REBOOTS Page 4

  “I know, goddamnit, but we can’t stop to open any of the doors, or he’ll catch up with us!” Beneath the panic and terror clouding his mind—two sensations that Tony had not experienced in millennia—an analytical part of him wondered why most of the doors they came to were locked. It was almost as if they were being herded somewhere, driven ever forward by the beast at their backs.

  “What’re we going to do, Tony? Oh fuck!—” Hephaestus went flying ahead of the group, tossed bodily by Fred. He slammed into a bulkhead with a sickening and wet crunch; his ribs were protruding from his back from the force of the blow. Recognition clicked for Tony; they were at the airlock! Without thinking, he shoved the other two Fangs into it, then kicked Hephaestus inside, while hitting the activation relay so hard that the housing around it bent and creaked. In a split second, the inner airlock doors closed with a snap-hiss. Fred barreled into the door, his fury fueling strike after strike against it. His claws raked against the metal to fruitlessly send showers of sparks into the air, and he howled impotently at having his prey so close but out of reach at the same time. Even if he’d had the mind to use controls, they weren’t where he could get at them. Shipside door airlock controls were all on the inside of the airlocks for a reason. Nobody could get shoved inside unconscious and spaced that way, or at least, not easily. You could override from the main control room, but that would take some significant planning, and Fred was not exactly thinking in this state.

  Tony put his back against the bulkhead. He was in better shape than the others, but only marginally.

  They were safe. Tony automatically began to plan. They could put on suits to keep from getting cold-damaged and protect them from sunlight. Grigoire could get to either the control room or the aux control from outside and override the viewports. Without moonlight, Fred would change back to human form back eventually no matter where in the ship he was. Or, they could just wait him out, hoping he’d stay in this section.

  They all began to chuckle, which broke down into fullout uproarious laughter. They didn’t really breathe, but it was a stress reaction that their dead bodies still remembered. It was a ghastly sight, in truth: four broken bodies, dead in most ways that counted, laughing and spilling more blood all over the deck. Tony had to wipe blood-tears from his eyes, he was laughing so hard. Fred continued to rage outside of the door, pounding against it relentlessly with his impossibly powerful fists.

  Their laughter died as one when one of the space suits that was stored in a wall alcove stood up straight. The blast visor flipped up to reveal a Reboot inside of it, illuminated by the harsh helmet lights.

  The grav kicked off, right on schedule, as I raised the blast-shield on the suit. I looked at them through the visor, and all they could do was look at me in stunned silence as they rose slightly from the floor. I knew that this made no sense to them, that this was so out of character for a Reboot even their lightning reflexes would not be able to save them, especially without footing. So, baring my busted teeth through my patchwork lips in the most evil Bond-villain grin I could manage, I said, “Adios, suckers.” In two smooth motions, I flipped them “the bird,” and then snapped up the safety for the outer airlock doors. In the old movies, they used to show people getting sucked into space in a rush of atmosphere, trying to scrabble and hang on to anything they could. It doesn’t really work like that, though, not when no one is ready for it, anyway. One second, the Fangs were there. The next, I felt a slight jolt against my restraint harness, and they were gone into the blackness, like darts out of a blowgun. There was nothing in the airlock but me and my suit; it was like Tony and the rest of his bastard brethren never even existed.

  Then I waited; being a Reboot, I’m pretty good at that. When the banging from the other side of the door subsided, I waited some more. Couldn’t hurt to be too careful, and besides, we had a plan. Stick to the plan. In movies, it was when you didn’t stick to the plan that things went off the rails. So, I just floated there, whistling some old commercial jingles to myself. Funny how that stuff sticks in your mind. I don’t drink anything, but there I was, rattling the words to a cola commercial around in my head, or what was left of it. Halfway through it, the outer doors closed and the chamber repressurized, and the grav came back on again. I unhooked myself from the restraint harness, looking to the door. There was a flash of hazard lights, and the heavy blast doors opened. On the other side, as planned, was Pete.

  “Dude…is that you?”

