Chapter 34 – Broken Goods
"Smith is not a man. He is an intelligent creature with the genes and ancestry of a man, but he is not a man." Stranger In A Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
It was not until nearly 3 am that Aster finished loading the gold, the precious, flowing lifeblood of any economy, onto her truck. It was with some relief that she saw that there were different men guarding the machinery than when she had obtained it. They would not know WHEN she had gotten the machine. Because she had been using it far longer than it ought to have taken her to load the truck with salt. Going to the Maestro's treasure chamber, removing part of the salt by hand, and replacing it with gold, had been time consuming.
Time that with any good luck, nobody would now know that she had spent. Though there were just two more things she had to get. Things General Monroe had promised her. She drove the forklift down to the lowest level of the palace. There were coffins there, in a dusty room. They had been used once. Before the Maestro had gone completely mad. Now, they had sat there for decades. But in the dry room they didn't decay, as they would have in the ground. Luckily, they were already on oversized pallets. It took several grown men to lift one. Well, human men. A Gamma like the Maestro could have lifted one as easily as Aster would lift an apple, but probably even before he went mad, he didn't want to be bothered with trifles like that. If puny humans felt the need to bury their dead, let them do the work needed to accomplish that.
They were lined with lead, of course. They wouldn't have been in stock in the Maestro's palace, if they hadn't been. In the world that existed after the War, one never knew whether somebody would die of radiation poisoning, their bodily remains permanently contaminated with some element with a half-life that measured in centuries. No, the coffins were not so much to honor the dead, as they were to protect the living. The Maestro, of course, had no problem with radiation. It was food to him, not poison.
In this case, Aster also intended the coffin to protect the living. Not from radioactive elements in the dead body, but from the possibility of the body coming back to life as a result of further radioactive contamination. She wasn't sure if that could happen or not, but then, at one time she would not have believed that an 8 foot green monster could transform into an old, weak man, then back again. She was not taking any chances. At least, not any more than she had to. She wanted Leonard Samson's skeleton to study and experiment on. He was, after all, a Gamma like the Maestro. But she certainly didn't want him somehow regenerated and resurrected by exposure to radiation. She was certain before and she was still certain now that she no more wanted to be raped to the point of near death by a Gamma Leonard Samson, than she had wanted the same thing done to her years earlier by the Maestro.
True, his skeleton was in the Hall Of Fallen Heroes, but Aster had had a bellyful of 'heroes'. They had all fought the Maestro, and all lost, leaving Aster and the other members of the Army of Darkness, and even little kids like Zack and Maria to pay the price. Besides, the Maestro had been a 'hero' once. When he was the Hulk. And he had gone bad. Aster could see no good reason why the hero Leonard Samson, could not go just as bad.
No more Heroes. She thought to herself. They were stupid and failed and left the rest of us in this mess. Probably too honorable to do anything nasty enough to defeat the Maestro. Well, I wonder if they think his roasting and eating little kids is somehow less nasty than whatever it would have taken to defeat him. And if it isn't, I can damn well think of something else that is! I think I prefer the Monsters. Like the Vampire, Morbius. At least he had the wits not to get himself killed. An organism fit to survive. Which is about all that matters, in the end. Keeping the animals alive. Keeping yourself alive. Though maybe it's better, probably it's better, to die than to live and have the Maestro get a hold of us again.
But she did not want to think about what the Maestro could possibly do to her, or anyone else in the Army, if he got a hold them. It was a thought that chilled her in depths she didn't think she had. A nearly palpable sensation, like a frozen rod of metal impaling her innards. Aster distracted herself from the thought, by re-focusing on the immediate task at hand. Working the controls of the forklift, she slid the prongs under the large pallet that held the coffin. It was arranged so that it fit lengthwise, which was good. Otherwise, it would have been too wide to fit through the door. As it was, she was going to have to be careful going around corners in the hallways of the palace. But the architecture of the palace was built on a large scale, for the convenience of the super-humanly large Maestro. She shouldn't have that much trouble.
Aster drove back out of the store room full of coffins, and headed for the Hall of Fallen Heroes. There were a few soldiers from the Army of Darkness there, standing over a pile of neatly stacked artifacts. Aster spotted Captain America's armor and shield on one side. She didn't see the six blades from the Hero called 'Wolverine', but she did see that his skeleton was gone from it's former position. No doubt the blades were somewhere. Either with or without the metallic skeleton they had been attached to. General Monroe was certainly not going to forgo a treasure like that. Wherever they were, it wasn't Aster's business, and she really didn't care. Swords were not really her sort of weapon, and she doubted that mere swords could defeat the Maestro anyways.
The soldiers seemed to be making a game of taking turns trying to move the large hammer that had belonged to the Hero (or maybe he was even a God) Thor. One of them was making a show of falling on his knees and making a loud prayer to Thor that sounded a bit sarcastic to Aster. Then he got up, and tried to lift the Hammer.
He failed. Although Aster didn't really think that a God would be moved by such a sarcastic sounding prayer, anyways. His failure was met by laughter from the other soldiers, and one of them said something Aster couldn't quite here in a falsetto voice, before raising his bat-shaped cloak and shaking it behind his own head. Whatever it was he had said, combined with the gesture of his clothing, was apparently extremely hilarious, as the laughter of the rest of the men - and one woman Aster now saw - became even more raucous.
Aster got off her forklift.
"Excuse me." She said politely as soon as the laughter died down. "I need to load up a couple of things from this room, to put on my truck."
