A Shrouded World 6

by Mark Tufo

  I’m too far to make out any definable features of the people. The other person has his hands poised, pointing something in my direction, but the arm configuration is not one of someone aiming a rifle in my direction. What in the hell is going on here? I flip the camera on and focus on the people.

  “What the fuck?” I breathe, seeing Mike waving his arms madly while standing in front of Kalandar.

  Turning my attention to the other person, I see Trip’s unmistakable visage, holding a drawn slingshot. Now, normally I’d laugh at such a nominal threat, but I’ve seen him and that slingshot in action. I continue hovering, but remove my finger from the trigger.

  With this place, I can’t be completely certain that what I’m seeing is real. I wouldn’t put it past the Overseers, or anyone else for that matter, to conjure up the exact images which would make me hesitate. Perhaps this is some trick of Kalandar’s. He may want me on the ground where he can enact his powers, squash me, or redeliver me to the Overseers. And, I can’t communicate with them. I can talk to them through the loudspeaker, but won’t be able to hear their replies.

  I flip the radio to external.

  “Mike, Trip, step away from Kalandar,” I broadcast.

  In the monitor, I see Mike’s emphatic shake of his head. He and Trip remain in their positions. As a matter of fact, I see Trip lick his lips as if figuring a trajectory, and pull further back on the slingshot.

  “Fire that slingshot, Trip, and I send a batch of rockets your way before it hits.”

  All that’s happened has definitely taken its toll on me. Here I was told to wait a year, wondered where Mike was, and found him back where we started. The pieces of the puzzle have settled nicely into place, all, that is, except for the demon. That one betrayed us, and is a piece that doesn’t fit.

  Mike and Trip and Kalandar together, all friendly-like, with Mike protecting the red demon. It just doesn’t make sense. Of course, with Trip involved, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Us being turned over to the Overseers might have been part of a plan formed by Trip and Kalandar without cluing Mike or me in on it. I suppose that could be plausible. At any rate, I’m certainly not doing any good hovering here, paralyzed by indecision racing through my mind. I’m not going to fire with Mike standing there, but landing will put me at a huge disadvantage.

  Mike and Trip are looking at me questioningly, Trip even lowering the slingshot. Should I take the risk that Kalandar or some other entity is creating this illusion? Or trust what I see and chance that it’s real?

  “Fuck it!” I whisper, lowering the collective and descending to land.

  8

  Mike Talbot — Chapter Three

  “Put the weapon down.” When I didn’t immediately comply, a static charge of noise burst through my skull. I immediately went to my knees; I took it as good a time as any to leave my rifle on the deck. The noise stopped as I stood back up.

  “I’m going to kill you for that, for all of this, really.” I made sure to whisper that; I might have suicidal tendencies, but I’m not suicidal, I made sure they couldn’t hear me. In my heart, I wanted to rip them apart, maybe use a wood chipper to do the dirty work. I’d laugh like a madman as whatever they called guts blew out the back chute. I stopped twenty feet away, Trip was in front of the two angels by about five feet.

  “Hey, Ponch.” He waved weakly. He looked tired, scared and a bit washed out, like maybe he’d been at a three-week music festival and had felt the need to take acid each and every night. Speaking somewhat from experience, I knew that feeling of being wrung out and needing a couple of days to start coming back to a healthy state. When you skirt around the edges of reality, there’s always going to be some difficulty realigning yourself within normal parameters.

  “Hey Trip. How you doing?”

  “All things considered?” He shrugged.

  “You can see?”

  “What am I looking for?” he responded. I didn’t see the sense in questioning him on it.

  “What’s going on?” I figured I had a better chance with that.

  “You’re in prison, or what they call Tartarus. Greeks had it pegged as a place of pain and suffering for Titans. The Overseers use it at their discretion.”

  “Jack, BT?”

