The sun hangs low in the clear blue sky, which still holds a tinge of nighttime’s violet. The snowstorm has been replaced with a bright chill. Shortening shadows drag alongside the trio as they slog through the snow on the outskirts of the city in the morning. The residential streets narrow and wind into trees and forests. Some of the roads have long since fallen to under encroaching vegetation, making it even more difficult to walk.
The woods are dense, having had seventy years of growth built up and no human influence to push them back. Some native species, in hues of purple and yellow, can be seen poking through the Earth vegetation. The strange bulbous purple vines snake through the ruins of buildings and curl around the rusting guard rails.
Genetically modified vegetation concocted by the galactic corporations, however, has overtaken much of surface of the planet, uncontested by native species. Grave has gotten very cold since the zombie plague, sinking it into an eternal winter; the tropical plants of Earth have not survived. Most of the trees the original settlers had planted, however, were fast-growing modified evergreens. These survive the freezing temperatures with sharp dark green needles coated with snow and frost, and they have flourished over much of the planet. Rigo suspects that eventually they will cover the entire thing, with all traces of humans eventually disappearing beneath the trees and snow.
The snow is pristine in front of them, but behind them are trampled veins in the hills showing their exact route. Rigo does not like the tracks they are leaving, but they have no ground car like a safari group to carry them over the deepest drifts. Sceps simply plows through the snow in his armour while Luka and Rigo trail him, following Sceps’s corridor in the snow. Rigo still stays behind Luka, keeping an eye on him. He doesn’t believe that the man will shoot them anymore, but Sceps is still suspicious.
The snow drifts finally disappear into a thin ice crust on the road as it trails off in the hills. The hills are covered in meadows of long yellow grass and encircled with evergreen trees. They are forced to walk in the edge of the trees, a prospect Rigo and Sceps do not enjoy while this bumbling tourist trails them. They usually avoid the hills and the trees as much as they can, preferring the ruined urban areas, which offers better cover and better hunting. It has been difficult to decide their route. This area is less likely to have people than the destroyed towns and cities, but the ones that are here are harder to spot. They can also barely hear anything over the sound of Luka walking through the tree branches they easily avoid. Rigo wonders once again if he has made a mistake taking on the man.
They spend an entire day crossing the hills, sticking to the line of trees that border the grassy meadows. It is long, quiet walk. They don’t hear any more gun shots, although Sceps and Rigo always have an ear cocked to listen. The two corpse hunters do not speak to each other as they walk on, but Luka occasionally breaks the silence to ask a question about the planet or about his newly acquired and reluctant guides.
“Do you live in Arkhangelsk, Rigo?” Luka turns and looks back at Rigo expectantly. Rigo wonders if the man has ever realised that Sceps and him have never let him get out from between them.
Rigo pauses for a moment, trying to think of an answer. He does not wish to give too much personal information to the man. Rigo thickens his Dutch accent as he talks, something he used to do for tourists when he was a guide.
“No, I live in a tree house, bro.” He answers laconically as he scans the trees for movement.
The team of three corpse hunters do have quarters back in Arkhangelsk but are rarely there. They stay in the badlands south of the city, and in the few sparse walled villages the authorities in Archangelsk pretend do not exist. The spaceport’s hedonism does not appeal; the people there behave as if they live in a barn most of the time. Also, the guides do not like to have corpse hunters around their clients, even though the line between guide and corpse hunter sometimes blurs. Most of the guides are not above killing to collect dog tags for insurance money. A man must eat, after all.
“Did I get you…you live in tree house?” Luka asks.
“Yeah” Rigo says, surprised that Luka believes him.
“That’s so cool, I like to sleep in the forest and stuff like that. I also like to sleep in the trees, with a tree tent. It’s so nice. And you live in a tree house?” Luka seems very pleased with this ridiculous conversation.
“Yeah, uh, it’s cozy.” Rigo decides to keep going. He doesn’t look at Luka, instead scanning the ridgeline above them and the trees behind them. Sceps is watching the trees in front of them.