The soldiers guarding the room ceased their laughter, and straightened up to military posture.
"You can't have any of this." The woman soldier said in a serious voice. This annoyed Aster. General Monroe had specifically said that she COULD have the two things she had asked for. Her mouth parted slightly in annoyance. Then she saw that the woman was gesturing towards the large pile of the most desirable... the most lethal... artifacts that they were standing guard over. Aster's mouth closed.
"No, no! Not any of that stuff in that pile." She assured the woman. Not that any of it would be of much use against the Maestro, anyways. The stuff Aster wanted was not as obviously lethal, but in terms of possibly defeating the Maestro... someday... had far more potential. Not that anyone else in the Army besides Aster was capable of understanding that, and it was just as well to Aster that they could not understand it, and she certainly wasn't going to explain it to them. She really did not want to compete with anyone else for her particular prizes. Especially not General Monroe. Aster wouldn't put it past him to slit her throat one night, if she became too inconvenient for him. He had, after all, been a murderer and a highwayman for a long time, and didn't keep his Army organized, or win wars, by being a kind and gentle person. In fact, she really didn't like him, but she would not have had him otherwise. If he were other than what he were, they would not have won their battle the previous night, or be escaping from Dystopia the way they were about to.
And they HAD to escape. Nobody understood that better than Aster. But she did not like to think about her terrifying realization of what they were escaping from. She turned her attention back to the group of soldiers.
"I need that skeleton." She pointed to the bones marked in the case labeled 'Leonard Samson'. "And that little file cabinet with the documents about the Vampire, Morbius."
"Oh!" The female soldier nodded, her short blond ponytail bobbing behind her. It looked like it had been recently cut, and was barely long enough to make a ponytail with. Perhaps she had been one of the women to donate blond hair to the wig Aster had worn as part of her disguise as a Betty the previous night. If so, her sacrifice had been worth it. They had won. And with far less casualties than if Aster had not Made The Darkness. And hair grew back.
The other guards were smiling now, and nodded as well. "General Monroe told us you could have those things, Miss Aster. We just forgot you'd be coming for them. But only those things. Them's orders, you understand?"
"I understand." Aster nodded. The more obviously lethal looking artifacts were for Monroe's ranking officers and his children. Rank and heredity hath it's privileges. That was fine, as long as Aster got the really dangerous stuff that she wanted. Her reward, she supposed, for Making The Darkness, that had saved so many lives. Though she had done it mainly for herself.
"You want help with that?" One of the guards asked, pointing at the large skeleton inside the glass case. "Looks big... well, probably bones don't weigh that much, but it could be awkward for just you to lift."
Aster regarded the size of the Gamma Leonard Samson's skeleton. At least 8 feet tall. Possibly more, though he looked to be slightly shorter than the Maestro. Hard to tell, without flesh on the bones. The size was going to be a problem, though not in the way the guard thought.
"You've got an axe." Aster pointed at one of the guards, who had one holstered in a leather sling behind his back. "Break the glass for me, and then I'll see what needs to be done next."
The man nodded, lifted his axe, then walked over to the large glass case. "Be easier if this were flat, instead of standing up. Better stand back, this could be dangerous." He muttered to himself. He hefted the axe in his hands, then stood a few feet away from the case, and gave it a light tap, then another. A spiderweb of cracks went up the glass, and at a third tap, the entire case shattered with a loud crashing, tinkling noise. The soldier jumped back quickly, but a rogue splinter of glass gave him a slight cut on his hand. He brought it to his mouth and sucked on it for a few moments, then reslung his axe. The cut was shallow and didn't bleed much. Still...
"Better put some alcohol on that." Aster told him. "Just to be safe. That case has been her for decades, you don't really know what was on the glass. For all you know, the Maestro himself might have taken a piss on it some fine night."
The soldier made an appalled face at the thought of actually having something as disgusting as their hated enemy's piss contaminating his body by means of a cut. He went behind the pile and brought out a rusty white box with a red cross emblem on it. He rummaged around for a moment, then brought out a cotton ball and dented plastic bottle of alcohol. He soaked the fluffy cotton thoroughly with the alcohol, and rubbed it so vigorously into the cut that it started bleeding again. This didn't appear to bother him, so long as he scrubbed away any possibility of some sort of unspeakable contamination by the Maestro's piss. Aster grinned to herself at her little joke. Urine was a sterile liquid. The other soldiers apparently didn't know that. But who knew what bacteria and viruses might exist on the glass, from it being pawed at by the curious or terrified citizens of Dystopia over the decades. Many of whom might have been sick, and most of whom probably didn't practice very much hygiene. Running water was a luxury that Aster had grown up with, and that existed in the Maestro's palace, but the majority of the citizens of Dystopia did not have it, and the number without it had increased as time passed. Just one more remnant of the old Pre-war civilization that was being crumbled away by time, entropy, and the Maestro himself.
"If you're done with that," Aster said to the guard who seemed determined to actually rub his skin completely off with the cottonball, "I need you and your axe again."
She gestured towards the skeleton. "The problem isn't so much that it's awkward, although that's certainly also true. It's just plain too tall. That coffin is what, a little under 7 feet long? The skeleton is over 8 feet."
The soldier didn't understand what Aster was getting at. "What do you want me to do?"
Aster pointed at the skeleton, then at his axe, which he had slung behind his back once more. She smiled wickedly.
"Break it up."
"You want me to wreck it!" The man appeared slightly outraged at the suggestion. Though whether it was the thought of destroying something that the Legend that was Aster Aversa wanted, or desecrating the remains of a Hero, Aster wasn't certain.