  “Same-ish, except for Jack.” Trip’s head tilted to the side like he had something to say but felt discretion was a better choice; good for him, There’s a first for everything, but whatever tidbit he was holding onto, I sure could use a little bit of good news—that was, assuming it was good.

  “What’s that mean?” I was referring to Jack.

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Okay, then why BT? Or, why this version?”

  “I thought he could help. Hasn’t he?”

  “I mean yeah, but he’s been a pain in the ass too. He’s not the same BT, not by a long shot.”

  “This place can change a person.”

  “No, I mean, he wasn’t the same BT from the beginning.”

  He looked at me with a questioning stare.

  “Doesn’t matter. Why I am here?”

  “I held out. Told them I wouldn’t do anything without your help.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  “Might not want to say that too loudly, they’ll kill you if they don’t think you can help. Either that or leave you here for all eternity. That’s the bad part of this place…you’ll never die, no matter how much you want to.”

  “That’s not the only bad part.”

  “You found sanctuary?”

  “There is no sanctuary. If you’re referring to the house, yeah, I found it. Not sure I’d go with your definition of it, though.”

  “And the isit?”

  “Is it?” I asked.

  He held his hands out and wiggled all his fingers.

  “That’s what that thing is called? I was gonna go with Broomenstein.”

  “Not bad. Better than: what the fuck isit.”

  I didn’t think so, but I left it alone, of all the shit going on right now I could care less about the naming convention of the broom-like monster.

  “Now what, and why, aren’t they doing anything?”

  “Ever seen two cockroaches hanging out in a sink?”

  “Trip.” I didn’t need him going off the rails just yet.

  “Context, Ponch! We’re the cockroaches. They don’t care what we’re saying; we’re so far beneath them they have no desire to know.”

  “You just warned me about what I say…forget it.”

  “You know what to do now.” It should have been a question, but it came out as a statement. I opened my mouth to ask him what he was talking about, but that would have been more of a stalling tactic. He was looking at the white plastic trash bag I had tied to my belt, and I did know. I pulled out a couple of the legs that I swear were still twitching and held one in each hand. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get any closer to the angels without collapsing, much less how was I going to stab one and then the other with neither of them squashing me into dust. They were thin and tall, and I knew they had a power I could not match. I took a step closer. If they took notice, they did not react. Trip stepped in front of me.

  “In the thigh,” he instructed.

  I took a step past him; I was breathing shallowly.

  “Ponch, my thigh.”

  “What?”

  “Our thighs. Those are for us.”

  “The fuck they are.”

  Trip gave me an intense stare. He held out his hand. I gave him one of the legs; I didn’t know what else to do. The overseers didn’t like that, not one bit, they began to move closer.

  “Now, Ponch, now!” He jabbed his leg and then screamed; it was a primal sound, full of pain. That did nothing to inspire me to follow his lead. Trip was falling to the ground and convulsing wildly; he looked in the throes of electrocution. The angels were reaching out for me, I briefly debated letting them have me, then I stuck a lightning bolt in my leg. The pain was immediate and intense. Neur
ons were firing wildly, unable to grasp the extent of the agony. My hand clenched tighter on the isit leg; I couldn’t have let go of it if I tried. I teetered over—I could not move anything to brace myself against the fall. If anything, my head hitting the ground was the least painful thing happening. I did the only thing that made sense: I passed out. When I awoke, it was to a mouthful of grass and the rough treatment of my buttocks.

  “Ponch, time to get up.” Trip reached down and pulled the isit leg free from my thigh. I may have passed out again.

  I jolted awake spasming violently before responding with an “ung.” Trip was smacking my ass like it was my birthday and I’d just turned a hundred and eleven.

  “You do not look well.” Kalandar had flipped me over with the toe of his foot, and I was staring up into a deep blue sky.

  Anger was burning the pain away. “You sold us out!” I yelled, doing my best to stand.

  “I suppose it could be viewed that way.” He looked pensive.

  “Viewed?” I’d managed to sit up. “You literally handed us over to the Overseers!”