“Is it, uh, 100,000 credits? Is it here on Grave or another planet?”
“Yeah, here, with a garage and everything.”
“What?”
Rigo just shrugs at Luka. He wonders if Luka has caught on yet.
“I would like a tree house,” Luka says softly to himself. He starts clicking photos of the trees, the conversation ending for now.
The three of them continue on silently for some time before Luka starts speaking again.
“You collect many reconstitution devices?” he asks. This is a dangerous topic. Sceps might not take to it kindly.
“Yes. And return them to Archangelsk to be revived.”
“You kill a lot of people for their tags?” Luka stops and looks at Rigo.
Rigo feels that Luka should have figured this out by now.
“Yes.” Rigo does not elaborate.
They walk on, but Rigo can feel another question brewing in Luka.
“How long do you go into the badlands and how many do you get each time?” Luka asks.
“Are you interviewing me, bro?” Rigo asks.
“No, I’m interested. I’m a curious guy.” Luka responds. He backs down, but Rigo decides to answer.
“We don’t keep track of time. Sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes we don’t make it back.”
“Oh. You die?”
“Yes.”
“And are reconstituted back in Archangelsk, only to start again?”
“Pretty much, dude.”
They walk on, with the conversation dying once again until there is a crackle in the air like static electricity. Luka startles and looks around with fear. Looking up he notices that a faint aurora has appeared in the blue daytime sky. A shimmer of purple and orange ripples in the sky above the hills. It is an aurora in the daytime sky.
“What was that?” Luka asks. He looks expectantly to Rigo.
“It means the storm will come soon,” Rigo answers.
“The electrical storm?”
“Yeah. But don’t worry, it’s easy to avoid.”
“This aurora looks different than on Earth. It’s purple and orange. The one I know is purple and green. And usually only appears at night.”
“I don’t know, man.”
Luka pulls out his camera to take some pictures of the sky. Rigo has to push him along every time he stops to get a good angle.
“That’s good,” Luka states as he gets yet another picture of the aurora. He continues thoughtfully, “I’m glad you didn’t kill me.”
“Hmm, I tried.” Rigo winces internally at the memory of missing the shot. He wishes Sceps had not witnessed that; he will not let him forget.
“Yeah, I was trying to kill the zombies, then you shot.”
“I’m kind. of surprised when I shot you, I didn’t hit you. It felt kind of awkward, I don’t know what happened.”
“I was wondering why you didn’t hit me the first time.”
“Yeah, I have no clue, man, maybe it’s just meant to be.” Rigo shrugs. The German is too nice and friendly. He is going to be upset when the man dies. Even though he talks a lot.
“The way you guys shot the zombies around the container; it was so fast. I have never seen guides shoot that fast, even in the training rooms.”
Rigo grins, despite himself. Sceps, who has slowed down and is standing in a clump of trees nearby, snorts at his reaction. Sceps points down a trail into the trees, towards a frozen lake set between the hills. There is a small village built next to the lake, a vacation resort from the time before the plague.
By the time twilight darkens the sky, making the aurora bright purple and orange, the three make it to the edge of the resort, where log cabins haphazardly line the streets. Faded signs dot the resort, advertising weeklong stays and continental breakfasts, now weathered and barely legible, reminders of when it was bustling with activity.
Despite its rustic appearance, Rigo knows that the interior of the cabins had been installed with all the technology that modern life encompassed. Inside, they would have boasted amenities like climate control, fully equipped kitchens, and entertainment systems. However, the surface-level aesthetic of log cabins was maintained, to preserve the charm of Earth architecture.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Zombie safaris sometimes camp here, and the tour companies maintain some of the cabins at a base level for that purpose, but that makes it a target for bandits and corpse hunters who found them easy prey. Rigo and Sceps had never lingered long here, but they often checked it for safari groups from whom to collect dog tags.
