A Shrouded World - Whistlers

by Mark Tufo

  “They’re always pissed off. There isn’t really a ‘normal’ pack size. It’s just how strong the leader is and how many are in the area. An area can have many packs, several large ones, or just one massive one. The ones where I come from have merged into a pack numbering in the tens of thousands. I’m kinda hoping that hasn’t happened here. If it has, I’ll just take a puff of what Trip is offering and enjoy the day, because that’s all we’ll see if we stay here. How did the zombies react when the night runners showed up?”

  “You’re just chock full of good news, Jack. I figured they were pissed off because they were former postal employees or some shit. As to the zombies, they fought the night runners tooth and nail.” Mike looked over to Trip, whose stomach was beginning to distend from taking in so much water. “Trip, buddy, breathe!” he shouted.

  “Whoa! Sorry, man, I forgot,” Trip replied, pulling away from the spigot and wiping his mouth.

  “Well, I figure we’ve got most of the day to get out of here, so let’s make the best of it,” Mike said as he reached over Trip and cranked the spigot closed. “I wonder if the water would be enough of a distraction?” Mike asked for the second time.

  “There’s too many of them.” Jack looked over the railing.

  “Dammit, you’re right. Worth a shot I suppose.” Mike looked over to the spigot a seemingly unquenchable thirst parched his mouth, but he’d be damned if he could drink from that thing now without a high pressure washer and twelve Clorox wipes to clean it first. “Can’t imagine that would keep their interest for too long anyway.”

  Mike spun the top off his bottle and drank deeply, reveling in the feel of the cool liquid going down his throat.

  “Too funny. Your postal workers go crazy as well? We call it going postal. John, are you going to be able to keep up?” Jack asked.

  “Man, I’m hungry. I sure am glad they had some candy bars back at ‘The Man’ blockade,” John said as he reached into his pocket.

  “What the hell are you talking about, Trip? There wasn’t any candy,” Mike replied, running his hand through his hair.

  John pulled out a silicone-wrapped grey bar. “These look old. Do you think they’re alright to eat?” Trip asked as he pushed it under Mike’s nose to take a whiff.

  “Are you seriously thinking about eating a block of C-4?” Jack asked, watching the conversation.

  Mike pushed the bar away. “Are you kidding me? You just tried to shove C-4 up my nose?” Mike backed up a few paces.

  “That would be handy if we had some fuses or blasting caps. As for how it is now, it might as well be a candy bar,” Jack said.

  “So, can I or can’t I eat it then?” Trip asked with a slight pout on his face.

  “Are you seriously asking that?” Jack responded, incredulous.

  “Trust me, he is,” Mike replied. “Alright, the zombies are pretty straight forward, they’ll follow us forever. Some are slow, some are fast, and they don’t have much in the way of climbing or tactics. These night runners, though. Man, I don’t know anything about them, and they scare the shit out of me. Trip not so much, but definitely me. How are we going to get past them?”

  “Yeah. I don’t see that we have that many options really. I guess we could try and use the night runners as a distraction, but that’s iffy at best. Perhaps we could hide out until night, toss down a shirt or something with our smell on it to lure them into the zombies, and make a break for it. I really don’t know. Avoidance was always the best choice and, if you did encounter them, firepower and an effective exit strategy is the best solution. I don’t see that we have either. Do you have any ideas?” Jack asked.

  “We can’t spend another night up on the top of the tower. That’s only going to work for so long. I’d love to leave now while the getting is only fucking horrible. The night runners add a whole new wrinkle. I mean, once we toss the shirt, how much time are we actually looking at?” Mike asked. “Because then we have to get the hell off this thing.”

  “I agree. I really don’t want to be out and about with night runners on the prowl. If they hold true to form, they’ll go immediately after the scent as long as they don’t see us. If we eliminate our scent as well, that would be ideal, but I don’t see how that’s going to happen. I’m hoping they may be distracted with fighting the zombies to give us some time to get away. But, if we can carve a hole through the zombies now, I’m all for that. I just don’t see that we have enough ammo to do that.”