  Trip had got in behind me and was now lightly tapping my ass.

  “Will you stop that!?” I turned on him.

  “We have to go.” He was hopping from foot to foot like the ground was lava and his Birkenstocks were on fire. “The isit poison blocks effects of the Overseers and will keep us hidden from detection, but only for a time.”

  “Trip, Kalandar gave us up! We have to deal with him.” I noticed the stoner became extremely quiet. “Oh, motherfucker. You two were in on this.”

  “It was the only way,” Trip said.

  “The only way to save your ass? Is that what you’re saying? Do you have any idea what I’ve been through? What I’m sure BT and Jack are still going through? Just to save your stoner ass? It’s the sacrifice of the few for the benefit of the many, not the other way around, asshole!” I was now standing, not sure which of the two nearest me I wanted to lash out at first.

  “You’re not understanding, Ponch.” Trip looked downtrodden.

  “Yeah? Why don’t you enlighten me! Tell me why I suffered in whatever that shithole was for, like, the last week!”

  Trip looked past me to Kalandar. “Perhaps you should tell him,” Kalandar said.

  “Oh, this is rich. Yeah, Kalandar. Perhaps you should!” I was losing my shit.

  “It was a year.”

  “What?” I didn’t know if I hadn’t heard him correctly or perhaps I was in shock from the poison.

  “You were there for a year,” Trip said before pulling a joint out of his pocket.

  “So help me, if you fire that up I’m going to put the lit end in your eyeball!”

  He looked longingly at the bone before placing his shaking hand back.

  “A fucking year? I’ve been in there a year?” Vertigo was swirling around in my head; I was afraid I was going to end up on my ass again.

  “Relatively.”

  “Trip!” I was advancing on him, my fists clenched.

  “Ponch! We’re the few, we’re the few!”

  “Ah!” I yelled out, my head was thrown back as I walked past him. He was right; fundamentally, I knew that. All of us here were doing what we could to prevent an even bigger disaster. I just didn’t like being an unwitting and unwilling pawn in a game I didn’t know the rules to. “BT and Jack, I’m not leaving them where they’re at, how do we get them back?”

  “It is imperative we destroy this realm before containment is lost,” Kalandar said.

  “Not without them.”

  “Hundreds of billions of lives are at stake,” Kalandar said.

  “They can fend for themselves. Trip, how do I get back to them?”

  No one said anything.

  “Listen, you two feel free, go do whatever the hell you need to. I’m getting them out of there.”

  “We will lose what little advantage we have gained,” Kalandar said, looking to Trip. They knew something—I just wasn’t in on it.

  “Ponch,” Trip beseeched.

  “Trip,” I mocked him with the same tone.

  “I’ve got a cherry Pop-Tart to convince you we need to go.”

  “No silver coins?” I saw in his eyes he’d caught the reference; there was a pain there, but he pushed on.

  “Jack escaped, and this existence of BT might die, but a nearly infinite number of others could live.”

  “Jack escaped? Where is he?”

  “Gone,” was all Kalandar said.

  “Gone like for good?” I gulped.

  “I do not believe so,” he replied.

  “Good for him, but that doesn’t change what I need to do. I don’t know those others, I can’t and I won’t leave him.”

  “Ponch, your family—”

  I cut him off. “Just tell me how to get them.”

  “His body is in the building Kalandar brought you to.”

  “Huh?”

  “It is your consciousness that was imprisoned,” Kalandar said. If he was expecting the lightbulb to go on over my head like I now understood, he was sadly mistaken.

  “Just point me in the right direction.” I started walking.

  “Other way.” Trip was pointing the way I was headed.

  I turned around. Trip and Kalandar fell in behind. “A year? I was in there for a fucking year?” Instead of the anger dissipating, it kept increasing, like heavy rain clouds banking for a storm.

  “Time isn’t the same in there as out,” Trip offered.