"It won't fit into that coffin the way it is." Aster gestured to the lead lined container. "I don't need it in one piece. I simply need it. And General Monroe told you I was to get it."
As appalled as the guard may have been at the thought of violating the sanctity of the remains of a long-dead Hero, he was even more appalled at the thought of somehow offending the ruthless General Erick Monroe.
"I'll do it." He nodded vigorously, and hefted his axe once more. "Any way you want it done?"
She considered. Leonard Samson's skeleton was not only too tall for the human-sized coffin, it was also too wide. The guy must have been barely smaller than the Maestro himself.
"Try to get between the bones." Aster said. "It'll keep it in better condition, though that doesn't matter. It'll probably be easier that way, though. I suspect the bones on a Gamma are really strong. Cut off the arms and legs. And the skull. Then all the ribs. The ribcage is too wide too fit in there, otherwise.
The soldier nodded, and set to work with his axe. Fortunately for Aster, several decades inside a case made out of what Aster did not realize was leaded glass, (that had been mandated by the Maestro specifically to avoid the very possibility Aster was worried about, that of radiation somehow causing the Gamma Leonard Samson to regenerate and resurrect) had caused the ligaments that normally attach bones to eachother to decay away in Leonard Samson's skeleton. Had that not been the case, the soldier's axe would not have been able to separate the bones from one another. The only blades that would have been able to manage the job would actually have been the adamantium ones that had been attached to the skeleton of Wolverine, and which had now been removed by General Monroe, who might or might not have allowed Aster to use them to dismantle a Gamma skeleton. But Aster had no way of knowing any of that, and the paranoia of the Maestro had, for once, worked in her favor. Though she did not know that, either. As it was, it still took several chops with the axe to break every bone from the one it was attached to.
As the man worked, occasionally wiping sweat from his face, Aster worked the catches on the coffin lid, and lifted it open. It was lined with green silk, which made her scowl, but it couldn't be helped. She wasn't going to waste the time ripping it out. Time was the one thing she was increasingly short of. As soon as every bone split off from the whole, Aster took it and arranged it carefully in the coffin. Finally, the job was done. She pulled the coffin lid shut, and snapped the catches.
"Thanks." She said sincerely to the soldier, who was panting slightly. She regretted the little joke she had played on him regarding the Maestro's piss. But only a little. And it had gotten the guard to disinfect his cut, which was important. Infection, like lack of running water, like lack of food, like lack of almost anything, was a growing problem in the decay of the Maestro's city of Dystopia.
Though if you thought about it, infection itself was not actually a lack, so much as it's opposite. It was an overabundance of life. Bad life, perhaps. From their point of view. But an overabundance just the same. Too much of what was bad, and not enough of what was good. All part of the same entropy and madness that they were running from. Running for their lives. For more than their lives, if she was right. But she didn't like to think about that. At all.
Aster distracted herself from the dreadful thought, yet again, by heading towards the very last thing she needed.
The suit of clothing labeled Morbius, The Living Vampire. And the small file cabinet full of information about him, below it. It was the only file cabinet left. General Monroe had already taken the others, somewhere, but had left this one for her, because she had asked for it. Because she had Made The Darkness. Aster unclipped the black and red clothing from the vertical board it was mounted on.
Then, acting on an impulse she didn't fully understand, she brought it to her face and inhaled deeply. Smelled it. Seeing if she could learn what a Vampire.. what Michael Morbius... what... smelled like. But there was nothing to smell but dust and staleness. The emptiness of time. Whatever... or whoever... had once lived in that clothing, was long gone from it.
Shaking her head at her own strangeness, Aster lowered the costume, folded it neatly, and put gently inside the drawer of documents, before sliding it shut. She was just barely able to lift the steel box filled with papers, and as she made her way over to the forklift with it, she wondered what in the world had motivated the Maestro to leave all this information about the Fallen Heroes where anybody could read it. No, not merely could read it, but the Maestro had, at times, actively encouraged the terrified, enslaved citizens of Dystopia to read it.
Why?, Aster wondered, as she lifted the file crate onto the flat lid of the coffin. Why give us INFORMATION? To intimidate us? To show us how powerful the Heroes were, so that we give up hope, so that we think to ourselves, if the Heroes, with all their POWER, with all their STRENGTH, could not defeat you, then what chance have I? So we give up without trying, despite what you've done, and what you could do? Are you so effing ARROGANT that you think you are 100 percent invulnerable? Or that us mere humans are simply so weak and helpless that we've no chance at all against you, no matter what we learn about you? Don't you understand that ANY information is more valuable than all the gold I stole from you and have in my truck? Simply knowing the abilities of all these heroes, is in and of itself, tremendously useful. It tells me what DOESN'T work against you, and saves me from wasting time looking into it. Thomas Edison had to go through the process of learning two thousand different ways how NOT to make a lightbulb, before he found the one way that worked. Letting me know what doesn't work against you, saves me all that effort, so thank you very much, you stupid arrogant pig. And letting me learn what's different about the Vampire, Morbius, such that he was able to survive and escape from you, when none of the Heroes could, is going to be even more useful. I'll figure things out. Everything I learn, and everything I fail at, will set me on the path of countless other, more likely possibilities. If you've got a weakness, I'll find it!
