by T. A. Uner
Finally the United States, the hardest hit industrial superpower by the new energy crisis, declared that in the interests of “Universal Peace” it was going to Saudi Arabia to eradicate the Tyrannosaurus Rex population that threatened humanity (in this reality T. Rex’s were only active in tropical climates, but were only a threat when attacked first). The result was the occupation of major Saudi cities of Riyadh and Jeddah. Mecca was spared, due to its holy standing in the Muslim population. The subsequent occupation of one of the world’s leading oil producers ushered in a new wave of Islamic militant behavior that reminded the world of the events of September 11, 2001. In 2103, roughly over a century after the 9-11 terror attacks, a group of militant Islamic fundamentalists detonated a dirty bomb in Kansas City, wiping out over a quarter of the city’s population and resulting in the United States’ “Second War on Terrorism.” Subsequently other Arabian nations were invaded: Kuwait, Yemen, Oman and Qatar were the first to fall. Followed by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Israel was only too happy to assist the United States, its historical ally and benefactor. Soon a global jihad was declared against all Christian and Jews, hence effectively starting World War III, also leading to the near-extinction of the global dinosaur population.
Much to the credit of the developed nations of the world, nuclear weapons were used sparingly. But everything took a back seat when the global conflict escalated into the second Death Walker incursion. This time millions of undead arose against the nations of the world, claiming more lives—last count 600 million—than World War III had. This increase in undead activity lead to the official cessation of the third World War as the remaining nations scrambled to save the remnants of humanity. Cobalt became the leading weapon, and black marketeering sprung up around the world, making trillions in profits off of the nations directly engaged in warfare against the Death Walkers.
A costly victory meant the Death Walker threat had been repulsed, but the global death count stood at over 2.1 billion. The global overpopulation issue had been solved, but the cost was high. Skilled labor became scarce, and universities world-wide saw a massive increase in enrollment as students sought to gain the skills necessary to replenish positions left void due to the massive labor shortages.
Reptilius knew his history well. He had been part of it. From his days as an overworked infantryman serving in the Middle East, he had grown disenfranchised with his nation and hoped for a time when the values of the founding fathers would be embraced. Millions of other Americans were also of the same mindset. The subsequent years after the second Death Walker conflict saw massive protests across the United States. Vigilant historians preached similarities between these contemporary occurrences and the turbulent 1960s. There were even rumors of another American Civil War.
Finally, the unthinkable had occurred. Fuelled by distrust for the central government, various states began seceding and declaring independent nation-states. The government sought to end this rebellion but this only served to escalate the mass exodus of states. Soon new governments sprung up and were quickly recognized by foreign powers. Russia was the first, taking advantage of America’s woes. Soon the EU was onboard as well and the destruction of the United States of America was complete.
With America divided into four quadrants: Northeast, Southeast, Central and West, dissent simmered, and for the most part, Americans reveled in their newfound freedom.
With the face of the world changed by the fracturing of the United States. The North American population turned its attention to the growing Velociraptor menace. Men like Croctus Reptilius benefited from this trend and countless fortunes were made. But the lingering after-effects of nuclear fallout, Cobalt racketeering, and energy shortages would result in another dangerous challenge for humanity.
The Anomaly
Reptilius stepped off Arrow not knowing what to expect. The light grew brighter with every step that brought him closer to it. He stopped just ten feet in front of it. Could it be? Shit. It was. Another anomaly. He thought he had seen the last of them when the Southeast Government announced that they had all been sealed. He should’ve known better than to trust the media. They existed only to mislead the public. Reptilius wished he had some Cobalt with him. He could’ve sealed this motherfucker in an instant.
Sawtooth snarled and Reptilius looked at his scaly companion. “Yep, the Death Walkers are back boy. The question is, can we stop them?” He inched closer to the anomaly. His helmet helped silence the hum but it was still there in the background. There was only one thing left to do, examine the extent of the damage and come back with enough Cobalt to blow this thing back to wherever it came from. The last thing they needed was another Death Walker incursion. It was bad enough the Raptors were making a comeback; Reptilius didn’t like the idea of moving down the food chain.
He was less than two feet from the anomaly when Sawtooth snarled again. “What is it, boy? You smell something?” The light started growing even brighter. Reptilius activated his visor and the light dimmed. He inched closer and thought he saw some activity inside the anomaly. Damn thing looked like one big tear in the fabric of time.
He reached out to touch the opening. I may regret this, Reptilius thought. But I have to see inside it. As soon as his hand broke the threshold of the anomaly he felt his stomach sour.
He blacked out.
Where the hell am I? He couldn’t see anything. He turned around, Sawtooth had disappeared. His only ally gone he felt totally alone. It was the first time he had felt like this since his father died. Left to fend for himself, before eventually becoming Croctus Reptilius, Malcolm had felt a void where his family should’ve been. The only thing he had was a keepsake his father had given to him on his deathbed. A black amulet. “It’ll keep you from harm, and ward off any strange magic,” his father had told him. Great, he thought. Like this will make up for the loss of his last parent.
