by Mark Tufo
“The pope knows all about it. They hold on to that secret pretty tightly.”
“What the fuck for?” But I already knew: knowledge was power, and you certainly didn’t want everyone having it. What purpose did a god have if a person held the same power? “All right, I have enough fodder for a dozen journals with this concept alone, just let me know what is happening here.”
“It’s not the same here. Time is not linear, it is like a corkscrew traveling through space, it moves in every direction at all times.”
I must have been staring at him.
“Usually in a miracle situation, time is only melded in one spot. In this place, right now, there have been dozens of collisions.”
It came out of my mouth unheeded. “Mankind. Only man could fuck something up so royally.”
Trip touched his finger to his nose like I’d nailed it.
“Like I said, time is not linear. We and Jack are traveling nearly similar worlds, but not identical; that’s why he winked out on us, that’s why you don’t always remember what he told you. All of us are weaving around each other. We have contact points, but we are traveling different routes.”
“What the fuck, Trip; how do you know this?”
“I can see the threads.”
“What? If that’s the case, can you get us out of here?”
“When you see a violin, can you play Vivaldi?”
“I hate when you make sense.” I deflated. “Whistlers, zombies, night runners, us, Jack. None of us are supposed to be here?”
“Nope.”
“Yet we are. Can we get back?”
He took in a sharp intake of air through his mouth. Never a good sound.
“Trip?”
“Sorry, spicy Phrito.” He held out a different bag, the normal yellow color of the snack was bathed in a red chili dust and had flames erupting from all sides.
“Can we get back?”
“Get back where?”
He’d checked out again. When Trip was cognizant, he belonged to the elite group of geniuses called Mensa; when he zoned out, well, he belonged with Dense-a. So I had an idea of the goings on here, what did it change? Dogs knew about the basic goings on of a car. They got in and went for a ride, wind blowing across their faces. Didn’t mean they could fix one or even drive it. The one thing I knew about Trip, these flashes of recognition meant something. Like meeting a stranger while playing a role-playing video game, they would often tell you things that meant absolutely nothing and made no sense now, but would come into play later. No idea when, but at some point. The problem was remembering the advice they’d told you.
“Fuck it, let’s get to the train. Can’t follow any advice if we’re dead.”
The zombies had gained ground, but not much; by the time we made it to the train, it was late afternoon. There were a whole bunch of options. Indian Hill was close, could maybe make it before dark, but maybe not. If we stayed in the train car, the zombies would definitely catch us—would they stop and surround us or travel on through? No way of knowing. I was basing my decision on unknowns. The city was sure to be a haven of night runners; I could easily be walking into what I thought was a refuge for us that would turn out to be a domicile for them. I looked forward to the city and back to the zombies.
“Better the enemy you know,” I said aloud.
“The train then?” In a moment of clarity, Trip understood me. Gotta tell you, it’s pretty refreshing sometimes.
“I need you to pull the door open, and I’m going to check the interior.”
He lifted the handle of a bright blue car, had the name Sherman-Williams plastered on the side, although in this place when those two men got together they had not decided to venture together with paint, but rather cigarettes. Cartons and cartons of the carcinogens. I shared a moment with Deneaux, of all people. The cigarette smoking, deadeye that she was. I craved one of those sticks, might have even drooled a little bit. It was the smell of smoke I could not risk, though. Didn’t stop me from ripping a carton open and dropping a pack in my pocket. I would make sure to get rid of it before I saw Tracy again. Not fucking if I saw her again, but when.
“Is it weird this isn’t locked?” I thought as I checked out the boxcar.
“What’s the sense of smoking something that doesn’t get you high?” Trip thought that was a perfectly good rationale as to why they were left undisturbed.
“What do you think the chances are we can come across a completely functional Wendy’s car? Bacon cheeseburger would be phenomenal.”
“Always a fan of McDonald’s Filet o’ Fishes, with extra pickles.” Trip was digging into another bag of Phritos; when he was done, I noticed that he just dropped the bag wherever. Now that I was looking, I could see Phritos bags for a fair distance behind us.