  “Shit, man, couldn’t you have been from a world that only had pissed off unicorns or something? Yeah, we definitely don’t have enough ammo to get through that horde, and then we have the added bonus that a fair number of them are speeders. I’d say we could take our chances if they were of the slow variety. We’ll give your idea a go. Worst case scenario, me and you become good huddle buddies on top of the tower. And then we figure something out the next day,” Mike said.

  “Huddle buddies?” Jack asked with some trepidation

  “Sorry. Don’t look at me that way. There isn’t much room. You’ll understand if we go up there.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Jack paused to look over the railing. “You had to go and bring fast zombies that run about during the day into the mix. I was marginally okay with night runners only coming out at night, but shit, man, we have this crap twenty-four-seven. Okay…so we hold out on the tower until night. We toss out a shirt or something close to dusk, hold out, and then see what we see, I guess,” Jack said. “Is John going to be able to keep up?”

  “John has at least three friggin’ angels on his shoulders. If any of us make it through this thing, it’ll be him, I guarantee it. The problem is, he won’t know that he did.”

  Jack chuckled. “Those are the guys I like to hang next to. Hopefully he can spare one or two to camp on our shoulders.”

  “We could hide ourselves in the tower, that wouldn’t be a fun night. We’d literally have to stand on a ladder the entire night, and I don’t know if the hatch actually locks though. We’d have to hold our end of the handle so they couldn’t open it. I don’t know how far his angels’ wings extend, but I guess I’m still alive, so that counts for something.”

  “I’ll carry the dude on my shoulders then. Heaven knows I could use an angel or two. I think I’ve used up mine and am having to borrow from others. Okay, so the interior is out of the question. So, we just hang here ‘til dusk and go from there. Do you have any cards?”

  “Well, I can tell you’re from a military background. Haven’t met a vet yet who doesn’t play cards during downtime. No cards, no food, plenty of water though,” Mike replied.

  “Okay, no cards, then perhaps a story or two. I’d like to know about your world.”

  * * * * * *

  I had my doubts about Jack. On the plus side, he hadn’t shot at me or even pointed his gun in my direction, which was as near to a win as was possible in this new world. The negative was basically my mistrust of all mankind even before the shit hit the rapidly twirling blades of the fan. It seemed much too fortuitous that he had stumbled upon us. I know, I know, not everything can be a conspiracy, BUT, some things can be. To what point, though? He’d proved himself invaluable in a pinch. And what possible state secrets could he hope to glean from me? Who knows, maybe he was sent to pluck secrets from John the Tripper. Lord knows the man had a past. Problem was, he probably didn’t remember half of it. More like a tenth, I suppose.

  Fuck it. We had time to kill, and I’m not sure what I had to lose from letting him know a little of the world I came from. Did I believe his tale? Jury is still out. I did, however, believe the part about the night runners. Those fuckers were all too real. Truth be told, if something seemed a little too fishy about him, I’d kill him. Right now, though, I kind of liked him. We were kindred spirits and, until he proved otherwise, we were good to go. Talk about doing a one-eighty, maybe Tracy (my wife) was right, I do have a feminine side after all—changing my mind at the drop of a hat.

  * * * * *
*

  “Alright, I’m looking at your clothes and your impressive weapon. They seem exceedingly earth-like. So I’ve got to assume you’re not an alien. That leaves alternate realities, which I can relate to as well. We’ve established that in my particularly much better NOW reality, we do not have night runners, just your garden-variety zombies. Who would have thought that would be a good thing?” I asked. He nodded at that statement.

  “I come from a relatively long line of survivalist types, I used it as more of an excuse to get my wife to acquiesce to me getting more guns.”

  Jack laughed.

  “She hates…sorry, hated them. Maybe on some level she realized I was full of shit when I kept telling her that anarchy was only five missed meals away. Then, you throw kids in the mix and what mother wouldn’t protect them by any means possible? I had ten or twelve guns when the thing started and damn near a thousand rounds for each one of them. It wasn’t near enough. It was like three weeks before Christmas, do you have that where you’re from? Because that would make for some fascinating conversation if you didn’t.”

  “We have Christmas,” Jack replied.

  “Too bad,” I answered. He looked at me strangely. “Oh, I just meant in a philosophical way. I was wondering for a sec what a world without religion might be like. Sorry, I tend to digress at the worst times. I…um…had a colorful youth, though not near as sustained as Trip over there, but I had my moments.”

