A Shrouded World 6

by Mark Tufo

  “What’s going on?” Jack asked.

  Trip was muttering; it looked like he was praying, but knowing him, he was reciting the ingredients for Pringles. I suppose it was pretty much the same thing for him. For all the battering the building was taking inside, the outside was a picture of stability. It was a very localized and specific disaster.

  “That…was difficult,” Kalandar said as he stepped through. “They know we are here, they know you have escaped, they know I am complicit. We should leave.”

  “The Overseers? What happened in there?” Jack asked again.

  “Not sure, but he’s right. We’ve got to get going,” I said. The problem was that only two people could fit in Jack’s ride, and besides the building we were standing next to, the area was a vast wasteland.

  I could see Jack was torn. Leaving that weapon and going into the vast unknown was not a comforting thought.

  “My unit is going to come for that helo.”

  It made sense the military would be able to track an expensive and dangerous piece of armament.

  “I would have ripped out the equipment, but that would have sent a warning, and they just would have been on top of me quicker.”

  “How much time?” I asked.

  “Far more than the Overseers will give us. Come,” Kalandar urged as he took the stairs down three at a time. If he was moving that quickly, the rest of us should have been running. BT was once again hindering the entire process. Hard to blame the man; he’d been in a coma-like state on a hard floor for over a year, and I’d just jabbed him with lord knows what. My leg had been as stiff as the time the Marines shot me up with the plague vaccine, and BT wasn’t given any recovery time. The expectation that he’d be able to get up and start running was unreasonable. Jack and I were each under an arm, dragging him along. Trip was behind, holding the back of BT’s shirt up like he was keeping a particularly long bridal train from getting tangled among the church pews. He thought he was helping, and as long as he wasn’t in the way, he was.

  “We’re not going to get anywhere fast like this, Jack. Would it be better if you took BT somewhere with the helicopter?”

  It made sense, and after some initial struggling and then some massive help from Kalandar, an exhausted BT was strapped into the back seat. I had a moment of clarity right then, as Jack sped through his pre-flight checklist. This world, all of the worlds we’d been in, really did their utmost to keep us separated. There was a reason for that. I didn’t know what it was, but there had to be a reason. Together we could defeat this; apart we were vulnerable. That was my hope, anyway.

  “Got something for you,” Jack said as he opened up a bag he had under his seat. I’m not usually the sentimental type, but when he pulled that olive drab rifle and knife out from under his seat, I about teared up.

  “I didn’t know you cared,” I told him.

  “This doesn’t mean we’re going steady.”

  “So you say,” I replied. We spent a minute going over the basics. It was a lot like an M-16, but enough differences that I didn’t want to have to figure the thing out in the middle of a battle. “Keep us in sight,” I told him just as the rotors began to spin. He gave me a thumbs-up as Kalandar was pulling me away. Trust me, the thought crossed my mind of hopping in there and taking my chances with weight limitations and the unenviable position of sitting on BT’s lap. I think if Trip hadn’t been there, I would have more than likely done it. Kalandar and I were on thin ice, and he was entirely too heavy to stay there long.

  I caught up to Trip and Kalandar; they were moving in the opposite direction than we had originally come. I involuntarily ducked down as the helicopter blazed on past. “Lucky bastards,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” Trip replied. “You’ll see,” was all he managed to tell me as I wanted to pressure him into an explanation.

  I was stewing in my juices, partly from the exertion we were placing on ourselves to make distance, but mostly because after all we’d been through, we were no closer to stopping the whistler invasion or the Overseers from taking their reins and wielding the beasts to do their bidding. And that wasn’t even delving into the hordes of zombies and night runners that kept spilling over. Fundamentally, I knew more and more zombies were coming to our party, but I didn’t seem to have the same tie to them that Jack did. It seemed they spawned wherever he tended to be, but that doesn’t necessarily make sense, as they didn’t appear to bother him while he was on the base he was stationed at. Is it possible they somehow know when he’s the least able to defend himself? Makes as much sense as the rest of this place.

