A Shrouded World 4

by Mark Tufo

“Has humanity finally grown so tired of their realm that they wish to throw it away?” he asked. I say “he” only because the demon was more than an “it.” Honestly, I’m not even sure if gender applied to this creature. Would have gone with “she” if it weren’t for the deep voice, and it ate like a pig. I wasn’t planning on looking for its hardware. Where the hell was BT when you needed him?

  There was no way to answer that question that wouldn’t put us in an even worse light. Sometimes I think we did give up—those in power certainly had. They wanted to wipe the slate clean. Maybe in their heads, there was some higher cause, scouring the earth of all the vermin, starting over, trying to create a utopia of sorts—with them in charge, of course. But six billion or so zombies tend to be too many variables to take into account. Not much of anything survived, much less their dreams of world domination.

  Jack pulled up short; I had to sidestep around him.

  “They’ve found us,” he said.

  “And they’re coming?”

  He nodded.

  “Wow, what does that say about the overseers? Them they avoid, this they’re coming for.”

  “In fairness, it’s me they found. I let my senses wander a little too far.”

  There was communication in the form of shrieks all around us; sounded a lot like rabid coyotes in heat. Yeah, that’s a visual that’s hard to suppress.

  “Are we in any danger of him turning?” I asked. Kalandar was bad enough, a turned one was a whole different story, and I would imagine then he would no longer be bound by the rules of our little arrangement, either. Shit, what was to stop him from faking having turned? Then we try to kill it and the deal’s off anyway. There were flashes of darkness around us as runners whipped past. Jack and I both had our rifles at the ready, scanning for a target to lock onto. One burst through to our front. Kalandar snagged it in mid-launch.

  He had pinned the thing’s arms against its sides. Spittle flew everywhere as the runner snapped and gnashed its teeth, trying desperately to sink them into something it could tear into and masticate. Kalandar brought it close to his face and sniffed vigorously. It would be nice to have an erase option in the brain—not the case, I’ll remember what I saw for a good long while. Kalandar stuck the runner’s head into his mouth and crunched down at about eye level, brain matter squirting out of his mouth and spilling to the ground. He chewed loudly, grinding the skull plates to dust before pulling the still-twitching body away so he could smell the now mostly vacant brain cavity.

  “Pungent,” he said, looking up like he was sampling a vintage wine. “Hints of mold and adrenaline; must be where they get their power.” He looked over at us. “Different; I prefer untainted, but my palate is wide-ranging enough to accommodate the taste.” Four massive bites later, the runner had been completely reduced to digestible parts. “I’ve had better.”

  I was so engrossed in the scene to my front that I’d lost track of our adversary. Luckily, Jack had the smarts not to watch Kalandar; there was a three-round burst and the spray of hot blood against the side of my face.

  “We need your head in the game, Mike,” Jack said tersely.

  “Right, right.” I quickly wiped a sleeve to get most of it away.

  “I could lick that off for you,” Kalandar offered.

  I rubbed more vigorously.

  “Mike!” Jack shouted, warning me about two runners coming my way. I took care of one, Kalandar the other as he once again snagged the runner in mid-flight. This one he did not eat; instead, he twisted his hands and then pulled the two halves apart in a sickeningly loud crunch, melded with a wet squelching. No part of that was easy on the ears. Jack and my suppressed shots did little to hide the sound.

  Kalandar proved his mettle in the fight; he took out five, as did Jack. I was pulling up the rear with a staggeringly dismal two, though in my defense I was closer to Kalandar, and between him as a buffer and me being so completely grossed out as to throw me off my game, I wasn’t that distressed about my showing.

  “You want to know why I didn’t eat them, don’t you,” Kalandar said, referring to the multitude of body parts strewn around him.

  “Not really.” I was being honest.

  He didn’t care. I guess he felt like he needed to explain himself, like why he was wasting food.

  “When you have a particular thought in your head of what something should taste like and it is different, it tends to make the entire dining experience strange.”

  “Yeah, like when you think you’re about to take a swig of Coke and it ends up being root beer, or the horror of drinking flavored iced coffee and getting that taste created down in your depths, namely hazelnut.”

  “No one down there likes hazelnut either,” he said.

  “Have you lost your mind, Mike?” Jack asked.

  “Debatable,” I told him.

  “You’re having a conversation with a demon about how the taste of tainted humans is weird compared to non-tainted humans. What’s next? Is he going to tell you clowns taste funny?”

  “Oh, I see what you did there.”

  “Can we just get going? I’m not sensing any runners, but that doesn’t mean we won’t come across more.”

  I noticed, subtly at first, that the closer we were coming to the valley, the slower we were traveling. Following Kalandar had been much like a toddler running after the much longer strides of his father, then it had slowed to a fast trot, then, for a while, I was walking at a more human gait. When we slowed even further, it appeared that Kalandar was shuffling his feet.

  “You are positive there were no archangels?”

  “Can’t be a hundred percent sure, we didn’t see everyone in the car,” I said. “Seems a pedestrian way to travel when you have the ability of flight, though.”

  Kalandar grunted in acknowledgment.