Sceps enters the cabin area long before Rigo and Luka, skulking around the buildings silently. He knows the layout of the camp and scans for any sign of living people. Rigo brings Luka to the edge of the cabins, but not into the area in case Sceps finds someone.
“Targets,” Sceps says softly in his earpiece, his voice barely audible.
Rigo grabs Luka’s arm and yanks him into a nearby building. Like many of them, the building has partially collapsed, but they are able to climb the stairs to the second floor. Rigo pushes Luka down behind an empty wooden armoire and takes a position in a window where his rifle can rest on the casement of the shattered window. Rigo puts his assault rifle down next to him, within easy reach.
He pulls the sniper rifle off his back and attaches his scope to the top of it. It’s an SVD Dragunov Variant sniper rifle. The barrel is long and thin, almost appearing delicate and fragile, with a suppressor attached to the end. Rigo has a bipod on which to rest the rifle. He places the legs on the edge of the sill. The gun is made of the alien metal, stellium, the same as the dog tags embedded into Rigo’s neck. Despite its appearance, it is nearly indestructible and lightweight. He has added extra weights in the core of the stock of the gun to limit the recoil. The rifle uses the massive 7.62x54 bullets, an old Earth calibre, not a modern military laser like found on other planets.
There are no lasers on Grave. The technology exists for lasers, but lasers don’t do much to zombies. Lasers slice up zombies, leaving quivering halves of bodies around until they reformed into a newer, even more grotesque zombies. A former governor of Archangelsk had decided no laser weapons on the planet. The corporations continue to enforce the rule.
The Arkhangelsk spaceport confiscates lasers that get shipped to the planet, and the gate guards and patrols remove any lasers that somehow get past. Most of the experienced people on Grave do not want laser weaponry due to the zombies reforming faster with laser injuries than projectile weapons hitting them. No one has ever explained why to Rigo, but he also doesn’t care as long as he has his projectile weapons.
Rigo can hear Sceps in a gunfight a few cabins down the street, but he can’t see the armoured man. The pops of Sceps' suppressed assault rifle echo through the quiet of the resort. Each shot is muffled but still audible, a soft metallic popping in a staccato rhythm that blends into the wind. Despite the gunfire, Rigo remains calm; there's no point in panicking now.
Peering through his scope, Rigo scans across the resort, his eyes searching for the source of the sound. The cabins cast long shadows in the fading light. His breath mists in the cold air as he focuses, his movements slow and deliberate.
Beside him, Luka grows tense and fidgety, but Rigo pays him no mind, his attention fully on finding the targets. Following the shots, he finally spots Sceps taking cover against a rusted metal shed. Rigo catches glimpses of him as he peeks around the corner of the shed, returning fire into a cabin across the street. Flashes of gunfire illuminate the snow-covered streets in brief bursts of light. Rigo needs to providing covering fire.
Through the scope, Rigo watches Sceps’s movements. He follows the trajectory of his shots into the cabin across from the shed. Rigo sees the silhouettes of two men in the broken windows. Zooming his scope in, he can see the head of one man. He fires one bullet. It goes through the eye of one man, obliterating his eyeball with an implosion of blood and goo. The back of the man’s head explodes in a red mist flecked with fragment of bone. Through the scope, Rigo can see he wall behind the man painted red with blood and bits of brain. The rest of the man’s body falls to the floor with a thump audible to Sceps. The end of the barrel of his rifle smokes lightly. Rigo always likes the acrid smell.
“One down,” he reports emotionlessly to Sceps.
“What is happening?” Luka asks, his voice rasping with the ragged breaths of panic. Rigo continues to ignore him but waves his hand in his direction in what he hopes is a comforting motion. The second man has ducked back behind the window frame. Rigo waits calmly for him to peek through the window. He knows the man has realised he’s trapped. There is no exit from the cabin that Rigo or Sceps cannot see.
