Gravewalkers: Soup Kitchen

Gravewalkers

Book Nine

Soup Kitchen

Richard T. Schrader

Copyright © 2013 Richard T. Schrader

Copyright © 2022 Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

Contents

Jam Crackers

Penelope’s Tapestry

Mother in Name

Bear Necessities

Rail Rider

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Soup Pot

Battle Shock

Family Values

Carnival Damnation

Wash Out

Chapter 1: Jam Crackers

Carmen wore a white mechsuit with gold trim that Alice had selected for her hologram to wear during their HUD game. That choice had only come after Alice had thumbed through examples of every sort of mechsuit. She had seen everything from the first armatures right down to the latest innovations.

Her study had taught her that mechsuits were generally all the same on the inside. It was in their external superficial styles that they actually differed widely. Even when it came to their stylish appearance, they usually conformed to a set of common unit codes. That made sense because only organizational brotherhoods were powerful and important enough to be deserving of the suits in the first place.

Alice had almost selected the mechsuit of the firefighter engineers for her. Those suits also had the golden trim, but it was on a brilliant red body befitting of that profession.

The mechsuits were like the charioteer teams that Alice had seen in one of her games. Members had styles and colors associated with them that were generations old.

There was room for personal taste in the mechsuit armor configurations. A recognizable unit uniform did allow for different shoulder and back mounted pods, but the true personalization came in the custom variety of their helmets and gauntlets.

Alice examined the records of many famous mechsuited heroes whose helmet designs were unique to them and infinitely more recognized than their actual human faces that no one had ever seen in their action videos.

For Carmen, Alice had selected a style called the Royal Guardians of the Marshal Chief Justice. According to the lists available for Alice to choose from, Carmen got one of the older styles, which meant that it was a uniform still in constant use going back nearly five generations.

The style of Marshal Critias' armor was positively archaic. His mechsuit was under the name Standard Marshal Officer Specifications.

Alice thought Critias’ marshal armor appeared a bit too sinister. To her eyes, the style made marshals too similar to those terrifying Beta android Death Blow Commandos. The only notable difference between the two was their height and weight, two factors engineered greatly in favor of the hulking battle androids.

The style Alice had picked out for Carmen to wear virtually, had more rigid refinement, being less organic in texture and rather chivalrous. It was certainly a display of romantic knightly dignity.

Her mechsuit had cleverly disguised thin mechanical arms that normally remained out of the way as underwire forms on Carmen’s breastplate. The robotic hands could reach up to attach into the face plate of her helmet, which then came off as a mask that split vertically in two. The halves retracted back with the little golden arms to end up with the mask sections fitting snugly out of the way by cupping the contours of her chest.

From her games, Alice had experience with how the mechsuited Praetorians escorted the Governors in a ceremonial fashion. She understood that the Royal Guardians were much the same thing, only they escorted the Marshal Chief Justice. Since their battlefield was courtrooms and law libraries, the Royal Guardians had more cause to show their faces than would most any other mechsuited hero.

Alice told Carmen, I have a few minutes. I'd like to try the driving again, only something better this time.

Carmen turned about and as she did, the whole environment shifted to daytime outside in the city near King's Tower. There were no ghouls yet at that level of the game. Alice didn't bother to ready any weapons.

"Sally Headshot’s Milk Wagon," Carmen declared as she made the Forager truck appear before them on the road.

"This Forager vehicle represents a truly epicurean smorgasbord of components greedily looted and lovingly maintained. With its secondary electrical drive system engaged, the Milk Wagon can stalk the streets virtually silent. It has unlimited gas in the game and you can even change the color."

Carmen tossed Alice the virtual keys, You will find the stereo plays the top one-hundred things I want to expose you to.

Alice climbed into the truck which in the real world was the cargo van that Carmen had gassed up down in the warehouse's underground parking garage. To Alice's eyes and through the touch of her suit’s traction gloves, it was indistinguishable from any other reality. The sound especially made it all too real for her.

With the help of her HUD tutorials, she prepared to be the wheelman of the Milk Wagon on a timed run to pick up stranded Foragers. The team only had minutes to live and they were across the city.

Alice’s helmet displayed info-framed explanations over anything she laid her visual attention on. It wouldn’t take her long to figure out the function of every switch, lever, and button.

