by Ian Woodhead
“That’s because it is. That part of the building occupies the same space in three worlds, my friend. Your security forces streamed out of that building a few years ago. What was left of our population didn’t stand a chance against your brutality.”
Mortimer stood back, almost stepping on the toes of his silent brother. “Where the fuck are we?”
Joseph laughed. “Welcome to Food World! This is where all your meals come from, processed in those factories by your enslaved survivors. If we don’t work, we die, it’s as simple as that. Not only did you murder most of us, you brought your fucking plague across as well. We don’t get pills if we don’t work.”
The two men raised their rifles again.
“Now, why don’t we start with something simple, like your names?”
The man’s voice lowered in tone. Mortimer watched one of the men tighten his finger on the trigger. Several black bears roared out in anger, the landscape blurred, every color washing out of the scene and flowing towards a single point – where the muzzle of the gun ended. It took his brains a moment to understand that the man had fired the gun, and yet the shell must have somehow travelled through his chest without leaving a mark.
The colors compressed into a single spear of golden light before flowing up the barrel. He tried to turn around, to see his brother, but could not even move his neck.
His eyes closed involuntarily; as soon his sight changed from a million shades of grey to pitch black, Mortimer picked up the sound of a quiet voice by his ear. The words wouldn’t mesh but the comforting pitch helped him to lose some of the tenseness in his muscles.
“Stay quiet and try not to move. They kill you here and now if they know you’re conscious.”
Mortimer opened one eye a crack. The voice could wait for a moment. Several breathing bodies, the sense of movement as well as being unable to move his arms and legs, gave him enough information to tell him that his situation had taken a turn for the worse.
He watched the florescent light above him slide past while listening to the heavy breathing. That voice belonged to his ‘old friend’ Joseph. He opened both eyes and stared at the man, noting the slight differences between this one and the Joseph from the other place. No matter how hard he tried, Mortimer could not believe that he had somehow just travelled to a parallel world. The whole idea was too ridiculous for words. Even so, what else did that leave? Mortimer had already dismissed the idea that he’d been wondering about in a digital reality. His brain hurt.
“The others are really pissed with you, Joseph. I mean pissed enough to have your rank stripped.”
Mortimer summoned enough strength to lift his head until the strap around his neck tightened. His restricted view showed three figures above him, two walking beside this trolley, and a white-coated figure pushing another trolley. Mortimer assumed that the other trolley held his brother.
“The only one who sounds pissed, my friend, is you.”
The recognition didn’t take long to arrive. Anyone who watched television would have known the other man opposite Joseph. Rossini looked smaller in real life. Mortimer closed his eyes and tried to slow his heat beat down.
“At this rate, Joseph, you’ll end up as bait on one of my shows.”
“Threaten me one more time and you’ll be the one who’ll find himself hung upside down over one of your zombie pits.” The man put his hand over Mortimer’s wrists. “I have no respect for the others, Rossini, they’ll never see sense. You though, come on, you saw what happened to Martin when we attached him to the drip. It didn’t work for him, why do you believe that these two will be any different?”
Mortimer’s eyes snapped open at the sound of automatic gunfire. The large man standing above him was too busy looking behind him to notice that his prisoner had regained consciousness.
“We have no other choice, that’s why. They’re turning faster than we can stop it. The pills are failing. We need a concentred supply, it’s that simple.”
“It isn’t that simple, you stupid fat fool. Thinking outside of the box is all that is required.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Rossini snapped. “Your thinking outside of the box almost killed us all. What possessed you to reopen the gates to both Source World as well as Food World? Thanks to your meddling, we’ve lost a lot of people, including some of my prized contestants.”
“Is that all you think about, Rossini?”
The big man shrugged. “If it wasn’t for the games, we’d have a revolution on our hands. Look, you’ve tried and failed to sort this, Joseph. Let me try.”
The trolley stopped. Mortimer found himself being pushed into a bright but small room. The steel bars on the only other door in the room told Mortimer enough about this place.
