A Shrouded World 6

by Mark Tufo

  “After you.” Jack motioned to the door.

  “Oh, now you’re a gentleman,” I replied.

  BT shouldered through when I didn’t move immediately. “I’m done with this place. One way or the other, I’m done. I either want to eat an entire cheesecake or kill something for not letting me eat it.”

  “Fair enough.” I shrugged and poofed out my bottom lip as I followed him. Jack fell in behind. The room wasn’t large—it was cavernous. It felt like I stepped into one of those magical tents from Harry Potter because the outside of the building in no way could house the room we were in. It was larger than a commercial airline hangar, the ceiling high enough to contain its own atmosphere. The floor was built of large marble tiles, the wall nearest us of the same material, and the far walls looked the same, but without a closer inspection, it was impossible to say. There were no furnishings—no windows, and no light source, though we could see perfectly.

  “I hate this unexplainable shit,” Jack said.

  I did too; safe to say so did BT. It was just a damn shame that my life had revolved around that description for a good long while now.

  “You see that?” BT was pointing to the far end of the room, some thousand feet away.

  “No.”

  “There are three dots.”

  “Doors?” Jack asked.

  I turned back to the one we had come through to gain perspective and see if it matched. I wished I’d been more surprised, but I wasn’t, when I noticed that if there had ever truly been a door there, it was gone now. I tapped Jack’s shoulder; he turned. The look on his face was anger.

  “I’m so sick of this shit,” was all he said as he gripped his rifle tighter.

  There was comfort in a weapon, a way to inflict harm on your enemies before they could do so to you. In this instance, I figured they were about as useful as a Nerf gun. BT had moved out ahead of us by ten feet; he’d stopped and was looking around.

  I wanted to stay in tight, well, because of the whole fear factor, but that also increased our risk of dying by a cluster weapon. Though, in truth, if the angels had wanted to do us in, I can’t imagine it would have been all that difficult, as we stood at the top of the stairs wearing stunned expressions upon our faces. We walked slowly but ever closer to what were most assuredly doors in the wall. I don’t think it was lost on any of us that there were three doors and three of us. Had Truden or Kalandar joined us inside, would there have been four?

  No idea how this was going to play out, but odds were good we each weren’t going to pick a door and go for it. Either we all picked the door with the tiger inside and we fought it, or we found the one that led outside and left together. I mean, I had no idea if those were the options, just speculating. Could have been a lifetime supply of generic mac-and-cheez behind one of the doors. Although the term “lifetime” is thrown around casually in those instances; it usually means three boxes a week for a year. Maybe they expect their product to clog the arteries sufficiently within that timeframe that you keel over. Yeah. Maybe that’s it.

  BT stumbled, righted himself, stopped and then bent over before going to a knee. He placed his hand upon the floor. “There’s a ridge here,” he said, tracing it.

  It was in the middle of the tile, smooth, it wasn’t caused by age or an errant tree root. It was supposed to be there. But for what purpose? I looked to my right, saw another, and said so. Jack looked to his left and echoed the same finding.

  “It’s here for a reason; don’t know what it is, though,” Jack said.

  “Decorative?” I asked, hopefully.

  Jack scowled. “A tripping hazard on the floor as decoration? If that’s the worst thing it signifies, then I’m okay with it,” he added.

  We were standing there, not more than five feet between each of us, when it happened. The ridges exploded upward as quickly as an anti-theft wall in a bank drops. I was alone in a corridor some ten feet wide, a wall on either side of me well over twenty feet high, and it went the distance, wall to wall across the room, I mean, and of course, it ended in a doorway.

  “BT! Jack!” I yelled out.

  They both responded. I was happy to hear them, it helped still the dread growing within me, but the outcome I’d feared now seemed predetermined.

  “Could these doors be the way home?” BT asked.

  It was possible; we were from three different realities. It made sense in a hopeful way, but no other, and we hadn’t experienced many hopeful endings. If they were merely going to send us home, all they would have had to do was tell us that, not strike some bargain with Kalandar.

