by JD Lovil
“What is your business here?” He asked. He interposed himself between the girl on the altar and the trio.
“Probably the same thing as you.” Tom said. “To make sure that the girl is okay, and maybe untie her.”
“Got it covered.” Said the man, as he worked at untying her bindings. Tom handed him the Athame to assist with freeing her, while Bailey took the opportunity to stick his nose into the girls exposed crotch and sniff it enthusiastically.
Finally the girl was free, and she was standing unsteadily on her feet. Regretfully, Tom lent her his coat to cover herself, even though he secretly had no desire for her to cover up. Once she was free and equipped, she looked hungry and cold still. Tom suggested that they might want to go to the RV and fuel themselves up, so to speak.
A few moments later, the group of them was clustered around the campfire, roasting more hot dog wieners, and drinking beer, glad to be out of the fray. The man was Sidney, and the girl was named Charla. Tom could tell that Sidney was smitten with Charla, so he privately promised himself that he wouldn’t aggressively try to have a Charla taco, but he knew himself well enough to know that he would not turn it down.
When they had arrived back at the RV, Tom had rummaged about in the RV and managed to come up with some suitable clothes for Charla that was part of the former owner’s wife’s wardrobe. For the sake of social ease, the dead owner’s dead wife had become Aunt Ida, and Tom had borrowed their RV for this little vacation/pilgrimage.
A couple of hours of campfire communication revealed that both Sidney and Charla had a touch of the old Watcher magic. Sidney had just got back from Afghanistan, where he had started seeing Rocs vying for airspace, and Ifrits occasionally tangling with the troops out in the desert. Charla was simply a home town country girl, and she was one furrow that Sidney had wanted to plow from before he joined the army.
After sounding the two of them out about their immediate plans, it was determined that the two of them would be happy to tag along with the trio in this half-assed pilgrimage to fix the world. Bailey was very happy to have Charla tagging along. Apparently, whatever he sniffed in her crotch made him very attached to her. Tom thought that Sidney had competition for Charla, and not just from Tom.
The next few hours were devoted to each of the members of the group filling in the rest of them on what parts of the jigsaw puzzle that was reality that they had been made privy to. Bailey spent the time training Charla to scratch him on the belly like he liked. When he had a reason to get to his feet, he now had a special ‘I got a bitch’ spring to his step.
Charla was the least experienced of the group, mostly just seeing the occasional warping of reality, a few relatives had appeared to her that were long dead, and of course, her tour of duty as the sacrificial virgin at a summoning of one of the Great Old Ones. She was a bit doubtful as to whether she qualified as the virgin in that scenario. She thought that some of the things that she had done with the local boys, girls, animals and inanimate objects should have given her the status of ‘ex-virgin’.
Sidney had seen a few monsters in his time, and he had developed that battlefield sense of intuition that keeps you from stepping on a land mine, and that puts that lump of rock in the pit of your stomach for days, as you wait for the next shoe to drop, that shoe usually being a surprise attack by the enemy of the day. He did not have a visual on what was about to happen to our world, but he had a bad feeling that he needed to do something.
George filled them in on what he knew about the Sage in the East, and collaborated most of the information that the new couple almost knew, and later he collaborated the factoids that Tom brought to the table. He covered his recent history, including the odd tornado that he encountered in Tennessee which went through the town, damaging nothing. The people were all mystified by a full-on tornado which did no damage, but then people started discovering that all of their money was gone from their billfolds and purses. They took to calling it the Larcenado.
Tom took it up from there, and brought the discussion home. He described his recent history, the dreams that revealed some relevant information on the situation, and the oddities that he had experienced such as the stretched roads, the extinct grazing animals, the universality of the monsters behind recent events, and what he knew of the mission that seemed to be assigning itself to the group.
Tom also addressed his doubts about if he wanted that responsibility or not. In a moment of rare un-monetized honesty, he confessed that he was not sure which side of the coming conflict he belonged on. Figuring that this was a good time to fake a little intimacy, he confessed that he was not sure if he was always a good man. Tom could tell that the girl was eating that shit up. He figured that trick might come in useful later. The men were not impressed with his honesty, but he figured fuck’ em, who cares?
In a final part of the conversation that wasn’t bullshit, Tom related his belief that the connection with other worlds, where he thought that the monsters and events that they were all witnessing came from, felt like it was growing stronger. Almost every time Tom fell asleep now, he would have a dream, or a vision, or just a knowing during the night.
Finally, the night wore down to the hours of sleep. Everyone stumbled to their newly assigned beds, after agreeing that all would be loaded up on and traveling together in the RV, with the start-time tentatively scheduled to be slightly after the crack of noon tomorrow.
******
7 The tortured Undead
The RV pulled into the previously unknown town of Mildew, which had apparently now become a central Texas replacement for one of the Dallas Suburbs that no longer existed. Mildew proudly advertised a population of 8,738, and from what they had seen so far, a fast calculation suggested that it must have nearly one church for every ten residents.