  The apocalypse and some less-than-stellar decisions had left me in the best shape of my life. With that being said, running in boots and gear and in defense of your very safety and health is not my favorite activity. Even when I was attempting to get into shape, pre-flesh eating monsters, it wasn’t something I would do for joy. Wait, I lost my train of thought. All this jostling of my brain…making it difficult to concentrate. Right, Trip. That’s what I was thinking on. Here we were, hoofing it through the desert, and here he was, humming and sometimes doing a pirouette, hands above his head and everything, and even once in a while he would yell: “Fire Drill!” and make a long loop around Kalandar and myself. Why he was doing it was a big enough question. How was an even bigger one.

  “Stop,” I told him on his third loop around; this one he was doing backward.

  “Damn, Ponch! Haven’t you ever been to a Dead show?”

  “Honestly, no.”

  Trip stopped in his tracks like he’d forgot his motor skills. This notion was as foreign to him as it was to me how someone could subsist entirely on plant matter. I’m not judging; I just don’t know how it’s done.

  “There is no time for your lunacy!” Kalandar yelled as he kept running. I had slowed, figuring at any moment Trip would reboot and start running again.

  I finally changed direction and went back to him. “Just kidding! Come on.” Figured it was better to lie than attempt to appease. Or quicker, anyway.

  “Oh…a joke. Good one.”

  I did not like it one bit that Kalandar had not stopped or even slowed. It did not bode well for what followed.

  “Concerned.” Trip had got close to my ear to whisper that info.

  “Kalandar? Probably. Me, definitely.”

  “You should be, but I was talking about the Overseers.”

  Trip showing signs of clarity was as welcome a sight as a lighthouse in stormy seas. It was just that his light was faulty, and the rocks he was supposed to warn about tended to move or fall from the sky.

  “We’ve got them on the run.” He was smiling. I wasn’t sure if I should bring up the irony of the situation we found ourselves in. “Big picture, Ponch. This,” he smacked his legs, “this is merely a minor skirmish in the greater war.”

  “What is?”

  He pointed over his shoulder and was able to give a burst of speed to propel himself forward. I watched as a vertical line formed somewhere up in the heavens and dropped all the way to the ground. The edges pulsed purple then pulled apart like the world’s largest theater curtain. The sky was blue on either side of the phenomenon, but in the middle of the opening, it was black with occasional bursts of white lightning blazing throughout it, much like a Tesla coil.

  At first, it looked like a gift from the heavens, albeit a strange one. Zombies were falling from on high in great numbers. I wasn’t close enough to see the carnage, but from the heights they were dropping, there wasn’t much chance of them getting up and pursuing. Like everything, this was a case of give and take. The precipice the zombies were entering from began to lower like an elevator reaching its proper floor. For a while, it was still high enough to cause catastrophic injuries, but that changed soon enough. Zombies began to leap no more than five feet from the ground and head straight to us like we were being targeted by lasers. I’d seen all I cared to as I moved my tired body as quick as I dared.

  Had another notion slip
past my stream of consciousness. I’d no sooner been thinking of zombies when my wish had been granted; did this have something to do with self-fulfilling prophecy? Was this something that happened with Jack? I began to concentrate hard on an M1 Abrams tank. A boy can dream. As of yet, nothing had appeared, though I was going to keep an occasional glance upward in case that thing decided to become airborne. We’d run another two miles, and Kalandar had a significant lead. Trip was running, but it was weird; it was like he was so stoned he couldn’t think to remember if he should be tired. I was under the impression he would, and could, run perpetually. Me, on the other hand, my feet hurt, my legs were sore, my chest heaved—and not like in a romance novel. My lungs struggled to get enough air, my throat was dry, and I don’t know…there were a dozen or so other bodily catastrophes in the making.

  I should have been able to run farther than this without being on the verge of collapsing. It was either the after-effects of the isit or the year I’d spent catatonic; although, neither of those explanations worked if I took Trip’s stamina into consideration. Fucker looked like he had been born in Kenya. I spared a glance over my shoulder; the zombies had not stopped. Neither had they gained any significant ground, but the converse was that they hadn’t lost any either. It was a stampede behind us, easily over a thousand zombies. Even with a mile between us, I could hear them running. The rustling of clothes, the smack of thousands of feet on the ground, the clacking of teeth that were preemptively chomping in the hopes they would be chewing on something solid soon.

