Bill 5 - on the Planet of Zombie Vampires (3 page)

“What about me?” asked Bill, eyeballing the wine and sipping his sour okra juice.

“Being closest to the crew, you get basically the same rations they do,” said Blight, tearing a roll in half and dipping it in his mashed potatoes and gravy. “In my experience, that will help you in dealing with them. Keep you lean and mean and on your toes, so to speak. However, since you are the only Trooper aboard who isn't serving out a sentence for criminal activity, I have decided you are eligible for a fringe benefit. It will help remind you of your favored position.”

“Benefit — tell me!” Bill slobbered, dreaming of the occasional steak, or maybe even a greasy, succulent porkuswine ham.

“As long as you remain in my good graces, you will be eligible for dessert,” Blight said with an expansive smile.

“Dessert?”

“Jelly doughnuts,” said Caine. “I think you will find them a welcome palate cleanser after an okra repast. Although I don't require much in the way of food, I enjoy them myself, especially those little raspberry fellows.”

“Only one,” said Blight, shaking a fork at Bill. “Mr. Christianson and Caine each get two. I get six, on account of it's lonely at the top. You've got to clean your plate before you get any dessert, Trooper. I'd get cracking if I was you, which — thankfully — I'm not.”

Bill looked at the mess in front of him. The excess grease from the fried okra was congealing into a semisolid pool of gray matter. He took another slurp of his okra juice and turned to the First Mate.

“Excuse me, Mr. Christianson, sir,” he said craftily, changing the conversation and diverting attention from himself. “What was your last assignment?” The First Mate was a dandy-looking man, the chest of his braid-encrusted uniform covered with medals and ribbons. His powdered wig was a little off-center, but that only added to his rakish image. As did his strabismus. Cross-eyes ran in the royal families.

“Assignment?”

“Work, gig, job, station, base,” Bill translated, in case the word was too complex for his teeny-tiny officerial mind. “Like what other ships have you served on?” He gnawed on a grease-encrusted sprig of fried okra. “It's possible that I might know some of the crew. Which would sort of make us like maybe ex-shipmates, possibly.” He muttered into silence, saw that no one was looking at him, then slipped the indigestible tidbit under his napkin and lifted a spoonful of the slimy boiled stuff. “I get around,” he added proudly.

“This is my first ship,” said Mr. Christianson, happily raiding the condiments tray, heaping Karbuklian salsa and grated porkuswine's-milk cheese on his okra. “My uncle simply demanded that I take one voyage before I get my captain's commission. Myself, I think it's an old-fashioned idea, but I guess if Uncle Julius feels that strongly about it, I ought to at least try.”

“Uncle Julius?” Bill slid a glob of steamed okra down his boot while no one was watching.

“He's the Emperor's four-hundred-and-second cousin twice removed,” bragged Christianson, hogging the wine. “He managed to get me this far without having to go through that boring basic training or taking all those complicated tests for officer's candidate school — rank doth have its perks — but he insisted I go out on a space ship before I captained one. Silly man, after all the money my family freely donated under pain of death to the Emperor's war effort against the Chingers, but if I must, I must. By the way, has anyone ever mentioned that you have a most offensive body odor?”

Bill brushed off a few more lumps of potting soil and looked out the viewport at the supply station slowly receding into the distance. Too slowly. It was going to be a long voyage.

It was an even longer lunch. He managed to clear his plate by stuffing all manner of ill-prepared okra in various pockets and hiding places — even slipping a few hunks onto Caine's plate when he was distracted. He eventually disposed of all of it and leaped on his strawberry jelly doughnut like it was the very last supper of all time.

Afterwards, licking jelly from his lips, he followed Caine's directions to his quarters. Captain Blight had offhandedly mentioned that Bill was in dire need of a shower, and if he hadn't had one by the next time their paths crossed, he'd personally stuff him out an airlock and make him breathe vacuum until he learned a lesson or two about personal hygiene. Or something like that.

Bill opened the door of what he thought was his room and gaped at the behemoth who stood, when he was standing, about six foot five, three hundred pounds, sitting on one of the two beds, bending a forged steel lamp like it was made of rubber.

“Excuse me, wrong room,” said Bill quickly, backpedaling like crazy.

“You da MP, right?” growled the bear of a man.

“I guess so,” Bill said, smiling insincerely as he hopped backwards.

