by Mark Tufo
“Now what, Talbot? Sit here until some random maintenance crew finds you?” What I really wanted to do was wallow in a little self-pity; figured I’d hard-earned that right. Yeah, I was fully aware that wouldn’t do shit. Not like there were a bunch of other things I could do.
“Think, man. Bob was headed this way, he must have had a plan.” Then I gave an abrupt laugh. Bob, for the most part, was see-through; as far as I could tell, there was no discernible brain, and still, he’d had a better plan than I did. “Great, out-thought by a bowl of jelly. Just perfect. Jack? I sure wouldn’t mind you showing up with a truckload of C-4. Trip? Can you hear me?” Nothing. Was worth a shot. Everything else in this crazy adventure had been bordering on fantastical, why couldn’t I summon him? Maybe I needed a genie bottle or a mirror, or a Ouija board.
An inkling of what I needed to do tickled the borders of my mind. Power. I needed power, or, in this case, I needed to interrupt power. Not sure if I should feel bad or not, but my first thought was to go back through the hole and kill all the alien pawns supplying the juice. Maybe better would be telling them what it was doing to them, that each pull of that trigger was slowly killing them. Would they care? Wasn’t one of them there that didn’t think this would become their final resting place. Shit, knowing they had an out, they might start working quicker. It wasn’t with confidence that I headed toward the electrified area. There were the obvious reasons to be wary of miniature electrical storms, and then, even if it was more controlled and directed than it appeared from this distance, I would still have to worry about the outcome.
Whistlers were getting jump-started to life. I doubted they would be like new-born babes but rather emerge the pre-programmed world-busting, killing-machines they were. I had a laundry list of reasons why I shouldn’t go, none of them good enough to stop me. For a factory operation of this size, the noise should have been ear-splitting, but besides the squishy dollops of processed aliens and the far-off crackle of energy, it was pretty quiet. Quiet enough I heard a noise behind me.
23
Mike Journal Entry 8
“Fuckers finally found me. Now what?” I looked for a place to hide. There wasn’t much; the conveyors were on some sort of anti-gravity magnets and didn’t even have the good graces to have a tablecloth draped over them. Might as well have been pissing on the fifty-yard line in the middle of the third quarter. Not that I would; not much into exhibitionism, just reflecting on how exposed I was. I did the best thing I could; I didn’t move. It was about as effective as it sounds. Die on my feet or die on the ground, the determining factor was that I was already standing. There was a ton of grunting, either there were a couple of whistlers getting away to do some clandestine rutting (eww) or…I started to run to the way I’d come in.
Bob was on the ground, stretched incredibly thin so that he could reach up and help Church through the opening. Again, Bob was displaying his freakish strength as he pulled fist-sized chunks away from the lip. I had such a euphoric response to seeing him the thought occurred that it was quite possible I was hallucinating. After all I’d been through, it wasn’t that far-fetched to think that my mind had finally taken matters into its own hands and plopped me into this thought oasis. I’d take it all day long. Probably wouldn’t even know when the whistlers found me, I’d be so far down my delusional road.
“Bob!” I shouted. He didn’t stop working on the hole, but his eyes swiveled around inside the goop to look at me. He said something that sounded a lot like “Gorp” or maybe “Brvrat.” Either way, I had no idea what the hell he said. He made a third appendage high up on his insanely skinny neck and drew it across his “throat” like one might do to intimidate an enemy.
“What?” I had a momentary panic where I figured this was the grand reveal: Bob was going to get Church out and then he was going to kill me in some excruciating fashion. The horrible twist at the end of the movie that no one will see coming. At least, not until that one douchey friend tells you all about it just as you walk into the theater.
