A Shrouded World 6

by Mark Tufo

  “I did wonder how you were going to make it up here. I fated it to the gods.”

  I gave him a sidelong glance. A demon fating anything to the gods seemed strange indeed.

  “This is a good thing, Michael.” Kalandar had lain back and was staring at the sky.

  “How so?” I asked when he didn’t immediately continue.

  “We have a powerful ally.”

  “Great. Another powerful entity with their own agenda messing with our existence.”

  “That is one way to look at it. They did, however, save your life.”

  “Nothing is done here out of the graciousness of someone’s heart. Mark my words, they all want something, and we are going to have to pay up soon.”

  “This is probably true, but it is difficult to reject the gift of life, is it not?”

  “A life beholden to others is not a life worth living.”

  “Hmm.” Kalandar was reflecting.

  “Bullshit, Talbot, you’re married.” BT was awake. “What are the whistlers up to?”

  “Wish I knew,” I told him.

  “Where’s Jack?” he asked.

  I looked over to where Jack had been sleeping; he was no longer there. I had a moment where I feared that maybe he had been pulled into another place and time, then I figured that he’d been awakened, like we all had, and maybe was keeping an eye on them. Made sense. If the bastards could use our technology against us, how long would it be until they flew helicopters in or maybe parachuted down? Whistler paratroopers…would that be the point I could finally say I’d seen it all? Doubtful.

  It wasn’t long before Jack came back around, his return heralded with the trumpeting of motorcycle engines.

  “Good news is they didn’t find a way up.” He sat down next to me. “Bad news is a few of them took off, I’m thinking to find a way up here.”

  “Parachutes?” I asked. I was stuck on that scenario.

  “You been in Trip’s stash?” he asked.

  “Speaking of Trip’s stash, what are the odds he has any food?” BT asked, grabbing his belly.

  “Damn, man, you’ve lost some weight,” I told him.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Talbot.”

  Jack was looking. “No, he’s right. You’re practically swimming in your clothes.”

  “Still hungry,” he said gruffly.

  Spent the next half hour talking about all manner of food we’d eat if given a chance. Not the most productive nor satisfying use of time. By the time the sun came up, I would have traded four bacon cheeseburgers for a tall, cold glass of water. Trip sat up, stretched, yawned, farted and burped before pulling a joint out of his pocket and sparking it up.

  “I’m going to look for water.” Jack stood.

  I looked out over the small bluff we were atop; there wasn’t anything to indicate a water source, no oasis in the middle of a barren desert.

  “I’ll go with you.” In the off-chance he found some, I wanted to be there.

  We struck out for the heart of the bluff. “The surface is hard; I’m thinking if there are any depressions, water may be pooled in it.”

  He was right; we found two good-sized puddles. The problem was that the water, in addition to being stagnant, was green and smelled a lot like what I figured hippopotamus bathwater would.

  “Would boiling it help?” I asked.

  “Even if we had fuel for a fire and a container to boil it in, I don’t think so. This smells like it’s full of toxins, and boiling won’t help that. I was hoping for something clearer. Would you drink that crap?”

  “What’s a little diarrhea among friends?” I was still looking at what we were loosely calling water.

  “You’d get dehydrated even faster than you already are. Tough to call this good news, but…” He pointed off into the distance, a line of dark clouds was on the horizon.

  We walked to the far side because, well, there wasn’t a whole bunch else we could do.

  “Sum’ bitch,” I mouthed as we looked down. At some point during the night, the zombies had spread out to encompass the entirety of our little home away from home. It wasn’t a thick perimeter, but it was unbroken as far as the eye could see. They were spaced approximately five feet apart, still-standing sentinels.

  “Do you think the whistlers are responsible for that?” Jack asked.

  “I guess. I don’t think the zombies are the brainless brain-eaters they’re portrayed as, but this seems a little above their skill set.”

  “This seems to bolster my claim that the whistlers have gone to find something so they can get up here.”

  “Makes sense. Leave guards,” I said.

  We checked the entirety of the area and there were zombies throughout. It didn’t matter much because they had no way up and we had no way down—neither of us were going anywhere soon.