One consequence that came from Alice having first to learn to drive in reverse was the kind of crashes she had. One of her common accidents was when she oversteered in moments of panic. It often resulted in her truck having a bootlegger spinout.

Alice wrecked the Milk Wagon truck several times before Sheriff Clyde approached her parked van. Her enhanced hearing had picked him up and then identified him by name from a long distance off. The echo of his steps carried far underground.

She said goodbye to Carmen and then turned off her game. Alice just sat there in the driver’s seat as she waited for Clyde to get in on the other side.

As he opened the passenger door, Clyde asked, Do you trust me that much? He wore his new gun and it showed as he climbed in to sit down.

Alice and Clyde had lived in similar realities since they both had been slaves within dissolute communities. She understood his point that in their past worlds, no one would be dumb enough to meet alone with another person, especially one that was armed, and not be cautious of a rape attempt or worse.

Alice replied, "Yes I do trust you, sheriff. It was Carmen that gave you that pistol from the armory on the Black Hole."

She turned her head to look at him poignantly, which was mostly a creepy thing because her smooth helmet surface wasn't much of a face. It was more like a shell with two telescopically actuated mechanical eyes.

The faceless expression worked well enough all the same as Alice said, Carmen does you a great honor. It would be an honor I’d be proud to receive.

Alice started the engine and then put the gearshift in reverse. Before getting underway, she advised him, When you get back to the city, you should tell people that. Let the word get around. If you are nervous or shy, the King will definitely give you a low stress job as an observation period thing. Not so much open bragging, but you will need to project your self-confidence.

People respect that, if you’re also a good man. Carmen just certified you as one. Politics happen fast around King Louie, and I don’t mean about my parents being in his inner circle. Two days from now, you could be the commander of something and I’d be the one taking orders.

She does a lot for me while you still hardly know me, Clyde pondered why Carmen would get involved.

Alice started to back the van out of the garage. They were headed to pick up the bodies that the laws of goodness had humanely executed.

Emotionally, Alice didn’t feel like she had even been involved in the shootings. She was more like this person who just happened to be there as a witness.

The King’s Law, a haunted bullet, and a teslaflux pistol killed those evil men. With that event past, Alice didn’t even think about it at all. Much like Critias before her, Alice didn’t even have a count of how many people had died through her actions of handing out justice. She didn’t care.

She told Clyde, Not only do we hardly know you, but Mandy and I are here with Carmen as well. Carmen will always go out of her way to keep us safe. She thinks we are more likely to survive a ghoul break in if you are armed. That means my mom trusts you. If she trusts you, then that is all the recommendation that I need.

Clyde gathered that Alice’s praise of Carmen was genuine, She sounds like she means a lot to you then.

She's my stepmom technically, Alice still bragged. Really, it is better than that because she is the best friend a person could ever have. And you wouldn’t even believe the games we play together. Carmen already has you too though. It’s not a bad thing; you can just admit it.

Clyde thought about Carmen a moment and then confessed.

She has charmed me with her act of trust. When she offered the pistol to me, she said, if I give this to you, it is saying you had lost your manhood that I might restore it by arming you with this mere tool. If I put it on the ground for you to pick up, that would make you my dog, and then I would not respect you. If you harm me, my husband Critias would live for nothing but hunting you down to have his revenge. If you were to so much as lay a hand on me, Cutter would pull your arms off if Verloc didn’t get to you first.

Then she tucked this pistol into the front of her blue jeans like this gunfighter daring me to try and yank this handgun out of her shorts.

So I says to her, cowgirl, let me sell you on this idea. I want to trade you full title, deed, and ownership of this here whole warehouse along with everything in it, for that there pistol. Carmen pulled out the gun and then slapped it into my hand as she said, sold.

Clyde told his story with the second voice of what Carmen said, I like you Clyde. You’ll need these. She hands me this fine clean box of new bullets.

He told Alice, I get the feeling you understand the comfort of wearing a pistol. Carmen let me get that feeling back without making me feel like a beggar.

Introducing himself to Alice hadn’t been the reason that Clyde had volunteered to help remove the bodies from the prison execution site.

Clyde had wanted an excuse to meet the unbelievably powerful and freakishly inexplicable giant who was part of the rescue team that had liberated him. He had seen hunter ghouls on occasion, but he had never encountered or even heard of any creature like Cutter.

