Survivor- World of Monsters 2

by Michael Brightburn

  She nodded again.

  Then he thought of something. “And the prickly green ones.”

  “Why? You like them or something?”

  “Or something.”

  “Fine. They’re not far anyway.”

  “You really did pay attention.”

  She grunted.

  Getting her to talk was like pulling teeth. Well, maybe not that hard. But keeping her talking…

  He still wanted to know what year she was from, but the loss of her sister and brother—and father and everyone else for that matter—was still fresh, so he waited.

  He’d found out Eliza was from 2041, which meant he hadn’t been the last person abducted and stored.

  He was disappointed that he’d been forgotten so quickly. Though Eliza had only been a baby when the most recent Leviathan movie had come out, and with his disappearance, no more would have been made—not with him as Leviathan, in any case—he still would have expected her to at least know of him.

  But Eliza had never heard of him, nor any of his films.

  With how popular Leviathan had been, he’d thought he’d have a more lasting legacy.

  He wondered what Bradley—his closest friend and director of the Leviathan movies—had done, what movies he’d made after Cal disappeared.

  He’d asked Eliza, but she hadn’t recognized Bradley’s name either.

  This didn’t mean much, as unless you were one of a few select directors, the general public wouldn’t recognize your name.

  He wondered about his friends, who would now be middle-aged. Or, who would have been in 2041. He wasn’t sure what year it currently was on Earth. Obviously after 2041 at least. But how long? Had Bradley lived to see the Earth overrun with zombies? Or had he made it to that old man he’d said he’d become who spent the winters in Miami, smoking cigars and sipping whiskey on the porch of his beach house, watching the young hotties stroll by.

  He smiled at the idea of Bradley as an old man. He wondered if he and Clara had stuck together. He thought they probably had. They were perfect for each other.

  His mind flashed back to the night he was abducted, a topless Clara coming into the kitchen to greet Bradley, the happiness on Bradley’s face when they’d kissed.

  He’d known Bradley for years, and had seen him go through many women, maybe more than Cal himself. But once he’d met Clara, Cal knew Bradley’s bachelor days were done.

  Maybe he’d find out one day for sure, maybe find a way back to Earth again.

  But though he missed his friends and family, he felt no great desire to return. And that was before taking into account that at least one city had been overrun with zombies.

  Despite Cal having been a movie star, he thought it probably wouldn’t play out like in the movies. Eventually humans would wipe out the zombies, retake the world.

  Unless the aliens had been the cause of them.

  He still wasn’t sure.

  Still wasn’t sure what those other things had been. The gangly, spider-like creatures with elongated heads and no eyes. That huge, humanoid monster that seemed to possess limitless strength.

  “There’s the banana things,” Imogen said, pointing up ahead.

  As they gathered, Cal split his attention between his surroundings and his interface.

  He meant to ID some things, but got distracted by his upgrade screen.

  There were several icons here, whose meaning he couldn’t decipher. It was a sort of tree structure, with its base being two individual nodes. One had something like a lightning bolt, but when he focused on it the text that appeared said SPEED.

  The other was two circles, and the text for this one read STRENGTH.

  This was the one he had selected, and after doing so more nodes had appeared above it. They had likewise indecipherable icons, and not even any text to indicate what they might be.

  He’d thought increasing his strength would make him faster but it hadn’t. No free lunches, apparently.

  Neither Eliza nor Mirabelle had used their upgrades yet, both being hesitant to do so.

  Mirabelle especially was freaked out, what with growing horns. She didn’t want to risk something even worse happening.

  He couldn’t blame her. While he thought her little horns were cute, it was clearly unnerving for her.

  There was also the fact that her upgrades were less clearly beneficial than his.

  Her symbols looked different, and the text for her two options were LIFE and DEATH.

  Eliza’s were slightly better, though even less enlightening.

  Still, based on his experience so far with his increased strength, he was excited to try out whatever his next upgrade options might be. But he had no idea how to get more upgrade tokens.

  If it took going back to a zombie-infested Earth, he didn’t think it was worth it.

  He also had no idea how it worked. He didn’t look stronger, but he could tell he was.

  Perhaps some neural pathway thing. He knew from his absurdly expensive personal trainer Mark Griffin that a lot of getting stronger was actually training the nervous system, not the muscles.

  This was why people on PCP could rip bolted-down benches out of concrete and mothers could flip overturned vehicles to rescue their children. Their brain sent out chemicals that got their nervous systems jacked and turned them into pseudo-superheroes.

  He also knew from Kylie West, an animal trainer who’d worked with the chimp in the second Leviathan movie, that the reason gorillas and primates were so much stronger than humans wasn’t their muscles, but the fact that their nervous systems were tuned to strength rather than fine movements. So they could deadlift a piano, but didn’t possess the fine motor coordination to play one—even if someone managed to teach them how.

  Whatever the method, it had worked, and now he was stronger. Not superhumanly so—he was still no Leviathan—but noticeably. He could, for instance, now lift Mirabelle one-handed, or hold her up and support all her weight without growing tired.