Given the fairly slow speed at which the forklift travelled, Aster decided that the small, heavy file cabinet would not slide off the perfectly flat top of the coffin. So long as she took the corners carefully. Which she had to do anyways, due to the length of the coffin. She thanked the soldiers once again, politely, for their help. It didn't cost her anything, and they'd be more inclined to help her in the future, if she ever needed it. She was starting to understand, that although there were some things that only she could do, and some things that she needed to do herself, there were other things that she needed other people for.
Making shoes, for instance. And if she found the Vampire, Morbius, she was going to need a LOT of people to help her.
It was only a few more minutes until she got to the loading dock. The pallets of salt were heavy, but only took up a fraction of the room inside the trailer. She quickly loaded the coffin behind them, then got off her forklift momentarily to set the file cabinet on the floor next to it. No sense in risking it falling off during the upcoming trip to the Destination, and scattering it's contents everywhere. Not that they would be damaged, but reorganizing them would be a time consuming annoying. And time was a luxury she had precious little of. Somewhere, in her frontal lobes, or perhaps deep in the reptile brain where fear resided, she could see or smell doom approaching. Not quickly, but inexorably, like the Gila Monster she had read about a few times in some of her father's books, back at the Zoo.
Thinking about the Zoo brought a different sort of despair. One for the past, rather than the future. She wiped a tear from her eye, got back into the forklift, and drove it out of her truck for the last time. They would not be bringing the forklifts with them. They took up too much room that was needed for other necessities. When they got to the Destination, the trucks would be unloaded by hand. There would likely be no way to maintain the forklifts, or even recharge them, at the Destination. Like most other places in the world, except for Dystopia and Iceland it had regressed by centuries. And from the looks of things, pretty soon Dystopia could be crossed off that exclusive list. Not that the Maestro cared. Aster thought back to one of her favorite books. She didn't quite understand all of it. She had once thought that it was about the God of Trains, though now she understood it a little better and no longer thought that. But what had it said in the book? That medieval royalty did not need factories to drink out of jeweled goblets? Something like that. Well, neither did the Maestro. So why should he care that things were decaying around him? That he was making them decay? Smashing them like a petulant, spoiled, insane child?
She stood up and pulled the trailer door down with a resounding THUD that reminded her of a coffin or crypt door being closed with finality. It was with a great deal of relief that she snapped shut the padlock on the rear of the trailer, pocketed the key, and returned the forklift to the loading dock of the palace where she had obtained it.
One of the guards did speak to her as she got out of the forklift.
"Zookeeper…" he paused. That didn't seem a respectful enough title for the Hero Who Had Made The Darkness. He started again. "Lady Aster. You're up late. What were you doing with the forklift at this hour?"
Aster thought. Lies, especially plausible lies, did not come easily to her. She decided to tell the truth, but not ALL of the truth. "I hid while everyone else fought, so I'm not that tired. I decided to use the forklift when nobody else was, so I wouldn't inconvenience them. Loaded my truck with salt and a few other trade goods that I think will be valuable in the destination.
The guard nodded absently. He really didn't care. Everyone had their own agenda, and as long as it didn't interfere with the Army in general, or General Erick Monroe specifically, it didn't much matter to him. He had a few plans of his own, that were equally neither a threat to anyone else in the Army, nor any of their business. He opened a panel on the side of the forklift, withdrew the worn looking coiled wire inside, and plugged it back in. "If you're done, then move your truck, if you will. Once dawn breaks, we're going to be loading everything. We need every dock open. Then you'd best get some sleep, my Lady. General Monroe wants us up at sunrise. Almost everything is loaded onto the trucks, and what remains is to be loaded by 11 am, and we're leaving for the ship within the hour after that. General Monroe says we don't dare risk staying here longer than 36 hours. We don't know when HE might come back. I'm not driving, so I'll get to sleep in the back of one of the trucks. But I hear you have your own truck. The one the General gave you for Making The Darkness."
There was an awkward pause. Anyone driving those trucks, rather than being inside the metal shielding in the trailers was going to take a heavy hit of radiation. Most of the drivers were old men. But Aster was young, it would likely take a substantial number of years off her life. Unless she found the object she was looking for. She was pretty sure it had to exist. But it might have been removed from it's former location by the Maestro.
"I know. I'll be alright." Or would be, if she managed to find what she was looking for. But there was no way to do that until they went to the piers where the Maestro kept the cruise ship they were loading the truck on, the Green Fantasy. To Aster's knowledge, the increasingly insane Maestro no longer enjoyed any pursuits as harmless and innocent as a day of sailing. He could have very well removed what she wanted to find. There was no good reason for him to do so… but there was no good reason for him NOT to do so, either. Who knew what aberrant thoughts might occur to someone as insane as the green tyrant. For all Aster knew, he might have taken it into his head on some fine random day to simply smash it. It's not as if he needed it.
I need it to be there. Aster thought as she got into her truck, and parked it a few hundred feet away. Plenty of room to let other trucks get into and out of the loading dock, or line up if they needed to. The night air was a little cold, but had a hot smell. One she had lived with all her life, but thought nothing of until now. Not exactly ash, but more like what remained after ash itself died. She re-entered the palace, then walked back to the Maestro's throne room that was now acting as a sleeping hall, half praying to whatever pitying God might still look down at the vermin that somehow managed to occupy what was left of the world. What I have planned will take decades, if it works at all. I CAN'T lose a huge chunk of my life to radiation poisoning. I need every minute I can get.
And if what she wanted wasn't there, she would drive the truck and take the hit of radiation regardless. As badly as she needed every bit of time she could get, she needed the gold even more badly. She couldn't let anyone else know about it. If they knew about the gold, they'd take it. They'd be dooming themselves and the world in doing so, but there was no way for Aster to make them understand that. People were so shortsighted, they almost all thought in terms of immediate greed and satiation.