The sheriff didn’t have any reasonable explanation for Cutter and he didn’t have any unreasonable speculation either. Cutter remained utterly incomprehensible.

Clyde thought it wise to have Alice nearby when he met with the giant. She could be near to perform an emergency intervention just in case Cutter didn’t like him.

Carmen had first repaired their van so that Critias would have it available to transport the condemned slavers out into the badlands. It would still take those criminals out for their last ride except that in the new version it would act as their hearse because they were already dead.

She had found the van down in an underground parking area where the slavers had stored rows of vehicles that they had intended for some future potential service. The King Duke's people had long since drained all those machines of any fuel or oils.

Their enormous underground mining bucket-loader machine was still there too. They had used it when they crushed all the cars and trucks that they hadn’t wanted to save. Those mashed conveyances had ended up as part of the warehouse’s outer barrier junkyard wall.

The overall number of vehicles that made up the outer wall attested to just how many people the slavers had lured into that place and then eventually killed. Twelve-hundred people had digested down to less than twenty, all in forty months. They averaged one death for every single day.

Alice’s evening had them on a roll well above quota.

After the van went up a long ramp and then passed through a newly opened vehicle gate, Alice backed it out onto the warehouse’s cement-floored surface level. She eventually weaved her way around to the prison execution area.

The dirigible hangar back home at the East Airport airbase was a big warehouse type building, but the one that Alice drove through was a roofed structure that could hold three of those hangars and then have plenty of unfilled space leftover.

Cutter already waited in the jail area when Alice backed in the van for them to load it with the corpses. The giant hadn't volunteered to help Alice with the chore, but he had agreed to assist when she had sought him out and then politely requested his assistance.

When it came to the simple task of tossing five bodies into the back of a van, Cutter didn’t think he needed the help of one feeble human who would only be in his way. The sheriff was a strong man, but still a sapless physical asset compared to the giant.

Clyde had learned some unorthodox job skills during his life as a prisoner among murderous slavers. He made himself useful by using a roll of duct tape to secure trash bags around the gunshot heads to contain any additional mess that hadn’t already drained out.

With one easy hand, Cutter picked up the first head-bagged body and then propped it to sit upright in the back of Alice’s van.

Clyde noticed the trouble Cutter went through to get a dead slaver to sit upright. For the next body, the sheriff taped their wrists and ankles together to make them less inclined to spread out so much.

Even after Cutter and Clyde finally did get all the bodies loaded with their heads tightly bundled, there would still be plenty of sticky mess on the floor.

Alice had brought up a bucket of coal dirt and a shovel from down in the mine. She would use that to sop up the liquid mess before she shoveled it back into the bucket. Much like with Clyde, when it came to the convenient removal of bodies, Alice had learned a few expedient tricks during her time as a slave to murderers.

One advantage to the cleanup was that the warehouse’s especially thick concrete floors could casually withstand the weight of any truck any number of times for a thousand years and beyond. The constant repetition of gritty foot traffic had also sand polished the cement to a glossy finish. Even bloody dirt only balled up and collected loosely because the floor was too hard and smooth for the grime to properly adhere.

Bobby Bean had originally come down from the Black Hole to get some cookout dinner with Alice. He had soon discovered that Alice remained at work. Bean continued his search until he found her as she busily shoveled up the brains of dead men she had given the death penalty. No one had bothered to tell Bean anything about the brief trial or the executions.

After Bean spent a moment to survey the gory scene, he offered up a mood lightening joke, Should we get ourselves a bible to say some prayers over these poor misbegotten souls.

If they had, it would have been the singular ceremonial gesture that the bodies received on their departure from the warehouse.

You don’t need to say any prayers for the souls of these fellas, said Cutter as he stuffed another body into the van. These fellas said they were all atheists.

Alice commented, I don’t care to label the life philosophies of perverts, pirates, and slavers. They don’t get the honor of secondary titles. If I blamed anyone else for what they did, I would have shot those other people instead.

Bean made another attempt at cheerful humor, You’re not planning on eating them then I take it. If you were, there is room on the grill.

Cutter and Clyde glanced over at Bean at the same time since neither of them was certain whom Bean had intended as the recipient of his jibe.

