A Shrouded World 4

by Mark Tufo

  I awoke with a start. Trip had fallen asleep in the downward dog pose. I could just make out his form, though the candle had gone out. I looked down to the bottom of the now empty tank and stood quickly when I saw two forms lying there.

  “Thought I smelled something a little extra,” I said quietly. Light was filtering in through the open valves. Nothing was beating on the sides and the sun was out, the night runners were gone. Took me a minute to figure out Trip’s knot amid the moment of panic where I just wanted out of there as quickly as possible. Banged my head on the hatch as I finally spun it open and went through before the door had come to a rest. I don’t know that I’ve ever smelled anything sweeter than that first breath of air away from the truck.

  “Trip,” I shouted down into the hole, holding my breath as I did so. Surprisingly enough, it didn’t take me five times to get him to come out. He seemed as relieved as me.

  “Ponch, I don’t ever want to do that again.” He was leaning against the truck on the side away from the flow.

  “We have to get going. Anyone who stops by this is going to know there was a fresh battle, and I don’t want to encounter whatever else this world has to offer. Plus, we need some water.”

  “Should be some in there.” Trip was pointing to a line of cars facing up the side of a mountain.

  Weaving our way through the mountain pass, we’d walked into the mass exodus traffic jam, though this one was heading into Valhalla, not away. Might just have been a normal commute, people heading into the city on a shitty Tuesday to go do their jobs when whatever had taken out this area hit. I saw no bullet casings, no bodies, nothing in the cars to signify that people had taken all that mattered with them. Nope, plenty of laptops, briefcases, and lunches, which all worked out well for us because we now had more bottles of water and breakfast bars than we could hope to carry, though Trip was doing his best to go for a world record. I admit, when we first found water, I was downing it as fast as I could push the liquid out of its containers, then I slowed, thinking wrongly that perhaps we had just lucked out into those first supplies, but more cars than not yielded at least some sort of prize. Whatever was going on in Valhalla, its lunch spots must be stupidly overpriced, because these workers were having none of it.

  What I wouldn’t have done for a steak sub or a hamburger! Sure, I liked a good peanut butter trail bar as much as the next guy, but they just don’t have the same rib-sticking quality as meat. But anything not prepackaged in cellophane was long gone. I wasn’t quite sure what the absence of bodies meant, but something had certainly happened to the driver and his companion at the milk truck. Although maybe they were trying to hide from whatever had come and simply drowned. Possible, but the truck had only been half full. Had they just given up? Maybe realizing that they couldn’t get out, they simply decided drowning was better. They could have survived on the milk for a while, I think, but then they would have normal bodily functions to perform and, umm, no one wants to drink soiled-in milk. Yup, I gagged just thinking about turds floating around in that white pool.

  “Oh, what a shitty way to go.” I tenderly rubbed my stomach.

  “Sure wish I could find some more Slender Joes,” Trip said.

  “Sicking those up didn’t turn you off to them?”

  “Nope, just makes me miss them more,” he said as he tore into his thirtieth granola bar of the day.

  “You’re going to turn into a horse if you keep eating those,” I told him.

  He gave me the evil eye. “Take it back. Now.” He seemed pretty angry.

  “I take it back, you crazy bastard.”

  His features softened. “Naw, just messing with you man. You can’t make someone turn into a horse. Now a goat, well that’s a whole different story.” He started laughing on his own as if he’d made the funniest joke known to mankind. Who knows, maybe he had.

  A funny thing happened as we got closer to town: the traffic jam cleared up. One moment there was bumper to bumper, stuck for days traffic; the next, absolutely nothing. It ended so abruptly I would not have been surprised to see cars cut in half. Though that was not the case.

  “Was there a military blockade here or something?” I asked as I looked around and scratched my head. It made no sense: there is no such thing as an orderly panic. If all these people were running from something, they wouldn’t just stop. I’d expect to see bodies, blood stains, at the very least a shit ton of expended brass on the ground. But there was nothing. It made no sense. Unless it was the rapture, but my understanding of that event is that there would still be some people left, and there’s no way they would have just left their cars; they would have pushed the empty ones out of the way. So, let’s see, I had a mass exodus that went nowhere, no people were around that I could see, and apparently there were terrifying angels afoot. That wasn’t even taking into account everyone’s favorite monster, the night runner.

  “What do you make of this?” I asked Trip.

  “No more peanut butter bars,” was his reply. He was right, but if the puffiness of his pockets was any indication, he was going to be just fine.

  “I was looking for something a little less superficial, but whatever,” I told him. “On to Valhalla. I feel like I should have on a Viking hat, you know with the horns and everything.”

  “Why?” Trip stopped eating for a moment to ask.

  “Because Vikings, horns, Valhalla.” I figured that was all I needed to do to explain myself.

  “Horns on the helmet is all Hollywood. Everybody knows no respectable Viking would have worn something so cumbersome.”

  I wanted to tell him bullshit, I’d been reading about Hagar the Horrible in the comics since I was five, which taught me that he wasn’t so horrible and that he had horns on his damn helmet. Why do people keep feeling the need to fuck with my reality? I like it just the way it is—or was—even if most of it was fabricated on self-prescribed medication. In the end, I let it go; he was probably right, and if not, how was I going to disprove him, didn’t have Google any damn more.

