They are silent as they advance down the street. They do not speak to each other; they simply watch the side streets and the towers above them. They are ebony ghosts haunting the streets and they make no sounds, unlike the creaking ruined buildings and moaning undead that surround them. The sun glitters off the ice and metal, blocking their vision into the darker corners. Their steps are soft as they make their way to the building into which the man had fled. They close the gap between them and the building steadily.
Occasionally a zombie groans or attempts to shuffle through the snow. Some are trapped in the high drifts in the side streets, frozen motionless forever by the relentless snowpack. The zombies that are wandering down the roads do not move as stealthily as the two living men. The snow crunches loudly under their rotting feet or the stumps on which they stagger around. Rigo and Sceps work their way forward, through the thin herd of zombies, taking down any zombie that blocks their progress swiftly. They stick to patches of clear pavement as they close in on the building where they saw the man. Avoiding the crunching snow, the soles of their boots scuffle softly on the pavement.
They pass by the containers that are stacked on the street in front of the building. Rigo notes the one they had seen the man on. It, like all the containers, are simple rectangles, easily stacked and maintained. Rigo and Sceps have seen many such containers throughout the cities in southern and central Grave, where the populace tried to build walls to hold back the zombies. This city, the first large city south of Arkhangelsk was also the last to evacuate before the encroaching hordes; the temporary walls in this place are higher and more organised than what they have seen much further south. Some areas closer to the spaceport were more successful than others, getting many of the citizens to safety in Arkhangelsk. Still, only a small fraction of the population of the planet had escaped the plague. The farther away cities were not very successful in their evacuation efforts and are still overrun with millions of zombies.
Gruesome piles of zombies, mainly destroyed by Rigo, lies around the container in heaps. They are unmoving for now. He mostly ignores the zombies, even though he knows the undead never truly end. Life and death are a fleeting circle on this planet. He gives the piles of corpses a quick glance for the blinking green lights of complete dog tags. In this group, he sees none.
Rigo and Sceps are dog tag retrieval experts. They collect the dog tags off the back of the necks of dead people in the wastelands and return them to Arkhangelsk to be reconstituted. The dog tags collect the DNA and memories of the wearer in real time, giving them the chance to be cloned into a new body that is, in essence, the same person again. Permanent death from injury is nearly unheard of on Grave.
They occasionally find a zombie with dog tags attached still. These are bodies from after the collapse of the planet, and zombie tags are the easiest dog tags to retrieve. Living people are a bit more reluctant to give up their dog tags, since the dog tags can only be released from dead bodies. The zombies wearing them still are usually people lost from zombie hunts or other dog tags retrieval experts like themselves. Rigo and Sceps just need to walk up to these zombies and stab their necks to break their spinal column. The dog tags release when they grasp under the edge of the metal and give it a tug.
Sometimes, however, they must make the bodies unalive themselves. They quite often make the bodies unalive themselves.
Being a dog tag retrieval expert is a difficult and dangerous occupation, but they are good at it. The insurance money from returning them to Arkhangelsk for reconstitution pays well, and the company does not question where they retrieved the tags from. Technically, dog tag retrieval started as an occupation to collect the lost tags that were still attached to zombies or dead tourists, but it did not take long for the men to figure out ways to diversify their collection methods. There is a reason most people on Grave called retrieval experts ‘corpse hunters’ instead of the technical term, even though corpse hunters do not appreciate the nickname.
Sceps’ thigh pockets are already filled with fourteen dog tags, which is a good haul. Rigo and Sceps have another buddy, Marten, who also works with them and who is currently dead. His dog tags are the fifteenth in the collection. Rigo keeps Marten’s tag in the pouch of his plate carrier, along with his extra magazines for his assault rifle. He does not like his teammates’ dog tags to mix with the others they collect, even though there is no reason to not mix them. They had already begun to head directly north to the spaceport so they can turn in the batch of tags and get Marten reconstituted when they spotted this man.