“Dude, the movie is great. Wait until you see the twist at the end—you’re not going to believe who the killer is!” The only thing worse would be the reveal. That has to be the most passive-aggressive way to ruin someone’s viewing of a movie. When you can call them out on it, they can fall back on the standard, “What? I didn’t tell you anything.” But they did, in a fundamental way they have changed the entire way you are going to watch said movie, constantly looking for the set-up to the twist. Maybe you discover it way earlier than you should, had the film played out the way it was made to, or maybe you never do until the end, but either way it changes the viewing experience. I could never understand why people felt the need to do it. Were they aware of their faux pas and didn’t care? Did it make them somehow feel important to impart knowledge you did not yet possess? Or the third and most likely reason, they were a movie-douche. Generally good people who just couldn’t shut the fuck up. Why in god’s name I was going down this road right now, I couldn’t even begin to say.
Bob swiveled his eyes back to the task at hand, but the strange arm kept up the sawing motion. Church was giving a series of clicks, beeps, and guttural noises. Don’t have to hit me twice with a rock before I realized what was up. I’d taken out my feeder tube and, subsequently, my translator. I ran over to the contraption, it gave me the shivers to touch it; looked like something right out of Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise.
“No way I’m putting the tube back in.” I grabbed the thing and yanked it free, not at all happy that when it snapped, some of the dried debris hit me in the face. I reluctantly placed the S&M gear over my face, the throat piece adhering on its own.
“Bob!” I tried the enthusiasm again, I was still feeling it.
“Milk!” he returned in kind.
“Kill rock!” Church grumbled.
“Felt the same way,” I told him.
“How did you escape?” I asked. There was no way I could help; I felt like a kid watching his dad and uncle work on a project with dangerous tools; I was basically in the way, and distracting them further with useless questions. Bob was busy trying to free Church and Church looked like he was going to break every rock he encountered from here on for the rest of his life. I did the only thing I could at the time and became the lookout. It was a good bet my escape had gone unnoticed; no way with these two. They would have had to lay waste to a good number of whistlers, and once that carnage was discovered, they’d be followed. Once again, I got a wave of paranoia thinking that perhaps the whole thing had been planned. They let me get away. Bob and Church stayed behind talking to their whistler friends, smoking a few cigarettes, shared a beer or two, maybe talked about what they’re going to do next weekend. Then Bob would smack Church in the chest after stubbing out his smoke.
“We should get going.”
Church would laugh. “Dumb human doesn’t even know what’s going to happen to him,” he would reply.
I’d seen enough movies to know that sometimes one’s closest friends were their worst enemies. Stupid plot twists. That made zero sense, as I’ve said before; Bob could have killed me a dozen times. Unless…what if his job was to follow me to Trip? He could be the real goal in this scenario. Get Trip, rule the cosmos. Now that particular idea was not overly far-fetched. Less far-fetched than these two getting free from a squad of whistlers.
“For having such an overactive imagination, you’d think I’d be better capable of formulating working plans,” I said, now watching the two with wary eyes.
“Milk!” Bob called out.
“What? How do you know they’re coming?”
“Milk.”
“They followed, or you led them?” The last part slipped out before I could censor it. It came out faster than Janet Jackson’s nipple at the Super Bowl. (Funny thing was, I missed it. A bunch of us were out in the backyard drinking a few beers and eating burgers, not wanting to have anything to do with the halftime festivities. Had I known the highlight, I would have m
ade an exception. It was a famous nipple, after all.) His head tilted in that confused dog stare.
“Sorry, it’s been a rough few days. How close?”
“Milk.”
“An hour at most? Lost your lead because of chunk there, didn’t you?”
He didn’t need to answer; that he’d not abandoned Churchill meant a lot. Bob was loyal to a fault, and I was sorry I'd doubted him. He’d, as of yet, done nothing to make me suspect him; I just couldn’t help myself. Humans were quite probably the most untrustworthy beasts in the universe, and I’d garnered all my experience from them. Not saying we were the worst, we just tended to say one thing and do another, all the time. The zombies, night runners, whistlers, angels…at least they were consistent. Consistently dickish, but consistent, nevertheless. I liked Bob; I liked Church. But I wouldn’t be opposed to being around my own kind, trustworthy or not. I didn’t consider myself a speciesist. It’s just damn near impossible to know what’s going through an alien's mind or what motivates them to do something. You knew where you stood with humans. We had a shared understanding of how the world worked. And examining that thought alone, I decided maybe I was better off with these two after all.