Besides, they were better off not knowing. If all they had left were a few years or a few decades, she would do the mercy of at least letting others have that little time in peace. It was too late for her, she could not UN-know what she had deduced.
Within a few minutes, she was back in the temporary sleeping barracks. It was crowded. Beds, cots, and couches were everywhere, and not a few people were lying on pads made of blankets on the floor. Most were sleeping, but a few were awake to guard the doors. Awake, and alert. Rifles held at the ready. None of them were distracted by playing cards, eating, or even talking amongst themselves. Aster smiled grimly at this. There were plenty of nasty things she could think of about General Monroe, but failure to teach or enforce military discipline among his troops was not one of them.
"Zookeeper." One of them recognized her as she passed through the doors, and the others nodded. Not as respectful as the guards in the loading dock had been, but Aster didn't really care. Other people's opinions of her meant very little to her, so long as they left her alone and did not interfere with whatever she might want to do at the moment. Which, at this very moment, was getting into the empty cot she had left, near Zack and Maria, and getting some sleep.
She saw her bat-winged cape still covering the two children she had informally adopted. Well, she wasn't going to disturb them to take it back. She'd put it on in the morning. There were warm blankets and a pillow on the cot. It was all she needed. She'd slept in far worse places, including the empty Vampire Bat habitat at what was left of the Zoo, and the cold ground. Her Army uniform was a bit tight and stiff to sleep in, and she didn't feel like looking for anything else to wear, so Aster simply stripped naked. This brought a curious glance from the same guard who had addressed her as 'Zookeeper', then he looked embarrassed, shrugged, and turned his attention intently to some sort of extremely fascinating insect that was apparently crawling on the floor near his feet. Aster paid no attention to him. The human concept of modesty had been very nearly entirely burned away in her, and she didn't care what sort of modesty the guard had that she might offend.
Aster took the two keys she had, the one for the ignition of the truck, and the other for the padlock in back, and put them inside the pillow case. Nobody would be taking them while she slept, without waking her up. Then, she put her belt back on loosely and reholstered her gun. Security first. She didn't know whether they might be attacked by allies of the Maestro or the monster himself at any moment. Though if it were the latter, there would be little she could do other than put the gun to her own head.
Since she generally slept on her side, Aster moved the holster sideways, against her belly. A cold weight, the anti-thesis of the pregnancy she would never have. Death in her belly instead of life. But just as comforting in it's own way. She placed her hand against it in a protective gesture, closed her eyes, and after several minutes was asleep, dreaming stange dreams of colors, of solid gold that flowed like blood, and liquid blood that illuminated the world like light.
Paul Rasse's blood. She thought in her sleep. The Maestro's blood. I'll have them both on my hands. On my claws. On my teeth. In my throat. Sweet. Like the finest chocolate. Rich. Like bacon.
Animal dreams. Blood dreams. Vampyre dreams. Perhaps nightmares, to anyone but her. In her sleep, she smiled ferally.
The other members of the Army of Darkness, save for Daniel Wolfkiller who knew Aster well, did not know it, but they had a beast and a monster in their midst, one that might talk and interact with them, and behave in a civilized and moral fashion most of the time, but was psychologically far different from them, and it was far, far too late to humanize her. Raised with animals, and savaged by a beast, she would only grow less human as time went on, not more so.
Aster woke up to the clatter of plates. Some breakfast was being served. Oatmeal and cold ham. The blankets she was under had become disarranged during the night. She thought she had dreamt, but couldn't remember about what. One of her nude breasts was exposed, and a man a few beds away glanced at it, then looked away, slightly embarrassed, and slightly fearful. Gossip traveled fast. It was well known throughout the Army what Aster had done. Her actions the previous night had increased her reputation. and she was now not merely the Only Bitch The Maestro Ever Bowed To, but had now also killed two guards in a few seconds, in order to Make The Darkness.
Rumor and gossip being the distorting things that they were, some versions of what had occurred the previous night claimed that Aster had killed the two guards with merely a broken bottle, or her bare hands, rather than with a gun. But even if there had been a gun involved, women did not generally kill opponents who were stronger than them, or outnumbered them. Aster had. One did not consider Aster as a potential bed partner in the same manner that one did not consider the Virgin Mary, Joan of Arc, or the goddess Kali in such a manner.
Still, it was a very nice looking breast. Aster was young, and healthy, better fed and cared for than most other women in the harsh world she lived in, and the lasting injuries the Maestro had given her were internal. The man found himself glancing up and looking at it again. Then he saw more, as Aster got out from under her blankets, and blanched slightly.
This time, Aster noticed him watching her. She automatically made an obscene gesture in his direction, then shook her head in disgust. As much with herself, as with the man goggling at her body. Honestly, she wasn't even certain she even cared if he looked at her naked, as long as he didn't say anything and kept his hands off her. There was a time she would have cared, would have been embarrassed. It was not so long ago, in years. But a near eternity in experience. Embarrassment had been burned away, a casualty in the long war her life had become. Though she did not know it, the obscene gesture was highly puzzling to the voyeur. He couldn't picture any divine woman reacting in such a fashion to his gaze. The Virgin Mary or Joan of Arc would no doubt have given him a look of stern reproach, and Kali would have struck him down with a sword. The nasty gesture was something a human would do. But Aster seemed more than that.