  “Zombies have thinned out,” BT said upon our return.

  “Yeah, only because they spread out.”

  “Here.” BT held out a small bag.

  “Hazelnut M&M’s?” Jack asked, taking the bag.

  “You get five each. I had to promise Trip four large pepperoni pizzas before he would hand the bag over. Gave Kalandar eight; I don’t think that needs explaining.”

  “Delightfully delicious,” Kalandar said, smacking his lips.

  “Hazelnut? Trip, are you holding out with the good stuff?” I asked.

  “Why do you think I still have that one left?” he replied.

  “Valid point.” I didn’t know if it was worth eating five somethings I couldn’t stand. If I could get full on them, I would have choked them down out of necessity, but what the hell was five going to do other than reopen the hole in my gut? “You guys can split my five,” I said holding my hand up to repel Jack’s offering.

  “Calories are calories,” Jack said, shaking out five into his palm. I noticed instead of savoring them, he chewed them all quickly and swallowed.

  There was a moment where I almost changed my mind as I caught a whiff of the candy.

  “You sure?” he asked as he handed one of mine out to each of the others, save Kalandar, who got two.

  “I think it would just make things worse.” I looked off to where the storm clouds were, but not because I was hoping that it would rain, rather that was the direction the whistlers were returning from. We all ran across to see what new nightmare awaited us, even Trip, who was usually too far off in his own worlds to care about the present.

  “Motherfucker,” I said as I watched their approach.

  “How big are those ladders they carry?” BT asked as we watched half a dozen firetrucks coming our way.

  “A hundred feet, maybe,” Jack said. “That limits the side they can use them on, but we’ll still have to monitor a mile’s worth of terrain. Could do it if we had a hundred more people.”

  “We’re screwed,” BT said, and he was right.

  “Okay, so there’s no way to defend against all of the trucks. But maybe we don’t have to.” I laid out what I was thinking. With some tweaking from Jack, we’d come up with something that resembled a plan, even if just a dried-up husk of one.

  Trip was scouring the area for rocks. Of us all, he had the most ammunition. I didn’t know how I felt when I realized that, for the most part, our lives were tied to a slingshot. Yeah, he was deadly accurate with the thing, but still it was a slingshot, and at least where I was from it was the 21st century; I mean seriously, hadn’t it been about two millennia since a soldier was killed in battle by one of those things?

  The trucks, like we figured they would, were coming around to our side—four of them at least—which meant two were going to try from out of sight. That would be a bit of a sticky widget in our plans if it worked out for them.

  “Nothing we can do about it,” Jack said as he watched me looking for the other two.

  That did not make me feel any better. Just one more thing in a long line of things we couldn’t control.

  “Can’t you put some bullets through the eng
ine or something?” BT asked. “You know, stop them before they get here?”

  “Not with this pea shooter,” I told him.

  “Need something like a 30 aught 6 or bigger,” Jack told him. “These would never penetrate the block, or it would take too many of them to make it worthwhile anyway.”

  “That sucks.”

  “No lie there,” I told him.

  Trip now had a miniature version of the Pyramids of Giza stacked up. He was flush with projectiles. The zombies that had been spread out were now beginning to coalesce, looked like kindergartners lining up to go back into school after recess.

  “How are they doing that?” Jack asked. “How are the whistlers making them do their bidding?”

  I was thinking about Eliza, who could control the zombies; in another life, worlds away, I’d had limited success, up close and with minimal numbers. It could be done, even if I wasn’t entirely sure how it happened. Then my thoughts turned to Mad Jack who had created a zombie repelling box. Zombies were susceptible to signals.

  “There’s a control box somewhere,” I blurted out.

  “A what?” Jack asked.

  I explained Mad Jack’s box.

  “It could control them?” he asked.

  “I suppose if he’d had enough time, he would have figured that out, but no, he could only keep them away.”

  “And you’re telling us about this now?”

  “I just thought of it, and it’s not like I could have built one. I can’t even solder.”

  “We need to find that box.” Jack was looking around. “How big was yours?”