The darkness around him felt like an endless void. No Sawtooth. No Cobalt. In other words he was fucked big-time. Stars appeared but that did little to ease his confidence, despite his predicament Reptilius did not panic. Fear was an enemy he would not lose to.
The stars swirled around him. He felt like a kid on a carousel, but in this case he wasn’t having any fun. The darkness receded for a moment before he found himself staring at a house in the distance.
He was back in a swamp standing in a shallow bog. Was it his swamp? Probably not. He flipped open his visor and had a look around. The humidity poured into his helmet. No. This wasn’t his swamp. It may not even be Florida for that matter. Something serpentine rubbed up against his leg and he drew his hand ballista and fired into the water. The thing reared its ugly head, wiggled like a belly dancer and took off in a southerly direction.
He holstered his weapons and took a sip of water from his canteen. A screech tore through the sky like an Ion engine and he looked up. Pterodactyl. Nope, he definitely wasn’t in his swamp. Or even Florida for that matter. The large bird eyed him and made a dive for Reptilius. He dove forward before its talons could seize him. He was barely five minutes into his visit here and was about to become fodder for an extinct life form. The Pterodactyl made another swoop toward him but this time he was ready. He fired a bolt that tore through the creature’s left wing, taking a huge section of its main covert. It shrieked loud enough to make the water vibrate around Reptilius. Realizing that he would be no easy prey, the creature cast one last look at Reptilius before flying off.
Seeing the creature gone he picked himself out of the muddy water. During the exchange a half dozen leeches had attached themselves to his forearm. He felt them squeezing his skin to get to his precious blood. He picked a few off, but some were more stubborn. He drew his dirk and carved the stragglers out. But the damage was already done. He was bleeding. Using a handkerchief he wrapped his wounds and pressed on. His only hope was to find some help, or better find another anomaly to take him home—of course, whether that was possible was another matter.
The bog
became sand flat, tall reeds tickled his arms before he stopped to rest. His mouth was dry like a bone and the water felt good as it wetted his innards. After resting for five minutes he resumed his trek. Where he was going was anyone’s guess, especially in this alien landscape. The smell of cooked meat reached his nostrils, and a flicker of hope appeared. After traversing the sand flats he found himself at the top of a sand dune overlooking a lagoon. Palm trees stood flanking a thin strip of land that lead to a small dwelling. No doubt the source of the smell. He licked his lips and kept walking. He thought he heard something click behind him and spun around, ballista drawn. What he saw blew his mind.
“What you doin’ here stranger?” the man asked.
Reptilius did not have an answer, least not yet. Standing before him was Tom Digby,
wearing an old denim shirt and pointing an ancient M-16 rifle at him.
“Can’t be,” Reptilius said. He spat. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I feel pretty lively from where I’m standin’ sonny, but you won’t be if you don’t start talking.”
Reptilius holstered his ballista, careful not to make any aggressive movements. “I didn’t come here looking for trouble.”
Tom grinned and lowered the M-16. Looks like trouble found you, mister. He pointed at Reptilius’ arm. “Better let me take a look at those injuries sonny; fire leech abrasions can lead to nasty infections.” He raised his weapon and pointed at the house. “That’s where I live, lead the way.”
The ointment Tom applied to his wounds cooled his skin; for now he would be fine. At least he hoped so.
“So you say I’m supposed to be dead, ehh?” Tom handed Reptilius a mug of coffee. He took a sip. At least the coffee here was decent.
“Death Walkers. They’d overrun your house, at least where I come from. Tore you to shreds. I had to burn your corpse and your house to avoid any possibility of further contamination.”
Tom settled into his chair and put his feet up on the ottoman. “Death Walkers? I see. If ya don’t mind me asking, sonny. What is a Death Walker?”
“Well if you’ve never heard of them then perhaps that’s for the best. But if you must know they’re undead creatures. Humanoid in appearance, but their skin is discolored and they prey on the living. In my reality they’ve caused countless deaths.”
Tom scratched his beard and digested the information. “Sound like you got a Zombie problem to me. But yeah, I can see how that can be a nuisance. But that still doesn’t answer how you got here, sonny.”
Reptilius told Tom about the anomaly and his disconcerting journey. “I have to get back to my time. My home is in danger. You understand that don’t you?”
Tom lumbered over to his kitchen. For the first time Reptilius noticed a limp in the old timer’s gait. “I understand that you were lucky to escape. Now in this here reality, or my world, we don’t have a Zombie problem, a Pterodactyl or two may swoop down to steal your lunch on occasion, but other than that it’s pretty peaceful round here.”
Reptilius doubted that. “But you do know about them, these ‘Zombies’?”
Tom nodded and poured himself another cup of coffee before returning to the living room. A small dog that looked like a Jack Russell Terrier scurried into the room and started playing with a toy bone. “I do indeed. You see, I once lived in another reality like you. It had been overrun with economic instability, overgrown reptiles and pollution. We also had a nasty tendency to use dirty bombs to solve our global conflicts. But one day I had the fortune of meeting a man from another time. He was kind enough to transport me here, away from my troubled world. He also gave me the means to make a life here, so that I could survive.”