“What the fuck, Hansel?”
Trip stood up tall and smoothed his hair before looking around. “Is Gretel with him?”
“Gretel? You have a thing for Gretel? Forget it, why are you leaving a trail? And why the fuck is there no wind to blow those damn bags away?”
“I’ve been putting small stones in them.”
“You’re purposefully leaving a trail?”
“How else is Yack going to find us?”
“Trip, if you know something, you need to tell me. Not in this cryptic shit way or every hundred years when you appear like Brigadoon—like, now.” I wanted to grab his shirt and shake the info from him; I refrained.
His eyes held a modicum of fear and then possibly a fleeting moment of understanding before they clouded over again.
“Yack’s a big fan of my Phritos.”
I sighed. Maybe he knew something on some level, but was not aware of it enough to let me know. I would just have to go with what he was doing.
“Wait, do you share with him?”
He ignored me. “We should look in a different car.”
“Ass,” I said to his back as I followed him.
The next five were completely empty; by now, the sun was getting ready to call it a day, and the zombies had halved the distance between us. Soon we would be in eyeshot of them. We were going to need to make our bed now, so to speak. The next car had a pinch of luck in it. It was a case of juice, the kind I’d seen in Costco or Sam’s Club; you know the variety, it’s mostly the weird flavors with one decent one that they stick in the package because they can’t sell the bad ones anywhere else. So we had four bottles of mango-chutney juice, four bottles of strawberry-plantain, two bottles of orange-garlic—yup I said fucking garlic, because apparently someone, somewhere, thought that sounded like a good idea. And two lonely bottles of apple-grape. Trip grabbed both those bottles as fast as a cobra strikes.
“No fucking way man, I will snap you in half if you do not give me one of those.”
“What if I take off the caps and take a sip off each one and let some backwash in, then swirl it around with my finger to mix it all together?”
“First I’ll drag you to the top of this car, then I’ll dangle you in front of the zombies like a fucking piñata. Clear?”
He reluctantly handed a bottle over. He then looked at the bottle he still had before he spun the top off and then quickly thrust that one into my hands as well. “Oh gross! Grape-apple! I thought this was the orange-garlic one.” He seemed relieved when he picked those two up.
I thought maybe he had gotten confused, but nope, he spun that top and chugged that thing like an alcoholic will his first cold beer after a failed stint at rehab. The resultant burp could have cleared a county’s worth of clogged sinuses. I was going to tell him not to drink the next for fear we’d be discovered, but he was already halfway through it by the time I could see through the tears the robust vegetable produced. I waited until Trip let out another belch, this time from a safe distance, grabbed the case and the remaining drinks, and sought out another car that didn’t reek. I figured four cars away was safe enough. We did our routine; it was empty, and we hopped in. After I shut the door, I wished we had
stayed in the cigarette car, if only so that we could use the cartons to hide behind if necessary. I was feeling very exposed at the moment. There was a ladder in the corner that led to a hatch door, which thankfully was unlocked. But not so much if the runners found us. I hopped back out and found what I was looking for: A long piece of steel to place in the eye hooks of the door lock; the best I could do was a busted hammer for the hatch. It wouldn’t stop anybody determined, only the slightly curious. It was more for my peace of mind than anything. It would give us a warning.
The last remnants of light were still leaking in around split boards and weathered seams when the smell hit me in the nose like Kenney Ashton, he of the fourth-grade bully variety. When you reflect back on your life, you tend to see trends, and even then I was beginning to show signs of my assholeishness to come. Although even to this day I consider it a necessary pushback, else the world would gladly cover you in feces without blinking. Kenney was a good-sized kid—didn’t help that he’d been held back a grade, making him tower over the rest of us who were on track to graduate on time. A group of us had been playing kickball; I’d just kicked a whopper and was heading down to first base, getting ready to go for second. I honestly don’t even know what happened, maybe I was just going to pass too close to him, but he crushed me flush on the nose as I rounded the base. I crumbled over; you know, I could almost have accepted the hit if the douche had even been playing the game, like maybe he was ultra-competitive and couldn’t stand to lose. But nope, he was just shaking other kids down for milk money or some shit.
