by Mark Tufo
I had expected for the night runner upstairs to begin shrieking once the device started, but I don’t hear a thing except the thrumming from outside and an occasional shuffle from somewhere upstairs. I’m not sure whether to just hide in the house where there’s a modicum of light or head upstairs to deal with the night runner. Either choice carries risks.
With a glance through the crack in the door, I withdraw my suppressed 9mm and gradually put my weight on the first tread to test whether it’s going to creak. Slowly, I ascend the stairs, staying near the inside edge as that’s the sturdiest section on any set of steps. Family pictures adorn the wall of the staircase, showing happier moments in the lives of the family who lived here. The smiling woman in the photos is identical to the one whose head is resting on the couch cushion.
Kneeling near the top, I poke the rearview mirror out into a darkened hall. A pale night runner clad in tattered slacks and overcoat stands barefoot, panting at the far end. Its eyes shine liquid silver from the tiny amount of reflected light. Shivers run up my spine, remembering far too many close encounters with these creatures of the dark.
I make sure my handgun has a chambered round and gather my legs under me. Even though I only sensed one in the house, that perception has been wrong on occasion, so I can’t focus on only the one I know is there. I’ll have to be ready in case others come out from the rooms off the hallway.
Okay. Go!
I push off, rising and stepping into the hall in one motion. At the same time, I raise my handgun and aim. Although the corridor is dark, both the night runner and I are able to see. Spotting me, it leans forward, its hands stretched down and out from its sides, and opens its mouth. The glint of silver eyes stares from a face contorted with rage.
The hall is lit from a single strobe as a round exits the barrel and streaks down its length. The spinning bullet smacks into the night runner’s chest just as it emits the first hint of a shriek. The creature’s shoulders seem to implode around the impact and it’s thrown backward, the scream changing to nothing more than a forced exhalation. I march forward, sending another suppressed shot into the body as it stumbles. A third flash of light illuminates the corridor for a split second. The night runner steps backward through a partially opened door, falling to the floor as the door bangs against an interior wall. I halt, not wanting to go beyond the first room’s entrance. With a gurgle, I see red-tinged froth bubble from the night runner’s mouth. It then goes still, the head lolling to the side.
I wait, my handgun poised and ready for any others who might race out from the other rooms. Part of my attention is also directed outside, listening to see if the crashing door has drawn any attention from the freaks on the bikes. I don’t hear anything other than the low frequency hums. I’m sure they’ve drawn zombies into the area, and the whistlers may be preoccupied with collecting their dinner.
After a moment, I step further into the hall, swinging the first door open. If there were any night runners, they’d have already smelled me and come running by now. They’re cunning, but once they scent prey, their ferocious nature takes over. The room is obviously a child’s room, with skiing and hot rod pictures on the walls and a mess of clothes in a pile. I’m guessing whoever slept here was too young for the teen crush posters, but in time, those would have replaced the cars.
I glance past the door, looking into the rest of the room. My heart literally stops at the sight of a young boy hanging upside down. Not hanging, really—more suspended. His upper half is attached to the ceiling, his arms at his sides with the ends of his fingers disappearing into the drywall. Where his striped shirt should be hanging down over his head—you know, from that gravity thing—it’s draped as if the boy were standing upright. His brown hair is doing the same, framing a face with eyes that stare directly at me.
“Okay, that’s a whole big bag of fuck no,” I whisper, backing out of the room.
I’m hesitant to check out the other rooms, where I imagine I will find the man and second child shown in the photos on the wall. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t need to know what the back rooms hold. Without any more night runners in the house, my attitude is to fuck right off. I’ve seen a lot in my life, but eyes peering from railroad tracks and boys hanging from ceilings are too damn much. Oh yeah, and a head sitting on a couch and nearly stepping on a face embedded into the sidewalk. I think I’m good with not seeing more of that kind of shit.
I work my way downstairs, making sure to stay out of view of the whistlers. Near the kitchen, there’s a door leading into a half basement. I quickly open myself up to see if there are night runners, and shut down once I find the immediate area clear of any sensation. A quick check shows it clear of zombies as well. Whatever the mechanism is that brings them into this world, it can seemingly deposit them anywhere at any time. If I feel that cold wave again, I’ll be ready. If it happens at night, then I’ll be fucked if a dozen night runners are suddenly deposited in whatever safe room I am staying in.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve only ever felt it during the day. The whistlers don’t want that to happen either.
What I can’t figure out is how the whistlers are able to do it without having a swarm of zombies spawn in their midst. It could have a directional aspect to it. If I happen to find the device, I hope the instructions are easy and in a language I understand…meaning English. Step by step pictures would be helpful, but not like the ones that accompany furniture you have to assemble. If it were like that, I’d probably materialize somewhere just outside of Saturn’s rings.