  “I don’t think so,” Jack said.

  I was irrationally angry with him for dashing BT’s hope, and even though I didn’t think so either, false hope is better than none at all. Right?

  “Jack, do we have enough material to fashion some rope?” I asked. We’d need something in the range of fifty feet. Between slings, pants, shirts, it was possible.

  “Let’s do it,” he replied. The acoustics were good enough that we could almost speak conversationally. I was thankful for that because just the act of yelling and screaming implies a problem.

  I’d just finished unfastening my sling and had my hands on my belt when BT’s warning cry rang out.

  “Night runners!” he yelled.

  I looked first toward the door and saw nothing, then looked back the way we had come. Something was coming, though not runners—speeders—fast zombies. I just figured BT had mixed them up when Jack began to fire his weapon.

  “Aw fuck!” Jack shouted.

  I could only assume the demon he’d been fighting had finally made its way to the stage.

  2

  Mike Talbot – Chapter Two

  It looked like we’d all been supplied with different but equal motivation to head toward the door.

  “Run!” Not sure I needed to tell them that, but on occasion you need a verbal slap to get moving. At a sprint, I should beat the speeders to the door, but if it was locked, I was going to be in trouble. I quickly debated the merits of standing and fighting here. It beat trying to get decent shots off while I tried to catch a breath. I ran instead. It’d be better if I had a wall to my back. I could hear BT chugging along—sounded like he was keeping pace. A five-hundred-yard sprint was no laughing matter, even in the best shape of your life, you’re bound to feel like absolute shit after making your body hit maximum speed for that distance, and BT wasn’t even close to peak shape. My first fear was he’d collapse before he made it. Even though this wasn’t my dearest friend, only a reasonable facsimile, that still didn’t mean I wanted to hear the meat being rendered from his bones while he screamed.

  “We meet again!” boomed around the entire structure. “When I am done with you, I look forward to meeting with the rest of your group,” Jack’s demon said. No matter how any of this went, I didn’t think there was going to be much left for him to get a hold of by that point.

  I heard a loud oomph next to me. BT had fallen and hit the ground hard, by the sound of it.

  “Get up!” I urged.

  He wasn’t knocked out because he grunted and started to fire his weapon. That was good, but if he was facing anything like the numbers I was, he didn’t have enough ammunition on him to make a dent, and night runners were a lot like zombies—they weren’t going to stop.

  “Get the fuck up!” I yelled again. I was slowly moving forward, almost jogging in place, but oh man, did I want to run. Every second I wasn’t at a sprint, the zombies were gaining.

  “Not gonna make it!” he yelled back.

  “Not an option. Move your ass!”

  As if all of this wasn’t terrifying enough, there was the deep growling bass of Jack’s demon and a red illumination on the ceiling that I saw out of the corner of my eye. Best I could tell was it was fire. I had no idea what fresh hell Jack was experiencing; I could only hope he would make it.

  BT had stopped shooting his rifle. That went either way; either he was running or he was be
ing eaten. My time of doing the “scared quarterback dance” or “happy feet” was over. This is a phenomenon I should explain. There was a pro QB that had been drafted by, I want to say the Tennessee Titans. He crushed it in college, but, unfortunately, he signed with a less than stellar team that had nothing in the way of a decent offensive line, so he was continually getting smashed in the face by opposing defenses. You can shake a few of these off, but, when three hundred-pound-plus men are consistently planting you in the ground and at speed, you can develop those happy feet, meaning, you’re dancing around looking to get rid of the football as quickly as possible before you are forced into early retirement. Needless to say, he never quite became the offensive leader the team had hoped him to be. He was traded four years later, a shell of a player. He rode the bench for a couple more seasons before he left to go sell life insurance. I was running because this was a football I could not let go of, and this was a game of kill the kid with the ball, and yes, that is a real game. This I know because I played it. It’s almost a surprise when any male adolescent makes it through puberty. I guess even if we consider ourselves above the animal kingdom, we still very much follow the rules, this one being Survival Of the Fittest. I had twenty feet on the speeding zombies; I didn’t even dare to look over my shoulder. If I stumbled, it was over.

