The notification icon changed. I opened it briefly and saw what I expected, my skill in slings had leveled again.
Learning from someone who knew what they were doing was so much faster than trying to struggle through it on your own.
June limped back to toss the carcass on the sled.
The rail gun rested there, folded up and sealed so that it looked like a large rectangle. The only change to the flat outer shape were the two curved tunnels that allowed the strap to be attached, the cover of the data port, and the slightly etched letters that spelled out Larkin, on each side of the weapon.
I didn’t have to worry about anyone shooting it. Though they could pick it up and run away if they were strong enough.
The weapon hadn’t worked for me until I plugged a cable from the port on the back of my neck into the weapon. The familiar voice of the implant system told me the weapon was locked and secured.
I asked some follow up questions as my neck grew warmer and warmer.
The system voice cut off mid sentence as a message window appeared. The implant told me over and over it could do nothing.
The page that eventually opened was titled, [Internal communication, unknown node, critical message push]
There was only a brief sentence underneath, [unlock successful, user database cleared, new administrator set. Physical ID required to complete set up.]
The voice didn’t know what the message said, but when I asked what physical ID meant I was instructed to press each of my finger pads into the outlined square on the weapon. As I did the outline changed to blue, blinked twice then went back to white.
Once I was done with all ten another push message came up informing me the weapon could be used.
I thought the messages were from the weapon, but a hour into our hunt I received another critical message push.
The instructions were long and specific and required me to tell the implant to run commands.
“I have some questions about commands,” I said.
Today my instructor was Gary, an older man who rode on the sled until we stopped. He wasn’t very good with a sling any more but he was very knowledgeable. He was also one of the few people who would spend any time around me.
The other person today was June, who had informed me she would be given a task because women who didn’t have tasks ended up on their backs and she was no whore. Ted had to explain what whoring was. I explained the woman tied to the small table, the one who had her ears cut off, and Ted shook his head, telling me that was something else entirely, and that I should not speak about the dead. Apparently people did not like to think about other people’s pain.
Both Gary and June glanced at me and I realized I had spoken out loud.
“Talking to my implant,” I said.
These two didn’t react any more. One man had called me a liar and stormed off. Some people thought implants were holy, and had issues accepting I might have one.
“What would the command ‘nodal attach’ do?”
“Attach is an argument for the command Nodal. Nodal is a command relating to the internal network controlled and firewalled by the implant system. Nodes are often internal hardware modules, co-processor units, linkages to prosthetic devices or external hardware components. The Attach argument will create a bi-directional soft communication pathway. This soft path may require a higher bandwidth physical pathway in which case internal fibers will be grown until parallel communication bandwidth needs are met.”
“What is Leopard Panther Wombat Troy?”
“In the context of the previous conversation topic, it is a layered encryption protocol.”
“Is there danger in attaching a node?”
“Ambiguous Question. There is always danger in attaching anything to any network structure. Nodal networks were designed with protection of the implant as the highest priority. At the lowest level the implant can disengage physically with any hardware.”
“What does ‘approve connection without signed certificate,’ do.”
“Bypasses the certification authentication process.”
I let out a long sigh then read the long command to the system.
“Connection established. Co-processor installed.”
The notification icon lit up again and another icon was created along the top. Then another and another.
They were grayed out except the first one that had appeared.
[Nodal Network]
This page showed the implant on top, a power conversion node, that I assumed was the thing in my hip where I plugged in, and a co-processor.
There were tabs up top. The highlighted one was labeled [Network] most were grayed out. Only one was in the blue I could select.
[Nodal Upgrade]
The page changed to show lots of gray icons connected by lines.
There were two blue options to choose from, both branching down from a grayed out option titled [Simulated co-processor Network Interface] other branches moved down past that.
Like the map I could expand and contract, zoom, shift, and move the branching structure. Everything else was grayed out.
[Co-processor Expansion 3/128]
[Storage Expansion. 1/22]
I selected co-processor Expansion.
[You have enough acausal material to create 2 co-processor clusters.]
“What is acausal material?”
“It is a term often referencing material created outside the laws of our physical reality that allow complex computations of an acausal nature where effect does not necessarily follow cause in the standard cause-effect relationship.”
“Where does it come from?”
There was a long pause.
“Explanation paths missing too many pre-requisite knowledge paths. No method found to explain to an accuracy greater than seventy percent.”
“Explain without accuracy requirement.”
It had taken me a while to figure out that command, but I often had to use it when my ignorance led me down paths I couldn’t understand due to lacking knowledge.