Aster was unaware of the man's confusion at the incongruities she presented to his way of thinking, and would not have cared if she had known. Her main concern at the moment was that she still had no underwear, and wasn't certain where any was. The only immediately available source she could think of, the wardrobes of the chamber where the Betties stayed contained fragile, filmy and revealing things, that were not at all to her taste. And they were green. She'd rather do without, than wear underwear like that. The Army of Darkness had had a supply of women's underwear, back in the Underworld, and no doubt it had been packed into one of the trucks, but she wasn't sure which one, and likely it was under or behind some of the numerous other supplies that had been packed to take with them to Wisconsin.
The Destination. Aster reminded herself. It was best not to even THINK of it in terms other than that, for now, lest she inadvertently break the military secrecy and speak the name aloud.
Zack and Maria were waking up. For some reason, Aster cared more about the young boy seeing her naked, than she did the grown man a few cots away. She hastily pulled on the black trousers and tunic that everyone in the Army of Darkness wore, then her boots. Her feet hurt. She wasn't sure why. Looking down, she saw some acid burns on them. Well, that was not surprising. The sandals she wore offered scant protection from the sulfuric acid she had used as a weapon against the two guards. Socks. She needed to find socks. Or at least clean rags of some sort to wrap around her feet. And something to disinfect them. She most emphatically did NOT want to get an infection.
Zack was fully awake now, watching as Aster laced up the black leather boots. "Can I have boots like that? I got no shoes, even."
That hadn't occurred to Aster, though it should have. Prisoners, such as Zack and Maria had been, were not allowed footwear, lest they use it to try to kick one of the guards. And to hamper them, if they should somehow escape and try to run. As Aster knew from her personal experience in being cast out of the palace completely naked, bare feet did not get very far, very fast. Especially on those whose feet had been softened by wearing shoes their entire lives. Removing the shoes from all prisoners was standard operating procedure in the Maestro's palace, and no exception was made for children.
Come to think of it, the delicate, high heeled sandals that the Betties wore was not really the sort of thing that one would get very far in, if attempting to flee. Just another one of the chains that the Maestro bound his female slaves in.
Aster's lips parted slightly. The young boy's question had managed to confound her to nearly the same degree as she had confounded the nearby voyeur with her rude gesture. She had never been confronted with it before, but now found herself face to face with a very glaring gap in her sphere of knowledge. She had been used to knowing almost everything (or being able to quickly find out) nearly her entire life, and the sudden incongruity of realizing that here was a whole world of knowledge that she knew almost nothing about, and had no easy way at hand of learning about, and that it had been brought to her attention by a mere child left her speechless.
As it happened, she had no idea whatsoever where to obtain shoes for the six year old Zack or his younger, and smaller-footed sister, Marie. There were no children living in the palace, therefore no shoes of the correct size would likely be found. The youngest dead soldiers from the Army of Darkness were 12. Too young to die, but old enough that their boots would be far too large for the two children. There were children of Zack and Marie's age who belonged to some of the soldiers in the Army, and possibly Aster could use whatever heroic status she had gotten whatever stories people told about her to demand that they give up there shoes. But she wouldn't do it. She had taken on of her own free will the care of the two young prisoners - therefore it was her problem. She couldn't rightfully foist it onto anyone else.
She thought some more. When she had been that young, her father had bought the shoes at some store or the other in Dystopia, so there were people there who knew how to make leather and shoes. But from what she had seen when the Army entered the city the previous night, the Maestro's increasing madness can caused the situation in Dystopia to degenerate to such a chaotic and dysfunctional state that almost all the stores were abandoned. Aster had no idea where the people got shoes for their children, or even for themselves. She could only surmise that whatever cobblers were around now worked and sold out of their own houses. But she had no idea who they might be, and there was no time to even find out, much less wait for them to build a pair of shoes from scratch.
In fact, as the subject at hand forced Aster to confront the glaring gap in her education even further, even if she had had the time to do so herself, she had no ability to make shoes for the children. Or even for herself. She wouldn't even know where to begin, she didn't even know how to turn animal hide into leather. Her father, Joshua, had always bought the leather straps, collars, and leashes they used for the Zoo animals. And the leather gloves they used for protection from biting animals. The way he had her shoes, and Thumb's, and his own. They were just there. Aster had never questioned or wondered about it before.
Still, the Army was shod in boots. And Aster recalled walking past a chamber in the mines once, with partially constructed boots in an inverted position on what looked like a wooden foot. Someone in the Army was making them. Which meant that they could make shoes for Zack and Marie.
Eventually. When there was more time. When they didn't have to flee for their lives, before the Maestro learned what they had done and came to kill them all, or worse.
But Aster did not want to think about the worse.
She closed her mouth, then opened it again.
"I can't get any shoes for you right now." She said regretfully to Zack. "I'm pretty sure that I can get you some eventually. But I'm not sure when. It probably won't be until we get where we are going."
"But what about my feet!? There's glass and sharp stuff on the floor in here!"
Aster thought for a moment. War was destructive, not only to those who fought in it, but to the environment that it was fought in. Anything breakable can and had broken during the attack on the palace. Mainly glass. There had been a precursory cleaning up of the Maestro's cafeteria, to make it somewhat more habitable for the members of the Army that were sleeping and eating there. But it had been just that. Precursory. The bare minimum, allowing one to walk in shoes or boots, without tripping or crunching anything underfoot. Innumerable smaller shards of glass still littered the floor. She certainly didn't want either of the children cutting their feet. With cuts, came risk of infection and inability to flee from danger.
