Dekker's Dozen: The Last Watchmen

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Dekker looked into her eyes and then embraced her. He couldn't hold onto his bitterness anymore—not with the current state of things. "I know you're right. So much death, but everything can still be new." He leaned in and kissed her, holding her tightly against his body at the bottom of the hellish pit.

An urgent chime beeped from his communicator. Dekker broke the embrace and answered.

"Dekker, you've got to get over to Darkside Station as soon as you can," said Doc Johnson. "I've been rummaging through some old files, looking for something I saw decades ago in cold storage. I found it, and it just may save your life."

He'd ever second guessed Doc, and he wasn't about to begin now. "I'm on my way," Dekker replied.

* * *

"So I read this file years ago," Doc said, pry-bar in hand. Fryberger was conspicuously absent. "Now, you didn't get this information from me. The clearance level on it is so high that it carries a kill notice for leaking the info. Not that it makes a difference, the MEA of recent years doesn't have the stones for that kind of thing and it looks like the government's gonna collapse sooner rather than later. I don't expect I'll be around, anyhow. I'm doing like most of those done from other sections of the moon—heading back to Earth, trying to find my loved ones. We're gonna die up here without supplies from Earth and those don't look likely—I might die planet-side, but at least I got a choice of where that might happen."

The huge, wooden box in the center of the warehouse floor was identifiable only by a set of numbers and various cautionary warnings. He rammed the tool into the seams of the crate and split it open; the sides fell off and collapsed to the floor.

Once exposed, they found a self-contained cryogenic unit, running on a nuclear cell with a two-thousand-year battery cycle. Doc wiped the frost from the glass and exposed the life form within. Frozen inside was an elder drone, one of the arbolean apothecium zombies, recognizable by the elongated, gnarled and split horns protruding from the skull.

"So they knew," Dekker stated. "Don't tell Guy. He's always been a conspiracy nut. How long has it been here?"

"Oh, it only gets worse." Doc opened a door to a smaller cryo-unit and withdrew a tray of twelve stoppered vials. "This unit has been in cold-storage... heh, cold storage." He laughed at the unintended pun. "Records date it to over three hundred years old. It's been here for as long as Darkside station as existed. Someone's been keeping this thing a secret for three centuries."

"Did they forgot about it?" Vesuvius asked.

"Not a chance. Every five years the crate gets a review, as with many other special tech projects, not by me, by people way above my paygrade. Something about keeping it current for R and D potential. And here's the kicker," Doc held up a vial. "A vaccination that prevents the attachment of the apothecium spores." He flipped open a bound report and pointed to a medical passage. "Symbiotic spores attach to the victim in a similar method to a virus. This ain't a cure, but it prevents an initial infection. There are just these doses. I figure that's what you got left after losing Nibbs, and adding your Doctor."

"Eleven."

"Eleven?"

"We lost Krav in Jerusalem. You take a dose for yourself."

Doc shook his head. "Nah. If everything falls apart, and I think it will, I'd hate to be one of those few survivors. I ain't nothing but a glorified warehouse manager and pencil pusher. I'll share whatever fate Earth gets. I got family down there, estranged as they may be. I just don't think I could take the knowledge that they didn't get a dose while a bum like me did." He pushed the ampoule back. "Save it, freeze it. You never know, maybe it can be replicated and used to save other lives, should we all outlive the next few days."