  “No, it’s Hannibal Lecter. I’ve come for you, Clarice.” I trotted forward, enjoying the feeling of the artificial gravity again; weightlessness isn’t my thing, even though my stomach doesn’t really get queasy anymore. “Where’s Fred?”

  “Probably sleeping it off somewhere, man. When he trips bad like that, he usually gets a killer headache afterwards. Dude, are you sure that we can trust him?”

  “Pete, we’ve gotten this far. Time to take it the last mile.” Besides, he was the only one who knew how to fly this boat. While we could probably sit up here for a while, eventually orbit would decay and then…a very fancy cremation. It was now, or never.

  Fred did wake up with a headache. If he had been cognizant enough through the immense pain to think about it, he would have declared that this was the worst headache in the history of man, living or unliving. Once the pain went from mind-blanking to merely Olympic, he started to remember—or notice—a few things.

  Like the fact that his clothing was in pieces, which meant he’d almost certainly Changed. And that his last real memory, before the usual flash of blood and screaming and then nothing but red, red rage, was of three full moons staring down at him, as if they were laughing at what would come next. And…and a Reboot opening the ports.

  While talking?

  No, that part had to be a hallucination. His mind did that sometimes, right at the Change, as if it was trying to protect him from what was coming.

  Looking around, he took stock of his situation. He was in a storeroom for tools. Sometimes when he wolfed out, the others would corral him into a room and lock him in until his Change wore off. Then he noticed that the door was torn inwards, and that there was blood all over it.

  “What the hell is going on?” His voice was thick and scratched. Even though he regenerated constantly, roaring and howling a lot took its toll on his human-again vocal cords. “Grigoire? Antonio? Anyone?” His eyes caught movement in the hallway beyond the door; a person-shaped smudge of shadow against shadows. Probably one of the Fangs here to chew him out for busting the door.

  “Hey, which one of you assholes made a Reboot open the shutters in the observation deck? There were three goddamned full moons out there!” The figure stepped through the ruined door; it was dressed in a space suit, obscuring the identity.

  “Oh, that was me. Sorry about that, friend.” Friend? He’d been called plenty while on this flight, with some of it so off-color that the Dark Prince, hell-red bastard that he was, would’ve blushed upon hearing it. But he’d never been called friend.

  “Seriously, who is that in there?” That voice wasn’t familiar either. Had they—no, surely they hadn’t been intercepted by another ship! Okay, there’d been rumors of FTL in the works but nothing but rumors…

  The figure seemed to look down at itself.

  “Oh, the suit.” The suited figure took off its helmet; beneath was the Reboot that had looked at Fred funny-like a few days ago. It grinned. A Reboot grinning…

  “I’m the local Sheriff,” it drawled. “Heard there was some trouble. Looked like you could use a hand, pard.”

  He felt exactly the way he’d felt when he’d been taze-stunned at the end of his first Change by the Norm cops. “All the demons of hell, it talks!”

  Could a Reboot look sheepish? This one shrugged, anyway. “Uh, yeah. About that. Name’s Skinny Jim. Pleased to meet you, Fred.”

  Fred was so flabbergasted by this turn of events, that he found himself deep in a conversation before the “stunned” wore off. Oh, he ha
d heard about the “intelligent” Reboots, but he’d always thought they were an urban legend. The entire “zombie uprising” had occurred decades before Fred was even born, after all, and the general consensus among people of his generation had been that the “King of the Zombies” had been nothing more than a figment of the fevered imaginations of the authorities. Either that, or a manufactured “threat” to give them the power to do pretty much what they wanted to do with the Paras.

  Joke was on him, it seemed.

  Joke was—even more so—on the Fangs, who were drifting in a decaying orbit right now, and who would, if not rescued, eventually come to a fiery end, conscious and starving most of the way. Serves the bastards right, all said and done. Just wish I could see it.