She continued to explain and I was lost in thought as I strained against the sled’s yoke.
“So the AIs created a vacuum space and then willed it into existence?”
“No,” the voice said. Even though that was what the explanation she had given me basically said.
“How did I get this material?” I asked instead.
“Unknown.”
“Best guess.”
“Processing of implant system hardware.”
Oh.
That made a little bit more sense. I had a craving for the implants because they had this weird material.
“What do co-processors do?”
“Expand semi-parallel processing capabilities.”
I fell into a fifteen minute back and forth trying to understand what semi-parallel meant until I asked, “what are the effects of having more co-processor units.”
“Computation speed and abilities are expanded.”
“I can think faster?” I asked.
“Implant nodal network processing speed and depth of processing are increased, not biological processes.”
“You can think faster?”
There was a long pause.
“Yes.”
I grinned. I knew it was considering how to answer but I saw humor in the delay.
“What does storage expansion do?”
“Increased the data that can be stored.”
“What data?”
There was a whole list she began to talk about.
“What takes up the most space?” I asked, interrupting her.
“Schema takes up a majority of your storage capacity.”
“What is my storage capacity currently?”
“Nine percent.”
Nine. That seemed like nothing.
I navigated to the menus and selected the co-processors. There was a brief window asking me if I wanted to build one or two co-processors.
I selected two.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Nothing seemed to happen.
I slowed to a stop and took out the sling and a few rocks. The rail gun waited behind me and the strange revolver rested in the hip holster. The ammo it took, like the rail gun, was not the conventional gun power ammo.
Like the rail gun the sleek revolver had been locked. The data port had been hidden under one of the grips. But once exposed and connected I’d eventually unlocked the gun for use.
I only fired it once, with Ted as a witness as he had never seen a revolver or ammo like it either.
There was no noise from the gun when it fired. The ammo looked like a small needle so we hadn’t expected much.
We couldn’t even find the entry point for the needle in the bark of the tree but the weapon blew a huge cone of wood from the backside of the tree in a loud explosion.
The sling whistled as it moved and then went silent as I released.
The stone slammed into a tree trunk. The wind up and release had felt correctly done but the stone had slammed into the tree a full meter away from the target.
The lizard disappeared.
I was squinting at it. It didn’t move, it just disappeared.
They were very good a mimicking the wood behind them. It would disappear first and then slowly move away. I tried finding it as it moved, but I couldn’t spot it.
I selected another stone from my pouch and set it in the sling, then I waited.
“Pete,” Gary whispered.
I turned to look at him and saw what had caused him to draw my attention.
A zombie was slowly shuffling towards us.
I’d not understood what the word had meant at first, but heading west for the last sixteen days we had come upon clusters of them more than once.
“Go back to the vehicle,” I said tossing the sling on the sled and selecting the long mace and hatchet we had traded for at the previous settlement.
“Begging your pardon,” Gary whispered, “but June isn’t quick, and I’m no spring chicken myself.”
I considered what he said and nodded.
“Warn the others,” I said as I started forward.
June lifted the pistol she had and fired three shots, waited and fired three again.
The ones in front reached me at that time and I didn’t pay attention to the warning shots.
The goal wasn’t to kill them. These were not men with guns who could be a danger even if they were on the ground. I used the long handled mace and hatchet to strike at knees and hips, shattering joints and limiting their mobility.
None of these had shown up on the network feeds and thus my map, but that was normal enough. It was far more common for a zombie to have a damaged implant than one that worked enough to ping the local networks.
That didn’t mean I didn’t crave the implants though.
Ted had made a compelling argument to not eat the implants in front of the others. He did however come up with an excuse to harvest them.
Sometimes the fibers were intact enough that splitting the skull open and pulling the port would pull the implant out. Other times the fibers and brain had degraded so much that I had to sort around for it.
Sometimes I didn’t find it even after searching for a significant amount of time.
Gary said that some humans didn’t have implants, but Ted argued with him about that. If either parent had an implant, than the child would most likely have one. Since hundreds or thousands of years had passed Ted was sure everyone had one.
Gary had heard stories about tribes of “Pure Humans” that lived in animal skins and could transform into beasts.
The two argued about it, never resolving their differences.
I learned a lot when those they argued. They were both very smart and seemed to know a lot about a lot of things. Gary though didn’t like to argue and Ted seemed unable to help himself once they started.
There ended up being only nine zombies in this cluster. With the hatchet I was able to get all nine implants easily.
Ted explained to the others that the implants would sell for system credits. Like metallic teeth did.