Still, although Aster had no ability to make actual shoes, she was nothing if not intelligent and inventive. She didn't need real leather. All she needed was something to protect their feet. Her eyes fell on the blanket that covered the bed. Green, like almost everything else in the Maestro's palace. She frowned at the color, but it was at least thick and sturdy. Aster took a small, red pre-War folding knife out of her pocket, and quickly cut four large circles out of the blanket, then four smaller circles, and four long, thin strips. She placed the smaller circles in the center of the larger ones, and instructed Zack: "Hold out your feet."
The boy complied, and Aster positioned the circles so that the smaller circle was beneath the sole of his left foot, creating a double layer of protection, wrapped the larger circle over the top of his foot, then tied it around his ankle with the long strip. She repeated the process with his right foot, then did the same for Maria. The improvised moccasins looked stupid, but they would work. Up to a point. They wouldn't stop a nail, but they would stop a very tiny piece of glass, which was what mainly concerned her at this point.
"This should protect your feet, and keep them warm." She told Zack. "At least until I can get something better. And be careful in them, they aren't as good as regular shoes, so watch where you walk."
The girl, Maria, had not said anything as Aster put the improvised footwear on her, and it occurred to Aster that she had not heard her say anything at ALL since she had taken on the care of the two children.
"Is she mute?" She asked Zack. The boy gave her a confused look at this, so Aster gave an inward sigh and put the question in simpler terms. "Your sister, Maria. Can she talk?"
The boy mulled this over for a few moments. "She used to... but not since they took mommy away and she never came back."
Aster nodded. Trauma then. She had no time to coddle Maria, although the girl undoubtedly needed gentle treatment. It was unfair, but so much in the world that existed after the War was. What happened to Aster herself, was by no means fair. and she knew she, herself, had trauma as a result. And no time to coddle herself, elther. You either dealt with it, or you died. Or as Daniel Wolfkiller had rudely, but accurately put it, when he found her in a delusional and nearly catatonic state at the ruined remains of the Zoo, 'You can't stay here!'.
At least the girl wasn't deaf though. She heard and obeyed instructions, such as Aster's earlier prompting to hold out her feet. Even if she never talked again, and Aster had read about a few cases where that had happened, there were workarounds. Aster didn't know sign language, but if Maria could hear, then Aster could teach her to write. A workaround. There were workarounds for almost any situation. Her father had taught her that. An animal was imprinted on humans and wouldn't breed? Use artificial insemination. A nasty trick on nature, but it worked.
Zack's concern, though, was on other things rather than psychological damage to his sister that he was far too young to understand.
"I'm hungry. You would hardly let us have nothing to eat last night. You said it was bad for us, but I'm still hungry. Can we have SOMETHING more for breakfast? Please?!"
Aster's mouth parted slightly again. Damn the Maestro for starving helpless children. Aster was far from being a doctor, like Doctor Llewellyn. Her range of knowledge was broad, but in many areas, not that deep. Or at least not as deep as she now needed it to be, despite being deeper than that of most other people. She knew it was dangerous for someone who had been starved for too long a time to eat too much, too quickly. But she didn't know how quickly you could get them back onto eating regular sized meals. She would have to do so gradually, and just pray that she guessed right, and that the resiliency of the human body would compensate for whatever errors of judgment she knew she was inevitably going to make.
"You can have half a bowl of oatmeal, half a slice of ham, and half a glass of milk." Aster finally decided. "The same for your sister. And I want you to count to sixty between bites. If you do well, you might get a little more for lunch."
Another problem now presented itself.
"I can't count to sixty." Zack complained. "I can only count to ten. Watch, I'll show you."
He held up his fingers and quickly counted up to ten on them. Aster sighed. She had been able to count to 1000 when she had been Zack's age. Her education had been far more extensive than that of almost all other children in Dystopia. She understood that in an intellectual sense, but her emotional response was one of frustrated impatience. Sometimes it seemed to her that other people could not POSSIBLY be so stupid and obtuse, and had to be merely pretending to be so, in order to annoy her. But Zack was a child, surely he was too young to be deliberately perverse. Aster thought for a moment and came up with a different solution.
"After each bite, I want you to get up and walk around the bed ten times. Count out loud when you do it. Your sister, too. If you do well, then you may each have a small handful of raisins after the rest of your food. I have to go and do some things, but I will be coming back every so often to check on you. You won't see me, but I'll be looking, so I will know if you are not doing as I say, and then you will get no raisins, and maybe no lunch, either. "
Zack looked alarmed at that prospect. "I will. I'll count. I promise. Then I'll get raisins, and a good lunch, right? Me and Maria both, right?"
In order to make sure that the two children got only the amount of food she had decided on, Aster went up and got it herself. She pointed out the two children to the cooks, and instructed them to make sure they were not given any more, until she got it for them, and briefly explained why not. The cooks nodded. One did not argue with She Who Had Made The Darkness, especially when it came to such a minor request. In fact, if Aster had ordered them to starve the two children to death, they likely would have complied, albeit in a very grudging fashion. After all, it's not as if it were their children.
Aster sighed to herself as she left. Her compassionate impulse coupled with a sense of belated justice in adopting the two children, was beginning to cause her headaches. She needed to get better shoes for them. And to teach them math.
When there was time. It seemed that there was never enough time, like the Maestro, it was a great beast rushing up from the past to devour them, if they didn't keep moving fast enough to escape it.
