David Dunwoody - Empire's End

Goldhammer made a wet noise inside his helmet. Ryland heard it over the gunfire.

Pawing through his own innards, the dead soldier came at his former commander. Former as of thirty seconds ago — yes, he was fresh undead, and there was still some basic military protocol embedded in that brain of his, wasn’t there, so Ryland threw his out (wrist broken, he felt) and screamed “STOP!!”

Goldhammer did, crouching on all fours with a rope of intestine dragging between his legs. He cocked his head and was the perfect picture of a sick dog. He was trying to recognize the word and why it had halted him in his tracks. Ryland could see the gears turning, like the gears in Grinning Samuel’s jaw, and at that moment Samuel ripped into the firing squad and the hail of bullets was reduced to a drizzle. Goldhammer pounced.

Ryland pivoted on his broken wrist with a blinding snap of pain and caught the other between his glassy bug-eyes with a bootheel. Goldhammer grunted, batted the leg aside. They wrestled there on the ground with Ryland kicking himself further and further down the tunnel, all the while aware that soon Samuel would be finished with the others. Backpedaling on his hands and hindquarters, he disturbed a pile of pebbles — no, gears, the strewn contents of the briefcase! Ryland closed his good hand around a fistful of them and, with a half-hearted cry befitting the last act of a dead man, hurled them into Goldhammer’s face. Relatively pointless but still an amusing precursor to Samuel’s hand sweeping down like a wrecking ball and crushing Goldhammer’s skull against the wall. The soldier crumpled to clear a path for the grinning afterdead. His steel maw was painted with rust from the insides of Ryland’s men. The zombie knew right where his prey was, and Ryland’s situation hit rock bottom as the damaged klieg lights faded out.

“STOP!! STOOOOOOOOOOP!!!” he shrieked. He now knew for certain that Samuel could still hear by the way that his pace quickened. A barely discernable silhouette in the faint remnants of light, Grinning Samuel’s grasping fingers squealed as he drew closer. Ryland’s back struck a wall. He waited for those fingers to find his heart.

His broken wrist was jerked into the air. He screamed, imagining his entire arm to be gone. But it wasn’t, and Samuel wasn’t even moving now. With his breath caught in his throat, Ryland just sat and listened in the dark.

And then he heard it…

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

His wrist twisted a little. He bit into his lip while Samuel traced the band of his gold wristwatch. The pair remained motionless in the shadows for what seemed like an eternity, but Ryland counted the ticks and tocks and knew it was less then a minute. Finally, in spite of both terror and logic, he stammered, “it’s a Rolex.”

The watch left his wrist, and intact arm dropped into moist lap. Samuel could be heard shuffling off into the catacombs, going down beneath the parish churchyard where the mystery of his unlife dwelled. The tick-tock, tick-tock gradually ceased.

Ryland sucked icy air into his lungs and sat there for what really did seem an eternity. There were a few dull spots of light visible down the tunnel. There, he’d have to confront the remains of his slaughtered team; but Samuel did quite the number on them, and none would be getting back up. He pushed his ankles through the dirt until the circulation returned to them and tried to stand. Still a bit shaky, wrist throbbing like mad. And goddamn it was getting colder by the second. He took another breath, sat back down, and listened to the silence.

Then he heard it…

Meow .

Ryland smiled just a little, as much as his strength would allow, and reached a blind hand into the darkness.

Hell, from a scientific perspective: the Big Bang spit sub-atomic particles in every direction through the nether. This newborn fabric of existence was torn asunder and sewn back together with every passing nanosecond — a ceaseless quantum storm. Chaos was, in fact, the seed of Order; and even now the matter both inside and out of our bodies is subject to this frenetic cosmic turmoil.

In the very beginning, through an infinitesimal rip that closed almost as soon as it opened — something struck through. Dark matter spewed across the infant universe at a speed beyond that of light, a speed reserved for the supernatural whose laws contradict all nature. Some of these tendrils of darkness were snagged in cooling gas clouds. Some of their dark energy was trapped within stars and planets.

This is a story about one world with this strange energy coiled about its core, leaking through fissures in the crust here and there to manifest chaos. It’s a story insignificant in the whole of time; nevertheless, the great architects record these events.

It begins with hot lead punching through the left ventricle of Pete Clarke’s heart. The bullet corkscrews through his meat, bounces off vertebrae and chews into bone. He feels its wake in him, a burning tongue lancing his torso, and he falls heavily.

Democratic Republic of Congo—2 hours earlier

Another coup, another civil war, another quiet genocide. Guerillas and tribes were clashing in the rainforests, senseless slaughter in which neither side understood the other’s agenda. Clarke’s team had touched down in the midst of it with mock UN seals adorning both their uniforms and their chopper. Whittaker skirted the makeshift encampment and snuffed a couple of colobus monkeys that had watched their descent from the trees. A veteran of jungle warfare and extreme survival alike, Whittaker took pride in securing the perimeter. His grizzled face was flushed with exuberance uncommon for a man his age. Bagging the monkeys, he slung his rifle over one shoulder and headed back to Clarke’s position. The team leader was hunched over a satellite phone setup. “Uplink’s not working,” he said softly, perhaps not even aware of the other’s presence. Whittaker clued him in by dropping the bag into the dirt.

“I said we wouldn’t need kickers.” Clarke muttered without looking up. “You don’t know this region any better than I do,” Whittaker replied. “Why not play it safe?”

“You just like plugging the little guys.” Clarke smacked the side of the console.

Whittaker grinned. “I don’t have any subordinates of my own to abuse, Captain.”

Clarke smiled back. He enjoyed the camaraderie among his men, but at the same time felt a twinge of discomfort over their complacency. Bradshaw was coming over now, lugging a few clear plastic cylinders; he guffawed at the sight of the monkey bag. He had a raucous belly laugh befitting an imposing black man, and Clarke had to silence him with a stern look. “Ken,” he said to Bradshaw, “see what you can do with the sat phone. I’m gonna go break Harmon in.”

Whittaker snorted as Bradshaw took Clarke’s place at the console. “Radio’s as good as any of this shit.” Punching keys, Bradshaw shook his head. “Time isn’t gonna wait for you to catch up, Whittaker.” He produced a few tiny plastic bags from his vest and tossed them. “Take care of the lanterns while I do this?”

Catching the baggies, Whittaker nodded gruffly and scooped up the plastic cylinders. The old man was efficient, good at following orders, but he longed to be the one giving them, didn’t he? Bradshaw watched him tromp away. No one had the heart to tell him that, at fifty-six years, with three decades of service under his belt, he was still a grunt doing busy work.

Harmon, on the other hand, had been charged with prepping the arsenal, a critical task. She didn’t view it that way, but no one ever did when it was their first time in the field. At least that’s what Clarke was telling her. “Widowmaker’s your best friend,” he said, perched in the side hatch of the chopper. He was referring to a cleaver-like blade with a molded grip and knuckle guard, a simple yet intimidating piece of weaponry. One was laid out for each team member. “That leads us to Rule One — no headshots. Your firearm is meant as a last resort. Bullet to the brain only kills what little impulse control still exists in afterdead. So if you shoot, aim for the limbs.” Taking up a widowmaker, Clarke slipped it into a sheath on his back. “Decaps will render them harmless. You’ve been trained in close-quarters combat — rely on your widowmaker.”