They reach the destination unmolested by zombies. There are no zombies close to this building, not yet at least. The decaying building stands in a small plaza behind the rows of abandoned containers that block the end of the street. The signs and menus tacked up on the sides of the building have faded in in the sun. They are covered with frost and are now unreadable. Through the glare, faded pictures of local cuisine can almost be seen. The restaurant it once held was patroned by office workers seeking a hot lunch before the fall of Grave.
Before the endless winter that has settled on the planet, the climate was pleasant enough to eat outside with co-workers during a long lunch hour. The cold and snow have long since destroyed the patio around the restaurant. It is filled with broken tables and chairs. A large section of the building is charred and burned while the other side is remarkably intact. Not a single window or door remains unbroken. The entire structure is covered by a thick layer of greyish, sooty ice, but the snow is not deep here.
Rigo and Sceps had stopped in this building a day ago, before moving down the street to the high rise, where they felt more comfortable camping for the night. This building is too exposed, too difficult to defend, with many open ingresses. Rigo pitied the man who had run inside for cover. He and Sceps could easily overwhelm him in this building.
Navigating the periphery of the restaurant, they are acutely aware of the potential danger possibly lurking above them in the surrounding buildings. Even though they had been sitting in the high-rise for the better part of a day, others could be in these buildings for even longer, silent and still, waiting for a moment to strike at any unsuspecting person in the streets below. Like Rigo and Sceps had been doing before the man’s appearance surprised them. There is always a possibility of others. They have also not yet confirmed he is completely alone. Rigo has not spotted any indication of more people from the man’s tour group, but he has made mistakes in the past. Costly mistakes. They can never believe they are alone, even so far south and away from the chaos in the spaceport of Arkhangelsk.
Although Rigo thinks there is a high chance that the man is a tourist who has lost his group, there were other possibilities. Corpse hunters, tech hunters, and sometimes bandits come into this city, if they are looking for zombie safari. People such as those are more likely to be alone and more experienced. This man could be dangerous if he’s not actually a tourist, Rigo thinks. He might be dangerous even if he is a tourist; sometimes the tourists romanticize Grave into a huge, violent entertainment venue, and want to shoot anything that moved. Rigo was once a guide, many years before getting into dog tag retrieval, and he remembers their tendencies. The tendencies of the tourists are a major reason why he no longer works as a guide.
A man’s voice coming from the upper floor of the building slices through the silence. Rigo jumps slightly at the noise. He squints up at the windows in the top floor.
“Do you hear me? Do you speak?” The voice is loud and clear, coming from a third storey window of the building in front of them. It is too loud and too clear. The nearby zombies groan and shift, swinging their heads towards the sound, seeking the source.
The two men pause at the sound of the voice, each in a shadow of an overhang near the building, hidden both by the dark of the shadows and the glare of the sun glinting off the upper windows. Rigo stands just under the edge of a gazebo that had been set up for diners while Sceps is closer to the building. The big man stands in the shadow of the metal bones of the restaurant’s awning. Neither moves while they consider the situation.
The man who spoke has a thick German accent but he sounds very posh and proper. His English seems to be the well-educated and trained type, from an expensive education off world. He doesn’t sound like a bandit, who often beg for their lives, or a corpse hunter, who are silent death. Corpse hunters don’t speak, they just kill and collect their prizes. Rigo’s belief about the man slides heavily into tourist once more.
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“Yo, what’s up, bro?” Rigo raises his voice and responds in a flat casual tone. The zombies don’t look for the source of his voice. He wonders why he didn’t kill the man from his perch in the skyscraper. He could have taken another shot. He misses occasionally, but never twice in a row. There was no reason to not take another shot. They could be collecting his dog tags right now and have fifteen to return to Arkhangelsk. He shields his eyes against the sun and looks up to the upper windows of the restaurant.
“Hello, friend. Did you shoot at me? Did you kill the zombies? I don’t want to fight.” The German man vomits a spew of words through the window. Though polite, the words are spoken too anxiously, too desperately. Rigo can feel the man’s fear rain down on him. The rifleman doesn’t know how to react. The man sounds both friendly and panicked.