I waited for the weekend and with a couple of friends was planning on egging the Ashton homestead; when we got there with an arsenal in hand, we got a much better opportunity when Kenny himself had to bring the trash out. I don’t know if money was tight for the family or Kenny just had a few issues, but he was wearing footsie pajamas that had stopped fitting correctly about two years prior, and the kicker: they were of Wonder Woman. Not that there is anything wrong with Wonder Woman—I think she’s a kick ass superhero—but her likeness was on a solid field of pink, which on a boy in the fourth grade…well, that was just asking for trouble. We hauled ass back to Paul’s house, grabbed his father’s camera, and headed back. The odds he was going to bring trash out again were slim; we were going to have to wait for an opportunity or make one. I caught sight of him in a back window of the ranch style home. Couldn’t really see high enough, so I just held the camera above my head and snapped off a few pictures; we had to make a run for it because of the flash. If Kenny noticed, it wasn’t like he could run after us.
Got the film developed. Of the four snaps, only one came out, but it was a doozy. It was of Kenny standing there in all his pink pajama-clad beauty; in one hand he held a Wonder Woman doll and in the other a Ken doll, the expression on his face was one of disbelief and horror, and maybe a tinge of sadness at what was to befall him. Cost me fifteen dollars I didn’t have, but I had that thing blown up to poster size and made sure to tape it onto the school building. By the time he’d got to school, there was a ring of students laughing their asses off at Kenny’s picture. It was like watching a puffed-up balloon getting punctured. He was never the same after that day. But don’t feel bad for Kenny—he was a prick.
“Payback’s a bitch, huh?” I’d asked him as he’d flinched.
Dangerous move because he could have snapped, but he folded over like an old playing card. Last I heard, he’d been washing dishes at a Mexican restaurant. How the fuck I ended up down that memory lane because of the pungency of zombies I’ll never know.
After the smell came a low moaning, keening sound, almost as if they were communicating with each other. Then the fun that was almost too intense to handle was throttled up, the roar of motorcycle engines was met with the furious screams of the night runners. It was looking like a full-blown party was about to converge on the train. I couldn’t have picked a better spot if I’d spent a few weeks surveying the area. My guess was if I were to get an aerial shot, there would be a huge red bull’s-eye painted down here, letting the military know where to drop their ordnance. Trip echoed my thoughts when he spoke.
“Should have brought my bong.”
He knew a party when it was happening. There was a light smack against the far side of the car, then another, then a few more. It sounded like the start of a rainstorm on a hot tin roof, until finally, the downpour gave way. I don’t think they were so much actively seeking a way in as a way around. A traditional zombie might have been stuck there for all time, but not these new smarter ones; they started to slide around either side. Some of the more industrious were even scuffling their way underneath. If that was the case, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think they’d climb up and over. Like I had a direct link, that was exactly what happened. I was starting to feel like the last couple of Pringles in a can, everyone wants to eat you. The train car was shaking from the sheer volume of zombies making contact. The footsteps above our heads were unnerving. Trip had even taken a break from his constant eating.
I looked over to him; he gave me a pained grimace that looked part fear and mostly constipation. I was tracking the footsteps above and was moving to the hatch door where I figured the trouble would originate. Ended up being about ten feet lower, where my left foot came straight down on one of Trip’s discarded cellophane bags. Might as well have blown a rape whistle at the policeman’s ball.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Trip said.
I looked to my offending foot, pissed off at my shitty luck to step on one stupid bag in this entire huge car. But as I looked around, I realized it would have been much more difficult to avoid a bag. They were spread around like debris after Coachella. I’d seen pictures of New York City during the great trash strike that looked better.