  “BT!” I yelled.

  There were a few tense seconds before I finally heard a strangled, “Ung” come from him. I took that as a sign he was still running and wasting breath on a decent answer wasn’t going to happen. We were isolated, on our own. Of course, I hoped that the three doors opened to the same antechamber, but the odds of that were as likely as a quiet woman being “fine” when she says she’s “fine.” (Or “peachy;” watch out for that one because they most certainly aren’t peachy.) I was at a full sprint as I neared the door. I couldn’t see a handle of any sort, and the closer I got, the more the exit looked like some abstract wall art. Something Andy Warhol might have done, a door to nowhere, a “no one gets out of here alive” type of thing. Fitting, really.

  Fifteen feet from the wall, and full speed, I was just about to slow, turn, and start firing, when the door began to fade, becoming translucent. It looked more and more like a sheet of glass with every step taken. I braced for impact, hoping it wasn’t some bulletproof material that would repel me violently like a skyscraper window will a hapless bird. If I bounced back, it would be into the waiting mouths of those trailing. I put my elbow up, gritted my teeth, ducked my head and surged forward…and through. The collision I’d been expecting did not come. One moment was the sound of hundreds of feet pounding the ground, my labored breathing, and the next…nothing. No zombies, no walls, and no light. I was in an all-encompassing darkness, the door behind me gone. I turned, waiting to see if the zombies had been afforded the same exit that I had been.

  I spent what seemed an inordinate amount of time waiting for the enemy to join me. As of yet, I did not fear where I was so much as I was the fight I was expecting. When that didn’t happen, I began to take stock of my situation, with minimal success. The dark was so thick I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Though, to be honest, I didn’t even bother trying. I got the feeling the place I was in was vast, though, again, I had no way of knowing. And if it was that big, didn’t it stand to reason that Jack and BT’s doors opened here? That was my wish. In my heart, I knew we were in different realms—or whatever this place was. Realm, reality, dimension, what did it matter? I wanted to check out my surroundings as best I could, but how do you do that when you can’t see a damned thing? One wrong step could send me plunging to unknown depths. The alternative was to stay rooted in place for all the time afforded to me.

  I called out, “Hey!” The sound traveled but did not echo. No idea what that meant, unless possibly I’d turned into a duck. Little known fact, duck quacks don’t echo. No one knows why. If I'd thought inane facts were going to keep me from panicking, I was sadly mistaken. I’d thus far in my life encountered every monster I could have possibly imagined and some I couldn’t have if I tried, but in the dark, who knew what could potentially be sneaking up on me, and from any direction. My heart started pumping, adrenaline began to course through my veins in preparation for a fight that I was very likely fabricating. But how could I honestly know? I wasn’t scared of the dark, per se; I’d never been one for a nightlight as a kid. I was cautious of the dangers that could hide in it—that was just being smart. But this type of dark, it wasn’t natural. Sure, there were some who, for whatever reason, enjoyed spelunking, and then there were those who worked deep in the ground, mining, but those who chose that life were few. No, most of us wanted to be atop the earth, under the sun, stars and moon, and hell…even a bunch of streetlights. I was amongst the latter.

  “Oh shit, yeah,” I said aloud, hoping I could trick my mind into believing I had company. It didn’t work, but there was a brief moment where, I can’t say I was relieved, but I felt hope spark. I fumbled around with my weapon until I found what I was looking for. When I depressed the button, I was rewarded with the beam of a blue laser, as delicate as a silken thread and of piercing brilliance. It wasn’t going to illuminate much, but it was something. I did a quick revolution, expecting the laser to stop as it slid along the chest of some new, impossible, nightmare. Then I did another turn, to be sure. When I was fairly confident nothing or nobody was in the general vicinity, I followed the guidewire out. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I was under the impression a green laser could, in theory, be seen a quarter-mile out; no idea on blue. Even if it was only a hundred yards, I thought for sure I’d see the light come up short as it hit a wall.

