and she didn’t say yes. A hand came into my hand, gently caressed it, and squeezed it.

“But we would always know that we had run away, wouldn’t we?”

But to live with you , I thought… and there was a stab in my gut, reminding me that the decision, one way or another, had already been made.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I said. “Show me what we need to do.”

Once again, we moved slowly, as different components were taken out, cables were hooked up, switches and such were inspected. Ludmilla said, “There were attempts, many attempts, to set up timers, or mechanical devices, or even a long, long cable to be used, to explode the device. It never worked. Some sort of… haze? Field? From the Dome? Only after volunteers hand-exploded, did it work.”

“Why two?”

“With one, it was too long to haul, too much chances of being found. And… two. There would be two to press the switch, in case one… runs.”

I nodded, just followed her directions.

All thought out.

And then, too soon, we were done.

We sat against a rise in the dirt, the bomb at our feet, ready and connected to go off and kill everything in the vicinity.

Two cables ran out of one of the black boxes, each ending in a trigger switch. I took one and Ludmilla took the other.

“What… now?” I asked.

The sun started to come up.

“Down there,” she said. “That’s the battery. You turn that switch down there… the light goes from red to green… powering up… when it turns to green… it’s time.”

“Okay.”

The sun came up higher. But there was little sound. No birds, no animals, nothing in this zone of death.

Ludmilla slipped her hand into mine, and then reached down, toggled a switch.

A red light came on.

She came back, cuddled up against me.

The light turned green.

“Ludmilla…”

“Please, Walter.”

“Wait, just for a bit.”

“Walter…”

“No,” I said. “There’s a reason.”

“What?”

I said, “I’m in intelligence. I keep track of things… according to the last orbital mechanics I saw, the new Orbital Battle Station should be showing up in a few minutes.”

She didn’t say anything and sitting against the dirt, I was feeling the vibrations coming through from whatever the Creepers were doing inside the Dome. There were probably human prisoners in there, and I hoped their souls or afterlife would forgive us for what we were about to do.

Then again, they might be thankful.

“Walter, I don’t understand.”

I squeezed her hand. “Wouldn’t it be something… if the Creepers’ orbital base was overhead, and they were looking down… they would see us destroying this Dome. Showing them that we’re still fighting. That we won’t give up.”

“Ah… how soon?”

“Very soon,” I said.

She moved even closer to me, kissed me.

“ Da , that we do. We wait. We show them.”

So we sat there, the only free humans in probably miles around, and I was hoping for a lot more time, to talk to Ludmilla, to find out more about here, her life, her hopes, her regrets… thinking of what we might have been able to do together if—

There it was.

Rising up from the horizon.

“I see it,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“You… we will wait, then we’ll do it together. Okay?”

I kissed her and kissed her.

“Together,” I said.

The Orbital Battle Station was nearly overhead, and then—

Light.

"I swear I will faithfully, loyally and honorably serve the Supreme Pontiff and his legitimate successors, and dedicate myself to them with all my strength, sacrificing, if necessary, my life to defend them. I assume this same commitment with regard to the Sacred College of Cardinals whenever the Apostolic See is vacant. Furthermore, I promise to the Commanding Captain and my other superiors respect, fidelity and obedience. I swear to observe all that the honor of my position demands of me."

Pontifical Swiss Guard Oath administered to graduating recruits

The day that we locked the doors on the Sistine Chapel, the conventional wisdom inside the College of Cardinals was that His Holiness had died in his sleep from the flu stage of the devil-spawned plague. That wasn’t, strictly speaking, true.

I should know.

I shot him myself.

If anyone’s listening to this, then you know all about the zombie virus that the scientists called H7D3. It raced around the Earth, killing off hundreds of millions, and eventually billions. Some people appeared to be either naturally immune or capable of fighting through the first stage of the flu. That still didn’t leave enough to deal with either the mounds of decaying bodies or the living, perpetually hungry afflicted, which outnumbered the sane by hundreds to one.

We, the Guard I mean, started with a strength of almost one hundred and fifty. There were another hundred or so Vatican Gendarmerie at the beginning, but unlike the Guard they were more like police, equipped for crowd control and border security. They could marry early, have children—so many of them made the difficult decision to desert their posts in order to protect their families.

Understandable. They weren’t personally sworn to the Bishop of Rome. Just damned awkward for those of us that were left inside the walls. In the end, I doubt that many found any lasting safety. A few months on and there’s no view from the parapet where Rome isn’t mostly smoldering buildings and mobs of mindless infected.

By the time that the decision was finally made to use a vaccine made from the spines of the infected humans, we were at three-quarters strength and dropping and we were without the guidance of the Holy Father, whom we’d pledged our lives to protect.

Our Faith, all of our training, our weapons, the thick walls of Vatican City—how do you fight an infinitesimally tiny virus without medicine?

As it turns out, the pope had been aware of the existence of a vaccine. He also knew how it was made. We were told, later, that he had prayed for guidance and determined that the use of such a vaccine was sinful.

We were sworn to obey His Holiness or his successor.

So, no vaccine even though it was available before the worst hit.

At least he was consistent, which was more than could be said of much of the leadership of the Holy Church.

Which you will also know from the papers documenting the scandals of the church, such of those records that survived the Fall. One of the upsides of the Plague, as it turned out, was that we all got to start again, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

I’m Hauptman Matteo Gagliardi, commanding the remnants of the Pontifical Swiss Guard. Until the light of this Fallen world is re-kindled, we will hold the ramparts of Vatican City.

Or die on them.

… I didn’t start writing anything down at first. It was God’s own truth; the disease didn’t start out as a recognizable catastrophe; it began like something akin to a really bad joke. In retrospect, I can see that I began recording this diary after the most severe shock of my life. However, at the time I was just desperately reacting to one disaster after another.

If anyone listens to this, it’s going to sound like several series of rationalizations, all meant to justify what I did. But you weren’t there, were you, because if you were, that meant that you survived. You did what you had to do in order to stay alive, didn’t you?