  I had four magazines of twenty-five rounds each. A hundred rounds. It would do absolutely nothing against the numbers I was looking at, except a measure of satisfaction that would live just long enough for the first set of teeth to sink into some meaty part of me. Stand and uselessly fight, or uselessly run until my heart burst: those were the two options I was staring down the barrel of. I kept running.

  “Where the fuck are you, Jack? Could use a rocket or two.” I think I said it aloud, although, the waste of the oxygen made no sense.

  We could fight. Jack had a fucking attack helicopter, for fuck's sake, and Kalandar, well, that bastard was just a walking Armageddon.

  “Why are we running?” I had a stitch in my side that traveled downward and upward from my neck to my knee—a blossom of misery. I was now hitching, catching my breath was becoming elusive. I did not have much left in the tank, and my body was letting me know that in no uncertain terms.

  “Dun…d, u, n, spells done.” I slowed my speed and came to a stop over a span of a hundred yards, I was afraid if I stopped short, I’d pull up lame. At first, I was in a great deal of pain as I struggled to breathe right. The muscles in my legs were twitching wildly, sending errant signals down the entirety of them. If I hadn’t controlled them, I’m reasonably certain they would have started dancing independently to the rest of me. My breathing was ragged, and, for a while, it drowned out the approach of the enemy. But then, as I began to get that under control, I could hear them coming, and my adrenaline nearly took off without me. I finally turned, surprised they hadn’t caught up yet, and thankful as well. I got down on one knee to steady my firing position. It was the last bit my legs could do, but it didn’t matter, because I wasn’t planning on ever standing again or running—fuck running.

  “Save the last one for you,” I said as I laid out my spare magazines in front of me. I clicked the safety off, luxuriated in taking a proper breath, and was making peace with the fact that my remaining existence was measured in minutes. I was surprisingly all right with that, amazing what a good workout routine can do for your psyche. Exhaustion makes it difficult to give a shit. I lined up a shot, in no particular rush to blow through my ammunition; plus, they were still in the neighborhood of a quarter-mile away. No reason to waste bullets.

  I had my finger on the trigger, slowly easing pressure backward. The thundering herd sounded like all those stampedes I’d watched with my dad when he was on his Westerns kick. I knew they were supposed to be scary for the actors in the movie, but they’d never done much for me. I’d always been more enthralled by the gunfights, but now that I was looking at one head-on, it was pretty alarming. I had to do a gut check and see if I wanted to get up and get moving again. Seriously debated the notion; the lactic acid buildup in my thighs had other designs.

  “I love you, Tracy. I have always loved you. From the first day we met, there was an undeniable connection. The life we’ve built together, the children and now grandchild we have brought into our world—not one regret. Not one. Okay, maybe one. I do wish I’d bought that sex swing.” I fired. A zombie toppled over, then another and another. I spared a glance at my rifle like it had magical qualities.

  “I’m not even shooting.” I heard heavy percussions; lines of dirt were being strafed up as bullet trails cut into the sand and dirt. A chopper whipped over my head. Hundreds of casings rained down upon me like tiny glinting presents from heaven.

  “Yeah!” I raised my fist in the air. I got up quicker than my body was prepared to do. I watched as the chopper ripped through a few more ranks of the undead. “Fine.” I bent over and grabbed my magazines. “Apparently, it’s not time to die just yet.”

  Zombies were spinning wildly in the air as they were caught in the deadly barrage, some cut in half so quickly their bodiless legs traveled for a few more feet before they realized there was nothing steering the ship. The butchery was a wholesale slaughter, and I was all in. It was all great and fine for the leading edge coming right for me, but it did nothing for those skirting around the edges of the killing field. The governor had granted me a reprieve, but I still had to unbuckle the chair straps and pull the plug if I wanted to live. I’d traveled about twenty feet thinking there was no way in hell I was ever going to be able to get moving correctly, the rust in my legs so built up it would take a case of WD-40 to loosen them.