  Nothing.

  Now I was left to wonder if I should wander from my last point of ingress. If I walked twenty yards away from here, the likelihood I could find my way back was non-existent. Then it dawned on me, why would I want to find my way back? Last I checked there were a hundred zombies waiting for me to join their dinner party. The devil you know, I suppose. As a person who is ambidextrous, I enjoy the benefit of being able to use either arm, depending on the situation. This has the added bonus of not favoring one leg over the other, provided I’m not injured. This was something I was acutely aware of. In the Marines, we had learned that when people are lost and they seek a way out, once they start walking, they tend to pull more to their dominant leg, meaning more than likely they’re eventually walking in circles. It was something I would have to, at least, keep in mind, as I had no landmarks, nothing I could reference. It was immensely possible, likely, in fact, that I would make giant loops around wherever I was.

  I had to hold on to the thought that if there was a way in, there had to be a way out. Made sense in my world, anyway, but I doubted those rules held sway here. For all I knew, I could be dead. Or this was, quite possibly, the immortal’s equivalent of a prison cell. Who’s to say? Didn’t want to know what I was convicted of or how long my sentence was. I knew I had enough against me that this could be an extended stay. As I walked, I was thinking about how long I would have the benefit of the light. Seeing as the battery was likely from a military vendor, it was probably on the cheaper end of the spectrum, meaning I maybe had four hours. Then what? Having even just this small piece of something good taken away, besides plunging me into physical darkness, would likely do the same on a mental level.

  I walked faster, knowing the clock was ticking. I regularly scanned the ground ahead of me, looking for a precipice, and every twenty feet, I did a quick spin. I didn’t think this was going to do me any favors in terms of walking a straight line, but dying at the hands of an enemy who’d snuck up behind me wasn’t going to work either. I’d been walking for what seemed an hour. Nothing had changed, nothing had appeared. For all I knew, the ground under my feet was the thing that was moving, like I was on the world’s biggest treadmill and geographically, I’d not so much as moved an inch. The dark has a way of tricking your mind. The brain, for lack of stimuli, will begin to fabricate things to keep it busy. I
t was during one of these times I thought I saw an impossibly darker shadow flit by the edge of my laser beam. I moved quickly, trying to pick up whatever had moved. If it had ever been there, it was entirely too fast for me to track. This one isolated incident was enough to put me on edge, but by the fifth time, I was panting in fear and exertion.

  “Reel it in, Talbot. You’re just hallucinating.” The words, meant for comfort, sounded alien to me. I wasn’t even convinced it was my voice, the stress and pitch so off from what I was used to hearing from my mouth. I wanted to do the universal darkness buster and whistle, but my lips were as dry as my throat, and the sound died on my tongue. Then there was the irrational fear that a return whistle would greet me and then the real fun would begin. I suddenly had concerns that possibly this place was filled with murderous clowns. Yeah, of all the things trying to kill me here, that one struck the deepest. I felt something brush up against my arm. I turned so fast I felt a twinge in my ankle, almost twisting it. Now I could do nothing but continue to spin. Whatever it was had felt brazen enough to make contact. How long would it be before a sharp blade or talon was inserted through my ribcage?

  “Show yourselves!” I shouted, I was dangerously heading down the path to delirium. And seriously, does one ever come back from that? I received a message of sorts; there was a slight metallic pinging far off in the distance. I thought that I had perhaps moved into an auditory hallucination. I turned to hear it better, I needn’t have worried, as the sound became louder and intensified, like a giant piece of tin had been struck with a gong. The sound reverberated, growing louder and louder to the point it was like a metallic storm was happening right above me. A white-noise generator using a monster stack of amplifiers from a heavy metal band’s stadium set would have been less intense. I was forced to my knees, my hands pressed tight against my ears to keep my eardrums from rupturing and sending blood flowing down the sides of my face.