  Something he’d done more than once since getting back from the zombie and monster-infested Earth.

  “I think that’s enough,” Imogen said, getting his attention.

  He looked at her and was surprised when his display changed, a question popping up while her form was outlined in blue.

  ACTIVATE?

  He frowned, tried looking away. The message disappeared.

  “Uh, hello?”

  He looked back at her, and the message reappeared. “Weird.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry. You lit up.”

  “I did what?”

  “In the interface we have. I was going through it, and when I looked at you it outlined your body in light and asked me if I wanted to activate.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He shrugged. “No idea.”

  She gestured at the sky. It was nearly dark now. “We should get back.”

  “Yeah. We have enough?”

  She hoisted the basket, showing it was half-full.

  He nodded. “Looks good for now.”

  They headed back, the whole time Cal thinking about the question the interface had presented him.

  He came to the conclusion that it must have something to do with the fact that there were only three dots and that Imogen didn’t have an interface.

  The dots were on the default screen of the interface, displayed at the bottom below STATUS.

  There had been four dots before, when Jonathan had been with them.

  Then, a little while after they’d been separated on Earth, one had gone away.

  And when Eliza had gotten separated from them, been left alone in that Halloween-themed conference room and had her breakdown, one of the dots had turned gray.

  Which to Cal indicated that they represented the people in his… group? Team? Whatever they were.

  But now there were only three dots, despite Imogen being with them.

  So maybe by activate, it meant add her to the group,
give her an interface.

  But while it was useful—and while it had made him stronger—he wasn’t sure what other effects it might have on someone. What if it was a bomb as well, like in that movie where they could blow up your head if you defected?

  But if that were the case, why would they give the choice? They would have already forcibly implanted it into her.

  Perhaps that was why it said activate. Maybe it was already there.

  He’d talk to the others about it when they got back, see what they thought.

  If it did give her an interface, that would be useful so she wouldn’t get caught unaware when the next wave came.

  It wasn’t fair to make her stay at the base the whole time. And besides, it wasn’t as though she did. She did what she wanted unless they could convince her their idea made sense.

  And not risking her life apparently didn’t make sense to her.

  Cal looked over at her as she knocked on the gate and called out that they were back.

  He didn’t think she was suicidal. But fatalistic? Perhaps that.

  7

  “God I’m starving,” Mirabelle said, digging in and pulling out one of the prickly green fruits from the basket. She took a big bite and moaned. “These are my favorite.”

  Cal smiled. He knew this, and it was why he’d made an effort to get them, even though the tubers and banana-apples would have sufficed. Her being happy made him happy.

  She hadn’t been idle while they’d been gone, dragging the alien corpses into a pile near the middle edge and picking up the broken arrows, restoring their base to some semblance of order.

  “Work up an appetite?” he asked.

  She nodded, enthusiastically devouring her meal.

  He took a tuber and bit into it, wondered how it would taste cooked.

  The days were hot, but the nights weren’t too bad, feeling like maybe high sixties to low seventies. At night, they could build a fire to cook dinner with. It would be cool enough that the extra heat wouldn’t be bothersome. And at least one cooked meal a day would be nice.

  There was plenty of room to build one away from the tree.

  Eliza—still naked, though most of her body was covered in bandage-leaves—sat against the tree, legs out in front of her, uncrossed due to all the wounds.

  Cal suspected this was why Mirabelle’d had him sit where he was, which was most certainly not directly across from her, but instead to her side, Mirabelle and Imogen between the two of them.

  But Cal was tall, and could see plenty even from here.

  And though it was the dark of the night and where they sat under the tree was only faintly lit by starlight, Cal could see clearly enough that the sight gave him a pleasant, urgent feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Eliza looked up, checking her out, and smiled, then took a bite of a banana-apple.

  No, she certainly had no modesty when it came to her body.

  She had no body hair due to an injection she’d had to kill it, which Cal had heard her explain to Mirabelle.

  Mirabelle had wished she was from the future, then ripped off the sap from her leg she’d been using to wax with.

  It looked painful to Cal, but apparently waxing was something Mirabelle had done since she first started getting body hair, and it didn’t hurt anymore.

  Imogen had neither injection, nor had she bothered waxing, but she was a true natural blonde and what hair she did have was fine and only visible when you got up close.

  Cal found himself staring at her, causing him to remember the message that had appeared earlier. “I saw something interesting when we were getting food,” he told the group.

  “Oh? What was that?” Eliza asked.

  “I was going through the interface and when I looked at Imogen, a message opened, asking me if I wanted to activate her.”

  “Activate how?” Mirabelle asked, finishing her prickly green fruit and taking another.

  “Not sure. I think maybe it meant giving her an interface. We still only have three dots.”

  Eliza looked at Imogen, her eyes moving as she brought up her own interface. After a second she said, “Huh, yeah. I get that too. It just says, activate.”

  Mirabelle paused her eating to try. “Me three.”