Rigo sighs heavily. He doesn’t want to respond immediately. He wants to let the trapped man cook up there while he thinks about the situation. He moves to stand deep under the roof of the gazebo. The smooth curved roof blocks any view of him from the window. The gazebo has a metal table and bench, used for outdoor eating. It is remarkably old-fashioned, with Earth evergreen trees planted around the perimeter of the eating area. The trees still live, even in the relentless cold. One of the galactic corporations must have genetically engineered them to survive in extreme weather.
He suspects the German man is one of the very wealthy tourists who hires guides to take them out on an expensive private zombie hunt adventure, further away from the more common large safaris areas and the larger, cheaper group tours. But the guides usually only bring experienced tourists this far south, even with dog tags. It’s too difficult to keep inexperienced tourists safe for very long in this city and the guides are not keen to line the pockets of corpse hunters. The groups used to come to this city more frequently, but the popularity of corpse hunting means that the guides take out larger groups, which are more likely to survive. Larger groups like to stay closer to the spaceport in the north.
He wonders if this man is more experienced than he appears. An experienced man, however, would not have climbed on top of a container to kill zombies. He should have run into the building from the moment the horde began to form and used the windows as cover from which to destroy the zombies. Rigo would have handled the situation completely different than how the man had. This makes him believe that the man is inexperienced on the planet.
At the end of the day, a target is a target, and a kill is a kill. He wants the dog tags that are blinking on the back of the German tourist’s neck.
Rigo finally decides to respond.
“You want to trade cookies or something?” Rigo responds slowly and sarcastically. He hates talking to targets. It humanizes them too much. Humanizing targets causes no end of problems.
“I uh, I was here with my friends, but now I am alone. Don’t kill me. I don’t want to die. Do you need anything?” The man sounds like he is spiraling into fiery panic. Rigo wonders if the man has ever died before. He thinks not.
Sceps, who has walked around the far end of the building, softly speaks into the earpiece Rigo is wearing. He cannot hear the German’s voice clearly from his position.
“So, what this one?” His voice is deep and raspy, as if he has smoked a lot of cigars, and his Serbian accent is very thick. Rigo is used to him though and has no problem understanding him.
“I’m talking to him.”
“Well, where he?”
“Probably up on the top floor. Next to a window.”
Rigo knows that Sceps wants to kill the man for his dog tags as well. He also knows that Sceps is annoyed that Rigo didn’t kill him from the overwatch in the high rise. He wonders again why he didn’t take a second shot. Dog tag retrieval was their bread and butter. They had made millions recovering dog tags, but equipment, weapons, and ammunition were expensive. They always wanted more dog tags. They had brought in the tags of tourists, guides, other corpse hunters, tech hunters, bandits, and even Arkhangelsk patrols that had misplaced their vital signs. The authorities in Arkhangelsk didn’t ask questions. It was also an unspoken rule that once you got into the spaceport, you didn’t name names in your stories. If you knew them, and they often didn’t.
“Well, do you need anything?” the German man asks again.
“No, we don’t need anything,” Rigo considers his response. “We’re just thirsty, you know. It’s been quiet for some time now.”
“You are thirsty? I can give you water if you want. I have canteen full of water, I can give it to you, we can share it.”
“Yeah, I’m more, like, bloodthirsty you know, not really thirsty.”
“What he say?” Sceps asks through the earpiece. He is still circling behind the building.
“He says he doesn’t want to fight.”
“Kill him.”
Rigo ignores Sceps and turns his attention back to the tourist, “Do you have any diseases?”
Sometimes the tourists ran into illnesses that made it difficult to retrieve their tags if they were contagious. If the man had something nasty, they would have to be careful killing him before getting his tags off his body.
“Yes, but I have some medicine. I am trying to get okay. I just have a cold.”
“So, what should we do with this guy, bro?” Rigo asks Sceps.
Sceps repeats his clear, succinct answer. “Kill him.”
“What are you doing out there?” the man in the building asks nervously.