Nestled in the basement with the closed door tied to a railing, I hear the perpetual thumping from the whistler’s devices. They must be making a big haul for the time they’re spending on it. I know that I left a few bodies lying in the streets and sprawled in front yards, their fluids leaking. Those are unmistakable signs that someone came through town, so I hope the whistlers focus on the ones still upright. Taking some of the laundry soap from a shelf above a washer and dryer, I spread it across my fatigues, hoping to mask my scent. It won’t be long before night falls and the night runners emerge from their lairs.
The vibrations continue, my watch indicating that night is near. I haven’t heard a sign of the whistlers departing. I know there were a lot of them outside, but surely they wouldn’t want to remain outdoors with night runners prowling the streets. However, the time for sunset arrives and the low thrums continue. Throughout the night, I hear the faint screams of night runners and the high-pitched squeals of whistlers.
A little after first light, I hear the throaty roar of the motorcycles starting up. It isn’t long before the thunderous noise fades, and I note the thumping sound has vanished as well. Heading upstairs to peek out through the living room curtains, I see that the street is clear of whistlers, but the lawns are a mess. The pavement is streaked a darker color from where zombies were tied behind the bikes and dragged. In places, there are smears the color of dried blood, apparently from night runners. Up and down the street, bodies of whistlers lie sprawled across lawns, over parked vehicles, or stretched in the street. The whistlers must have fought night runners all night long. If that’s the case and there were whistlers who drove away, then they must have won, meaning that the town is empty of the night runners. At least, I fucking hope so. And zombies, for that matter. I momentarily open my mind and don’t sense a single night runner. Pushing further outward reveals the same.
Well, okay then, Problem solved until the next cold wave blows through.
However, there still might be whistlers out and about. I move out of the house and carefully out of town. If Mike and Trip are still alive, they won’t have remained within the city limits, considering what last night held. At the military encampment, I ponder whether to restock, but put that aside for later. I still have a little ammo, so my priority is to find the two wanderers.
Edging around the outside of the city, I come to an overlook that has a good view of another vast plain abutting a line of mountains. Something l
arge winks out on the plain. Through my binoculars, I see a huge solar farm. Set against a range of mountains is a large facility that carries the look of a nuclear power plant, but without the telltale stacks. The compound is large, but doesn’t look like it would need all the power being generated by such a gigantic solar farm. That can only mean that there’s something else housed within.
Also dotted across the plain is a series of other concrete structures evenly spaced apart. Through my magnified view, I trace each building, noting that together they make a huge arc. If my view were complete, meaning that if I could see in a three hundred and sixty degree arc, I’m sure it would form a circle with a circumference that could measure a hundred miles or more. The sight of the facility gives me hope.
Looking back to the main plant, I see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of motorcycles parked in lots surrounding the place. Again, I wonder where they could have found so many. From where I’m looking, it seems like I’ve found the place where the vast majority of whistlers are hanging out.
While glassing the compound, I pick up a very familiar scent and hear the crunch of boots on gravel.
“You know that I can smell that from a mile away, right?” I say, not turning around, but knowing that Mike and Trip have arrived.
Chapter 2 - Mike Talbot
I was attempting to collect my thoughts. Trip was looking past the ruined and quickly frying bodies of the night runners. I knew what he was thinking.
“No, just no, Trip; you can’t save any of them.” I was referring to the Phritos. I stood up. “I’m done with this seat-of-the-pants shit, we need to get to Indian Hill, find Jack—if he’s still alive—and find a way out of here.”
“Yack? He the serious one? I don’t think he likes me.”
“He’s just trying to figure you out, something I’ve been trying to do since we met, too. You ready?” I was heading to the hills in the distance.
“Didn’t you just say you wanted to start planning?”
“I did,” I replied, not knowing where he was going with this.
“You might want to take that into consideration, then.”
He was pointing off to our right, where a giant column of dust was rising into the sky. I shielded my eyes from the sun in an attempt to see what was causing it. I was hoping for a column of military vehicles with the foremost experts in quantum physics who were going to explain everything that had happened and how they were going to correct it, including a very easy way of getting us back to where we belonged and maybe even throwing in a cheeseburger. You know what? If you’re going to dream, you might as well go big or go to Florida.
Want to know what I got? Because a rescue it wasn’t. Zombies—not a couple of dozen or so, but hundreds; shit, could have been thousands. They were a few miles off, but coming this way. If we stayed on course, they would have eventually come to us. The seventeen-dollar question was a healthy “why?” Why were they coming this way? Sure, a huge battle had been waged, a lot of monsters on both sides had been killed, but in terms of noise, there were no artillery barrages or bombs dropped. Even in this relatively quiet world, nothing more than a thousand yards away would have heard a scream. There was more to it; there was a convergence happening. That was why the whistlers and the night runners had clashed. They weren’t hunting each other; they simply had the misfortune of meeting up by chance. And now here came the Johnny-come-lately zombies.
“Well, going straight just lost its appeal.”
“Why?” Trip said, digging into a bag of Phritos.