  By the time we could see the cabin, sunlight was illuminating the roof, making it look like it was on fire. The car was still there—to me that was mostly good news; it likely meant Trip was still alive. The bad news was that we obviously still had the overseers to deal with.

  “Hey, Jack, you maybe want to give Otter a heads up we’re coming and we’re plus one. Well, two I guess,” I said as I looked up.

  He looked at me, then Kalandar.

  “I’ll be all right, I think,” I told him. I was acutely aware of the fact that, if Kalandar wanted to kill us, he could have done so a dozen or more times. If he hadn’t yet, then why now? That was when my thoughts harkened back to those old investment firm commercials that specifically said that past performance in no way predicted future outcomes. And this seemed like a pretty big deal to be gambling with.

  “What else is wrong with this world?” Kalandar asked as he looked around, seeming to observe everything going on around him, from the flight of far-off birds to the buzzing of nearby insects.

  “I don’t know much about it. Trip—the person the overseers are holding—pulled me into it and it seems we’ve been on the run since the beginning.”

  “Pulled you in? You are not from here?” He stopped looking around to concentrate on me.

  “No, similar but different.” I told him about where I came from and that it had been overrun by zombies; that Trip had pulled me into another world that had zombies, night runners, and whistlers. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you about the science involved, but it looks like Trip, with the help of his younger self and some other people, has opened up doors to different dimensions—realities, I guess you could call them.”

  “Tell me more of these whistlers.”

  I described them, indelibly burned into my synapses as they are, in graphic detail, from the backward bend of their joints to the striation of coloring on their earless heads, the strange whistling communication they made, and their staple guns.

  “Melerforns,” Kalandar said.

  “What?”

  “Those sound very much like melerforns; you do not have these in your world?”

  “Not that I know of, though I
don’t get out as much as I used to these days. That’s a lie, I didn’t get out much when things were more ‘normal’ either.”

  “Are they here?”

  “I haven’t seen any.”

  “But a rift is open?”

  “It would seem that way.”

  “Then great trouble is coming.”

  “Coming? You mean it isn’t already here?”

  “This passage that this Trip has opened, it is not just alternate realities, it is also alternate dimensions.”

  “Um?” I was confused.

  “Alternate realities exist very close to each other and are breached more often than most realize. Lesser gods play with these doorways all the time.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “You are familiar with this?”

  “I’ve been told I have one continually screwing with my life.”

  “Which one?”

  “Poena.”

  Kalandar actually winced and pulled back. “She is mean-spirited; did you insult her origins?”

  “She’s female. She still hasn’t told me what I’ve done to make her furious. Maybe she’s angry because I don’t know why she’s angry.”

  “I’ve met her—that could be the case.”

  “You’ve met her? At what, like an office mixer or something? Some way to get the heavens and the underworld familiar with each other?”

  Kalandar ignored my words. “You’re going to have to kill her or she’ll never stop. She exists to make others miserable.”

  “She’s a troll?”

  “No, trolls are decent beings. Forgiving, even. The melerforns are far worse. Poena is very focused on what she does, only ten thousand at any one time suffer her indulgences—but melerforns, they are parasites. They adapt to whatever world hosts them. They constantly seek out new places and do not stop until everything of substance is gone.”

  “I’m a little lost—not about the eating everything like locusts part. The dimensions and realities.”

  “There are no realities you can inhabit that naturally host melerforns. They do not belong here. They exist separate from our worlds. They should not—they cannot be here, yet they are.”

  “If they’re not supposed to exist, how do you even know about them?”

  “They have broken through to other realms before.”

  “How were they stopped?”

  “They were not.”

  “Comforting.”

  “There are some who believe that they were created to do just this.”

  “To destroy? A weapon gone bad? Pretty normal state of affairs, looks like.” I was thinking about the zombies and night runners. “Did man do this?”

  “No, your kind cannot be held accountable this time.”

  “Score one for us, I suppose. They can be killed, though; they are mortal beings.”

  “You have told me of the world you inhabit. Could you suffer another war?”

  “Not right now; we’re just holding on. Attempting to gather our strength once again to find a way to combat the threat we’re facing.” I had been thinking that given the abstract terms of all the things we were dealing with, right this very moment, I’d have to push whistlers far down the list—then Kalandar decided to give me a reality check.

  “They have destroyed realms at the heights of their civilization; they will come in greater numbers, using your own technology against you. Heat, cold, poison, the highest mountains and the depths of the earth and oceans—none of it is a deterrent. There is nothing they cannot adapt to or learn.”

  My world was in shambles, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of military equipment the whistlers could get ahold of. Tanks, helicopters, jets, it could all be at their disposal. A squadron of F-16s could completely wipe out Etna Station—America’s last best chance at reversing the course of this ship we were all sailing. Hell, how many nuclear missile silos were now unmanned?

  “Why though, to what purpose?”

  “Do not think they need a purpose. Does the rifle you carry ask why it was fired and what it has shot? They are a weapon. The overseers are not friends of yours or mine,” he quipped. “Yet, they may be doing what needs to be done. Your friend is a key of sorts. Is it worth stopping them?”