“Get them prepared, Joseph. I’ll go see if I can hold the dogs off your back for a few more hours. You can thank me later.”
Rossini and the two attendants left the three of them alone. Mortimer waited for Joseph to unbuckle the neck strap before looking to see if Daniel was okay. When he sat up, Mortimer saw his brother’s eyes staring back at him.
“I wanted to stay there. I don’t like being this fat loser.”
“You two are the most important people on the planet. The most important people on all three worlds.” Joseph finished unbuckling Mortimer’s straps before hurrying over to Daniel’s trolley. “You certainly are not a loser, young man.”
“Is it true, Joseph, I mean about enslaving the population?”
“Of course it isn’t, Daniel. Is that what they told you? Look, it is true that we inadvertently brought the plague to them. I can’t tell you how much guilt I feel about that.” The man paused. “All those deaths.”
Mortimer watched the man closely; now that he’d seen the other Joseph, he began to see just how alike they were, not only in their appearance but in their mannerisms as well. Something about Joseph’s reaction felt somehow false. He looked away and gazed at the door that led to the corridor. What did it matter anyway?
They both had used Martin’s name in the past tense. It didn’t take a genius to work out what that meant. This drip thing brought up an image of a huge mechanical vampire that would drain them both dry. They didn’t have much longer to live.
“Why not just move there, Joseph?” asked Daniel. “From what I saw, there weren’t many dead things.”
“Don’t you think we tried? There are only a few who can make the physical shift between worlds.” He gently tapped Mortimer’s head. “Those devices only took your mind across, your bodies stayed here.”
It all sounded so plausible until Mortimer remembered what Rossini said about people disappearing through gates. “Are you sure about that, Joseph? I heard what that bastard said to you in the hallway.”
“Yeah, great, I’ve managed to open a couple of random holes that appear and disappear. Well guess what?” Joseph cried. “I haven’t a fucking clue how I did it.” He raced over to the door and locked it. “We need to get you two away from here,” he muttered, walking back and forth. “They just don’t get it, none of them do. Then again, what else should I expect from that bunch of clowns.” He stared at Mortimer. “I might be able to work out how to control the jumps, I just need more time.” He laughed, “That’s one luxury that none of us have right now. I still need to find a cure.”
Mortimer’s heart skipped a beat. “Wait, you said we were supposed to be the saviors of the human race.”
“Both of you are immune, but the compound in you won’t replicate in another body. That’s why we need to keep taking the fucking pills. It’s like wrapping tape around a leaking pipe. Now, even that is beginning to fail.”
“What’s going to happen to us?” Mortimer wasn’t sure that he really wanted to know the answer to his question.
“The others in the council believe that completely draining you in one go and transfusing a selected few will somehow produce a cure. I didn’t vote for this, believe me.”
“Oh fuck that,” muttered Dan
iel. “I’d rather you didn’t. I want my blood to stay in my body.”
Joseph sat on the side of Mortimer’s trolley and pulled out a brown plastic bottle. Mortimer knew immediately what they were. Those pills were the main cause of Daniel’s fuck up. Mortimer watched Joseph unscrew the lid and pour out a small pile into the palm of his hand.
“There’s a reason why I plugged you both into those devices, you know.” Joseph poured a pile into Mortimer’s palm and repeated the action with Daniel. “Don’t stare at them. Eat the bloody things.”
Mortimer watched his brother tip his head back and shove them into his mouth. Joseph did the same. Within a couple of seconds, his brother’s body faded away, and his sheet fell from the trolley. He heard footsteps coming down the hallway. “What the fuck have I got myself into,” he muttered, watching Joseph’s body vanish too. He opened his mouth and pushed every pill inside.
Chapter Eleven
Kenny slid down the filthy wall. The smooth, solid surface felt fine against his aching back. Every muscle and tendon cried out for rest. He wrinkled his nose as the odor of rotten meat filled his nostrils as he sank to the floor.