“You seriously already forgot?” I placed my hand on top of his head and turned.
“Oh yeah, the funkies. I don’t have enough to share.”
To our right, I caught a glint of metal.
“Since I like shiny shit, I think we’ll head that way.”
It was as good a plan as any. It would be hours before the zombies were a factor, and we sure weren’t going to wait for them. Trip turned around after every few feet traveled for the first mile or so, making for slow going, but he said it was his way of mourning his loss, and if I didn’t let him do it, he would go back and bury each corn chip individually. That seemed like it would take way longer, so I allowed him his ritual. We’d gone perhaps another mile when the glint took on definition. It was the cold gray steel twin rails of train tracks, traveling off into the distance. There was a touch of hope there. That would be the quickest way into the city. I don’t know why I thought that was where we needed to go; even when life had been normal, I’d tended to avoid cities, always full of too many people. Now they just seemed to be full of too many monsters. Though an argument could be made that people were monsters, that was not a philosophical rabbit hole I wanted to descend into.
“What time you think the train shows?” Trip looked at an imaginary watch clasped on his wrist as we came up onto the tracks.
“Oh, I think your train came and went a good long while ago, buddy.”
“Buddy? Buddy hasn’t been around since that Thailand fiasco. How was I to know that seven kilos of cocaine was illegal there? I thought they were pretty liberal on their views concerning herbal medicine. I mean, they use aloe for cuts and burns.”
“Pretty much the same thing,” I said.
“That’s what I told the authorities.”
I took a good, long look at the approaching horde. They were still coming our way, but we had a while; in fact, I was thinking we were going to be in more danger from the approaching night and the things that hatched at that time than from the zombies. Soon we might need to start jogging, but for right now we could walk. I turned Trip so he was parallel to the tracks and then we started moving.
“All right, so you’re in Thailand with over fifteen pounds of coke, how the hell did you get away from that?”
“I led them to an as yet undiscovered Khmer ruin. Place was littered with bars of gold.”
“You knew where shit tons of gold were and were smuggling coke instead?”
“Can’t snort gold.”
How does one argue with that logic? The sun had hit its zenith, and our stalwart ally had decided to turn against us as it ran for the cover of darkness.
“Coward,” I called up to it.
“I think the train is coming!” Trip said excitedly, pointing off into the distance.
I followed the tracks and it was impossible to tell what from this distance, but there was definitely something ahead of us. Now the question became whether it was beneficial to us. Considering we were out in the open with not a bit of cover for days…well, that was the best we could hope for.
“You all right?” I asked Trip.
“Why?” He got real suspicious, his eyes narrowed as he stared at me intently.
“Shit Trip, I thought you might be thirsty or tired.”
“Last time someone asked me if I was okay was in Ecuador, and I ended up in a straitjacket. But now that you’ve said something, I’m mighty thirsty. Thanks for that.” The last part was said in a sarcastic tone.
“Like me mentioning liquids is why you’re thirsty. Couldn’t have anything to do with the seven pounds of salt you’ve taken in over the last twenty-four hours.”
“If I told you something, would you think I’m crazy?”
I shit you not, I almost started laughing like a fucking loon right there. With some super control—not something I’m good at, by the way—I held onto a straight face. Water is wet, blood is red, Trip is fucking nuts: all of these things are universal truths. He looked so sincere as he asked his question.
“You’re not answering.”
“I’m doing my best here, man,” I told him.
“Close enough. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to explain this in terms you’re going to understand.”
I didn’t know if I should be offended or glad.
“Go ahead, I’ll untangle it as best I can.” I was holding on to seriousness like a virgin does his first breast.
“Do you believe in infinite realities?” I nodded m
y head. I did believe in the possibility of it, maybe not so much the practicality, though. “There’s something wrong in this world.”
I understood that easily enough.
“The walls that hold back the different realities have been breached here.”
“All right, let’s make sure we’re on the same page. My understanding of infinite realities is that in this one I bend down, pick up this small stone, and toss it.” Which I did. “But from that point are thousands of billions of different possibilities—the rock travels farther or shorter, or an eagle comes and snatches it out of the air, and so on.”
“Basically correct; it’s more complex, but each action has an unlimited number of events and each of the reactions has an infinite number of events. Interestingly enough, this is how miracles happen.”
“Huh?”
“In one world, there is a meeting of cells and toxins that create an inoperable, incurable brain tumor within a child. But in a billion different worlds, this same child is unafflicted, living his or her life as all children should, full of laughter and light.”
“Where the fuck you going with this, Trip.” I wasn’t liking it one bit.
“Sometimes there are beings that intervene.”
“God? Gods?”
“Some call them that. Other times, people of a power they don’t even know they have can pray so hard that they pull another realm close enough to be able to alter things themselves.”
We were seriously traveling into other realms here.
“So a miracle is just the life of a new, better reality?”
“In basic terms, yes.”
“Holy shit. I wonder what the Catholics would think of that?”