“What kind of man?”
Digby cleared his throat. “Well he called himself the ‘Timekeeper’; someone who makes sure realities don’t collide. He called it ‘Preventive Temporal Transgressions’; says people in the wrong realities have a tendency to mess-up time’s flow.”
“Well if the Zombies didn’t originate from this reality, then where did they come from?”
“I think I can answer that, sonny.”
Thomas J. Digby was born in 2053 in Mobile, Alabama. Son of Margaret Sanderson and Norman Digby, Young Thomas was an inquisitive child from the start. Not knowing that one day this habit would get him in a world of trouble. After attending community college and getting certified as an automotive service technician he found himself in his dream job working on cars of all makes and models. His work took him across the United States. But in his reality there were no remnants of dinosaurs. They had been extinct for hundreds of millions of years. Although environmental issues were the main topic by the end of the 20th century, as green became the watchword for environmentalists.
There was another issue that lurked within the government which Thomas had no clue of. It was of course kept under wraps to keep the general population at ease. A cover-up that made the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico incident look like a joke, this conspiracy was of a global magnitude, and resulted in Tom’s first experience with the undead.
Vampires were controlling the governments of the major industrialized nations of Earth. How they attained such an impressive feat was due to a mass exodus of these beings from another world called Kaotika. A land containing a sun in total eclipse, which suited these beings just fine. Most Vampires lived a peaceful existence. But an extremist group had risen and was determined to conquer Kaotika. Something that had never been achieved in over four centuries. When the first war of unification began the Vampires found themselves on the verge of victory, but that was before a warlord named Reptokk the Invincible arrived on the scene. His reptilian armies defeated the Vampires’ quest for total dominance. Later he either killed or banished the aggressive Vampire population, including the peaceful Vampires who had no part in the extremists’ desire for conquest.
The surviving extremists who managed to escape Reptokk’s fury found themselves seeking a different reality-laden world they could easily assimilate. They found such a planet; Earth. After centuries of careful maneuvering, these extremists found themselves at the head of every major corporation and eventually placed carefully selected operatives in sensitive governmental positions to consolidate their power. Their objective was to turn the Earth into an entire blood bank, capable of sustaining the growing Vampire population indefinitely.
Over the years many global conflicts arose, the result of direct Vampire influence: World War I and II. The Vietnam War and the first and Second Iraqi wars were prime examples. Using these wars as smokescreens, they utilized their combined efforts to harvest the human population. Enter the mid-Twenty First century: this is where Thomas Digby enters this tragic tale.
One day a customer by the name of Vanessa Redpath came to his garage looking for someone to repair the air conditioning of her Mercedes. Tom, overjoyed at the opportunity to work on an import vehicle, and charge incidentals to increase his profits, gladly became the go-to mechanic for Ms. Redpath’s automotive repair needs. Soon more of her acquaintances began entrusting their vehicles to Digby.
It was really by chance that Digby made the discovery that changed his life. One evening, he inadvertently located documents left in the trunk of one of Redpath’s associates. The pictures Digby saw were enough to disgust him to the point of revulsion. Fearing that Redpath was either a demented psychopath or serial killer (or both) he contacted the authorities. The police were at first shocked at what they saw: pictures of human body parts being harvested, nightclubs where Vampires were feasting on humans like hors d’ oeuvres. Happy that such an individual would be apprehended by the police, Digby felt as if he had done his community, and the human race a great service. But to his dismay, the police had other plans for him.
When he was arrested and taken into custody, Digby’s elation turned to horror. He found himself taken to a warehouse where he was brought before Ms. Redpath who politely informed him that he could not be allowed back into society. “What do you mean?” Digby
had replied.
“I mean that the knowledge you have acquired could only serve to cause massive social unrest.”
Digby was perplexed by Ms. Redpath’s response. “Who are you people? Why are you doing this?”
“This has been going on for centuries Mr. Digby,” Redpath replied. “And it will continue. It is unfortunate that you must pay the price for your involvement. But we cannot risk alerting the public when we are so close to total victory.”
What she meant was a new conspiracy to harvest even more human blood. A new virus was being created to be released into the general population. Its predecessors: swine and bird flu were only field tests to set the stage for the mega virus that would give rise to a new undead lifeform. The Vampires called them Zombies. They would use “doors” brought from Kaotika to send the creatures into other realities. But first they had to send out anomaly probes to locate prime temporal real estate that would yield the highest human subjects.
Digby was put into an interrogation chamber where various Vampires would ask him questions.
“Are you a part of the Grand Militia?”
“What is the Grand Militia?” Digby had asked.
He would always be punished when his interrogators assumed he was feigning ignorance. They began using various proboscis devices to extract his memories. They were convinced that he was a member of the underground militia sent to investigate their activities.
The more Digby protested and resisted, the more they tortured him. Another device was introduced. It was called the “Faucet,” a sadistic piece of machinery that slowly drained his blood. Not enough to kill him, but enough to keep him barely alive.