by Ian Woodhead
Tony shrugged. He didn’t know what to believe anymore.
“Do you feel better?”
“Yeah, I do, actually.” It surprised him how well he did feel. “Must have been those tablets,” he replied.
Joseph shook his head. “No, more likely the stuff I injected into you before your body crashed onto the carpet.” He pointed at the empty syringe lying on table next to a Lego house. “There was enough concentrated vaccine in there to keep you clear for a week. Those tablets that you took were designed to stop their brother from releasing too many chemicals into his body. We found that as time wore on, the purity of the vaccine that we extracted from their blood had started to lose its potency.” He sighed. “Now, I don’t think it matters, the cat’s out of the bag. Before long the whole city is going to start to change.” He stared at Tony “There might be light at the end of the tunnel though. It looks like they had a very curious side effect on you.” Joseph rushed over to the door and looked out before coming back over to Tony. “Enough talk, it’s time for you to get going, you have a job to accomplish.”
“Wait, what are you talking about?”
“Did you not listen to what I just said? You are not the only one whose body has started to grow used to the drug, Tony. A small percentage of the city’s population have already succumbed to the plague, with more people growing sick every hour.”
He nodded over at the two boys. “Those helmets were stored in the most secure vault in the city, for obvious reasons. The last time we used them, looking for another world. Trouble was, that last time opened up a rift, allowing half a dozen dead things from that world to enter our city as well.” Joseph leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “I imagine that there’s been quite a few more incursions thanks to your use and these two brothers.” He shrugged, “Not my problem though. I told the council weeks ago that we needed to look for an alternate method of survival. The bastards never listened. Then again, should I be surprised? As far as they’re concerned, the only salvation lies with the three brothers, just like our visitors thought. Those three got the shock of their lives when they found their only hope of survival had perished in a fire a few months before they arrived. At least, that’s what we told them,” he snarled. “By the time we managed to extract the real reason for their visit, the infection had already taken hold. People were dropping like flies.” He caught his breath. “They didn’t stay down for long though.”
Joseph jerked his head towards the open door. “Fuck, the others are coming!” He raced over to the door, shut and bolted it. “You need to listen to me, Tony.” Joseph pushed six more tablets into his hand. “Your mind is very special. In the thousands of people that I scanned over the last few years, you are the only person that I’ve found to be receptive to the device.”
How could he say that when it was as plain as the nose on the front of his face that those two kids were more than fucking receptive to the devices. Tony jumped when someone on the other side of the door tried to open it.
“Shit, get those tablets down, Tony!” Joseph looked back at the door. “Hurry up, man. If they find you in here, they’ll kill you.”
“What about those two?”
“They’ll hook them up to the drip, like they did to their brother. The machines only need their bodies anyway, not that it’ll do much good.”
A hard object slammed into the door. “Do you want to be fucking shot?” hissed Joseph. “Put those tablets into your mouth, you idiot. That door won’t hold them for much longer.”
When he saw the first splinters appearing in the wood and the muzzle of a weapon pushing through the hole, Tony realized that his options had run out. He didn’t want to end up as live bait in a game show. He looked at the six tablets rolling over the palm of his hand.
“Two will shift you over; keep the rest to get back. Those are not from this world. I want you to go find more duplicates, Tony. Don’t you see? We’ve used them up, their blood is no good to us anymore. Look, you’ve already visited both the worlds that we know about; there’s a very good chance that you’ll visit another world, a new one. There must be more out there.”
He did as Joseph suggested and dropped four of the tablets into his pocket before pushing the remaining ones into his mouth. His last sight before his view distorted was of the door bursting open and a huge man, dressed in security body armor, burst into the room.
His nausea had not left him after all. The transition from a hundred garish colors to an endless shade of greys also brought back the deep ache and the vile sickness. The room lurched to one side, while his guts rolled the other way.
Tony dropped to his knees, painfully aware that the soft carpet was gone. The rough stone floor slammed into his bones. He fell forward, slapping the palms of his hands against the stone, and tensed up his muscles, desperately trying to get control of his body. What the fuck was happening, this had never happened before. A stray thought whirled around his head, telling him that Joseph might have poisoned him. “I’ve overdosed,” he blurted out, feeling his saliva drop from his lips. “It must be that, what else could it …”
He abruptly stopped as he felt some of the sickness departing. The nausea quickly dissipated, leaving him feeling weak and very tired. Tony took a deep shuddering breath and counted to twenty, taking his time with each number, hoping that the nausea was not going to return.
“What the fuck was all that?” Tony lifted his head and took in his new surroundings. Nobody else was in the room; he counted that as a mixed blessing. Finding himself in the midst of a dozen security guards would not have been good for his health. Come to think of it, even one guard would have made sure that his lifespan was measured in seconds. It wasn’t like he would have been able to fight back in his ragged state.
“I’m such a mess.” Tony watched dust motes settle on the top of a wooden crate, pushed against the wall, where the sofa had been in the other world. He stopped himself right there. Did he really think that? He coughed out a single laugh. Had he really just crossed over to another place?
