Some spoilers for The Night Watch, sorry about that. Yes, this is
another story inspired by that little throwaway line in Night Watch
that scares us all, gentle readers.

I'm beggin' you to stick by this one. I /hate/ stories about people
dying, but this is not a sad story. And this is not to say that is
uplifting, either, which is just a sad story where someone has a deep
spiritual revelation. It's fun. Honest. I promise.

Some Buggers

...are you just afraid of becoming some old man dying in the groove of
his life and buried out of pity by a bunch of youngsters who never knew
you as anything other than some old fart who always seemed to be around
the place and got sent out to bring back the coffee and hot figgins and
was laughed at behind his back?
He'd wanted to avoid that.
- Men At Arms

His Grace the Duke of Ankh, Sir Samuel Vimes, stood on the hill of
Small Gods Cemetery, in the rain and freezing wind, and thought...

/Yes. This is perfect./

This is how Watchmen were buried. Almost how they /wanted/ it. With the
muddy ground and the pounding rain and only Watchmen. Sometimes a few
family.

The funeral was huge, of course. The service up at the University's
Great Hall had been massive. Every nob in the city, every Watchman and
most of their kids, too, because every Watchman wanted their kids to
remember...half the Assassins' Guild and the Thieves' Guild had shown
up, and most of the Guild of Seamstresses, and Dibbler had been there
(vending pies outside afterwards, because this was /Dibbler/, after
all).

But up here, on the hill, in the rain and wind...it was just him, and
Lady Sybil, and a couple of the more senior Watchmen. Commander Carrot,
Sergeant Angua, Sergeant Detritus. Nobby Nobbs couldn't get the
wheelchair up the hill, but Detritus had hauled it up for him.

He could've been buried up in the big Ankh cemetery, where the nobs
generally were, but Lady Sybil'd said no. Small Gods was what he
wanted.

Damn dad and his stupid terrier instincts! He could've retired (but Sam
Vimes would never retire, he'd tried it and hadn't liked it), he
could've at the very least stopped patrolling (but the whole reason he
put up with managing and paperwork was patrolling). Oh, he was cagey
and fast, Sam'd had plenty opportunity to learn that. But cagey and
fast only got you so far, when you were seventy and your heart was
giving out.

At least nobody'd got the better of him. At least there was that. It
wasn't as though he'd lost in a street brawl. And he hadn't died in
bed, which, he'd once confided to Sam, would be even worse.

Sam Vimes the second was twenty-four years old, and (now) a Knight
and a Duke, and nominally head of the Vimes-Ramkin family estate. He
was also a Corporal in the Watch, not three months back from the
job he'd taken briefly in Pseudopolis, to get a little rank without
being his father's son the whole time.

He wasn't sure what responsibility laid heaviest on his mind.

His first real memory of his father, other than as a man whose almost
always made it through the second course of dinner before being called
away, was being held up to a high dormer window in the attic of their
home on Scoone Avenue.

"That's Ankh-Morpork," his father had said, pointing at the city laid
out below. "It's not very nice, or very clean, or even very
law-abiding, but it's ours."

"It is?" Sam had marveled. "All of it?"

"All of it. But you have to be careful, Sam. You have to protect it."

"Why?"

"Because it's ours."

"Why's it ours?"

"Because we protect it."

Circular logic of this kind makes perfect sense to a five-year-old.

"And if we stop protecting it...we lose it," his father had said.
"That's our job."

"You an' me an' mum?"

"Well, yes. It's the job of the Watch."

"Oh." Sam had looked thoughtfully out at the Ankh river, which was a
muddy golden color. He looked as long as his father's arms could hold
him.

His father had given him the /city/ for his fifth birthday (as well as
a real wooden sword and a stuffed dragon, but those didn't last as
long).

You protect the city because you love it. You love the city because
it's yours. It's yours because you protect it. You protect the
city because you love it...

Sometimes Sam wished he hadn't bothered, true, because loving
Ankh-Morpork was like...like loving a very dirty and ungrateful thing.
But he did. It was in the blood.

Dad had loved Ankh-Morpork. He'd been out patrolling its streets when
an unlicensed thief made things difficult on himself by robbing a
shop right in front of two Watchmen, and leaving bodies behind. Dad
took off like a shot after him, and Sergeant Ping was on his heels and
looking to outdistance the Commander, but then...

Ping had explained it, very carefully, to a stunned Sam. He just seemed
to slow down, like, and he grabbed at his chest and screamed "I'll
catch you, you son of a bitch!" and that was that.

Sam thought they were quite appropriate last words for a Watch
Commander.