Still undecided, they next looked at each other. Cutter and Clyde both had reason to wonder if the other thought they had slipped so low that they would dine on human flesh.

Don’t look at me, Clyde responded to Cutter’s accusatory glance. You’re the giant.

Sure, blame the giant, said Cutter as he grabbed another corpse. Like you shut-in desperate survivor types never started to eat one another. I’ve heard about how you people get.

You’re my first giant, Clyde meant his past experiences he could draw upon. Apart from making your bread from people’s bones and smelling the blood of Englishmen, I can’t really say I have heard what giants do from day to day.

The heavy lifting seems to come up a lot, Cutter complained as he tossed in the final corpse. Whoever takes these meat sacks outside will need to dump them well clear of this place. The naked dummies will scent them down for sure once they start to rot in all this heat. You don’t want to attract them to this fort of yours. They will get the idea it has more food for them.

Down below in the coalmine, Critias, Verloc, and Carmen walked along the rail tracks with Hatchet’s brother Jasper.

Critias asked Jasper, What is the story with you and your brother? Hatchet and I are friends. I think a lot of the man.

His best talent is being a truck mechanic and welder, Jasper said of Hatchet. That is how I remember him. He built a lot of great things for your King Louie’s dad. Hatchet called him Mister Albert. People used to think Hatchet was a little slow back in school, but he was a wizard with the tools. Hatchet was the last child and I was eldest.

Our three sisters are dead. They were daddy’s girls, tough; they killed a lot of crazies. Each of them held out more than a little while. When Mister Albert started transforming into King Louie, like his radio show gag was going to his head and becoming real; that is when I took off on my own and he didn’t like it.

I set up a vehicle, loaded it with supplies, and then headed off to the city of ghosts, New York City. I figured the harbor there would be a good place to contact an Atlantic sea community, like ships or something.

That’s when I discovered that the bigger the city, the worse their vampire problem is. Talking away with one another, carrying guns sometimes, barely got out of there with my life.

Jasper told Critias seriously, The vampires will be in your King Louie’s city too. It has something to do with drugs I figure. I can’t think of anything else that all the big cities have in common. It isn’t the damn drinking water and no special weapons ever dumped on every major city worldwide. It has to be drugs.

Carmen informed Critias of pertinent news, "A weather front of moderate to heavy rain is coming this way. Gloria reports that she has the Black Hole tied off to all three towers and facing into the wind."

Kevin loaded new automatic piloting software that micromanages the wing surfaces. The ship will generate the lift or down force needed to stabilize pressure on the landing gear. Gloria will be staying aboard along with her crew. Preventing storm damage to the airship will be her fulltime priority.

On another topic, she added, The rail quality scouting truck for the train will arrive soon. They expect to meet us at the western barrier.

Critias asked her, Are we ready for them?

I think so, Carmen sounded confident. "I brought down enough diesel fuel from the Black Hole to power the main generator for approximately three hours. That should be long enough for us to bring in the new train and then refill the generator’s reservoir from the tankers they will supply us. The airship uses diesel fuel along with the water as a relocatable ballast product and we had enough to spare."

She meant that the airship pumped the fluids around to different inflatable bladders in order to balance the weight distribution.

From what Critias had already seen of the underground with its railway loading dock, he realized that the great warehouse up on the surface was only the cap upon a much older and far larger colliery operation. The place had excellent rail service that came in by tunnels from opposite directions. They were long tunnels too that ran beneath the hills to both their east and their west.

Jasper indicated the track behind them as he said, The east end emerges on a trestle bridge that goes out over a river that is too small for boats. This end goes out from under the hill onto a trestle too, over a dry rocky ravine. There is nothing down there but an old country road. It’s not quite two miles from the freezer to the gates this way.

The original coalminers used this heavyrail to ship out all the coal and muck during their operation. By the time that the coal had played out, they had excavated miles and miles of caverns and tunnels. You will want to be careful if you ever do go exploring. It wouldn’t be difficult for you to get lost down in there and you might never find your way back out.

Their walk finally got them within sight of the gates that kept the ghouls out of the rail tunnel. They were survivor manufactured double-doors of high quality. The barriers could fold back along the sides of the tunnel or snap closed again as they met vertically at the center.