He got to his knees and slowly got back on his feet, using a metal table beside him as support. He looked past the crate over to a heavy wooden door that was open a crack. Through the narrow gap, Tony saw pretty much the same as what this room contained: featureless, grey surroundings coated in thick dust.
“It’s the same room,” he muttered. That much, he was sure about. The positions of the door, the room size and the height of the ceiling told him that, yet there was something else as well. Deep within him, now that his body had returned to normal, he knew that he had not moved one inch since swallowing those two tablets.
“Oh fuck!” Tony pushed his hand into his pocket, trying to suppress the bubbling panic. His tension eased when his probing fingers felt the four smooth pills, nestled together deep in his pocket. He pulled two of them out and wondered what would happen if he swallowed them, here and now. Would he return home, or would he go visit one of the other two worlds?
“What if they’re not a ticket home?” Tony rolled one of them between his finger and thumb, recalling what Joseph said about there being more than one world. He dropped them both back in his pocket and told himself to get his shit together and to stop worrying about stuff he couldn’t change.
Tony walked over to the door that led into the hallway, and opened it a little wider. The air in the hallway smelled different from the room. He detected the faint tinge of flowers. He frowned, wondering if his nose wasn’t just sending him empty promises. The vision of fields full of spring blooms, waiting for him just above this complex, evaporated when his nose detected the underlying taint of rot as well. That was one smell he was very familiar with. Shambling bags of dried-up cadavers had passed this way, not that long ago.
Tony sighed and leaned back, quietly closed the door, and decided that it would be a wise idea to take this situation one step at a time and start by exploring this room first. Finding himself a weapon would be a good idea. If there were dead thin
gs prowling about out there, he wouldn’t last that long. Hell, even a thick stick would suffice. “A studded baseball bat would be even better,” he muttered, turning around and giving this dusty place a closer scrutiny. Tony wandered over to the wooden crate and ran the tips of his fingers across the top of the wood, almost expecting his hands to find a projection. The wood felt as solid as that thick door. This was as real as it got.
Was this the same world where that device had taken him this morning before he set off for work? He understood now that the black helmet just moved his mind over, just like it was doing to those two kids. He hadn’t really been there. “I am now though,” he muttered. He tentatively pressed his hand against his guts, feeling the ache still there. “Shit, it must be travel sickness.” He resisted the urge to giggle, thinking that if he started to laugh, he probably wouldn’t stop. “Jesus, I bet the doctor wouldn’t be able to prescribe anything for that.” Tony bent over the crate, and found that it was lying on its side. “Now that will come in handy,” he said, looking into the interior. Tony reached inside and pulled out a small crowbar the size of his forearm. “That will do very nicely.”
He felt much better. Now if he did run across any zombie, at least he’d be able to put them on the floor. The two prongs would quite easily smash through their skulls. He gripped his prize tight and hurried over to the other door. Before he opened this one, however, Tony glanced around the room one more time, just to ensure that his eyes had not missed anything. He paused and ran his tongue across his lips, staring at the only object in here that wasn’t devoid of color.
“You have got to be shitting me,” he muttered, walking back over to his original position. Tony bent down and picked up two bright yellow Lego bricks and grinned to himself. He stuffed them into his front pocket and walked back over to the inner door. He couldn’t explain why he felt the bricks were so important, only that he knew that he’d need them at a later date. “You’re getting weirder by the minute, Tony, you do know that?” He slowly pulled open the door and peered through the opening, seeing not much of anything but more dust. It dawned on him that when he jumped over before, in order to interact with the dead things in there, Tony must have been in someone’s body. He blinked. That idea was creepy. Had the device somehow been able to push his consciousness into another human on the other side? Somehow possessing that person? Tony involuntarily shivered, wondering what would have happened if he’d gotten that person killed. He guessed that his mind would have either found another body or just whizzed back into his own body.
Tony opened the door wider and stepped over the threshold. There were another three doors along the short hallway. Although it was clear that nobody had been in here for a long time, this section didn’t seem so decayed. Tony ran his fingers over the faded wallpaper, tracing the faint patterns as he walked towards the closest door. He lifted the crowbar, stopped, and grabbed the handle. He wasn’t taking any chances. Just because the only footsteps in here belonged to him, didn’t mean that one or more of the dead things weren’t behind this door, just waiting for some unwary victim to stumble inside. Tony counted to three then pushed the handle down and kicked the door open.
He grinned at the sight of one unmade bed, a pile of Legos in the middle of a frayed carpet, an open cupboard and nothing else. “Looks like I really am alone.” Before he checked the other rooms, Tony walked inside, bent over and picked up another Lego block. He pulled the two yellow pieces from his pocket and tried to connect them with the piece in his other hand, not all that surprised that they weren’t compatible. “There you go,” he said. “You really have crossed over.” Tony looked inside the cupboard; the only thing inside was a yellow newspaper. He picked it up and read the headlines. The blown-up black and white image of a street taken from above showed masses of panicking people running from a crowd of walking corpses. Tony closed his eyes, remembering seeing similar photos in newspapers from his world. He dropped the paper and left the room, suddenly not all that bothered about checking out the other rooms.