When I asked the system I found it was not a convenient lie. The system estimated they would each sell for up to one-hundred system credits.
When we killed zombies I went around to the dead and harvested the implants. Washed them, and then put them in a small pouch. Only in the privacy of the vehicle cab, or in the space near the battery cabinets did I consume them. I didn’t bother to crunch into the ones that weren’t using their fibers as weapons as those were disabled.
There as only one zombie with boots on and while the clothing was worn and torn into uselessness I recovered two belts and a necklace of bones.
I took a long looping turn around several trees before returning to the track I’d left in the mud and followed the same track back to the road.
Everyone had assembled when the shots went out.
The group was good at processing the carcasses. The smaller animals took much longer, but people got every bit of meat off the bones and then tossed the bones into the large soup pot.
They ended up boiling the bones, letting them dry while we ate, and then tossing them on top of the cook fires when the dinner was done.
Then the bones were put in thick canvas bags and crushed with hammers, the bags catching all the pieces. Then the pieces were baked and crushed again.
The resulting bone meal was used as a fertilizer to help plants grow and supposedly traded well.
Mostly we ate soup. And nuts. We’d stopped near a marker labeled ruins that was a mile or so off the main road we were traveling on.
The small detour had been worth the trip.
I added a note to the map to indicate the settlement ruins had fruit and nut trees.
We spent a full day and night there. The people were excited about their good luck and worked and worked and worked.
Even at night they worked in the light of electric lanterns.
The nuts were easy enough to collect, at least at first. The previous settlement had created False Stumps, which seemed to be large wooden barrels with tree bark nailed into the sides. A small hole accessible from the side allowed squirrels to access the space.
The barrels were chest high and absolutely full of stored nuts. We emptied those into crates completely before they returned a small layer of nuts to the bottom of the barrels before securing the lids.
They spent the rest of the time picking up nuts from under the trees and digging up the smaller shoots of trees that were growing beneath the fruit and nut trees as well as processing the rotten fruit beneath the trees for seeds.
When they had idle time nuts were shelled and the meat was put into jars while the shells were kept for the evening fires.
A whistle went out and I turned until I could pin point the dot on my map that was likely blowing the whistle.
As I sprinted out, I saw the dot was approaching instead of staying still.
He tried to say something to me as he pointed back over his shoulder but he was out of breath. Not that it mattered, I saw what had caused him to flee.
The zombie was emaciated, the flesh of it’s forearms was so thin that the two bones of the arm were visible.
The hands though were grotesque knotted things. It was moving fast, and I wasn’t in the habit of studying things when they were trying to kill me. I was used to the weapons I favored. I knew their range.
I swung the mace toward the knee as I darted to the side.
The mace made contact and there was a familiar restriction as the head of the mace slowed with contact.
I moved past and continued on.
The trees were ancient gnarled things with a dense interwoven canopy. So much so that cutting a tree’s trunk might not be enough to fell the tree as the top clung to its neighbors.
While that left the forest in darkness, it also meant there was very little underbrush.
I could see the rest of the zombie cluster a good distance away.
I jogged instead of sprinting as the rest were moving slowly instead of fast like the last one.
I felt the wetness at my waist where the weapon belt hung from my hips.
I glanced down, surprised to see my shirt was covered in blood. I checked the zombies ahead, then checked the wounds. They were shallow enough, and the healing fire had already clotted and scabbed over the cuts.
I checked behind me. The skinny fast one was scrabbling towards me with it’s hands and good leg.
It was disturbingly close.
I backed away when it swiped at me, only then realizing how long it’s reach was.
I stepped in again, letting it swing and chopping down with the hatchet.
I caught the thin forearm in the middle and there was little to no Resistance as the hatchet when through it and stuck into the ground.
I hopped away as it slashed with the other arm.
Using a two-handed grip I brought the long mace down on the shoulder of the remaining arm. And then on the spine.
I glanced over, having more than enough time to get the hatchet free, scrap the clinging dirt off on a tree trunk, and then sprinting back toward the vehicle.
While I was only slashed, if there were more other people might be in danger.
I couldn’t remember if I’d heard other whistles or gunshots, and a quick query of the implant and map showed everyone was accounted for and clustered.
They were in the vehicle’s storage area, though with all the supplies it was standing room only. Unlike the covered trailer, the vehicle area was lightly armored and fully enclosed. The air system that heated, cooled, and cleaned the air was nonexistent in number 4, which was why it hauled storage instead of people.
Ted argued with people when they wanted to clear the cargo out and sleep in it because doors that sealed meant the air would go bad and people would die.