Lady Sybil was crying, in a genteel sort of way. Sam had on his Watch
uniform, with a black band on his arm and one over his badge.
Captain.../Commander/ Carrot's face looked strangely crumpled. He kept
turning his helmet in his hands. Sergeant Angua stood next to him, a
hand on his arm, and stared at the ground strangely. Detritus, with all
the subtlety of a brick to the head, was murmuring an old Trollish
prayer of some kind. Nobby, almost completely deaf and certainly not as
lively as he'd once been, kept smoothing his lap blanket.

His dad wasn't a religious man, so Sybil'd asked the Patrician to say a
few words. Sam rather liked the Patrician. He'd said something quite nice,
about Watchmen and duty to the city and Sam Vimes' legacy, which it was
important to continue.

Sam Vimes' legacy, his son thought, probably consisted of the attempt
to find a nice quiet place out of the wind to have a smoke.

"Are you coming, Sam?" his mother asked, and he realized that Angua and
Carrot and Detritus (carrying a nodding Nobby in his wheelchair) were
all turning to follow the path back down to the street. He shook his
head.

"I'd like to stay a little while, mum," he said. His mother nodded.
"Don't wait on me. Go on. I'll get a carriage, I promise."

He put his helmet on so that the rain could run off it, rather than off
his ears. After a few minutes of staring at the pile of dirt where his
dad ought to be, he sat on the pleasantly colored marble headstone, and
smoked thoughtfully.

It was about two hours later, and the rain had stopped, when the earth
first started to move. For a good five minutes, it just sort of bumped
up and down, as if a mole was digging towards the surface. A head
finally poked its way out, follow by a shoulder and the right arm.

"Hi, dad," Sam sighed. He took his father's hand gingerly, and helped
pull him up out of the ground.

"What in the name of the holy hells is this all about?" his father
panted, brushing dirt from his arms. "Where'd that sod Biffer get to?
Did Ping get him?"

"No, dad," said Sam patiently.

"Well, then why are we standing about?"

"Biffer fell in the Ankh. Concussion killed him."

His father grinned. "Too good a death for a thief," he said. "So why're
we up at Small Gods? Someone die? Other than him?"

"You, dad."

His father turned to look at the headstone, which was carved with a
stylized copper's badge and his name. "I never did."

"Yes you did. Igor said heart attack. I saw you."

"Sam, I am obviously not dead. Take that silly black thing off your
arm."

"You /are/ dead, dad. I had a word with Reg Shoe. He said it might
happen. Said to give you his regards if it did, and ask if you wanted
to come round to the office of Undead Rights sometime."

His father looked furious. "Undead!"

"Yeah. You're a zombie, like." Sam lit another cigarette, then a
cigar, which he'd taken from a box in his pocket.

"A damn zombie!"

"Could be worse."

"HOW?"

"Could be a vampire."

His dad scowled. "I need a drink."

Sam sighed. "Yes, dad. Here." He handed him the lit cigar. His father
chomped on it, then noticed what he was wearing.

"They buried me in /this/?" he roared.

Sam grinned. The gold-and-silver dress armour - with the formal dress
trousers and thick shiny boots - were a much-hated part of the life
of Sam Vimes senior.

"Mum thought it'd be nice. Can't have all the nobs at the funeral
sniffing at his regular tatty old armour, she said."

"I'll have a few words with your mum when we get back home." His father
glared at him. "You didn't do this, did you, Sam?"

"Me? Nah. Happened naturally. Like with Reg. Some buggers are just too
determined to let death stop them, Reg said."

His father stared. Finally, his face resolved itself into an amused
grin.

"All right then, lad. Come on. There's lots to do." His father clapped
him on the back, and began walking towards the gates of the cemetery.
"Was it a nice funeral?"

"Nicest I ever saw," said Sam, loyally.

***

Carrot stood in the office, Mister Vimes' office, and hesitated.

"It's all right, Carrot," Angua said. "It's your job. Go on."

"It's not right," Carrot insisted.

"It is. It's your job now. It's going to be very difficult if you can't
ever sit down to do it." Angua steered him towards the desk.

"That's Mister Vimes' desk," Carrot said reproachfully. "It's his
chair, it is."

"No, it's Mister Ironfoundersson's desk and chair. Listen, I'm not any
happier than you are that he died, but the Watch needs a good leader.
Especially right now."

"It's still got his nameplate and mug on it!"

Angua rolled her eyes. /Gods give me strength/.

"It also has a half-eaten curry and five years of complaint letters.
You're /good/ at organising, Carrot. Go on."

There was a slam downstairs, and confused shouting. Both officers
looked out the door. Carrot's face spread in a wide grin as he saw
someone coming up the stairs.

"Mister Vimes, sir!" he said, saluting. "Good to see you up and about
again, sir!"

Angua gawped. There was no other word for it.

"What's the matter, Sergeant?" Vimes asked, with a smile. "Never seen a
zombie before? Come on, someone find me some decent armour. Is there
any food around? I'm dead hungry..."

END