  “But how would it give her a display?” Eliza asked. “Wouldn’t it have to be implanted?”

  Cal shrugged, eating his tuber. He really was curious now what it would taste like cooked.

  “It’s asking me to spend an upgrade token,” Mirabelle said.

  “You tried it?” Cal asked, surprised.

  “How else would we know?”

  “Yeah,” Imogen said dryly, “feel free to experiment on me.”

  “Sorry,” Mirabelle apologized. “I was curious. Besides, it didn’t do anything.”

  “Well don’t go spending your token or whatever. I’m not keen to have my head split open.”

  “I won’t. But we have them, and we’re fine.”

  “That’s debatable,” she muttered and took a bite of a banana-apple.

  “Hey, I heard that,” Mirabelle said in a playful tone.

  Imogen didn’t respond, her face remaining blank.

  Mirabelle sighed quietly and took another bite of her own fruit.

  8

  “I’ll take first watch,” Eliza offered when they’d finished.

  “You rest,” Cal said. “Heal up. I’ll take it.”

  “I can do it,” Imogen offered.

  “No. I’ll do it. You need your sleep. You look like shit.”

  “Thanks.”

  He shrugged. “Taking a page from your book. You could pass for a raccoon.”

  “I what?”

  “The dark circles under your eyes.”

  She shook her head. “Not from lack of sleep.”

  He patrolled the perimeter while the women slept, on high alert for any sign of more monsters.

  Every time he passed the corpses they had piled to one side, he felt the urge to rip one of their taloned limbs off. He’d lost track of which he’d promised to do this to, but really, any would suffice.

  After a couple hours, Imogen woke up and joined him. “I’ll take over.”

  “My shift isn’t done yet,” he objected.

  “It’s fine. I’m not tired.”

  “Neither am I.”

  They stared at each other.

  Finally she shrugged, grabbing a spear. “Then we’ll both keep watch.”

  He tried making conversation, but she gave one word answers, when she answered at all.

  Mostly she’d only grunt in response, and even then only after repeated prodding.

  “We’ll find her,” Cal said.

  Imogen froze, halting in her tracks.

  He stopped and looked back at her.

  “What?” she asked blankly, no emotion in her voice. She was staring at him, expressionless.

  “Your sister, Addison, we’ll—”

  “Don’t.”

  “We—”

  “I said don’t. I don’t need your false hope. I’m not a child.”

  “I know you aren’t. It’s not false. She came through, she had to have. She was right in front of me, and I saw her go through. Maybe she ended up coming out a different doorway, I don’t know. But she did make it.”

  She shook her head, walked past him, her shoulder bumping into him. “You can’t know that. That thing probably got her.”

  Cal sighed and followed after her.

  Having already brought it up, he figured why not go for broke. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  She sighed irritably.

  “What year are you from?”

  She stopped and frowned at him. “What?”

  “Well, you know, Mirabelle’s from the eighties, Eliza’s from the twenty-forties—”

  “Twenty-forty?”

  “Yeah.” She had to know, didn’t she? Hadn’t someone told her? Cal realized likely not. But she must have heard them talking. “You knew that,
right? We’re all from different time periods.”

  “No. How?”

  “We were abducted. Stored until we all woke up here.”

  She stared blankly at him.

  “I thought you knew. Thought you heard us talking about it.”

  “I’ve never heard you talking about it. But that’s impossible.”

  “In my time they’d already frozen and brought back to life organs and I think some animals. Maybe just insects.”

  “No, I mean, how can she be from the future?”

  “She’s not, it’s the present for her. It’s only…” He trailed off, realizing what she was saying. Imogen hadn’t been abducted, but had come from Earth through the portal with them. And if 2041 was the future to her… “What year was it back on Earth?”

  “Ninety-three. Nineteen ninety-three,” she clarified, before he could ask.

  Now it was Cal’s turn to stare blankly. That was impossible.

  “That means…”

  “Time-travel.”

  “Huh,” Cal said, dumbfounded.

  But was that really any more surprising than aliens and doorways that led between planets?

  It somehow was.

  “But, if it’s time-travel, and you’re from the past, my past anyway, I’d already know about the zombies.”

  “Unless something got changed.”

  The idea felt off to Cal. There was something about it… He felt like he was missing something.

  Like back when they were on Earth and he’d noticed something wrong when entering the McDonald's, but hadn’t realized till later what that had been: the streak of blood on the bathroom door.

  This was like that. There was something off about it, something that made him think this wasn’t time-travel.

  But what? There was no other explanation that made sense.

  “You disagree?” Imogen asked.

  Cal shook his head. “I’m not sure. I feel like…” He shook his head again. “I don’t know.”

  Imogen shrugged. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Not unless we can get our hands on the time machine.” She fell silent, looking thoughtful. “We should search the area. There might—”

  A sudden screeching silenced her, and they both looked around, listening intently.

  After several minutes passed without another sound, Cal said, “That sounded like one of the monsters.” He looked at the pile of alien corpses.