A Shrouded World - Whistlers

by Mark Tufo

  Climbing onto the trunk, my feet slip on an oily residue covering it. Barely keeping my balance, I see the runner that slammed onto the hood has gained its feet and is coming across the roof, eager to get me in its grasp. Rather than attempt to recover from my slip, I go with the momentum and sink to my knees. It’s the quicker solution and time isn’t something I have a lot of at the moment.

  I raise my carbine. I feel the shock of my old knees as they hit the hard metal. It’s not the most graceful maneuver, but it’s the only thing I have. Flipping the selector switch to auto, I fire a burst into its head. It spins from the multiple forceful blows and falls from the roof to the pavement below. There’s no time to admire its ballerina precision, which is much more graceful than mine. I gain my feet, not having time to make for the roof as another runner is climbing onto the hood ahead. Two others are in the gap where I just was and closing quickly – only feet away. This will have to do…like I have a choice.

  I put a quick burst into the top of the nearest one’s head. It drops to its knees before falling forward onto its previous companion – both of them now dead for the second time. Time slows again. The two remaining are equal distances apart. I won’t be able to take both out before one or the other is upon me. The one on the ground is the easier shot, but the one now coming over the roof is the biggest threat.

  I decide to fire a burst at the one at my feet, putting it down for good. In my peripheral, I see the one on the roof leap. I don’t have time to turn or perform any other neat tricks. Without thinking, I dive into the air sideways toward what I hope is the hood of a car right behind. Turning slightly while in the air, I see the vaulting runner almost upon me. We are both sailing slowly through the air. It has its arms stretched out and lips peeled back, revealing darkly stained teeth. Its open mouth is emitting a shrill, piercing scream. That, and its close proximity, rocks my brain. I blind fire and am rewarded with the sight of bullets striking its face, which vanishes momentarily behind a splash of viscous liquid. That good news is over quickly as I meet the terminus of my dive. I slam into a car’s hood on my back, my head thudding hard into the windshield.

  The collision stuns me immediately, sending a blinding white flash through my head. I feel another heavy object land on me and barely have the presence of mind to push it off to the side. My brain is screaming to become more alert as I know deep down that I’m still in trouble, but I’m have a hard time responding. I don’t really know who I am, let alone why the red alert is going off in my head. Slowly, and it seems like an eternity, consciousness returns. The ability to think in simple terms returns. My mind is screaming that danger is close and the signal finally reaches my shattered consciousness.

  I raise my head off the starred windshield to see the remaining zombie-like creatures closing in. The pain from rising isn’t the most pleasant, but the sight of the stinking creatures takes priority. I roll to my side, away from the runner lying next to me. Forcing myself up through a now throbbing headache, I steady my carbine on the nearest zombie, thankful that there aren’t any more runners about. Steady is a very relative world as my barrel is creating arcs through the air. My full consciousness returns but that doesn’t help my aim one whit. I squeeze the trigger and am surprised by the multiple recoils spraying bullets everywhere.

  When did I move the selector switch to auto? I think, moving it back to semi. Oh yeah, that’s right.

  The moaning figures are still making their way closer.

  Focus, Jack. Focus.

  With careful deliberateness, I center the scope on the nearest one. This time a hit registers and the figure drops to the pavement. It’s hard to stay focused, but I manage to drop the remaining ones before they get much closer. The stench, combined with the piercing headache, is too much at this point. Standing on the hood of the car, I lean over my knees and expel the remains of my snacks and water onto the pavement below.

  My head feels a little better afterward. I search for any others in the vicinity, but for the moment, the area seems empty. The sky overhead has taken on the darker gray of the impending sunset. There still isn’t anything that looks remotely secure, and time isn’t standing still.

  Think, Jack. You have to push through this and think.

  I have two hours at best until the time of the night runners is at hand. Far into the distance, I see the top of a water tower poking above the near tree line. That would be better than anywhere else, but there is no way I will make that before nightfall. Under normal conditions I could, but wading through this tangle makes that nearly impossible. I most likely won’t find any place if I trudge onward. I eye the overturned motor home.

  Yeah, that will have to do. It’s not much and won’t withstand a determined night runner assault, but my choices are very limited at this point.

  I’m just going to have to make it so I’m not detected – sight, smell, and hearing. Sight and hearing are relatively easy. Smell, yeah, different story. Especially after that adrenaline rush. That is fading and my heartbeat is about back to normal, which is alleviating the pounding in my head. The putrid odor of the dead is still making my stomach turn over, but it’s manageable. I walk past the rotting corpses to the overturned motor home, and, using a car next to it, haul myself up to its side. Thankfully, the entrance is on this side. I pull the door open.

  The interior is in shambles. Everything spilled out of cupboards and drawers when it turned over. Seat cushions lie amongst shining silverware, pans, and paper, along with broken plates and cups. It’s a long drop inside and, once there, it will be tough to get back out without shattering the windows in the front or back. Walking on top to the rear, I notice a ladder bolted to the side where the previous owners could climb up to the roof.

  That will do nicely, I think, placing a shot into each of the places where it’s bolted in. I manage to wrest the ladder free and place it by the door.