  We walked a few more miles. The traffic jam was a distant memory; a set of hills became visible on our left and soon after I began to see the glimmers of what seemed like sunlight reflecting off of buildings.

  “Looks like we’re getting close,” I said to Trip. I figured we’d make it before night fell, though I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. If it was a dead city controlled by the runners, we’d be walking into town right around dinner time.

  “Good thing,” Trip said. “I’m down to my last two dozen granola bars.”

  “You realize that’s enough food for about four days, right?” I asked.

  “Maybe for someone like you, with your baby metabolism. You realize the amount of energy it takes to fuel this brain?” He aptly pointed to his stomach.

  I smiled, thinking that if I were having this same conversation with BT, he would have pointed toward his genitals; my smile quickly turned into a grimace when I remembered who he was sharing his bed with.

  We were making good time. Trip was actually staying somewhat focused and only needed goading or prodding every half hour or so, which for him was momentous. I saw something moving from far off. With its speed and because it was on the roadway, figured it had to be a car.

  “Trip, come on man, we need to get off the road, car’s coming.”

  “Good thing, I have to poop, I’ve had to for the last couple of miles.”

  I realize I’m an asshole. It’s something I’ve come to accept and sometimes even embrace about myself, but at no time would I have told him we could not stop so he could take care of some business—I mean, unless we were actively being chased, that is. We got to the side of the road and quickly down into a small gulley. I had my rifle pointed toward the oncoming car. I turned my head when I heard the metallic twang as Trip undid his belt buckle.

  “You are not taking a shit three feet from me, Trip!” I wish I was kidding when I say he shuffled a foot further away. “Trip! Minimum is twenty f
eet; out of sight would be preferable.”

  With his pants down by his ankles, Trip waddled his tightie-whitey-clad ass further away. My guess was he stopped at nineteen feet, and on purpose. He was grunting so savagely I could not hear the approach of the car.

  “What the fuck, man? Are you a Yeti?” I asked.

  “All bound up!” He was sweating profusely. “Like trying to pass a hairdryer!” He was squatting, I was trying not to pay too much attention to him but his underwear and pants were pooled directly under him, where I figured they’d be able to catch anything that came out, and while that would traditionally be something I would find very amusing, I also had to be in close proximity to him pretty much constantly.

  “Trip, move your pants out of the way!” I got quiet quick as I could hear the car’s tires on the roadway and the engine thrumming along as it zoomed toward us. I brought my eye down to my scope. I wasn’t getting the same vibe I’d gotten from the strange angel mobile, and from what I could see of the streaking sedan, it appeared normal enough. It was moving at a good clip, seventy miles an hour, maybe a little faster—fast enough it was difficult to track with my rifle, especially as it got closer. It didn’t look like it was going to slow down as it approached us, so I decided to look up as it passed. It got strange only because it was so normal. I saw a man driving, early thirties or so; he didn’t look distressed about anything, tough to tell with the speed and distances involved, but the little kid who was plastered up against the back window looking directly at me? Yeah, that was fucking weird. He waved and then held up his dinosaur toy to show me. Just a normal kid, doing normal things, thinking nothing of seeing someone all dressed up in camouflage, hiding on the side of the road.

  “What the hell?” I asked as I stood up.

  “Oh god, I think I’m shitting coral!” Trip cried out.

  That was my cue. I walked further out onto the roadway; if he was indeed tearing his asshole up, I didn’t want to bear witness. Had to wait another twenty minutes while Trip alternated between grunting like a rutting deer and outright screaming like a woman in labor.

  “Going to need some hot towels over here!” he shouted once. I didn’t even bother responding.

  When he came back up the small slope, he was all smiles.

  “You ready to go?” I asked.

  “I bet that’s visible from space.” He was pretty proud of himself.

  “Whatever, man, can we leave?”

  “You don’t want to look?”

  “As much as I’d like to, we should probably get going. Night is going to be here soon enough.”

  “I’ll miss you,” he said back to his miniature Great Wall. Apparently shitting bricks was a real thing, who knew?

  “Oh hey, I was thinking while I was crafting. You should have this.” He handed me a pink Hello Kitty notepad.

  “I’m good.” I was thinking of all manner of microscopic entities walking along that surface, hell they were probably infused in the paper and cardboard. Melted in.

  “Seriously, I’d feel better if you were holding this.”

  “Why, Trip? Does that thing contain the plague?”

  “Just stick it in your pocket, you’ll eventually need it.”

  “You know I hate this foreshadowing shit.”

  “This what?”

  I gripped the small pad as lightly as I could with the tips of my thumb and forefinger and deposited it in my side pocket.

  Mike Talbot—Chapter 3

  I moved off into the hills off to our left as we closed on the city, a city that, on the surface anyway, appeared to be absolutely fucking normal. We’d got off the road seven more times for cars, which considering we were coming up on a city, was not all that much. The lack of traffic was something to think about, though right now it was far from the most abnormal thing I’d seen in this world.