I was so lost down a rabbit hole of my own making I’d missed Church’s escape. Bob had grabbed him and let him down gently to the floor. I was a little salty that he’d not been here to give me the escalator ride down to the bottom level. Church had turned and tugged at a rope tied to his waist. A bag of Santa’s gifts plopped down into his outstretched arms. At that very moment, I think I would have been happy to see a cherry-glazed canned ham. Not ecstatic, but happy. When he opened it up, it was like looking into a bag of gold recovered from a long-buried pirate’s chest.
“Weapons!” I gleefully reached my hand in. “What do we have here?” It was rifle-shaped but had as many similarities with my preferred M-16 as it did a toaster oven. It was boxy, not overly burdensome, maybe around fifteen pounds, certainly heavier than something you’d like to lug around all day in the jungle or desert. It seriously looked like someone had put a stock and a trigger on said toaster oven, although, this one didn’t have a glass door to look in and see how burnt you’d made your bagel. I tilted it to look down the receiving end. The opening was roughly the size and shape of a standard USB port.
“Great. What am going to do? Memorize them to death?”
Bob swiftly pushed the barrel down. Safe to say he thought it dangerous enough that I shouldn’t point it at my head.
“Let’s see what this can do then.” Thinking it wasn’t much more than a glorified stapler, I loosely placed it against my shoulder, didn’t even aim so much as raise the rifle and shoot. There may have been the crackle of energy, but that was lost in the whomping sound, the shove against my shoulder, and the deep damage I’d done to the side of a conveyor.
“Holy fuck.” I had a new-found respect for whatever I held. There was an eight-inch groove in the metal and up through the belt; chances are it would have gone farther, but the projectile had been fired at an angle. It had torn through and exited upward. There were lit up symbols on the side, but the numbers were in whistler, and I had no idea what they meant other than there was an ammo count. That was a slight bummer, as I wanted to light up this whole place with my toy. Destroying this place was paramount; stopping the whistlers that had been following, maybe even more so. There was a chance they had no idea where the tunnel let out to, but once they got to the opening, all would be revealed, and it stood to reason that they would call for reinforcements. I knew what needed to be done, I just wasn’t overly thrilled with it.
“Bob, you need to get me back in the hole.”
“Milk?”
“No, I haven’t changed my mind, I’m not going back. The whistlers coming after us need to be stopped.”
“Bob.”
“No, Bob, you can’t do it. It needs to be me. You know what you’re doing here, you know how to take this place down. I’ve been here for who knows how long, and all I’ve managed to do is take my mask off.”
He thought long and hard, this I knew only because he had not moved. Finally, he started back toward the hole, turning once to see if I was following.
“I wouldn’t have minded a bigger debate,” I told him as he wrapped an arm around me and did the elevator thing.
“Milk.”
“No, I’m not having new doubts, they’re the same ones I had originally.” I did my best to settle my nerves as I was now able to step through the decent sized hole Church and Bob had made. I had to move deeper in and not allow the whistlers to know that we’d found a way out. There would be no help coming if I got into a situation that warranted it. I was heading down the martyr route, like, why would things be any different now? But that was not quite right, I’d almost always had allies when things went down. That wasn’t to say I hadn’t had to rely on my skills more than a few times, but for certain I’d always had plenty of help along the way. This, unfortunately, wasn’t going to be one of those times. Alone in a dark rock tube, fighting a relentless enemy, sounded perfect for a horror movie. Right now, I was the dipshit that went into the basement alone to check the circuit breaker. Of course, that was generally the first death, so you couldn’t blame me.
Bodies hadn’t started dropping from ceilings quite yet. It was the dumb shits that went to check out the strange noises coming from the newly discovered mystery room who had no clue. If you were finding all the people you’d come camping with in various forms of mutilation and you were still striking out on your own and not circling the wagons, well, there’s no word to describe your stupidity. And here I was, alone in the dark.