“That’s bad,” he whispered.
Some distant voice casually informed him the wall’s thin coating of gelatinous black fluid now covered his clothes and his palms.
Not that he cared. That voice could fuck off. Kenny no longer gave a shit about anything. Why should he let something as irrelevant as that concern him now that he could count the grains of sand left in his hourglass? Thanks to his dark friend, the sickness bubbling up to the surface, Kenny knew he only had a few more minutes left to enjoy his life.
Steady footfalls on the tiled floor broke him from his stupor. He slowly lifted his head and followed the sound until he saw the figure of his darling sister making her way back from wherever she’d gone. His apathy vanished and Kenny suddenly wished that she wasn’t coming back. He didn’t want her around when he did change. No matter how hard he tried, Kenny couldn’t move his limbs. It felt as if the stinking, cold jelly coating his skin and clothes fastened him to the wall and floor like strong glue.
How long did he have left? Kenny couldn’t answer that; hell, he had enough problems even remembering his sister’s name. Searching through his memories required way too much concentration.
She held something in her left hand. For a moment, his hopes heightened, until he realized his memories were in the wrong order. She wasn’t coming back with more of the drug. Just to be sure though, Kenny managed to lift his head enough to see a ceiling above him and not the sky.
The woman did have something clasped tight in her hand though. What the fuck is her name?
It wasn’t more drugs, so it couldn’t be that important. Kenny ground his teeth together and stared at an irregularly shaped blood spatter on the wall in front of him. His sister wouldn’t leave him, that much he did know. That meant he’d have to force the sickness back down, push the craving into a wooden box, close the lid and lock the bastard. He’d done it before, he could do it again.
He couldn’t allow his dead body to hurt her. Kenny took a deep breath, hoping that he’d be able to control himself. He turned his head and smiled at her.
She’s called Diane.
He grinned wider. He could do it, all it took was willpower and focus. Those two abilities were in very short supply; his mind wouldn’t stay on track for more than a few seconds. Wasn’t that the sad truth? Even the shock of stumbling across Rossini’s rotting corpse hadn’t fazed him.
“Not that it was the big fat bastard,” he muttered.
Even in his fucked up mental state, he knew that it couldn’t have been him. This whole notion of hers of being pulled into another world, some sort of alternate dimension, had bullshit written all over it. The idea was just too ridiculous for words.
It had to be a doll, a prop, made up to look like that nasty fucker. It all made much more sense than them travelling to another world.
“How are you doing, Kenny?” His sister stopped by him and crouched down. “I’m sorry for taking so long. You’re not going to believe what I discovered though. It has seriously blown my mind.”
Her face had lost its usual color. She looked almost as bad as he felt. Kenny stared at her wide eyes, wondering if she’d seen a ghost. Diane shuffled forward, gently opened his fingers, then placed her find in his palm. His initial thought was she’d given him a wooden ruler, until he turned the object around and found letters carved into the dark wood. The letters spelled his sister’s full name, “What the fuck is this?”
“Yeah, I thought the same words. The grime, different colors on the walls, and the unusual furniture threw me at first; even so, at the back of my mind, something told me that I should know this building.” She paused and took in a deep breath. “Oh, I know this place alright, Kenny. I work here. This is Government House, or another version of the place.” She pulled the name plate out of his hand. “I found my office and this was on the floor, next to the desk. By the looks of the dust, my other self hadn’t been around for a long time. It felt as though somebody was walking across my grave while I looked through the office. I’m not sure if I would have wanted to meet my other self.” She shivered. “From what I found, it didn’t look like she was as pleasant as me.”
Kenny rubbed the back of his neck, frowning at how soft his flesh felt under his fingertips. Could this be a part of the process, of his inevitable transformation from alive to living dead? Get the fuck away, I refuse to let you beat me. He squeezed his eyes as tight as he could until his vision exploded into a sea of colored points of light.