  They spent a good long while talking. The Reboot explained his plight, and what he had done about it. Fred wanted to be angry, wanted to be filled with righteous fury for being used. He knew that he should destroy the Reboot, and flush the rest out of the pen and into space, then report back to the Home Service immediately.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to do any of these things. It didn’t take him long to decide that things had just become a lot more interesting on the UES Cenotaph, and he suspected…a lot more peaceful, too. No more getting drained to feed evil bastard Fangs. No more orders from Tony, needling from Grigoire, bitching from Hephaestus, or dueling with Barnabas. Taking stock of everything, Fred was suddenly happier than he had been in over a century and a half.

  “Well, how about that. You know, Jim, I’d shake your hand, but—” He shrugged uneasily, looking at the deck.

  Skinny Jim didn’t have much in the way of an expressive face, what with the sunken eyes, retracted lips displaying broken teeth, and shriveled-taut skin, but somehow he conveyed resignation. “Yeah, I know, I’m a zombie.”

  “Hey, it could come off!”

  They both shared a laugh, although the Reboot’s was kind of wheezy. It was the first real laugh that Fred had had for many, many years. One not tainted by schadenfreude, or at the expense of someone else. It felt good, and it felt clean. Fred also noticed that it was as if a weight was off of his shoulders, and that was also good, welcome.

  A smile broke out over his face. He didn’t immediately notice when another Reboot trudged up behind Jim.

  “Oh, Fred, I want you to meet Pete. Fred, Pete. Pete, Fred.”

  The skateboarding one! Fred goggled. He felt his eyes bulging when it opened its mouth. “Yo, dude. ’Sup?”

  “Ye gods, two of them! I mean…two of…you…” It wasn’t every day that a werewolf met a talking zombie, much less two of them. The shock wore off quickly, though; after the rollercoaster of emotions, combined with his still monstrously bad headache, he didn’t have the energy to stay stunned and stupid for too long. “So, why didn’t you guys talk earlier? Why didn’t you flush me out of the airlock with the rest of those scum-suckers?”

  Jim stepped forward. “You remember Xavier. Right? The ‘Zombie Emperor’? After that, any of us that seemed to possess any greater cognitive ability than your average jar of mayo were exterminated. Being anything but another mindless deader didn’t do much for anyone’s survival chances.”

  “Yeah, but that still doesn’t answer why you didn’t flush me out of the ship, also. If I weren’t cool with this, I could take the ship back to Earth. Or just rekill you myself and save the Home Service the trouble.” Fred placed his hands on the hips of his tattered jumpsuit, trying to present a strong front, even though he wasn’t truly feeling it.

  “Honestly, that was the weakest part of the plan. But, you suffered just as much as we had under the Fangs, if not more; they actively hated you, while we were just scenery and mildly useful furniture. So, I—I mean, we—took a chance. It was worth it to see Tony’s face when all the atmo got sucked out into the aether and them with it.”

  A fiendish smile crept across Fred’s face. “Damn, I wish I could’ve seen that, actually.”

  “Good news is, I recorded it via the ship’s security system. Wanna see it?”

  “Bet your ass I do.” He paused, thinking for a moment. “Well, what do we do now? We can’t really go back to Earth, which isn’t that big of a loss. Place is a hole, or at least it was when I left.”

  Skinny Jim nodded. “Me and Pete thought about that. We figured that finding a decent planet with lots of yellow sun would be a good start, one that can bake us nice and leathery. High UV to sterilize the bacteria. Kill the rot, and a little oil solves most of our problems. For you, well, pick one with no moons and plenty of stuff for you to munch on, or only one moon and stuff the Were can eat, and when you go human again you’ve got the ship’s garden. As for everything else—” he pulled out a deck of playing cards from his pocket, “have you ever played poker?”

  It took us a while, but we found pretty much what we were looking for. Yellow phase star, no moons and not a lot of exploitable resources. Someplace that wouldn’t off-hand look too attractive to the Home Service. We called it “Planet Hawaii,” since it was mostly islands and mostly tropical. And contrary to what you are probably thinking, “island paradise” planets are not on the top of the list for places to go. Home Service wants commercially viable resources, and the number of people that can afford to take off-world trips to tropical islands that vary only from the same kind you find on Earth by the exotic flora and fauna are…well, you’re not going to be able to find enough to support a single trip, much less a resort. Nevermind that none of them would ever live long enough to get here, even with hyper-sleep tubes. You still age, even when you sleep.