After Tom drove the RV down the road into the town, and it appeared that they were about to emerge on the opposite side of the town, Charla suggested that they might want to stop at a park that the vehicle was passing, and get out to stretch their legs. Tom agreed, and a moment later, the party was offloaded from the RV, and felt grass under their feet for the first time in a while.
Bailey ran out into the field, and found a stick to throw up into the air with a flip of his neck. Tom was quite sure that he was missing his once cherished finger, which he used to flip into the air in exactly the same way. As women so often do, the advent of Charla on the field of doggy romance had put an end to Bailey’s wonderfully fun game of ‘throw the finger and catch it’. Both items would have exuded an exciting musky odor, although to be fair, the Charla parts were not ripe due to putrefaction like the finger was. Maybe Bailey chose the right scent after all.
It was about 4PM when they started lollygagging about the park, and by the time the dog was beginning to get tired of frisking about in the grass, and the human contingent was over the first buzz, and started into that secondary, less fun, buzz that comes with drinking iced beer at the proper pace, it was somewhere between 5:30 and 6 PM.
It was Charla who asked the question. “Hey guys, check out that odd looking graveyard over there. Want to go look at it?” She pointed over to the east side of the park, which was bordered entirely by a huge graveyard, with those giant statues and mausoleums that are usually a legacy of the South. Being by that time suitably juiced, the group readily agreed to an expedition to that sophomoric destination. Only Bailey probably had a suitable reason for going, needing to secretly replenish his finger supply.
The group good-naturedly got to their feet, and trudged across the open field of the park, and to the ironwork fence surrounding the graveyard. A few more feet saw the group at one of the ancillary gates to the bone-yard. They entered the final resting place of the local deceased.
It was immediately apparent that the recently deceased were no longer at rest. Indeed, it could be said that the deceased were not even at their ease, as the entirety of the graves in this graveyard had been dug up, and at the bottom of each of the open graves cou
ld be seen an open and empty coffin.
“What the hell do you think happened here?” Sidney asked.
“There are only a couple of possible explanations.” Tom replied. “Either somebody dug up all these graves, or the bodies inside them dug their way out.”
“Check this out. These graves have compacted soil inside them, with only a small amount of loose soil thrown up out of the grave.” George remarked. “I am going out on a limb here, and say that the bodies clawed their way up out of the grave. They made room at the bottom of the grave by compacting soil until they could open the lid and get out, and work their way up toward the surface until they could break out to the surface.”
“Seems a mite premature to be burying folks before they are dead.” George ventured. “Anything is possible, but I haven’t seen any zombies lately, so what is going on?”
“I saw a bit of Zombie action on a newscast a few days ago. This could be more of that, but I would place odds that this is something else.” Tom mused. “Zombies are a bit more aggressive in trying to find human flesh to chow down on. We would be hip deep in rotting walkers right now if it were zombies.”
“Well, there are just a few body riders out there that it could be.” Sidney shared. “Maybe some kind of vampire or some weird possession that only happens to dead bodies. I don’t think that these are examples of mummies, and all of the eaters of the dead would tunnel down to get to the bodies, not up and out.”
“Whatever they are, why don’t we just get the fuck out of here?” Charla chimed in. “I don’t see what good figuring this out does for us, and I am not in the mood to deal with walking corpses right now.”
“Get the girl a cigar!” Tom said. “I don’t think we can do a lot for this town, and we have more road to cover.”
The group having generally agreed to vacate, they all started walking toward the gate to the graveyard that they had entered. At this point, they were perhaps a thousand feet away from the RV, and once they had found a source of fuel, they could be on their way.
“Hey guys, I think we are a little late!” George said. He pointed at the gate they were approaching, where several disheveled and dirty people were blocking their exit.
“We were just leaving!” Tom called out. “Leave us alone, and we will leave you alone!”
A few of the people ahead smirked at that. Tom’s group continued toward them, while surreptitiously checking themselves for ready access to their weapons. Tom and George took point, and Sidney took up position behind Charla. A quietly growling Bailey walked just to the right of Charla.
If the people blocking their exit were a cross section of resurrected corpses, they were certainly in better physical shape than Tom would have expected. While some of them looked as though they had been awakened to pursue activities from the middle of some pig pen without getting their morning coffee, none of them had flesh rotting off of their bodies. None of them were even missing body parts!
As the group got within a dozen feet of the possible zombies, Bailey launched himself at the nearest one. As he made contact with the person, there was an arc of some sort at the point of contact, and Bailey was propelled back the way he came from at about the same rate as his charge. When he hit the ground, he rolled a couple of times. He regained his feet promptly, and looked more surprised than hurt.
The opposing group looked as though they were about to charge. Tom produced his knife and a machete that he had found in the RV. George had a two pound sledgehammer, and Sidney had a Katana and now Tom saw that he was in possession of a nice silver toned Colt Anaconda 44 caliber revolver with a long eight inch barrel. Charla had her good looks, which would buy her more protection than any weapon would.