  Trip was one man versus the lives of an infinite number of people. How could I possibly justify that risk? But he was one person I knew, versus a multitude of strangers.

  “He might be able to stop it—the bleed through, I mean.”

  “Are you justifying? Much injustice has been accomplished this way,” Kalandar responded.

  “A philosophical demon? What are the odds?”

  “I’ve had a lot of time alone to reflect.”

  “Are you evil, Kalandar? Do you basically hurt others just to do so?”

  “I do not. Good, evil; these are subjective terms. Surely you must know that. Are not some evil actions done for the betterment of good? And does not some good turn to evil? It is all the perception of the events.”

  Couldn’t argue with that. I’m sure the people running the Spanish Inquisition thought they were doing the right thing for the people by persecuting alleged heretics. Can’t imagine the heretics or their families thought this was such a good idea.

  “Can you get back to where you were before? Not the prison, I mean.”

  “There are always ways.” I think he smiled.

  I was both happy and apprehensive when Jack came back. He looked almost surprised that I was all right—not sure how I felt about that. If he was so worried, maybe leaving my ass alone with the giant demon wasn’t such a good idea.

  “We’re good,” he said tersely.

  I think Otter wanted to shit a brick when he saw Kalandar. I mean, so did I, really. We all talk a brave game, like if some home invader decided to rob my castle I would stand and fight, and, yeah, I’d like to believe that. But what if a nightmare walked up that staircase, not just some armed masked asshole but this, a thing unimaginable? Would your innards turn to water? Would you pool into a large wet mess atop those stairs? You never truly know your mettle until you’re up against it. I’ve seen some of the biggest baddest mofos walking the planet completely cave when the front they put up was challenged, and I’ve seen some of the smallest, seemingly least threatening people rise up and conquer.

  In high school, we were playing our rival; on their team, they had this guy Nick Marinachi, all-state running back, I mean absolutely built like a brick with legs. To make a statement, they had Nick receive the ball on the opening kickoff. My team was small in numbers, so most of us played in every facet of the game; special teams, offense, and defense. This was one of those games where I really hoped I got blocked well so I couldn’t get steamrolled by Nick. We had this kid on our team, Larry Guildan, buck-ten soaking wet, would have been the water boy on most other teams, but, like I said, we were a small school and just fielding enough players could be a challenge. Nobody figured Larry would do much of anything except get planted into the earth. He ran down that field completely unblocked and straight into the path of the charging train that was Nick Marinachi. I thought I should have asked Larry what his sister thought of me before he no longer existed.

  Funny thing about that play—Larry, who was generally afraid of a tackling dummy, launched at Nick and wrapped both his arms around those tree trunks of legs. He hit him so hard he jarred the ball loose even as he slightly lifted and forced that man-boy down. The ball took a fortuitous bounce right into my unsuspecting arms. I scored a touchdown and garnered a fair amount of glory for it. But all credit goes to Larry. He won that game on the very first play. Nick looked absolutely lost for the rest of the game, and after we all saw that the behemoth could be crushed, we did not hesitate. I don’t think he had a run longer than five yards that game. Even got tackled in the backfield a bunch as he grew cautious with where he was going. We won a game that we were heavy underdogs in. It was there and then I learned a kernel of truth: it is not what a person says that is the measure of
them, but rather what they do.

  “They’re still in there.” Otter was talking to me but had yet to look away from Kalandar. “Four of them. Heard some yelling and screaming some time back, but it’s been quiet for a while now.”

  “These weapons you use, they are underpowered for what we attempt. Are you three aware of the chakras?”

  “The life force wheel?” I asked.

  Jack and Otter both looked at me.

  “What? Had a girlfriend into that stuff.”

  “Sure,” Jack said.

  “They are very real and very powerful. It is the chakra on the center on the forehead—the third eye—that you must fire upon. It will not kill them, but it will hurt like hell.” He laughed. “Not really hell—abysmal place—but it will stun them sufficiently that I may do what needs to be done.”

  Jack, ever the pragmatist, asked, “So, we need to make four shots on something the size of an eyeball? Or what?”

  “It will be over quickly; there is no need to worry about that which you cannot stop once it has begun.”

  “Oh, Kali, when you talk like that it just makes me all giddy inside.” I looked around. “Sorry, I just don’t even know what to do with what is happening. We summoned a demon to fight angels that I think are trying to stop an actual Armageddon event from spreading to an unlimited amount of worlds. I don’t think any of us here is equipped to deal with something like that.”

  Kalandar quickly informed them of the melerforns and what their presence meant. I was keeping an eye on the cabin when I saw movement through one of the windows.

  “Something is happening,” I interrupted.

  “Mike, I like Trip,” Jack started before I gave him a questioning look. “Okay, I can tolerate him…on some levels. But you heard Kali—this could be for the best.”

  “I don’t mean any offense, Kali, but Jack, are we all of a sudden accepting everything he says? Aren’t you the one who said we shouldn’t trust him?”

  “You are using doubt to further your agenda,” Kalandar said. “And prefacing your statement with ‘no offense’ does not make the words any less offensive. In fact, it makes the affront more prominent.”