  The inside should be fairly easy to seal up against the night with regards to being seen. With the vehicle turned over, that eliminates one side that needs to be taken care of from a defensive point of view. If I can find some duct tape or something similar, I will be able to block the windows with blankets and anything else I find. The night runners will only be able to get in through the front windshield, the back window, and the side facing up. Those are the weak points. It’s awful hard to pound through the windshield of a motor home as they’re made a little thicker than that of a normal car. However, I wouldn’t put it past a night runner to be able to do so.

  Time is moving on and I need to be hasty. I drag the fallen zombies and place them around the motor home. It takes some work, but I also manage to hoist a few onto the upward-facing side. Searching through several autos, I find a roll of duct tape in the glove compartment of one and stow it away for later. Now to the messy part, and one I’m not all that looking forward to undertaking. The smell of the dead bodies is horrid already, but I want to create a wall of stench that the sensitive noses of the night runners can’t penetrate.

  The odor is horrific as I lean over the first body. The smell has an almost physical presence to it which causes my eyes to water and initiates my gag reflex. Taking my knife from its sheath, I cut the shirt away, exposing the rotting flesh of the torso. If anything, the smell becomes so strong that I can’t sink my knife into the corpse. I’m thinking the reek is good enough as it is.

  There’s no way anything will be able to smell me through this shit.

  However, I can’t assume anything. If there is something I can do to better my already crappy situation, then it needs to be done.

  With that in mind, I place my knife just below the sternum and, turning my head, slice downward. The stench from the decaying insides roils upward. Cursing my enhanced sense of smell, I gag and then retch on the ground. There isn’t much left, but there’s no way I can stop the reflex. I don’t look at the body but rise after a moment, more from needing to get away than to carry on. I move to the next body and go through the same motions. Yeah, I’
m not going to be able to eat anything tonight. I’ll be lucky if I can keep a sip of water down.

  Finishing the last of the ones around the motor home, and with the sky growing darker by the moment, I walk away to get a breath of fresher air. That isn’t entirely possible, but I am able to clear my head some. The small amount of drumming still going on in my head, coupled with the stink pervading the area, is not making me a very happy camper – pun not intended.

  I crawl back on top of the motor home and look at the two bodies I hauled up. Enough is enough, and I just can’t bring myself to cut into these two. I know what I said earlier about doing anything to make my situation better, but I just can’t. If there is something that can smell me through the reek of decaying bodies that have been nearly disemboweled, then I need a new deodorant.

  Standing on the top with the last of the daylight covering my little island paradise, I cast outward with my mind to see if I can feel the presence of any night runners about. I immediately sense a couple of middle-sized packs in the nearby, dark forest. Yeah, the woods are out of the equation and I’m glad I didn’t venture into them. They are apparently dense and dark enough to allow night runners to lair there.

  Roger that, remove the woods from the equation.

  Still feeling ill from the stink, I open the door, drop the ladder inside, and descend. I test the ladder to see that it will reach and am happy to find that I’ll have a way out. Plus, it will help with sealing the windows that are now high above me. Heading to the back, which is no easy process with my having to climb and step on cabinetry and walls, I find the back bedroom in the same shambles as the rest of the motor home. A mattress and blankets are lying in a heap on the wall/floor. I prop a box spring against the window and tape it in place to prevent it from falling. Hauling the actual mattress across the maze to the front, I wedge it up against the windshield and tape it there.

  It takes the rest of my time available, but I manage to tape blankets and towels against the windows on top. The interior darkens into shades of gray and I find that I have retained the night vision from my other world. I still feel this is some sort of dream but the pounding in my head and bruises are real. Regardless, here I am and I intend to survive. I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep tonight with the stench, much less if there are night runners prowling, but I’m hoping to get some rest. When I wake, I want it to be in the nightmare of the world where my kids are.

  Almost anything is better than this. I’m alone in the state of ‘Amissus’, trapped inside an overturned motor home, surrounded by the overwhelming odor of decaying bodies, with night runners about to venture out on their nightly hunt.

  How much better can it get?

  I think through anything I might have missed regarding my security for the night. Nothing comes to mind, so I find a place to settle in. Just in case you want to know, there is no place of comfort to be found on the wall of a motor home. However, I pile seat cushions as best as I can and, placing my M-4 in my lap and two mags by my side, I settle in to see what the night brings.

  Michael Talbot – Journal Entry 5

  I don’t know if it was THC induced or not, but when the moon arose, it looked both larger and greener than I had ever remembered.

  Was this alternate realm even of the same planet?

  That scared the bejesus out of me. I didn’t have an interstellar rocket ship license. Odds were good John did, and then I laughed. I stood up carefully and stepped over to the railing.

  Nothing to it but to do it. A silent mantra I’d often used for a myriad of my issues.

  It usually worked except when I had to deal with my daughter or, Tracy, my wife. I pushed gently against it, making sure it didn’t give way. When I cautiously peered my head over and looked down, I was not rewarded with a sight I would have hoped for. My initial band of runners had swelled into a full-fledged horde. There had to be some means of communication among them, how else could the slower bastards have tracked us down?