  So this was our little pocket paradise. Screw the non-contamination directive, our seeds would grow here, so besides the hydroponic garden, we figured we’d have the Reboots out there doing the slave-labor for a little plantation for Fred, and what with the place being mostly ocean and all, the water wasn’t salt, so we just needed a nice big lagoon we could cut off from the rest of the oceanic biosphere. We’d find an island that had one, sterilize it, and seed it with algae. Once that got started we could transplant more tilapia, and bingo. Fred would be set forever. We did all that, and settled down, happy as beach-bums can be.

  As for us, all we needed was that nice hot sun and oil. Fish and some of the peanuts that the greenhouse had in it provided oil. We Reboots really didn’t need to eat brains to keep going, so we saved the freeze-dried stuff for me and Pete for kicks, and let the others do without. They wouldn’t touch Fred—more of the Para influence than anything—so although they moaned a lot, it was no big deal.

  In six months, we were self-sustaining. Then it got better, because even the moaning stopped, and I found the Reboots scrounging some sort of fungus that they seemed happy to munch on. At least, I think it was a fungus. It was spongy, neon-orange, and when I tasted it, it was actually better than the freeze-dried crap we subsisted on. I figured I would wait and see what happened to them in the long term before I moved the stuff onto my dinner plate, but it looked like a viable option for the others now.

  I kind of hoped whatever the orange stuff was wasn’t sentient, but hey. Survival of the fittest and we were only harvesting one island, so screw it. If it wanted to survive here, it could evolve a mouth and talk to us, or grow some legs and run for it.

  Naturally, Pete didn’t hold any of my reservations, and started chowing down as soon as he tasted it. Whatever. While I dimly liked him for our mutual plight of undead sentience, if he wanted to risk himself, I wasn’t going to stop him, and I could watch him for signs of lapsing into the usual Reboot coma due to his new diet.

  Fred and I could always change over to chess from poker if that happened.

  So, Pete and I baked to a nice, healthy, flexible brown in the tropical sun. Fred got a tan. Pete taught us both to surf, such surfing as there was on a planet with no moons, and we all settled down to a pretty nice and quiet life, even if I did smell like Planters Best from the peanut oil. Fred said it was a much-appreciated change from perma-rot. Me, I never had not
iced.

  “Ante up, sucker,” I said, pushing my chips across the table. I had a good hand. A really good hand. Which meant that when Fred lost, he’d have to do my bidding, muwahaha. I was trying to decide what that would be. I was powerfully inclined to an external speaker system so we could play some music out here. I was pretty sure he could rig it, and reasonably sure we could weatherproof it. We didn’t have crazy tides due to lacking a moon, but we did have some powerful weather systems and seriously impressive storms.

  Fred scratched the back of his head. “I feel like I’m forgetting something.” It was our third year on planet, and things had been humming along fairly smoothly for a while. The other Reboots were all doing their thing, we had the luxuries we wanted, and there wasn’t anyone to bother us in this corner of the galaxy. The orange sponge hadn’t evolved a mouth, and Pete hadn’t turned into a wandering corpse, so I’d added the tasty stuff to my menu. We hadn’t bothered to check on the subspace radio for news for over two years, since it was all more of the same. So-and-so tin-pot dictator was toppled, new government rises, such-and-such planet was annexed for whoever corporation, Home Service celebrates the whatever. We in the ships might have been taking the long and slow route, but communication was still at real-time speeds. It mattered little to us; we were separate, insular and sufficient unto ourselves. The only thing we got from the rest of the civilized galaxy was that we’d set up the computer to continue the automatic downloads of entertainment stuff, which flooded in faster than we could watch or listen to it. Home Service did that much for the ships, probably because otherwise the crews would kill each other from boredom; providing they’d been less like ours had been, that is. Life was good.