by Mark Tufo
“Go away,” I wished the being. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to shoot him, but right now I had no good reason to other than I wanted to. At times in my life, I’d also wanted to get tattoos expressing my undying love for the chick of the month. Just because you want to do something by no means makes it right. Time is always the great revealer of knowledge. Just a less refined way of saying hindsight is 20/20, I suppose.
Shorty did not yet move, but the ones he was with did—they were going back into the car. I kept the steady pressure on the trigger, I added no more. I was convinced I was less than half a pound from sending that round downrange. Finally, he turned, followed the others, and the trunk, hatch, or whatever the fuck it was closed up and sealed. The engine made a high-pitched whine and launched off, going from zero to holy fuck in under a couple of seconds. I eased up on the trigger and let my head down to rest on the stock. It was then I noticed the ground below me was wet with the sweat that had dripped from my brow.
“Pretty fucking glad I took the DMT”; Trip had stood.
“What?” I turned my head.
“DMT, man.”
“I know what DMT is, Trip; why would you take a consciousness-altering drug that makes you see spirits and aliens right now? You could have just peaked around the corner with me and done it real time.”
“Oh, trust me Ponch, I was doing it real time.”
“Trip, I need you to tell me what is going on.” I felt as if my quivering legs were now steady enough that they would support my weight. “What did I just see?”
“Different people call them different things. Not many have seen one and lived to tell about it.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” I said sarcastically.
“I offered you some pills; you should have taken me up on it.”
“I’m still wondering if what I just saw is an aftereffect of that bottle of water.”
Trip was shaking his head back and forth while also trying to take bites from the Slender Joe he was holding steady in his right hand. I reached over and stopped his head from moving, he then took a savage bite from the meat stick.
“Thanks,” he mumbled around a mouthful.
“Trip, what did I just see?”
“Overseers, Ponch; some people call them angels.”
Mike Talbot—Chapter 2
“Angels my ass, hell’s angels more like it. The angels I know about have huge white wings and shit. Right?” Although how would I know, I was basing everything off of movies and books.
“Angels, demons, they’re really the same thing, just matters where they reside.” Trip was nervous.
“Oh, I don’t think I like that piece of knowledge, not one little bit.” I was being honest. “Angels aside, where is Jack and how do we help him?”
“We have two ways we can go on the road. Which way do you think we have to go?” Trip asked.
“I feel like this should be rhetorical, but it isn’t, is it?” I asked Trip, though he was much more interested in his meat snack at the moment. “Of course it’s the way the angels went, why wouldn’t it be?” I started walking, Trip quickly came in tow. We’d been walking no more than a half an hour, toward the rise of hills, when I saw the first signpost for Valhalla. Thirty-two miles isn’t that bad when you’re in a car, sucks balls when you’re hoofing it.
Trip was mostly silent except for the occasional lip smacking and the oh-so-irksome habit he had of licking the insides of plastic wrappers. We were nearing the first rise of the line of hills when Trip clued me in to the fact that the sun was far down on its daily journey. I was so focused on getting to Valhalla, getting Jack out of whatever jam he was in, and getting the hell home, I wasn’t paying too much attention to anything else.
“Yeah, I guess I’m getting a little tired too,” I told him.
“Tired? I’m not tired.”
That was the trigger point. “Trip, please tell me there aren’t night runners here.”
“There’s no night runners here,” he said as he looked around. “Not right here.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Well, it’s not night yet.”
“This world has night runners?”
“Yes, but they’re not right here…yet.”
“Shit.” I immediately went into survival mode, and survival meant shelter. There was nothing on either side of the roadway as far as the curvature of the earth to the left and right, for all I could tell. Ahead was more of the same with the start of trees, and I hadn’t come across anything on the road here aside from some vacant cars; nothing I’d want to spend the night in.
“Let’s go Trip, we’ll go further up the road. There has to be somewhere we can stay for the night.”