Hydraulic rams opened and closed the gates either by a convenient but exceedingly slow hand crank or with a swiftly operating motor when the main electrical generator was operational. Since Carmen had started up the power grid for them, they had electricity for the compressor motor to do the work automatically.

Critias asked Jasper, If the coalmine tunnels are so deep, what did those slavers use them for?

The King Dukes of America never had any use for the dark places, Jasper replied.

For the most part it is nothing but bad water and dirt for miles on end. None of them would bother going back in there unless it had food or maybe some pussy, but you won’t find any of those.

It is infinitely dark down in those manmade caverns, perfect zero light, day or night. That became doubly true when they ran out of flashlight batteries. When all the petroleum fuels ran out, they couldn’t even make torches. Getting deep down into those mines then would have been impossible even if they had wanted.

That’s a lot of the reason why they left me alone. None of them was fool enough to play hide and go seek with me down in the pit. I know my way around more than a little, which is a shit load more than not at all.

While they waited near the rail barrier, Critias smoked some of a cigar he had worked on over the past week.

Jim finally radioed to them, We are coming up on your western gate.

Carmen positioned herself in the middle of the tunnel before the doors just in case any infected tried to rush inside. Once she was ready, Critias opened the train barrier gates with the press of a button.

It seemed like the doors opened for Carmen because they swung close enough that she could have reached out to touch them. Once she was sure that there weren’t any ghouls about to jump inside, she moved aside to let the rail-quality inspection scout truck roll past.

The vehicle was a typical four wheel drive suburban truck armored for Forager duty. It also had hydraulically deployable ride the rails flanged rims that could drive on heavyrail gauge track, just as would a locomotive.

Another addition on the vehicle was a pair of externally mounted tanks for the storage of liquid chemicals. It was a quiet vehicle that operated in the dark. It hadn’t attracted too much in the way of ghoul attention.

As Critias watched the truck roll past him, he did notice that there was a pack of ghouls at the far end of the trestle. When he zoomed in with his telescopic visor cameras, Critias saw that the ghouls fought over some of Commodore Tinny’s molasses chew.

It was apparent enough that the truck had jettisoned a canister of that ghoul bait as they made their final approach to the gateway. Even if the ghouls were not in dangerous numbers, the distraction did prevent them from learning that the railway tunnel was an area with human inhabitants that might interest them.

With another button push, Critias made the gates begin to close again. Carmen remained on guard until the portals had sealed.

Once it was safe, she commented about the truck, Those tanks are expanding foam urethane like the bastion builders use to plug up gaps in the security barriers. They must be injecting it into eroded areas under the rails to prevent further water erosion.

The rail-quality scout truck stopped nearby and then the doors opened. Jim, Jessica, and Hatchet climbed out grateful to stretch their legs. Once they were clear, the driver continued on alone. While Hatchet went over to introduce himself to his long lost brother, Jim and Jessica walked forward to speak with Critias and Carmen.

This has the makings of a fine place, Jim praised the base Critias had captured, more than fine; this is really incredible.

We have been scratching our heads trying to solve our rail storage problems. If you consider the next few years, the amount of things we can salvage by rail is really staggering, only we didn’t have anywhere to put it all. The Castle doesn’t have the loading dock we needed or the storage space. This new acquisition has all we need of both.

With that in mind, Jim commanded, This Jam-up Sam Flash you have heard about will be arriving on the train. I am giving this new outpost over to the direct command of Commodore Tinny. He will have some living quarters here at the least I should think.

What that means to you is that Colonel Flash will be the commanding officer of this base for the time being. I’m not here as King, so take any problems you have to Colonel Davis. If you manage to find a problem bigger than him or Jack, it can be one of them that tells me.

If you are not King, Critias asked, why are you here?

A bit of wife time, Jim explained. Some exploring of a new base will be exciting, a little tomb raiding as it were.

I am here for some vacation, but you know that I’m always on duty since that comes with the job. If at all possible, I would like a chance for a little rest and relaxation. I would like to film this place and take some rough measurements, which is not entirely unlike working.

You have opened the door on a real treasure. It will be a mountain of new work, but this is definitely worth it. If this coalmine is as large as Kevin suggested, there is space for entire factories after we relocate all the heavy industry equipment. Foragers’ Castle never had the floor space for anything like that.