But she had given her word. She would at least make an effort to keep it. And perhaps it was penance, for her cowardice at saying nothing when General Monroe had hung their father for spying. Knowing why he had spied on the Army of Darkness, and knowing why General Monroe had had to kill him for it regardless of his reasons, did nothing to make Aster forgive her own personal flaws. She could at least, have maybe prayed for him. Even though she wasn't at all certain whether she believed in God.
Leaving the impromptu dormitory that the Maestro's dining hall had become, brought Aster to hallways that had not been swept clean. The bodies of those killed in battle had been removed, as had the most... grotesque... remnants of the Maestro's rule, such as the severed hand she had seen earlier. But there were still numerous bloodstains, both from the battle, and from the Maestro's sadistic madness previous to it, and broken objects and glass had been merely kicked to one side, rather than swept. Plenty of small fragments remained, and Aster simply kicked the larger of these in one random direction or the other as she walked.
She made her way to the loading docks, where there was now frenetic activity. Trucks were being backed up, filled with pallets of goods via motorized forklift, then they left, to be replaced by other trucks. There was very little organization to this. The closest pallets to the dock were being stuffed in no order into whatever trucks happened to be there at the time. What they mainly needed to bring to Wisconsin with them was food, clothing, seeds, and tools. There were a few other things as well, such as Aster's prized salt (that concealed a treasure she desperately hoped nobody would find), and the horses that Daniel Wolfkiller had selected from the stables. These had a truck of their own, it would have endangered them to be in a truck with other objects that could fall on them. She thought she could even hear the horses, in a truck parked some distance away from the loading docks, and whinnying in fear over the nearby frenetic activity that no doubt was even more confusing to them than it was to Aster. It seemed, judging from the screaming coming from several different sources, that almost everyone else in the Army was equally confused. The only certainty was that the trucks Must Be Loaded! Now! As Fast As Possible! And move your damn truck, there's no room for any more pallets on it, tough if it wasn't loaded right, tough if the stuff would fall over, it wasn't going to break, no time to re-adjust it, get the hell out of the way so we can load the next truck.
Aster went out a side door of her loading dock, found where her truck was parked, and satisfied herself it was still locked. Good. That was all she needed to know. Some trucks were not being loaded, of course. They were shielded with metal, and held bunkbeds, 4 high. Barely room for people to squeeze into Everyone but the drivers would go into them. Along with the few personal possessions other than the clothes on their back that they would be allowed to take. There was not *room* for a great deal of sentimental value. But then, most of it had already been ruthlessly left back in the Underworld, anything useless, frivolous, and sentimental culled out ruthlessly by Daniel Wolfkiller and several other ranking officers operating under orders from General Monroe himself. There wasn't room then, and there wasn't room now. And perhaps... that was the price of Freedom. Perhaps it always had been. Not merely being willing to shed their blood, the way they had in the battle two nights ago, but being willing to walk away from the mere things that you valued.
The way Aster had. When she had left the palace - or rather, been cast out by the Maestro in what he no doubt thought was some sort of very funny gesture on his part - it had been with nothing. Not even a stitch of clothing. Naked as the day she had been born.
But she had left. Aster wondered now, what if she hadn't? What would have become of her. She'd be dead, probably.
Naked was not the same thing as dead. Nor did it automatically cause you to die, regardless of how embarrassed you might be from it. It was something she had realized, a long time ago, as a mere child. When she had looked at a set of clothing in the Hall of Fallen Heroes. A costume that had once belonged to a Vampire. The Maestro had insisted that all the Heroes were long dead, of course. But Aster, whose reading habits were more extensive than anyone else in Dystopia, except (though she did not know it) the Maestro himself, had had a nagging doubt at the back of her head, and had gone home to read a particular story in one of her old books of Fairy Tales, to confirm the doubt in her mind. Being without clothing was not death. One could be naked, and other than the possibility of hypothermia, would not necessarily die from that fact.
The story was, of course, 'The Emperor's New Clothes'.
And it had been then and there that Aster decided that the Vampire Morbius was not dead. Or if he were (though Aster dreaded that thought fervently), he had not been killed by the Maestro, as everyone else thought and claimed. If he had... then his skeleton would have been mounted in the Hall of Fallen Heroes. Not merely his clothing. Which Aster had taken for herself. She wasn't sure why. Or why she had smelled it (an impulse she still found disturbing and confusing). She had a tendency to be a packrat, and her high and slightly legendary status gave her more freedom to bring along personal belongings than most of the other members of the Army. Besides, she admired the intelligence of the man who had become the Vampire. Michael Morbius. The man who had written the book 'Fundamentals of Biochemistry' that she still (much to her frustration) could understand only a very little of. Aster valued intelligence more than anything else, though she had never thought so in any specific terms. It was merely her nature. But having a token of that man, even if it was a token of the Vampire he had become, something that had touched him, was something she...
She forced herself not to finish the thought. Or perhaps lacked the context to finish it. Aster was in an odd way in the same position as a man who was starving, but who had never in his life seen food. She needed an equal. But had never met one. Her father, Joshua, had been highly intelligent, and well educated, but had she not been enslaved by the Maestro, she would have inevitably surpassed him within another year or two. And Doctor Llewellyn had been even more educated, but probably actually slightly less intelligent than Aster's father. In fact, Aster's only equal in the entire city of Dystopia, though she had know way of knowing it, was the green monster who had raped her nearly to death, then killed her sister and driven her father to suicide. Needless to say, the likelihood of her seeking any sort of companionship from the Maestro was about on par with the likelihood of her seeking to take a hot bath in a pot full of molten metal.
Not a chance in hell.