Just as the Dead were about to strike, a shot rang out, and the lead Deader fell. Sidney opened up with his own pistol, and Tom and George each felled one of the Deaders. Bailey stayed back to guard the Queen, and to direct the battle.
Thirty seconds later, the last of the group of Deaders were down. A man came out from his vantage behind a large headstone, and approached. The group examined him as he approached, but could find no evidence of him being a member of the Deader community. He had assisted with putting down the Deaders, and he wasn’t graveyard messy, so he passed first muster.
When he reached the group, he extended his hand, and George shook it. “Hello. I am Markus.” The man said. “I suggest that we get out of here, before the bodies get back up.”
Tom looked at the bodies, and noticed that each of them were the source of a softly luminescent fog. In the case of one body, Tom had used the machete to sever the head from the body. The fog from that body extended to the head, which seemed to be dissolving into the fog.
“Okay then.” Tom said. “I formally offer you a ride on my RV down to a less dangerous situation. Do you know where we can gas up in town, before we go?”
“I know just the place.” Markus smiled. “Let’s move.”
A few moments later, the group had boarded the RV, and it was bouncing down the slightly ill-kept road. Markus directed Tom to take the left side turn-off, and after a few hundred feet, the group had arrived at a small two pump gas station. No one was around, but a brick and a short search yielded the necessary means to activate the pumps and lift the cash out of the register.
In short order, the RV was gassed up, and the crew was ready to depart this Dead infested town. As they pulled out onto the interstate, Sidney drove the RV, and the rest of the group settled down around the table to interrogate their new friend Markus. Tom took the opportunity to get right to the point.
“Markus, why don’t you tell us whatever you know about what took place back there?” He queried. “You are the only living person we saw in town, although we didn’t do much of a search. How did you survive?”
“Well, I woke up this morning in this body.” Markus reported, as he raised his hand to indicate to which body he was referring. “I went to sleep very much in different circumstances.”
Markus went on to recount the events of the last day. He said that he woke up in the body of a person named Mike, who by the evidence of a suicide note and a bottle of tranquilizers was contemplating suicide. For whatever reason, what he got instead was an unanticipated resident in his body.
Markus believed that Mike was still in the body with him, because he could access all of Mike’s memories, and there was a sense of someone else being there, but totally passive. Markus had also noticed some small habitual type details that he was doing now, that he had never done before.
During the time that Markus had been exploring the situation today, he had encountered two other people with the same situation as his own, and had met a few still alive normal people. All had gone their own ways, and the Deaders had been very active, trying to catch and kill them all.
Markus had caught and to some extent interrogated one of the other types, the Deaders, and had formed some preliminary theories on what was happening in the wonderful town of Mildew. The dead bodies that had been resurrected were being animated by things that claimed that they were spirits, trapped in a tormenting place. They didn’t know if it was some type of hell, or if all the dead go there, or why they were there, but for whatever reason, a pinhole escape hatch from that place opened up to this place.
Once they escaped, they discovered that they could not force their way into a living person, but they could enter a dead body. They also found that they had the ability to repair those bodies, even the rotted ones, and walk around inside of them. Once in those bodies, they could find and kill the townspeople, and then one of their un-bodied compatriots could take up residence in the newly dead body.
The Deaders had some pretty significant Chi powers, some ability to throw things around telekinetically, and the Walk-Ins like Markus had no such powers. For all intents and purposes, Markus was a regular person, just in someone else’s body, and remembering a different world. Why both of these types of transfers took place at the same time, no one really knew.
>
The Deaders had become aware of the Walk-Ins just before the RV had hit town, and they were intent on eliminating the competition. They could not take over a living body, but the Walk-Ins were just as mortal as anybody, and so the Deaders could fix the situation by killing the Walk-Ins, then inhabiting the corpse.
As for Markus, he had Mike’s memories to examine, and to compare to his own memories, and for the most part, all of the history that Mike knew seemed to be the same as the one Markus knew, up until the mid 1990s. The hinge point seemed to be the Third Reich.
In Markus’s world, a couple of whistleblowers had turned into a flood of whistleblowers, starting in the year 1994. A young intern in one of the world’s biggest corporations came across a set of secret emails that dealt with an advertising, lobbying and payoff program of activities that were clearly aiming at accomplishing ‘The plans of the Reichsmarschall’.
Investigations by the fractured congress led to first a few, then hundreds of pieces of evidence that the Third Reich did not die when it was ‘defeated’ at the end of WWII. Instead, by bits and drabs, with the most advertised bit being ‘Operation Paper-clip’, they simply integrated the Reich’s machinations with the governments and significant businesses of the times. All of the significant organizations became part of the new, clandestine Reich.
By the end of the 1990s, a major witch hunt for Nazi Ideology was underway. It was discovered that both Nazi influences and overt Nazi organization were far more universal than was ever believed. By the end of the first decade of the 2000s, most of the Nazi structures had been destroyed, including the oddball off-shoot in the Middle East called the Muslim Brotherhood, and the toppling of the Argentine Republic.