Sceps does not like to wait for the man to make a run for it from the cabin. He moves around the shed to position himself in front of the door. Rigo covers him from his perch in the window, his rifle steady on the two windows he can see. The second man inside the cabin has not noticed Sceps' movement yet, his attention focused on hiding from the window where his buddy had been standing.
Sceps gathers himself and charges into the building, his massive frame barreling forward like a juggernaut. He slams into the door with his shoulder, the wood splintering and giving way under his impact. He is unhurt from the impact, with his armour dissipating the force.
Inside the darkness of the cabin, there is a bright flash as the second man fires his weapon. Rigo hears the gunfire from within, the sound muffled by the closeness of the walls indoors.
Several nearby zombies, previously ignored by all the combatants, also hear the commotion and begin to charge towards the noise. Their roars mix with the chaos of the firefight. Rigo takes aim through his scope and dispatches the approaching zombies with precise shots. The undead creatures fall to the ground, their bodies motionless, inconsequential variables.
“We have killed them. There were people close after all,” Rigo reports to Luka. He doesn’t need to check with Sceps to know the outcome of the fight.
Rigo turns to look at the German tourist, who is wide-eyed with terror. Rigo wonders how this man had held it together while they had been stalking him in the city. Rigo and Sceps are much scarier than anything else in the southern badlands.
Luka gasps slightly as he comprehends the situation.
“I just wanted to kill zombies, not people.”
“Eh, they will become zombies now. We can kill them again.”
Luka chokes slightly at the idea.
Rigo stands up and collects his gear. He doesn’t think Luka completely understands what is going on around him.
“You said last night you wanted a fight. This was a fight. Come. Sceps is collecting their tags.”
Rigo leads Luka out of the building and across the road to the cabin. The inside of the small cabin is coated with blood and gore. There are bits of brain and bone sliding slowly down the wall behind the man Rigo had killed, creating a pool at the baseboards. It is merely background scenery to the two corpse hunters.
Sceps rolls the headless man over with his foot and starts rifling through his clothing. More gore slides out of the broken skull onto the floor. Sceps ignores it oozing into lumpy pools around and squishing under his boots. He grasps the metal wings attached to the back of the man’s neck with his hand. The light is flashing green. A quick yank pulls the dog tags off and he stows them in his thigh pocket with the others. He looks up and scowls at Luka and disappears between into the other room to repeat the process with the second man. Rigo kneels beside the body, avoiding putting his knee into too much gore, to check if there is anything else they can use.
Luka stands awkwardly just inside the door with wide eyes. It is a dangerous spot to stand, leaving his body completely exposed to anyone outside. Also, Rigo notices that Luka still has his camera in his hands, not his gun. Rigo wonders if someone will kill him right now and end their obligation to the man. His obligation, at least. He doubts that Sceps feels any obligation. Sceps is very thorough, however. He would know if there was anyone else left alive in the resort.
“They are not permanently dead.” Luka states, not asking a question. He manages to collect himself enough to take a photograph of the interior. He avoids taking pictures of the bodies. Rigo’s comment seems to be weighing on him. He is staring around at the fresh gore, and somehow taking pictures of the gory walls and floors. Rigo does not believe it is a good idea to have a clear photographic record, even though the guides and tourists livestreamed the safaris, but he worries if he spooks Luka now the man will dissolve into a complete panic. Luka has probably never seen a fresh body ripped apart before. The zombies do not bleed quite so red, quite so much. They ooze gore slowly while the humans spray blood and bone.
“No, of course not. They were wearing tags. No one leaves the spaceport without tags, same as you. We will return them to Arkhangelsk for the insurance money, along with all the ones you gave us and the others we had.”
“Will they come after you for killing them?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. The corporation doesn’t tell reconstituted people who brought their tags in.”
“How many times have you been reconstituted?” Luka asks.
Rigo looks up to stare at him. He knows that Luka doesn’t understand the etiquette of Grave. Dying is never fun. Sometimes he has been killed fast, and there is no pain when it is fast. But it isn’t always fast. He can remember the echo of pain when it is slow, as if the feeling reverberates and ripples through his memory, but he isn’t able to describe it. It is just slightly out of touch, still there, but distant. He has never heard anyone describe it well before.