  It was a lot smaller than I anticipated. Instead of the metropolis I was expecting—because of all the jammed traffic we encountered earlier—it was more like a small coastal community. At some point, we must have been exposed to a time distortion that neither of us had noticed—which was serious cause for concern. We were less than a mile from the first low-level structures that marked the city limits, and now I found myself in a quandary as I looked down from our vantage point on a hill. Here I was, armed to the teeth, a Colt .45 1911 strapped to my hip and a fully automatic M-4 tactically attached to my chest. I had a Ka-Bar on a shin strap and enough ammo packed around my body to sustain my own little war. I couldn’t just walk into town like this, not without garnering plenty of unwanted attention. And what story could I tell them when I inevitably got picked up? “Hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Certainly not their government. Trip would have no problem, he looked like any homeless indigenous person from anyplace. And the more I looked at him, the more I wondered if that was on purpose. He could blend in much better with the surroundings than I could, all decked out in camouflage. How’s that for ironic?

  “Here,” Trip said as he tossed me a huge poncho.

  “Oh, come on,” I replied as I held up the bright green burlap-feeling material. It had red and yellow wavy lines running around it at odd intervals, giving it a very psychedelic effect. “Yeah, no one will notice this thing,” I said as I took my cap off and placed the poncho over my head.

  “Whoa, where’d Ponch go?” Trip was looking around and through me.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah man, you stick out like a sore thumb in a toe factory.”

  I didn’t know what a toe factory was, but I didn’t think this was a good thing. I tucked my cover away and made sure my rifle didn’t bulge out too much as we crossed the sign that welcomed us to Valhalla.

  “What now, Trip?”

  “Now we find some food.” He slid his hands back and forth over each other.

  “Yes, that’s the first thing I want to do upon finding myself in hostile territory.”

  “It’ll be all right; there’s a lot going on here you don’t understand.”

  “You think? Any chance you could clue me in?”

  “There are rules here; people aren’t so interested in dealing with things out of the ordinary. We’ll mostly be ignored.”

  “’Mostly’ is a lot different from ‘completely.’”

  “Ordinary folks will barely look at us—anybody in authority? Well let’s just say it could get sticky.”

  We kept walking. It was hard not to keep the time of day in the back of my mind, the sun was definitely on its way down. We were starting to walk past people on the sidewalk, and true to what Trip said, they didn’t even look our way. It was like we weren’t even there. If they were at all concerned about a night runner invasion, these people were among the coolest cucumbers I had ever encountered.

  Trip walked up to a street vendor’s cart; the smells were great but my stomach quickly soured when I saw what he was selling.

  “Cool cats?” I asked Trip.

  “It’s like hot dogs,” Trip said to me. “Six, please,” he said to the vendor. “You want one?” he asked me as an afterthought.

  “Ah?” I didn’t know what to say. Obviously, a hot dog isn’t made from dog, and I was assuming cool cats weren’t made from felines, but how could I be sure?

  “And one for my brightly dressed friend,” Trip said. He pulled out some currency from his backpack. It was roughly the size of your standard letter sized piece of paper, colored red with silver threads through it and marked with a portrait of some historical figure, though he handed it over so quickly I didn’t get a name.

  “I cannot take this,” the man said.

  “Wrong world?” Trip asked.

  “The denomination is too large, I can’t break it.”

  “Let me see if I can find something smaller.” Trip turned, got his backpack off, and was on his knees rooting around for a different bill. I watched as the vendor contemplated stashing the large bill away.

  “I’ll take that,�
� I said as I snatched it from his hands. The flash of anger I received from him was intense.

  “Hurry up or I will call the authorities!” the man complained.

  “Hold your horses, he’s looking.” Don’t think he understood the expression, but he got the mood, and now that we were spending an inordinate amount of time here, his gaze kept returning to the bulge in the front of my poncho. Would be hard to disguise what that was, and no, I wasn’t happy to see him. The man started to look around; I wasn’t a fan of where this looked like it was going. Finally, Trip stood up with bills that were still larger than traditional dollars but smaller than the sheet he had tried to pass off earlier. The transaction made, we now had seven cool cats. It was something like a taco mixed with a hamburger. The bread was thin, like a pita, the pocket it made was rectangular, and inside was what I would call a meat wafer, maybe as thick as two nickels stacked.

  I was holding my allotted cat as I watched Trip double-fist his six. I kept trying to get whiffs of the food, though I had no idea what fried cat smelled like even if I did get a nose full. My stomach was protesting the fact that it was empty. I took a tentative bite, mostly of the shell/bread, catching just the tiniest portion of the meat between my front teeth. The explosion of flavor was both savory and spicy. If it was cat, I had just found a new favorite menu item. Matching Trip, I inhaled the thing. I looked back to the vendor and wondered if I could buy the remainder of the cart with the large bill I now possessed. Trip slurped through the rest of his food fairly quickly.

  “Not sure if I want to know, but what kind of meat is that?”

  “It’s called a relarud, something between a goat and a kangaroo. Been to a lot of places, Ponch, and there’s not much that can compete with these.”