“How the fuck am I going to find a set of duplicate people?” The enormity of his task now settled upon his shoulders. Tony looked down at the pile of Legos by his feet. Even if he did find them, how the hell would he persuade them to come with him? He didn’t think for one minute that they’d even believe him, never mind wanting to cross over to another world so his boss could drain out their blood.
“What the fuck have I got myself into?” he muttered. Tony felt the tablets in his pocket, feeling the inner workings of his mind begin to turn. The chances of him finding these duplicates were practically zero and he didn’t think that Joseph would be very happy if he returned empty-handed.
Tony left the room, hurried along the hallway and back into the room where he’d appeared. He nodded to himself, then left this room as well. He had no other choice but to at least make some sort of effort. Even if he didn’t find them, Tony could either stay in this world or return, just making sure that when he did go back to his world, he was as far away as he could be from Government House.
That aroma of fresh flowers grew stronger the further away he walked from the original room. He had no idea where it was coming from, considering all he saw was dust-covered tiles and grey, featureless walls. Tony stopped by the first door he reached and looked inside, frowning at the vast array of medical equipment stored on stacks of metal shelving. He shook his head in confusion. He assumed that this building would be similar to the one he’d left. Was this some kind of hospital in this world? Tony sighed and moved along. It would be a good idea for him to find a way out of this place, wherever ‘this place’ was.
He jumped when something crashed onto the floor behind him. He spun around, knowing full well that the noise had come from the room with all the stored medical equipment. Tony felt his sweat making the crowbar slippery. He transferred the weapon to his other hand and wiped the sweat away, keeping his eyes fixed on that door. Shadows began to move and the smell of death grew stronger. There was no denying what was in that room.
He waited patiently, watching those shadows lengthen. “Come on then,” he growled. “Let’s see you.”
His voice echoed along the hallway and was rewarded by the low moan of the dead. Presently another moan joined that one, and one more. Tony took a deep breath and backed away at the sight of several dead things all trying to squeeze through the door at the same time. His bowels loosened when he saw another one leaving the room where he’d appeared. Where the fuck did that one come from?
“Shit, this isn’t fair! He looked at his little crowbar, wondering what possessed him to think that he’d be able to take one of them on, let alone a dozen. It didn’t surprise him to see three more heading his way from the other direction; there was nowhere for him to go. Tony moaned himself when he saw the features of the one leaving the room. It was one of the boys, the one strapped to that helmet in his world.
Four of them had managed to stumble out of the storage room. He turned and raced towards the approaching three, just praying that there weren’t any more behind them. If there were any more, Tony wouldn’t last more than a few seconds. He charged the closest one, using his inertia to slam it into the wall. Tony then swiveled and cracked the crowbar into the head of another one, grinning savagely at the sound of its skull cracking. The last zombie managed to snag his shirt. Tony twisted around and jerked forward, leaving the dead thing holding his jacket.
“That’s mine,” he snarled, pushing the sharp prongs into its eye. The zombie gargled as Tony slammed the crowbar deeper, pushing until he felt the metal scrape on the inside of the dead thing’s skull. He pulled and staggered back as black, foul-smelling gloop gushed from the wound. Tony turned and saw the others further down the hallway were getting dangerously close.
He slammed his boot down on the remaining zombie that was still trying to get up before he raced away from the approaching horde. There were no more dead things ahead. Tony giggled, feeling the adrenalin rush through his system; he
’d never felt so alive. Although he had protected himself from the zombies before, he’d never taken on three of them at once. “What a buzz!” he said, laughing.
He stopped at the next door, listening to the low moans of his pursuers echoing down the hallway. His euphoria wouldn’t last very long if he found no way out of this fucking maze. Tony tried the door, grunting in frustration when he found it locked. He then jumped back when someone or something on the other side of the door smacked the wood. Tony sneaked forward and tapped the crowbar three times against the door panel, smiling when the sound was repeated. That made it clear that at least whoever was on the other side wasn’t dead.
“Hello?” he yelled.
“How do we find a way out of here?”
Tony frowned, not expecting to hear what he’d been about to ask. Whomever it was sounded as though they were as lost as him. He looked behind him, acutely aware that he couldn’t stay here much longer. A pity, whomever was on the other side of that door had a cute voice. “I’m sorry!” he shouted back, “I don’t know where I am either.”
With regret, Tony raced away from the door, glancing behind him and watching the dead things veer towards the door. Whomever was behind there continued to bang against the wood. He sure hoped that door stayed locked now.
The urge to swallow two more of those pills strengthened when he found himself rapidly running out of hallway. There was only one more door left. If that was locked as well, he’d have no choice but to take the tablet express to get out of here. Tony had no wish to experience that nausea again but it was certainly preferable to having his limbs ripped off.