Gravewalkers: Dying Time Read Online Free

Carmen’s pride. “I’m not
loquacious,” she complained resenting the insult. “My commentary is
always witty and usually ironically pertinent even when
anecdotal.”
    “ Yes,” the colonel agreed
while he stared at Carmen’s ideally combat-modest breasts through
her flight suit. “I see what you mean, on both counts.”
    Carmen secretly frowned in
silence because the override directives in her inorganic parallel
brain intervened to turn her expression upside down. The inhibitor
module made her smile with charming innocence. Both her real and
false expressions were equally intent to refrain from further
levity.
    “ So, tell me, colonel,”
Critias asked, “What have the infected population figures been like
since your arrival?”
    “ Sustained reclamation
activity attracts them as always,” the colonel stated as a
routinely expected consequence. “Our vehicles are as impervious to
them as is our defense perimeter. They are no difficulty at all
aside from all their screaming, which can be unnerving to the new
arrivals, at least until they get used to it.”
    Carmen struggled to control
herself, but in the end, she couldn’t resist opening her mouth to
say, “Marshal Critias, should I be taking notes on these clues in
your investigation? You may need to report to the Grand Marshal
that you’ve discovered evidence that the insanely tormented shrieks
of the immortal cannibal damned can be detrimental to scavengers’
sleeping patterns and thus adversely impact their overall morale
and bottom-line productivity.”
    Colonel Walker mistakenly
assumed he had seen the sharpest edge on Carmen’s tongue. “People
call us reclamation engineers,” he scolded her in a cold tone, “not
scavengers.” He added a scowl over her mocking insults, “The
infected don’t sleep, only lurk, scream, and hunt for
food.”
    “ Fascinating, colonel,”
she replied in unsubtle sarcasm. “This should also go into my
confidential report to the Reclamation General. I’m strongly
considering the working title, ‘Observations on the wondrous
advantages of embedded reclamation strategy’.”
    Walker assumed more than he
actually heard; her favorably named confidential report to his
boss, the Reclamation General, would nutrify his career
immensely.
    “ It should go in that
report,” Carmen continued, “but then again, no one ever asks a
gabby technical-mouth like me to write special reports. Even if the
Reclamation General did ask me to write such a report, after this
latest research, I’m more partial to naming it, ‘Unbelievable
Fucking Ignorance: ERC Strategy is to shit your own bed for lunch,
one real marshal’s observations’.”
    Colonel Walker slipped into
a rage over having Carmen taunt him with a dream opportunity only
to have her cruelly reverse it to flames. Part of his anger sprang
from the knowledge that much of what she said had come from having
overheard Critias’ own private commentary, which meant his
inspection would end in written repudiation no matter what else
happened. The colonel unleashed his resentments on Carmen, “When
human beings reveal their presence anywhere in ghoulish feeding
territory, the humans can’t avoid attracting unwanted attention.
Our defenses are utterly unassailable; ghouls run around out there,
rob bird’s nests, pursue rats, dogs, or cats, and oh yes, they howl
crazily in the night like baying animals, just as they have always
done, all very dramatic, but otherwise overrated.”
    “ Legend is they would
rather eat reclamation engineers,” Carmen retorted unflinchingly,
“but as you say, colonel, that time is long past since they ran out
of people to chew on. Now the ghouls are more like scavengers, if
that is the proper use of the term, meaning they are dirty
gut-buzzard vermin feeding on the decaying refuse. Even for all of
those obvious faults, I assume even ghouls are smart enough not to
defecate in their own nests.”
    “ Lucifer’s balls!” the
colonel cursed on the