“Are you okay?”
He nodded while turning away from Diane so he could open his eyes. “Listen to what you are saying, Diane.” He already knew that she’d decided to believe this ridiculous story. Just as he knew that no amount of denial on his part would change her mind. Kenny knew that this whole set up had to be one big fake, it was the only scenario that made any sense. “It’s Rossini, he’s just fucking with your head, Diane. It’s what he does. You of all people should know that, considering you’re in the same business of bullshit propaganda.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Kenny shifted his tired body, pleased to see his goading had provoked the desired reaction. “Exactly how it sounded. You’re all one big happy family, sitting in your ivory towers, feeding the workers bullshit every day, laughing as we all slowly die in misery.” Her eyes blazed. Good. A furious sister meant she wouldn’t notice that his body was dying, she might even storm off and leave him here.
“I’m not going to rise to this, Kenny.” She leaned closer to his face. “You forget who you’re talking to. I know you better than anyone.” Diane stroked the side of his cheek with the back of her hand,
Her touch felt like he’d pressed the side of his face against a hot plate. Her warmth stirred a desire that he’d already tried to suppress. “Just go, leave me alone,” he snapped.
“Not going to happen, Kenny. So stop it with the lies.” She grabbed a handful of his coat and pulled him towards her. “Come with me.”
He had no choice but to allow her to drag him back along the hallway. The expression of a pouting teenage etched on Diane’s face brought back nostalgic memories of the fights they used to have back before everything turned to shit. All those petty arguments over who had stolen the TV remote; accusing each other of badmouthing their closest friends; even leaving the kitchen cupboard door open could have brought them close to a fight.
What he would give to go back to those days. Even if Diane did get her way most of the time, Kenny always took solace in climbing into his warn, soft bed, complete with clean sheets, and falling asleep while wishing his sister would fall under a speeding car.
“What’s so funny?”
He reached forward and wrapped his arms around her. “You are,” he replied. “Diane, I’m sorry, but come on, think about it. What else could this be but a studio?”
Dia
ne wriggled out of his grasp and wrapped her fingers around his thin wrist. “I have lost count of the times when I wanted to slap you, Kenny. You really can’t see the wood for the trees, you know that?” She turned around and stormed back down the hallway, dragging him behind her.
Kenny’s stomach rolled at the sight of the body lying in front of the door. Looking at it with fresh eyes, he saw that there was no way that could be anything other than a rotting human corpse.
She stopped directly in front of the body, released his wrist and glared at Kenny. “Look at it, just look. It’s a dead body and it’s Rossini. Stop glossing over the facts and wake up.” Diane booted it viciously in the side then jumped back as foul gases burst from the ruptured skin. “What did I do that for?” she muttered whilst covering her mouth.
Kenny spun around and ran over to the wall, desperately trying to keep his stomach where it belonged. That stench had followed him; he slammed his hand over his mouth and nose and waited for it to leave him, sinking to the floor. He paused and lifted his head when he realized that the smell was coming from all around him. Kenny saw his sister pressed up against the shut door and slowly twisted his head.
Several figures, all dressed in rags, stared at them. They charged forward and took hold of his struggling sister. Two men broke off from the group and approached him. Kenny offered no resistance; his body had used its last reserve of strength running away from Rossini’s corpse.
The two men wrapped their thick fingers around his limbs, gently pulled him up off the floor, and carried him over to his sister. Kenny’s rolling stomach refused to calm down. Where these people had come from, what they had planned for him and Diane, didn’t even get a mention. All Kenny could think of was why anyone could smell so vile and not do something about it. Despite living in a world where the stench of death dominated every other aroma, the smell coming from these individuals was seriously making him ill.
The largest man holding his legs stopped and let go. He nodded to the woman holding his shoulders and she bent down and placed him gently on the floor. The woman then skirted past him and hurried to rejoin the others. “I’m sorry,” said the blonde man. “We can’t take you any further. You’re too far gone.”