Jessica informed Critias, "Everyone back home is really proud of all that you have accomplished since you left with the Black Hole."

On that topic, Jim added, "Jessica and I will be going with Gloria on the Black Hole. I want you to ride home on the train when you leave. Now that the airship is officially crewed, the royal couple must attend a protocol cruise. It can be a little airborne honeymoon. I’m sure we’ll enjoy it."

Once again, you did a perfect job. You were bold and insightful to have come up with this. You know how to seize a rare opportunity; one of the many things I really like about you.

As Jim started to walk off, he said, And I will need the honeymoon suite master bedroom that belonged to king duke what’s his face. I’m entitled to it, but more than that, when you decided to marry Carmen, I gave you the President’s room to make it a special occasion.

This is my chance to prove to you that I was being honest at the time. At the moment, I don’t feel an obligation to assign you a nicer bed than my own. You do great things, but I still work more hours than you do.

There are other nice rooms in the guard tower, Carmen said to convey that it wouldn’t be any hardship for them. We will be comfortable there. Did you enjoy the drive? It did look exciting, a cross country trip to get the train to the station on time.

It was exhilarating, Jim confessed. We’re going to go take showers and get some of this cookout I have heard about.

Hatchet and Jasper followed as the King and Queen walked away linked through the elbows.

Jessica called back, Please tell Alice that the King’s Law made the King very proud today.

I have the feeling she will seek you out soon enough, Critias said after them. "She is getting rather formal about her obligations. I think she picks it up from Carmen and her bushido etiquette."

Jim called out, Critias is the Perkele. Whenever the kingdom is thirsty, his thunder calls us fresh rain.

You are a terrible poet, Jessica had to laugh. That was really gay.

My praise is like my bedrooms, Jim stated as one of his principles on life. I only give them to others when I genuinely mean it; otherwise, I prefer keeping all the best ones for myself.

Jim’s raised voice echoed in the vast rail tunnel, This place is as big as our ambitions.

Before he forgot, Critias called down the tunnel to Jim, Carmen is planning a special dinner party for her closest friends. It will be at Verloc’s place; I think. If you can arrange some time off work for us and perhaps contribute in some other ways, my family would feel not only fully rewarded but grateful besides.

Jim answered, I’ll think on it. This is a busy time of year for us; big plans are afoot.

Colonel Jam-up Sam Flash’s train arrived a half-hour later. The locomotive ran smoke machines while it moved faster than ghouls could sprint to chase it. After Critias opened the gates, he stood by and then counted eighty cars as they passed.

He started to close the doors after the caboose cleared the gateway. Its inactive smoke generator hung off the back.

With so much heavy smoke on the trestle bridge, none of the infected even managed to get up so far. Those that tried, invariably lost their footing and fell from dashing about blindly with so many gaps beneath their feet.

Whoever drove the train did a fine job as they stopped it just enough that Critias and Carmen could catch up and then climb aboard the caboose for a ride back to the loading dock.

Carmen said, Hello, little person, friend. She spoke to the masked and goggled dwarf on the caboose that waited to meet them. She introduced herself, My name is Carmen.

The dwarf challenged her as if she had offended him, You have something against little people?

I certainly do, Carmen replied snappily. They stop fetching my beer when it isn’t on the bottom shelf and they always have their nose in my business.

The dwarf laughed, I do have a nose for the business of beautiful ladies. I’m Ray Brakeman, but you should call me Ray. Jam is up in the engine. If you need a date for the party tonight, I happen to be free.

Thank you, but I’m married, Carmen declined though genuinely flattered. She liked the man already. He seemed to love old world engineering as much as she did, and living large adventures with a cheerful heart at the same time.

Their fuel tankers were near the back of the train. The rest of the locomotive had to continue on far ahead past the depot to put the diesel carriers near the dock.

Ray disconnected his caboose so that the train could then back the fuel cars onto their reserved side rail that was specifically for them.

Critias and Carmen left the caboose to walk over to the well-lit loading dock area.

They found Mandy there where she had set up rows of wash buckets and laundry baskets as her field stage one decontamination area. Decontamination Services had provided her with a ring binder of laminated protocol sheets that instructed on the proper way to perform her duties.