“Fucking brilliant, Talbot,” I whispered. I traveled as far as I needed to so that I could not see the light at the end of the tunnel, no, that's not a metaphor. First, so I wouldn’t be silhouetted, and secondly, again, so the whistlers didn’t know there was an exit. This was the place I made my stand, in a manner of speaking. It had maybe been a couple hundred yards, up to a quarter-mile. Tough to tell in the dark, and pretty much impossible to count your steps when you’re crawling. My neck was beginning to hurt as I kept my head up, not sure what I was going to see. It wasn't like the whistlers had flashlights or, better yet, glowed in the dark. I guess it’s just what you do. No doubt, as a human, I relied the most heavily on my sense of sight.
I finally had to rest my forehead against the ground; my neck thanked me by giving a relieving crack of gratitude. I closed my eyes, not because I was tired; I was doing my best to divert some power to my hearing and smell. Who knows if that works, but in my head it did, and since the mind runs the show, I figured I’d listen. It wasn’t long; they weren’t making much noise, no grumblings of complaint or tremulous questions to their companions. But it would be impossible to move in this environment without making sound. It was their strange leather clothing, the squelching it made as it rubbed up against their skin and the rocks. It was then I had a moment to reflect on what most likely that material was made out of. Surely not cow. The thing about the noise—while I could hear it, I wasn’t a bat. I couldn’t echo-locate it, so I didn’t know how close or how far they were away.
If I fired too soon, the element of surprise was lost, and I would be in a drawn-out firefight. Catching staples in the top of my dome sounded about as much fun as sticking your junk in a fan. I’d thankfully never seen that done, but odds were greatly in favor that some drunk moron, spurred on by his just as drunken friends, had done it. That must have been one hell of a fun hospital visit, could guarantee that every doctor and nurse on staff that evening was going to come in and take a look. And, oh shit, if it was a teaching hospital, nothing like having a class of ten or fifteen future doctors file through to go over your issue. Can’t imagine there would be too many men thrilled with the prospect of slicing off half of what they’d been born with. And it was just like Jimmy, that ass, to let the chunk of bloody penis that stuck to the ceiling stay there as they ushered you, hunched over and with a
blanket on your crotch into an Uber. Can’t sew back on what you don’t have. You’d have to live the rest of your life called Stumpy.
Why? Why are you even thinking this? I kept this thought to myself.
Then, so I could ramp the panic up, I was wondering if they had this new super stapler. It was one thing to get toxin stapled into your skull, a whole other to have it caved in. I did my best to make sure the rifle was centered in the crawl space. The stock rested against the top of my shoulder. The kick, while not the formidable bucking of a 12-gauge shotgun, was more than my familiar 5.56. Maybe something approaching a .308; it was not going to feel particularly good shooting like this. Again, the least of my problems, but food for thought. Another loud squelching…that was close, twenty feet, max. Then it stopped. Had they noticed something up ahead? Did they have infrared, and even now, was I a sizable red blob in someone’s sights? It was not a chance I could take.
I began to pull that trigger and did not let up until more than a dozen rounds lit up that canal. There were whistles of pain and surprise as the rounds found their marks. Through the high-pitched whine of rocks being shattered and bullets being deflected, I’d not been noticed. I deduced this by the fact that I had not been shot in return. When I was done firing, I listened as best I could over the drumming of my heart. I didn’t know if I was done; I could not let any follow for the reason I was up here in the first place, and I could not let any turn and go back.
I moved forward with as much haste as I could. The smell as I got closer to the bodies was becoming unbearable. I’d covered most of the distance when I heard a sound not generated by me. I was fearful that I’d missed most of my shots, and they were waiting for just this opportunity. I braced for impact, not that it would matter, gritted teeth, rigid extremities, tightened core, sphincter slammed shut, none of it was going to stop a bullet. No bullets; more movement. It wasn’t advancing, it was trying to get away. I crawled faster. By this point I was slogging through pools of blood, the smell enough to make my eyes water and my stomach turn, neither of those things enough to dissuade me from doing what needed to be done. I went headlong into the broken body of a whistler. I grabbed its head to push it to the side. That was a mistake; there wasn’t enough remaining to do more than sink my hand into its neck.