We were jogging lightly; I was now acutely aware of how quickly the sun was setting. I could see the glint of something a couple of miles away, sitting at the high end of a rise in the road. It looked big, but we were definitely too far away for me to accurately tell. Going down would be easy enough, going back up was always the backbreaker. The tree-filled valley of the swell was already bathed in shadows. If any night runners were in the area, they could easily attack from there.
“Trip, we need to pick up the pace.” I was alert and had my rifle at the ready.
“I hope this one is speed and not valium,” Trip said as he popped a pill.
We’d no sooner got to the very bottom when we heard the telltale screech. It was far off, but still close enough that I heard it. Trip’s pill must have started to kick in because he pulled ahead for a little ways, at least. Once we hit the upslope, he slowed considerably. Another screech, this one a great deal closer.
“So tired, Ponch,” Trip said as I grabbed the side of his hemp belt and began to tug. “That’s some high-quality stitching. Don’t you think? Stephanie made me that belt.”
“Yeah, incredible stuff; come on, we have to go.”
“Want to see the buckle? It’s an aloe leaf.” He was trying to turn his pelvis to me, while also winking his right eye repeatedly. “Aloe leaf!” He thought this was hilarious.
“Yeah, buddy, the Rastafarian colors gave it away.”
“It’s not an aloe leaf at all!”
“I get it, Trip; come on, we need to go.” I was tugging harder, trying to drag the both of us up the hill. I turned to see movement in the woods to the rear and left. Didn’t need to stop and figure out what it was. We were halfway up when a new series of screeches started. I looked down the roadway, six of the night runners were at the bottom. They were deep in the shadows and were very intently watching us as the shadows bit at our heels like every grandmother’s dog since the dawn of the ankle biter. Some were parallel to our position but much further away in the woods; it was the ones behind that were going to get first dibs on a warm meal if I couldn’t get Trip and myself to someplace safe, which was seeming less and less likely.
I don’t know if we were barely moving or the planetary revolutions had sped up, but the shadow was working its way up to our knees. That must have been the cue for the ones below, who started screeching in earnest and running. They looked like a pack of rabid dogs, snarling and clawing their way to us at full speed. We had a couple of minutes at the most. When they halved the distance, I took it upon myself to set up our final defense.
I was breathing entirely too heavily to trust my aim in the standing position, so I got down on one knee, did the best I could to regulate my breathing, and took a well-aimed shot into the abdomen of the closest runner. He doubled over from the gut punch; the light and fast 5.56 round must have struck something hard and taken a southern turn as the beast’s leg buckled and fell over. Looked like I’d taken out its hip, if I had to speculate. Two more shots, I took down two more. The first in less than spectacular fashion as I put one bullet in its thigh, and the other in its knee, causing its leg to snap to the side. I watched as his head slammed into the ground; teeth cracked and broke free, rolling a few feet away from its head. The second runner went down quickly as my bullet blew into and t
hrough the side of its neck, exposing the muscle. Blood pumped out in an arc before the loss of so much muscle caused the thing’s head to fall over, taking the rest of the body with it.
“Hey, Ponch!” Trip shouted. “Come on!” He was at the top of the slope waving me on. As I stood, I realized that the shadows were almost even with my shoulders. Fifteen minutes max and the sun would be down. I had five full magazines on me, plenty for what I could see right now, but the more I shot, the more of them I was likely to attract. The small stop had been enough for my legs to produce sufficient lactic acid that they weren’t working quite to peak efficiency no matter how hard I urged them on. Trip was emphatically waving with his left arm for me to get a move on; he was eating with the right.
“Got milk?” he asked when I finally got abreast of him. My chest was heaving, my legs were killing me, and I was struggling to catch my breath. He was pointing at a large chrome tanker truck, a red elliptical sticker on the rear declared it was “Milk only the way Pood could.” Don’t exactly know what that meant, but it was going to be our makeshift sanctuary for the evening. I thought about the cab, but the close trailing runners would bust through the windshield in minutes and that would be some pretty intense close fighting. Spending the evening in a tank filled with milk was slightly better than getting eaten. I ran up to the large off-loading spigots, broke the small wire holders designed to keep them from shaking open during transit, and spun each of the four wide open. It was the smell, I won’t soon forget, —even as heavy, moldy cheese-like chunks plopped to the pavement, it was the smell that physically pushed me away.