  “Neither of you talk to me; how about that.” I moved further ahead, but without actually running, keeping distance on Kalandar’s strides was difficult. There was a shimmering in the distance; it was the Taj Mahal replica we’d all been turned over to, trapped in. What had seemed like the only course of action previously now had my legs feeling weak and wreaking crazy palpitations from my heart.

  “It’s guarded.” Kalandar had come up alongside to my now non-moving self.

  “Overseers?”

  “That would be nice. Gurigs”

  I could only look up and over as he stared at the building.

  “Like the coffee?” I had a hard time getting worked up over coffee pods with legs.

  Kalandar didn’t say anything. Trip could only sigh and shake his head as he walked past.

  “Yeah, like you should be casting stones,” I said to him. “Wait, I’m confused. Are these our real bodies?” I asked, touching my stomach and chest.

  “Reality is observed objectivity…” Kalandar stated.

  “Okay, Descartes, I’m asking Trip. Because if this is my body, then doesn’t it stand to reason that BT could be anywhere? And if this is some other waking dream, is my body still in there?”

  “What can happen here is not under the same set of rules that apply to most of the universe,” Kalandar said, helpfully.

  “It’s like Vegas,” Trip said, dumbing it down for me.

  “So, I’m real, and my body isn’t in there?” I asked again because getting straight answers from either of them was like going to a martini bar and asking for a beer; they’ve got one, but you need to suffer bullshit to get it served. “But I was in there? The isit leg somehow merged my two parts? So, or, are we using these on them?” I asked, gingerly touching the bag. “Won’t they merge to wherever they are in the other realm? How would we find them then?”

  “He asks many questions,” Kalandar said.

  “Did I have a real rifle with me?” I was now feeling totally exposed without a weapon. “Or will it be in there?”

  “The rifle, your clothes, nothing you had with you was real,” Trip said.

  “I was naked for a year? On one level, that sounds amazing, but since I was around guys and things that wanted to kill me, I’m not so sure anymore. But I have clothes now?”

  “I had to find you new clothes; your others were sullied,” Kalandar said. “I changed you after I had taken your bodies to where you awoke.”

  My head sagged. “Really? Just fucki
ng great. The night runners?”

  “Save BT or keep asking questions?” Trip replied.

  “I don’t know, maybe just a few more. How did you get us out and why not grab BT?”

  “Once you were all inside, I told Vice Colonel Truden what was happening; he was more than eager to spill blood on this ground,” Kalandar said. “It was a glorious battle.” He had a gleam in his eyes.

  “They won?” I asked. I didn’t see any blood stains, bodies or military equipment, nothing to give me the impression that they’d lost. But if they’d won, why would we need to be attempting a rescue?

  “There’s not much the enemy won’t eat,” Kalandar said. “Given enough time, their saliva will dissolve all manner of substance, including steel.”

  “They’re all gone?”

  “They fought bravely,” he said solemnly. “Even while they were being routed, Truden rallied his people. They were able to kill one of the beasts guarding your bodies.”

  “Truden had over a hundred people…they were only able to kill one?” I was in shock. “He sacrificed all of them for us?”

  “Ponch, he knew that there was no way out of here for him and his personnel. He did what he could to prevent further tragedy.”

  I spun on Trip. “Did you bring him here? Did you decide he was an acceptable sacrifice?”

  “It was fortuitous that they were here, but that was not anything I had control over.” Trip’s shoulders slumped like the weight of this was all too much.

  “Kalandar, why didn’t you grab everyone?” I asked, the anger beginning to flow from me.

  “I tried. I barely escaped with my own life. As it was, I was gravely injured and am just recently beginning to fully recover.”

  To look at him, one wouldn’t figure he’d been hurt, but a year was a long time for a wound to heal. He pulled aside his tunic to reveal a broad, puckered scar along his ribcage.

  “The angels did that to you?”

  “Gurig,” he grimaced.