For all of her flippancy on her off hours, Mandy had good attention to detail while she worked. Both her biological parents were university educated professionals important enough to have had passes into the elite Denver bunker. She had a sharp mind born of good genetics and her new life finally gave her an opportunity to demonstrate it.

Since they still had work to do, Critias watched the train with some curiosity while Carmen went over to pet Wilma the bear. The enormous beast had never displayed urgency about anything. At the moment, Wilma relaxed on the dock with his head on his paws like some mega sized housecat. The bear just watched the activity without any special interest, not even in Carmen.

After Ray, the next crewmember from Sam Flash’s train to appear was a man with a long spear that he apparently used to dissuade ghouls as he walked along the roof of the cars. It had been weeks since he had the freedom to get away from his train without the need to fear for his life.

When he saw Mandy’s washing station, he seemed entirely grateful for it as he stripped off his bite resistant leather work clothes to scrub down.

When Carmen caught his eye, she said, Hello, I am Carmen and this is my husband Critias. We work for King Louie.

Wilber Pike, the man nodded politely, but everyone just calls me Pike. It’s nice to meet you. You are just as Sam described you.

I like your tattoos, Carmen admired the art all over his body. She could tell it had been a different artist almost every time. It was all chains, skulls, and guns woven together in a scary warrior display that might have seemed disingenuous if worn by a man of lesser self-reliance.

A girl arrived next to go through the decontamination. She was about Alice’s age and seemed to work the trains as a crewmember. When she pulled off her headgear, the girl revealed that she was distinctly Korean.

You two are from the movie they sent us, she said in fluent local speech as though born to it. The girl recognized Critias and Carmen just as Pike had. You can call me Pipkin. Don’t call me Pip though. I really hate that.

Welcome to the coalmine, Carmen greeted her. We are happy you have arrived without any serious mishaps.

I can smell the meat from here, Pipkin meant the cookout. I have been eating out of cans for so long that people have to remind me to heat them.

No need to hurry, Critias told her. We are cooking up everything to make it easier to ship when we leave. It will still be there when you arrive.

Colonel Sam Flash approached from the engine end of the train, which was some ways down.

Critias headed off that way to introduce himself. Carmen followed after him because she was just as curious only for different reasons since she knew history and Sam Flash was a prominent figure of it.

When they got close enough to see that Jam-up Sam Flash was really Samantha Flash, a woman, Critias said to Carmen, Why is it you don’t tell me these things?

Sam Flash wore leather armor she had tailored from what was motorcycle road rash protection. A goggled pullover leather helmet had a respirator. She kept her blonde hair clipped short so that it was tolerable under her vintage leather aviator’s hat. Sam wore an automatic pistol in a hip holster plus she had a military battle rifle that she carried slung over her shoulder. The rifle was suitable to stop a hunter in the unlikely event one made a nuisance of itself.

Sam Flash, Critias greeted the woman with a smile. I was expecting a man.

Critias Virgil, she replied without a smile. I was expecting a salute, Captain.

The colonel made a point to look him over to size up his worth or else compare what she saw against the stories she had heard.

Without revealing her appraisal, she said, I think Colonel Flash would be more appropriate. So long as we are on the working side of the line, we need to keep this professional. You can just call me ma’am or colonel if that is easier for you. Before you welcome me, I am going to need a situation report.

Carmen felt nervous around their new and quite demanding superior officer. To be away, she said, I will go hook up the new fuel cars and then begin transferring the fuel to the storage tanks.

Colonel Flash had Carmen wait, We won’t be doing that just yet, lieutenant. I will let you know when I want you to begin transferring the fuel.

For right now, I want you to make arrangements to perform a fire drill. If there is an accidental fire in here, we might all end up on the street. Find their hoses, get the water pressure running, and then perform a test. Let me know when you have something to tell me.

Critias radioed to Kevin’s control room back in the city. Once he talked to one of Kevin’s operators, Critias said, "Colonel Flash needs the coalmine report sent to the Black Hole so they can print it out for us."

He next told Colonel Flash, "They are printing you a full copy of the inventory and analysis updated until now. It will be waiting in the Black Hole when we get up to the warehouse. If there is anything specific that you need to know right away, I can have that relayed to you immediately."

Better than excellent, she praised him, "printed briefing materials I can take to the pig roast. For the moment, I only need to know if there is anything that I need to know. If we have any missing gobblers or bandits running about