“What the fuck, Trip?”
I could use a conversational tone. We’d been discovered and the zombies thought we sounded like a great pick-me-up before they got to their final destination.
“You’re the one that stepped on it.”
“I feel like I should hate you.”
Now the car was shaking in earnest. They were now working on the door. Odds were the hatch would be all right; the real problem was that, now that they had our scent, they wouldn’t leave unless something better came along. The whistlers were coming en masse. Either for food or payback. Both they were going to get in spades; the night runners could hardly avoid all the fun. I could not help thinking that this world could not get much more fucked up. What really had happened here to have so many monsters that clearly were not working together? We’d run across scant few people, but there still had to be some, right? I mean, what would our purpose here be if not? Although I suppose that was a little grandiose on my part, anyway. What the fuck made me so special that someone would actively seek my ass out? They’d have been much better off hijacking some SEAL units.
If getting here was a completely random event, that made getting back seem even less likely. That it was random, though, that held merit; how else could you explain the zombies, night runners, and whistlers all converging here? I watched Trip’s ponytail swish to the right like a horse might its tail attempting to dissuade a particularly thirsty horsefly. I was going to ask him how he’d done it without seeming to turn his head when I watched the bag of Phritos he was holding explode into a mass of yellow spray. I dragged him down onto a layer of bags as dozens and then hundreds of staples pierced the sides of the train car. We were getting covered in wood splinters and sawdust. This went on for a minute or two, then there was a rhythmic loud thumping sound that continued and the zombies began to pull away. The ones on top didn’t even attempt to climb down, they just took the Nestea plunge right off the roof; we heard more than one fall with a sickening, bone-shattering crunch.
I dug my fingers into a cluster of staple holes to widen it enough so I could see out unhindered. There was an enormous line of whistlers that stretched to both sides farther than I could see. In front of them was the devic
e they were using to lure the zombies to them.
“Well, that’s different.”
Trip had resumed his eating duties.
I started thinking as I watched the whistlers round up the zombies. It was entirely possible that this world had been plagued by the same zombies mine had, and in their haste to counteract the problem, they had pulled in predators from other worlds better suited to deal with it. A knee-jerk reaction to a horrible situation that had made it tenfold worse. The whistlers were very well equipped to deal with zombies, as were the night runners. Really the only thing the zombies had were superior numbers, and trust me, that can make up for a lot that lacks. Just ask the Germans who were defeated by the Russians at the Battle of Stalingrad, many of whom didn’t even have a weapon. Unprepared and lacking decent leadership, they prevailed solely by tossing too many ammunition catchers at the Germans. That was the zombie strategy.
You know how they have those medications that can cure dry eye, but cause severe dehydration, muscle spasms, anal leakage, hairy palms, violent mood swings, thoughts of suicide, devil horns, vestigial tail regrowth, and manic, uncontrollable, hysterical laughter? Yeah, this was a case of the cure being worse than the illness. The cat was out of the bag; the question now was how to stuff that fucker back in without getting all clawed up. The whistlers had quickly reduced the number of standing zombies to nearly zero, but they weren’t quite done yet. They were prepping for the night runners. They were coming toward us; well, actually, the entire train.
“Fuck. We have to get out of here, Trip.”
“Can’t,” was all he said, on the other side of the car looking out.
I quickly joined him to see a huge pack of night runners approaching. I seem to remember Jack telling me that they don’t usually travel in such large groups, so they must have made some sort of alliance to deal with the whistler threat. Makes sense, why wouldn’t they? Although, I wasn’t much of a fan of the notion of them planning, coordinating, and communicating. I’ve always maintained that the stupider the enemy, the better. The whistlers made the train first, and were using it to their advantage as they climbed up and over everything to give themselves clear lines of fire. Had to have been at least five of them right above us. The night runners fanned out, making much more difficult individual targets rather than one congealed mass. The battle for the railway was on, and we were unwilling bystanders.