Remember when you were a kid in grade school? There was a time either you were out on recess and were retrieving a ball or perhaps you were Mrs. Darwin’s favorite student and you volunteered to take her overflowing trash out to the dumpster. Whichever way you got there, doesn’t matter, there is something about a grade school dumpster—it always smells like spoiled milk, that acrid, nose-curdling, gag-inducing smell. I would happily have lived in that dumpster for a week over just the thought of having to go into that tanker.
“You think that’s safe to eat?” Trip asked as we watched lump after lump go flooding down the roadway.
“Up, let’s go.” I started manhandling him before he got any ill designs on actually trying any. Trip climbed the ladder without any further problems. I waited a few seconds until I saw the first of several heads crest the hill, signifying the night runners had arrived. I did a quick spray of five shots; at least a couple hit, but I didn’t wait to see how effective they were. As foul as the milk that was running down the street was, it did have the benefit of masking our scent from the runners. They knew we were up here because they had seen us, but the smell of the foul milk was throwing them off.
“Open the hatch, Trip!” I shouted, going over to meet him in the middle of the tanker. I shouldn’t have been surprised when he tilted his head back and opened his mouth. “Not your hatch, Trip; the truck hatch.” I moved quickly on the little foot rail, happy that there was no lock on the large chrome wheel. I spun it open and pulled up; it let go with a heavy sucking sound. I staggered back from the nose-busting smack of fetid air. Trip leaned in, dropped his head through the opening while keeping himself propped up with his arms on the lip, and then violently began to puke inside of the tank.
“It’s so gross!” Trip cried out as he lifted his head to look at me. His eyes were watering, thick chunks of liquidy-meaty substance were tangled up in his beard. He dipped his head down again. I wanted to tell him to stop puking in our bed, but I was afraid to open my mouth. The zombies were a damn summer breeze compared to whatever hellacious emanations were coming from this truck—how it had not eaten through the metal was a mystery. I turned to check on the night runners, to see if maybe I could mount a viable defense from right here. Dozens of the bastards had come over the hill just as the sun went down below the horizon, and that wasn’t including whatever lurked in the forest. The numbers weren’t completely overwhelming, not yet, but they could come at me from a variety of angles, and they would. I could not make my stand on top of this truck.
Trip was lying on his back looking up at the stars that were making their return. I was doing my best to keep the runners at bay, honing in on the silver shine of their eyes. I was spraying bullets into them in the hopes that the cost of this meal was too high and they would seek fare somewhere else. Wasn’t the case, they were running at full speed out of the woods just as the main group was up the roadway hill.
“Too many” I breathed out as I kept firing, swiveling my line of sight from the rear to the side. I was inflicting grievous injuries on them and they did not care. The bolt froze open and I lost precious seconds as I ejected the spent magazine and put in a fresh one, I pressed the bolt carrier release button and was back in business. They were less than twenty feet from the truck. They met my bullets with determined ferocity, I blew through the tops of skulls, ripped faces away, blew holes through lungs, gutshot a few and even performed battlefield amputations as I took off limbs, none of it, nothing would stop them. Our position was lost the moment they found it. At some point Trip had rolled back over, his face back in the hole, his back heaving as he emptied whatever stores he still had in his stomach.
I don’t know what the hell he was thinking, I can’t imagine during the numerous times in my life I have gotten sick that I would choose to drop my face into a diarrhea clogged toilet. Seems like it would have just made matters worse, maybe that’s just me.
“In, Trip!” I shouted; the truck was beginning to rock as the night runners slammed into the sides and back, grasping for a way to climb up. Trip looked horrible, his face drawn out, his long gray-black beard stringy and wet with puke and drool. Through all that, though, he didn’t start a rant or back away or give me a reason why he couldn’t, he merely turned so his feet touched on the ladder down into the rotten, milky mire.