Rigo and Sceps, and their third partner, Marten, have been reconstituted several times. They usually bring each other in, collecting back their own insurance, but once they had all been killed at the same time and their dog tags were brought in a couple of years later by someone else. Getting new dog tags had been very expensive. They didn’t have wealthy tourists or popular livestreams to cover the costs like the guides did.
“A few times,” he answers after a moment, shrugging non-committedly. He turns away from Luka and reloads his gun.
Luka realises he has made a misstep with the corpse hunter. He forces himself to turn back to the body on the floor. Sceps returns to the room while stuffing another set of dog tags into the thigh pocket on the other leg. The first is full. They now have twenty dog tags.
“Take his chest rig.” Sceps orders Luka, distracting the tourist from Rigo’s darkened mood.
“What?”
“Chest rig. You need some better armour, bro. Put it on.”
Luka, still horrified, struggles to remove the bloodied armour from the dead, still bleeding, body. Sceps sighs and helps him get it off the body and onto Luka. Luka suddenly stops being horrified and points out the blood-soaked lettering on the plate carrier.
“I think the letters are Cyrillic. It looks Russian.”
“I don’t fucking care, man,” Sceps states unemotionally, “But you need some armour. How the fuck did you manage to survive this far?”
Luka shrugs. This is the longest speech he has heard from Sceps thus far. Luka doesn’t really remember the route his guide took, he had just followed and had fun killing zombies. Sceps turns and leaves the house.
“I’m going to check the other body quick. Sceps is going to check the surroundings. Just stay there.” Rigo tells Luka.
Rigo rifles through the second body. There are no loose dog tags on either body. These aren’t the corpse hunters who killed the group in the suburbs. They are probably unlucky corpse hunters who hadn’t managed to find any tags yet. They will not be pleased when they are reconstituted. Rigo is disappointed that there is no treasure of tags on the bodies, but their haul is already quite good. Luka watches through the doorway. Rigo’s lack of care for the dead bodies seems to horrify Luka. When Rigo is finished he puts a few more bullets with his suppressed pistol into each man. Luka jumps back when he starts shooting.
“Why?” Luka asks, confusion written across his face.
“Slows them down becoming zombies,” Rigo answers. He shrugs, again.
The look of shock on Luka’s face reveals to Rigo that the innocent tourist has never truly understood that all dead become zombies, even though Rigo has mentioned it before. The German had never considered this before apparently or read the terms of service on the dog tags sales agreement. Rigo suspects that most tourists didn’t read it; didn’t realise that the bodies they would be reconstituted into would be new bodies while their old bodies wandered the planet as zombies. This is why he had gotten out of being a guide many years ago. The tourists are all stupid.
“Come, we will find a place to stay the night. The dark is cold and dangerous,” Rigo tells Luka.
“What about him?”
“He is going around the resort, looking to see if there is anyone else in a rat hole. I’ll just stick with you.”
“So, he is trusting me also.” Luka said hopefully. Rigo notes that Luka hasn’t realised that neither Rigo nor Sceps have never put away all their guns since they met. Rigo always has one in his hand. The tourist didn’t seem likely to try anything, but sometimes people did surprising things. Impulses are hard to control and many of the tourists had watched the streams of the guides with the wanton violence and betrayal. It appeals to some.
“Yeah, he’s kinda, well, yeah, he doesn’t trust you. He just feels obligated to because I make him.”
“I do not think he would leave me alone with you if he did not trust me. He must trust you a lot too.”
“Oh, we go back a long time. We have, how do you say it? Our relationship is too close to fuck each other. In any way, by the way.”
“I understand.” Luka nodded gravely, but Rigo doubts he understands. He follows Rigo out of the cabin and back up into the hills, looking for another camp for the night away from the resort. Night drops on the pair as the aurora glimmers above them serenely.