  “Damn near the size of a footlocker and as heavy as if it was filled with rocks,” I told him, “but I would think as he figured things out, it could have gotten a lot smaller. Shit, Jack, the whistlers might have something the size of a tv remote.”

  “We need to find one that sticks out, doing stuff the others aren’t.”

  A quick scan of those we could see yielded no results.

  “It can’t be by line of sight, not if they’re on the other side of this mount.” Jack was thinking.

  “Radio frequency?” BT offered.

  “That would make it larger,” Jack said.

  “Hate to throw an iron in the fire, but what if it’s satellite controlled?” I asked.

  “What’s that mean?” BT asked.

  “Could be the size of a cell phone.”

  A loud thunderous boom had us all turn.

  “Oh come on,” I said to the enormous bank of storm clouds nearly settling on our position. Bolts of lightning were crackling across the leading edge, and every once in a while one would plummet to the ground.

  “Normal trope for a horror movie,” Trip said as we all watched the massive storm approach.

  He had that right. We turned to see a firetruck far to our right approach the bluff; if they staggered their assault, it wasn’t going to work out well for our plan.

  “Jack?”

  “We hold,” he said, confidently enough, even if I thought I detected a hint of a waver within his words.

  The ladder extended far and above the lip of the bluff. When it stopped, zombies began to clamber up, even going so far as to push their brethren out of the way in a bid to get to us.

  “I hate your fucking zombies, Mike.”

  “Yeah, me too, Jack.”

  “Beats Birkennnstocccks,” Trip came in from left field with.

  “I will take care of that,” Kalandar said.

  “Do we need to move?” I asked, referring to his powers.

  “I do not yet have the strength to summon.”

  “But you will?” Jack asked. If all else failed, Kalandar was our plan Z because there was nothing after A.

  “Give him a break; he’s low on mana,” Trip responded. I don’t know if he knew something or was referring to video game lore.

  Kalandar was moving fast, as he needed to; zombies were already halfway up by the time he got there. He grabbed the ladder and shook it from side to side, sending more than a few zombies clinging awkwardly and tumbling back to the ground. It was much too early to celebrate a victory, but I liked what I saw so far. When he wasn’t getting the results he wanted, he began pushing back on the ladder. I was so mesmerized by Kalandar’s display of strength as the ladder began to buckle, I hardly noticed the first few fat drops of rain that nailed my head and shoulders. That changed quickly enough as the smattering turned into a torrential downpour.

  The ladder was now bent at a forty-five-degree angle and was no longer touching the side walls. It was looking like he was going to take at least one of the ladder trucks out of the equation. This could work, I thought. That was before the enemy adapted and overcame, and what we thought was the shit hitting the fan was merely the prelude. Basically, a stench-filled gaseous emission that had been circulating the room before the real chunked up bits started to fly.

  Five of the whistlers, seeing what Kalandar was up to, began to fire their weapons. I didn’t know if they’d have any effect. I sort of assumed Kalandar would have skin as tough as the rest of him, and they’d bounce off. It was impossible to tell for sure in the deluge and with how suddenly dark it had got. What we all saw was the whistler driver pull his truck forward in an attempt to keep Kalandar from further damaging the ladder. The problem was, Kalandar had not let go and had been drawn to the edge. I started to run toward him as his arms pinwheeled and he fought for balance, but, first off, I wasn’t going to make it, wouldn’t even be close, and even if I did, there was little I’d be able to do to stop his bulk from going over.

  He was going to fall; you could see the instant he lost the fight with his equilibrium. As he went over, I kept thinking that it wasn’t possible. The human mind is just not able to reconcile tragedy instantly. At first, it seeks a way to make what has gone wrong, right; failing that, it will ignore the very thing that is happening in front of it. Ignoring, that is, by not processing; close your eyes and make it go away. Not thinking, by omission. (If that’s not a thing, it should be.)

  All of us were moving, as was Kalandar, though he was going in the wrong direction. All we could do was cover him, give him a chance to escape. His head collided with the back of the firetruck as it continued forward and away. The rest of his body landed with a solid thud. He shook his head; he had to be dazed after that strike. Zombies began to flood toward him, and whatever hold the whistlers had on them was not enough to keep them from the giant entree that fell before them.