Trip took a deep breath before his head disappeared under the lip of the lid. I had my doubts he could hold his breath for ten hours, but who knows. The first industrious night runner had crawled her way up the back of the truck. A look of shock and confusion crossed her features as I shot her for her troubles and she fell back into the throng, the left side of her chest completely ripped open from the trio of rounds I’d placed there. Then I killed two more as they emerged. By now, I was hoping Trip was clear of the ladder and I could make my escape. I had got to within five feet of the entrance when I started to debate the merits of standing and fighting. I was already in motion, though, and continued with my present course of action no matter how much olfactory pushback I received. Amazing how much power is given to that particular sense. It took every bit of persuasion to push myself into that hole.
Trip was sitting on a small platform halfway down the truck body that went the entire length of the trailer. He was illuminated by a small tea light candle he had placed in front of himself. He was sitting cross-legged and I think attempting to do some yoga. I pulled the hatch shut behind me just as I saw the next wave of night runners coming up on the platform above. I wasn’t sure if it would have a wheel to close it from within, but I was extremely happy to find that it did. The problem now was how smart the runners were—would they be able to spin it open and follow us down? I stepped back, my left hand involuntarily holding my now roiling stomach. The stench that had drifted outside couldn’t hold a candle to the all-encompassing, all-encroaching, all-pervasive reek I was now subjected to. I was hunching over, mouthfuls of sweet water forming in the back of my throat. If the hatch wheel being turned had not squealed, I would have missed it, so lost was I in the intestinal misery I found myself mired in.
I grabbed the wheel in a life-or-death struggle to keep it closed. I was winning so far, but how long would I be able to keep my hands above my head, twisting against an enemy that appeared never to tire?
“Trip! I need your help,” I barked out.
One of Trip’s eyes opened and looked over to me. “This is
a bad place, Ponch.”
“Yeah, I get that. I need help, Trip, have to keep the funkies out.”
“Why would the funkies want in here?”
“Beats me, but they do. I need you to take the strap off my rifle.”
“This is like being up the rectum of a dead brachiosaurus,” Trip said as he approached me. “I’m a hardcore stoner and I could have found us a better place to spend the night. Army guy thinks he knows everything yet here we are stuck in a whitewater cesspool.”
“You realize you’re talking out loud, right?” I asked through gritted teeth as the night runners redoubled their efforts.
“I meant to,” he said as he undid the tactical strap. He then tied it to the wheel and secured it tightly to the ladder. I tested the tension with my left arm before I felt comfortable enough to let go of the wheel. My shoulders popped in protest as I slowly lowered them.
“Nice work,” I told him; he had already turned and was going back to his small candle and yoga. I stayed close to the hatch, not completely trusting Trip’s work, but I think a Merchant Marine would have been proud to call those knots their own. Mercifully, the stuff that was once milk was exiting the tank as fast as gravity would allow. Luckily for us, the tank hadn’t been more than half full or the ladder and platform would have been soaked in the foul concoction. It was one thing to have to smell it, would have been a completely different animal if we’d had to sleep in it. Or worse yet, swim in it until the levels had gone down sufficiently to allow us to stand on our own.
The pounding on the exterior of the truck as the night runners clamored all around was magnified within the tank of the milk truck. It was going to be a long night. Our noses and ears were being assailed and we were a tea light away from being plunged into darkness. I was having a hard time imagining a worse scenario for us to get any sleep. And through it all I found myself thirsty; we’d been running for most of the day. There was no doubt that both of us were heading toward dehydration—that was going to be a problem we needed to settle immediately come daytime. I sat down on the platform, my back against the ladder, and somehow, someway, I nodded off—the majority of my dreams revolved around me being a steelworker wielding a hammer and always having to repair broken toilets. Hey, they were dreams, of course they didn’t make sense.