“Then dis da right room,” the monster macerated, biting off the end of the lamp and spitting the pieces onto the floor. “We is bunkmates.”

“I'm Bill,” said Bill, hesitantly hopping into the room. “Pleased to meet you.”

“My name Bruiser Bonecrusher,” grunted the big ape. “Nice tusks. And — hey! — you got two right arms.”

“Good eye, guy,” said Bill.

“One of them right arms is black,” snapped Bruiser.

“We all can't be perfect,” Bill ingratiated, craw-fishing on crutches and foot toward the unoccupied side of the room. “If you're crew, what are you doing time for?” A change of subject might help. It didn't.

“Axe murder,” hinted Bruiser, his broad grin revealing surgically implanted canines, two inches long and filed to sharp points.

“Could happen to anybody,” said Bill.

“Cut feet off MP an' left him in snow to bleed to death.”

“I know how it goes,” said Bill. “Sometimes stuff like that just happens.”

“Course, he had two feet. You just got one. Only take half time.”

“You got to realize there's no snow on this ship,” gasped Bill. “And none forecasted in the foreseeable future.”

“That black arm you got remind me of someone,” growled Bonecrusher. “Goes way back.”

“Well, me and this arm go way back, too.”

“Reminds me of big Trooper name of Tembo,” grunted Bruiser. “He and I never get along.”

“You and I will get along better, I'm sure,” Bill implied hopefully. He remembered Tembo, blown apart in that awful battle, and how he awoke with Tembo's arm surgically attached to his body. A bit of news he was determined to keep to himself.

“He drive me bonkers, all that preaching. Voodoo day an' night. I mean to kill him, still got nightmares. But he shipped out while I was in da brig for like doin' something I forgot. I lookin' for him ever since. He ever lay hand on me, I chop it off in a second.”

Bill watched his right hand, the black one, clench into a tight fist, and knew for sure it was going to be a long, long trip.

Bruiser Bonecrusher was the meanest-looking human Bill had met in his entire life, right up until the moment Rambette walked in the door about five horrible minutes later.

Rambette was of medium height, medium weight, and had medium brown hair. She stopped being medium right there. Her eyes were a blazing blue, and she carried all manner of knives and menacing weapons strapped in bandoleers wrapped around her attractive, curvaceous — though barely visible behind the armament — body.

“Where's that MP, Bruiser?” she rasped huskily. “We got a problem in Repair Dock Four.”

“I'm the MP assigned to this ship, miss,” said Bill, staring in awe at a gigantic curved scimitar stuck in her belt. “Bill's my name.”

“I'm Rambette,” she said, looking down below his belt and laughing. “You seem to be missing a piece or two.”

In horrified shock Bill looked down — his zipper was closed! He relaxed and the cold sweat cooled on his brow. “Oh, my foot you mean. The doc said that it'll grow back.”

“Nice tusks, though,” mused Rambette, reaching over and twanging one suggestively. “Well, back to work. Bruiser, you better bring your axe. Larry's in one of his wild moods and strong measures might be called for.”

“Dat's great!” grinned Bruiser, dragging an oversized door-busting axe out from underneath his bunk and swinging it in whistling arcs through the air. “Not used old Slasher in some long time.”

Bill looked at the razor-sharp blade with dismay. He saw something that might have been a spot of rust, or, with a tiny bit of imagination, could possibly have been a few drops of dried blood.

“C'mon, Bill, we better get hopping,” said Rambette with a saucy grin.

“Har, har!” grunted Bruiser. “Hopping! I get it. Har, har!”

Bill failed to see any humor in that comment, but he hopped along with the dynamic deadly duo, thinking that only in the military would the prisoners be armed to the teeth and the guard equipped only with a pair of bent, rubber-tipped crutches. Head of the list of things to do was getting a weapon or weapons soonest.

The repair docks were several levels down, and Bill struggled to keep up with Rambette and Bruiser. He was beginning to wish he had his stone foot back again. For all the trouble it had been, that hunk of petrified foot was a weapon of sorts. This Larry character must be one mean bowb if Rambette thought Bruiser needed more than a scowl to get him under control.

“Who's Larry?” asked Bill.

“Just another criminal slob serving out his term on this scow like all the rest of us,” said Rambette, turning right.

“What did he do?”