  Within fifty feet, I was running again. The break had done wonders, that, and watching a few hundred zombies get obliterated. It was invigorating, but I was not under any illusions I could keep the pace up indefinitely. After all, I’d not had an extended rest, nor fueled back up with food and liquid. I was content with the knowledge that I could always stop again; I wouldn’t be given a chance to catch my breath like I had the first time, but I didn’t have much choice in the matter. By this time, Kalandar and Trip were hardly more than a figment of my imagination on the horizon. I felt like I should have been pissed they’d kept on going, but I’d made my choice; that didn’t mean they had to go along with it.

  The shooting behind me had stopped. I didn’t bother looking; I knew they were still coming. I could hear Jack roaring toward me, then he was hovering and descending. The dirt he was kicking up and the rotor wash was making it difficult to breathe or see.

  “Grab the wheel!” was shouted over the loudspeaker.

  For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why he would want BT to start driving the helicopter. Then as the copter got closer, I figured out what he meant. He wanted me to grab hold of the strut and tire and go for lift off. Usually, this would be right up there with juggling chainsaws or eating sushi, but right now, with an army of the undead heading my way, I went for it. The chopper dipped some as it took on my body weight. I gave Jack the thumbs up, and he rocketed forward and upward. We were some hundred feet off the ground, my nuts inexplicably another few feet higher than that. I could see a ridgeline up in the distance; it wasn’t our mountain range—more like foothills. Behind us, the zombies were still running, but they were beginning to lose definition.

  “We’re getting low on fuel, Mike. I’m going to have to put you down close to Trip. I’ll take BT and myself as close to the hills as I can, and we’ll meet up with you there.”

  I gave him another thumbs-up as he descended. Can’t tell you how happy I was when my feet touched the ground and my balls fell to their proper location. I was now a few hundred feet ahead of Trip and Kalandar and began to get my legs moving again. It wasn’t long before
they caught up.

  “Hey, thanks for stopping,” I said sarcastically, not sure if that needed an explanation.

  “The patchouli smelling one said you would be coming along at any moment,” Kalandar said.

  “And how did you know Jack was going to pick me up and drop me off?” I asked Trip.

  “I didn’t, but the odds are greatly in your favor that you don’t die right now.”

  I didn’t like that Trip had the curse of the Cyclops thing going on. I was tempted to ask if he knew when the odds would reverse, but does anyone want to know that?

  I’d had the benefit of a small rest and a ride and somehow, I was still struggling. Trip might as well have been an automaton, and Kalandar, I guess in addition to being a demon, was a cardio nut. They must have some huge treadmills at his gym. It was unspoken, but we were all heading to the ridgeline. The thing about terrain and hills off in the distance is that it is challenging to gauge distance. Big things always look closer than they are. I watched enviously as Jack and BT flew off and became just another speck in the sky. They were a few miles out and hadn’t reached the hills that I thought weren’t more than a couple of miles away. I could feel the moment my mind sagged at the notion that I could be running for another ten...and then what?

  Maybe Kalandar was hurting as well; I don’t know, but he began to chant in rhythm with his footfalls. It was his guttural native language, it was discordant and rolled off the tongue like fat maggots from a corpse. In response, I dug deep for an old Marine Corps cadence. At the time when we were doing PT, I detested having to sing out, I mean, it was all I could do to breathe right and to then having to shout out lyrics made no sense to me. I was now getting a clue as to what they were for: it was a way to trick your mind into forgetting what you were forcing your body to do. It started off softly enough, but I added some volume as we ran further.

  “Navy, Navy, I’m in doubt. Why your bellies are sticking out. Is it whiskey or is it wine? Or is it lack of PT time? Join up. Roll with us,1 mile, no good, 2 miles, no good, 3 miles, getting better, 4 miles breaking sweat, 5 miles breathing harder, 6 miles Girl Scouts, 7 miles Boy Scouts, 8 miles now we’re talking, 9 miles almost there, 10 miles Marine Corps! Ooh Rah! Oh, Yeah! Lo Right a Left Left Right Right your Lefty Right your Left. Left Right your Left Lefty Right your Left Left Right your Left. Lefty Righty Lo.