Rigo pulls the grenade launcher hanging from his belt. It is a small, single use cylinder. Rigo doesn’t like using them, he feels like they lack style. He puts a toxic gas grenade in it. It makes a dull whomp as he fires it towards the top of the building. The capsule arcs onto the building and explodes just above the roof with a crackling poof. A thick green miasma spreads across the roof and drips over the sides like the foam of boiling water in an overflowing pot.
“I gassed it. Do you want to hear him cough, Sceps?” Rigo asks.
“What are you doing, huh?” The German man’s voice is soaked with panic.
“Huh, trying something. I want to make you sicker. Did it work?” If the man dies from gas, they can get his tags quicker than trying to shoot him first. And they won’t need to worry about any diseases.
Rigo notes Sceps still patrolling the perimeter of the building. The big man radiates suspicion and deadliness. He stalks around the building like a panther, expecting prey to appear at any moment.
“You want to make me sicker? Why did you do that? I don’t want to fight.” The man coughs. Rigo hears him scramble around inside the building. Broken furniture smashes in the building above him.
“Yeah, I mean, I do respect your friendliness, but there’s nothing you can give us, you know. And we don’t really trust random people, and you’re in a location that’s really asking for trouble.” Rigo still doesn’t understand how this man managed to survive this city all by himself. He’s curious but doesn’t want to ask him. He has already spoken to this man too much.
“Yeah, yeah, I don’t trust people either. Only in Arkhangelsk,” the German tourists calls down.
“Yeah, like, I mean usually it’s hard to trust people this deep south. I hope you understand that. If you meet people in the north and hire some guides to run south together it’s a different story. But once you’re in the south, it’s, like, fucking trust issues all over.”
“So maybe you can teach me, I can hire you and pay you to take me back to Arkhangelsk.” The man’s voice is muffled with coughs. The gas has spread inside the upper floor of the restaurant, filling the rooms with noxious fumes.
Sceps voice fills Rigo’s ear, “What he say now?”
Rigo laughs. “He’s saying he wants to pay us to escort him back to the city. And teach him.”
“Fucking teach him? Kill him. Easier take him back dead.” Sceps never minces words.
The German man speaks again. “I found a gas mask here.”
Rigo sighs because his plan to kill the man with gas has been averted by his own hand.
“Yeah, we were here a few days ago, and we left that.”
The three of them, including Marten when he is alive, stash supplies they don’t want to carry with them all the time in the restaurant and other locations throughout the continent. This city is the major crossroads between the northern and southern parts of the continent, and they have passed through it often.
“So, it’s yours? Why is it here?” The German tourist sounds ridiculously interested in the ownership of the gas mask.
“No, no, nothing is ours. We just use it temporarily, until we die.” Rigo is philosophical about life on Grave. Unlike the tourist, he has died many times. Death doesn’t bother him anymore. Most of the time.
“Ah, okay. So, I will explain to you, I was with a group of five and a guide, but the others are all dead. I have their dog tags. Except the guide, I couldn’t find him.”
“Who was your guide?” Rigo asks.
“His name was George. I think he is dead. I feel bad because I couldn’t find his tags.”
Rigo scoffs, “George is hard to kill.”
“You know him?”
“We know of him, yes.”
“Do you know where he could have gone if he’s alive? I would like to find him again.”
“Bro, I don’t know. Probably back to Arkhangelsk.”
“What he say now?” Sceps’s irritated voice breaks through the conversation. He is now too far away from the front of the building to hear the man speak at all so Rigo must relay the conversation through their communication link.
“He says he was with a guide named George and his team is dead. He has all four of their tags, but the guide’s. Guide might still be alive.”
“Then kill tourist. Retrieve all tags. We go kill guide. Big payday.”
Rigo sighs. “He doesn’t know where the guide is, bro. And neither do we.”
It makes it more difficult to kill targets when they talk to him. Rigo hates it when they do that, because he begins to feel guilty about killing them. He likes to believe this tendency is a sign that he has some shreds of humanity left inside him. He can hear the man inside going up the stairs to the bulkhead on the roof. He is probably trying to get above the gas, which was sinking towards the ground as it dissipates.
Sceps’s voice cuts through Rigo’s thoughts. “Zombies headed into the plaza. They look aggressive.”