There were plans on fixing the issue. Discussions on cutting holes in the side and affixing fan to running tubes up and out from behind the armor panels.
There always seemed to be reasons why a space sealed from the outside air was preferable though and no one ever pushed the issue.
“Is anyone injured?” I asked.
Ted was on the other side of the cracked open door, ready to close it in an instant.
“No,” he said.
“Are they clear?”
“Not yet,” I said.
We had three different music devices. I turned the larger one on. The cube was big enough I could use it as a seat. The switch indicated it was on, but there was a delay, and then the device came to life, a small screen allowing different selections to be made.
I pressed the icon for random and then waited.
Eventually the zombies approached. Six of the fifty-three had active implants.
It took nearly an hour to kill them all. I chopped the heads off the zombies as I killed them and tossed or kicked them them into piles to be picked up by others.
I returned to the faster zombie, what they called a Class 3 Slasher.
The hands were large balls of growths with no fingers. There were four bone claws inside that resembled blades more than curved animal claws. They were housed in a bone and cartilage sheath that was full of a white pus.
A muscle sack on the outside of the sheath contracted and forced a thick fluid into the bottom of the sheath. The pus and the knife blade shot out cutting free of the flesh.
John showed me how it all worked as he cut into the hands to process the blades. The bone blades were fifteen centimeters long, and the edge was covered in a small layer of metal in much the same way my upper teeth were.
“They won’t rust,” John said, “and they stay sharp enough unless you try to use them like chisels. See this area here, where the bone is more, um, well it’s not porous, but you can tell there is less of it.”
“Dense?”
“Yeah,” he said without any evidence he agreed, “but see these ridges, they are, um, more dense, so you can drill holes in these gaps here and attach a sort of wooden hilt. It goes up the back side of the knife blade and sort of cups the bottom. If you drill into the bottom here or into the middle of the blade it will shatter and break. Best knives there are for skinning or butchering, but it takes a bit of practice to use them. You can cut into a bone easily with one, of these. Not that the cutting in is the problem. The blades are fine with that, but people tend to wiggle it out front to back like, which also isn’t a problem exactly. But when they do they go side to side a bit as well. Cracks the blade right in half the long way if you do that. With a steel blade you can wedge in like that, but with these bone blades you can’t flex them at all like that, only sort of pressure they can take is from the front.”
Ted was overseeing the processing of the heads.
A head would be lined up, split with a hatchet and then pulled apart by two people with gloves. The brains, more often a black clinging goop than anything that resembled brain matter, would be scooped out into a bowl. Bits of the goop would be pressed against the side and swiped out until the implant was found.
Often it still had a mass of fibers attached to it so it resembled a dandelion head covered in syrup. The device itself was a bent oval shape, smaller around than a finger nail and thicker in the center than the edges.
It was an unmarked smooth gray stone-looking thing when the fibers were rubbed off.
“These better be worth more than a credit,” Aden grumbled. The man wouldn’t leave the the protection of the vehicle even to hunt or gather. He even shit by leaning up against one of the massive tires and shitting into a shallow hole he dug if the privy hole was dug to far away or it was too dark out.
He would stay awake all night even if he wasn’t on watch and do any chore or task given to him so long as he wasn’t more than forty running paces from safety.
He did complain a lot, but if given a task he did it.
“Up to a hundred credits,” I said.
He jumped and twisted, his hand dropping to the gun on his hip. He let out a slight yelp and pulled his hand away from the gun letting it float in the air as he stared at me. I had to remember to make more noise when I approached others from behind.
“Settlement credits, maybe,” Mac said, “If you’re lucky enough to find a place that pays for zombie bounties any more. Recyclers don’t care about dead zombies. You get a single system credit for a hundred kilos of iron, again, if you’re lucky. Best scrap is circuit boards, displays, anything that rotates like a fan or engine. Anything with the icon or wireless charging. In general if it works you sell it to a settlement, if it don’t you sell it to a scrapper. Let them take on the danger of transporting it to the recyclers.”
“My father looted a bunker once,” Kelly said, “got some big heavy pieces of tech. Lots of wires ran to it. He’d never take less than twenty system credits for it. Held onto the thing for years. Eventually he left to take it to a recycler himself,” she said holding up a cleaned off implant and tossing it into the shallow bowl of water with the others.
“He came back,” she said with a laugh, “Eight years later and he came back. Said the heavy thing was only worth six credits!”
She let out a bark of a laugh and shook her head.
“He got more credits from random scrap than he had that big ol’ piece of tech.”