  Kalandar stood, staggered for a step; maybe it was the fall, the concussion he surely was suffering, or the whistler staples that landed one after another…or just as likely, all three of those. Jack and I were firing on the whistlers, took three of them out before they thought to take cover; we had a moment before they would be in a position to return fire. Trip had flawlessly been inserting marble-sized rocks into the craniums of the undead. Kalandar roared as he beat a few zombies into the ground. He kicked out, sending three zombies hurtling into the air; he then grabbed hold of the firetruck to keep himself steady. He was in trouble. We could shoot until we went dry—it wouldn’t be enough if he fell over.

  Kalandar pushed off on the firetruck, sending it skidding away. The drenching had started in earnest, and he began to run. He was slow at first but was picking up steam. The damaged truck and another were in pursuit, along with a plethora of zombies. It wasn’t long before all we could see were the taillights of the vehicles and soon after that, nothing. Stunned silence heading to shock was the flavor of the moment in our camp. We had lost easily our greatest warrior in the opening salvo; what chance did the rest of us have? I was still trying to figure out what happened when Jack tapped my shoulder.

  “Are you still with me? We still have four trucks we have to deal with.”

  I think he had to ask because my mouth was agape and I hadn’t moved. Trip was walking around in circles muttering, and BT was watching us all.

  “I um, yeah,” I told him, doing my best to wrap my head
around the loss or at least put it aside for the moment.

  Two we could see, two we couldn’t. Even now there could be an army of zombies on the bluff heading straight for us. If that was the case, this was already over. Nowhere to run, nowhere to take cover. I suppose we could pray to our mysterious benefactor, but help seemed to be in short supply, while the flowing shit appeared to be endless. The moisture on my lips was welcome, and I found myself involuntarily sucking in as much as I could. This is exactly the crap I’m talking about. Here I was, extremely dehydrated and soaked to the bone in a skin numbing downpour. How does that even happen?

  Jack was moving quickly back to the truck we’d been watching. Its ladder was fully extended, and the first zombie up was nearly about to make landfall. His rifle mirrored the storm’s lightning cracks. It illuminated the mask of hate Jack wore for the enemy. He had his war face on and was in the thick of it; I was still struggling. The only thing that got me moving was I knew that if my inaction led to another loss, we’d be through. The enemy had hundreds, possibly thousands to spare; each loss we took would make this even more insurmountable. I pulled my knife free from my thigh sheath and fixed it onto the front lug, twisting the handle so it locked in place. I was generally of the ilk that the further away the enemy was when I killed them, the better. Right now I needed to be up close; I needed this to be personal. They wouldn’t care, but I would.

  Jack was now leaning over, using the ladder for support and firing straight down into those that approached. The illumination from the lightning gave the entire battlefield a surreal feeling, freeze-frames from an intense graphic novel. Stills of Jack’s teeth clenched, water dripping from him, explosive rounds firing from the muzzle of his weapon, and a horrid, unrelenting enemy intent on ripping the flesh from his bones. In less than a minute, he’d cleared the ladder, but there was no lack of volunteers to make the charge.

  “The other truck, Mike!” he shouted over the din of the storm. “The ladder just cleared the top!”

  If we were going to make it, we needed time. I raced the hundred yards to the next truck, not once realizing just how alone I was. Anger doesn’t allow much opportunity for other feelings. A zombie had just crested the top when I plunged my bayonet deep into its skull. If someone had snapped a picture of me at that exact moment, I do not believe I would have recognized the person in the photo. As I withdrew the blade, the zombie fell away to the side. Now it was time for the next contestant on the Slice is Right. Poor attempt at humor, but it keeps me going when the alternative is despair. The next zombie, I plunged the blade through its eye socket. The next I ripped through the skin on the side of its face before lodging the blade into her bottom jaw—she took four strikes before I was able to stir her brains. Each and every zombie seemed blissfully unaware of what had happened to the monster before them.