“He might not have done anything,” said Rambette. “You see, he's a clone.”

“No, I don't see,” said Bill.

“There are three of them. Larry, Moe, and Curly. All clones. Three peas out of the same pod. Three nuts off the same tree. One of them busted into the base computer and gave everybody a weekend pass. They've got the same fingerprints and identical retinal patterns, so the brass couldn't figure out which one of them had done the dirty deed. They court martialed them all for it. It was kind of a family package plan.”

“That doesn't sound fair to me.”

“Been a Trooper long, Bill?”

“Too long.”

“Then you ought to know fair ain't got one thing to do with it.”

Bill could only sigh retrospectively in agreement.

Bruiser was mumbling incoherently and affectionately to his beloved axe, Slasher, when they entered Repair Dock Four. This was as large as the okra chamber, but filled with massive equipment instead of potting soil, which, to Bill's eyes, was a definite improvement.

“Hop this way,” said Rambette, leading them down a metal staircase to the floor, where a group of people were standing around arguing. “Believe it or not, Larry's the one waving the crowbar in the air.”

Bill found it easy to believe. His luck was going from bad to worse.

“It went that way,” yelled Larry. “And I ain't tracking that beast down for nothing, no way. I got more sense than that.”

Larry was a thin man with light brown hair and a sharp, angular face creased with so many wrinkles and worry lines that Bill knew he was a Lifer for sure. Moe looked just like Larry and Curly looked just like Moe who looked like Larry and so on.

“It's all your fault,” said Moe, or maybe Curly. “You got careless. Let him get away.”

“Who you calling careless?” cried Larry. Or Curly. “I swear, Dad should have dropped your test tube when you were just a bunch of undifferentiated cells. I just can't believe I'm related to you.”

“Leave Dad out of this,” said Curly, or maybe Moe. “That thing is out there somewhere. We got to do something.”

“Everybody split up,” said Rambette. “Find the creature.”

“Ugh! Not me,” said a heavyset muscular black man, shaking his head. “Count me out.”

“Everybody!” said Rambette, brandishing a particularly vicious-looking knife. “And that includes you, Uhuru. That's a direct order from Bill, our new MP, isn't it?”

“Uh, sure,” said Bill, who was still trying to figure out Larry, Moe, and Curly. He'd lost track when Larry set the crowbar down. He thought Curly had it now, but it might have been Moe.

“A week of bread and water for any cowardly slackers. Right, Bill?”

“No less. We want no slackers here,” said Bill, who was beginning to suspect that Larry himself had picked the crowbar up again just to confuse him. Confusing MPs had a long and honorable tradition behind it.

“Go!” cried Rambette. “Look everywhere.”

Bill was jolted into action, dropped one crutch, and grabbed a wrench from a tool box. Everyone had scattered and he was alone, armed with a wrench and a crutch, staring down a long, deserted corridor. He started out slowly, quietly.

The ceiling of the repair dock was far above him, almost lost in a maze of suspended walkways, elevated tracks, and all sorts of massive equipment. Huge loops of chains hung down like giant spider webs, clinking softly as they swayed back and forth.

Bill was wondering if the wrench would be enough to handle the ... the...

Agh! He didn't have any idea what kind of a monster he was chasing, or even how big it was. Fangs? Claws? Bigger than a bread box? Smaller than a tank? It could be hiding anywhere. Sweat burst from every pore, which made it even worse. Now the thing could track him by smell!

Maybe it was some horrible alien creature covered with scales, lurking right around the next comer, ready to pounce and tear him limb from limb. Maybe it was a deadly praying mantis grown to impossible size and at this very moment was staring coldly down at him from above, all set to strike. Giant ants and killer bees as big as a man were also possibilities Bill considered, cursing his overactive imagination and trembling with fear, eyes darting every which way, nostrils flared. Very busy. He pressed on, figuring the odds were better if he kept moving.

He turned a corner and looked up. A drop of water hit his face, then another. The floor was wet and slippery. The water tasted faintly of okra.

Bill was facing a long series of lockers, all closed tightly save one, which was slightly ajar. He approached it warily.

Where was everybody else? Bill had never felt so alone, so vulnerable. The repair dock was quiet as a tomb, save for the soft metallic clinking of the chains, the rhythmic dripping water, and the sound of labored breathing.