  We were safe because I hadn’t met a climbing zombie yet, but would they leave? How long could we stay up here without food and water? That was another funny thought; we were inches from a lake’s worth of water, and we couldn’t touch it. There’s some more damn irony, pretty soon I was going to be able to build a story with all of it.

  “I’m so thirsty, Ponch.”

  And so was I. I would have commiserated with him, but just then we heard the war-slash-hunting cry of the howlers. It seemed that they had picked up our scent. The question now was, could they climb?

  “Look,” John said.

  He had come up to the side of me and was peering off into the darkness, pointing. The greenish tint of the earth from the moon looked as if we were peering at everything through night vision goggles, which I would have given my left ball for. (Well not really. I like them just where they’re at, it’s a figure of speech.) A group of thirty howlers were heading our way, and I’d swear that, from time to time, they would stop and stare directly at us.

  “Does everyone in this place have super-smelling skills?” I asked no one in particular.

  “I was going to say something about that,” John stated.

  “Don’t even go there, man. It’s not like you smell like lilies of the field. I just can’t figure out how we became so popular.”

  “Howler Monkeys can climb trees, can’t they?” John asked. He was leaning pretty far over the railing, enough so that I had taken a grip on his belt. I could see him completely forgetting his locale and just letting go for the flight of his life. “This thing has support cables all over it,” he said as he stood back up. He staggered a moment and gripped the railing tight. “Head rush, man! Cheap high!”

  Nothing was clicking, maybe it was the exhaustion, maybe it was the mild buzz I was enjoying, or just fucking maybe I didn’t want it to. Simple as that. This could basically be the world’s largest jungle gym to what was heading our way. The zombies had ‘treed’ us and the howlers were coming to do the wet work.

  “I really wish you had a rifle,” I told John.

  “Probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” he answered seriously.

  I looked over at him. “Probably right.” I smiled. “You’re going to have to be my spotter then, alright?”

  He nodded.

  “Do not let go of the railing,” I admonished him.

  I laid out my magazines and began to jam rounds into them. I kept it to twenty-five rounds per thirty-round magazine. I’d learned over the years, both in the military and in the civilian world, that the springs in these high capacity mags fail all the time, and it’s those last few rounds that ninety-five percent of the problems will arise from. When you’re shooting at the range and a round fails, you put your rifle down on a table and clear the jam, taking your time to be safe. In the midst of a firefight, one jam can mean your life or your death, simple as that. Anything I could do to improve my survivability, I would do.

  I was finishing up on my last magazine when John spoke. “They stopped.”

  “Like for coffee?” I don’t know why I asked, it was the first thing that came to mind. John turned to look at me. “Sorry.” I told him.

  “No, not for coffee.” He turned back around. “They stopped at the fence edge. They keep looking up at us and over at the zombies.”

  “Really? That’s pretty friggin’ interesting,” I said as I stood up, strategically placing magazines all about my body in various pockets.

  I got next to John, and that was indeed the case. The howlers for once were quiet and not moving. Well, that’s a lie; some of them were walking the perimeter. I would imagine to find a less conspicuous way to come in. It was fairly safe to say that the Z’s and H’s weren’t in cahoots. I don’t know if they actively hated each other or just weren’t in a sharing mood. I followed as three scouts walked counterclockwise around the perimeter. They stopped and looked around when they realized the zombies were the thinnest on this side. One of the monsters began to climb, I noticed two things: one, he was r
eal quiet, and two, he was good at climbing. I didn’t think the water tower was going to be much of an obstacle to them when they got to it. My best defense just became my offense.

  The first scout had just jumped down from the top of the fence and was getting his feet under him, looking around for any signs of trouble.

  “Should have looked up,” I told him, sending a bullet down into the top of his skull.

  His knees buckled and his ankles folded in on themselves as the bullet slammed into his skull and spine. His two howler buddies glared at me. I swear their eyes glowed, just about stopped my heart to look at them.

  I immediately sent one of them back to the hell it had originated from. My first shot caught him high in the thigh. He practically shrugged it off, no more affected than if a tennis ball had hit him. Maybe it was only a flesh wound. The second shot was center mass, even from my height I could hear the satisfying impact of a round striking breast plate.

  The third howled and was gone before I could acquire him as a target. Then the best news of the night happened as the zombies came over to see what all the fuss was about. They began to tear into my first kill.

  “So, apparently howlers are on the menu. Good news,” I said, wanting to fist bump myself. “Where’d they go?” I asked, coming back to John.

  “They split as soon as the one guy came back. And he looked pee-oh’d. Think they left for good?”

  “Doubtful, it looks like viable food sources for these guys are becoming increasingly difficult to come across. No way they’re giving up so easily. On a good note, zombies like to eat howlers.”

  “Seriously? They don’t look like they taste good.”

  “Some might say the same thing about two hundred and seven bags of Phrito’s.”

  He shrugged his shoulders in response. “I think I see movement in the woods across the street.”

  I was by his side in an instant. I could not detect any movement, not matter how much I strained to see. “You sure?”