  Jack looked a little concerned that he had hitched himself to my cart.

  “Right…moving on. So, I was in the shower of all damn places when the zombies came. I just got back from work and wanted to relax. No sooner did I get in when I hear this blood curdling scream from my wife. I’m thinking, is it bad enough that I need to get out? It was. I ran downstairs almost in my birthday suit. It’s a zombie apocalypse and I’m wrapped up in a towel, go figure. It got real bad, real quick. It went from a few zeds ambling about my shared front yard to an all-out war for the preservation of the human race. Once I made sure my kids were safe, our hope had been to ride the whole thing out in my walled community.”

  “How’d that go?” Jack asked.

  “Not so well. I knew I should have packed up my friends and family and took off long before they could get in.”

  “Why didn’t you?” he asked.

  “Duty, honor, morality, stupidity, a combination of any of them. Take your pick, feel free to mix and match. I stuck it out until the bitter end, and my family almost paid the ultimate price for my indecision. Once we struck out on the road, I figured I’d head back east and see if my family was alright.”

  We had more than a few detours along the way and there were many more variables involved than I was telling him, but he was getting the gist of the story

  “Where were you headed?” he asked.

  “Started in Colorado and headed for Maine.”

  He took in a big inhalation. “Those are states, right?

  I nodded.

  “We have the same names for a couple of ours. We may be from the same place. Did you have a plane?”

  “I wish. That would have saved us a lot of heartache. I never thought to ask anybody if they knew how to fly. Although I’ve got to hope that it would have come up in a conversation. I was in the Corps, and most of my time involved jumping out of them. I never thought to figure out how to fly them.”

  “Colorado to Maine is quite the road trip,” Jack stated.

  “Is it the same for you? I’m really having a hard time with this cross-over happening here. I mean, it sounds very much like we are from the same place…and then there’s here. Wherever the hell here is.”

  “Twenty-one hundred miles, give or take a few,” he replied.

  “Well, that’s the same.” I paused for a moment, reflecting back on all that had happened on that trip. “Lost a lot of good people on that journey. Made it though, somehow.”

  “And your family?” he asked with concern.

  “Better than I could have hoped. Took some hits, lost a brother and his family, plus a niece.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I appreciate that,” I told him, looking him in the eyes. His response seemed genuine enough and I liked him all the more for it.

  * * * * * *

  I’m not sure what to think about this whole thing. First of all, there is arriving in this place that I’m still not certain is real. Then, rapidly approaching the end of the line, I’m snatched from the proverbial jaws by a pair that is from yet another world. It seems like the quantum world gone haywire. Yet, here I am.

  Mike seems like a pretty good guy and someone you can trust at your back, once that trust is established. I don’t think we’re there yet, for either of us. I’m just not all that trusting right off the bat. However, he did save my life, so there’s that. I’ll trust him to a certain point, but keep my reservations. I’m sure if we lived in the same world and hadn’t met up in this one, we’d probably be great friends. I kind of like his attitude and can certainly understand his reservations.

  Trip is seriously that…a trip. I don’t know what to think about him. He doesn’t really seem all there. He seems like some kind of savant, pulling shit out of thin air. I’ve been snatched from my kids and Lynn and thrown into this. I can’t figure anything out, and I’m surviving one moment to the next in the hopes that this all vanishes in a wisp of smoke.

  Listening to his story, especially about losing part of his family, I have a sort of kindred feeling toward him. We seem to have been through the same kind of thing, albeit in different worlds. If this didn’t seem so real, I’d say he was an extension of me in some way. Perhaps this is all a dream and I’m seeing another part of me. Hell, I don’t know.

  With some reservations, I begin telling a little more of my story. I leave out some parts, such as the changes that have occurred to me. I’m sure he suspects something by the look on his face at times. I’m sure when night falls, he’ll have more of those when I manage to make my way through the dark without goggles.

  * * * * * *

  I relate how the deaths from the Cape Town virus spurred a quick reaction from the pharmaceutical companies to produce a vaccine. The live virus vaccine triggered an increased number of deaths, eventually causing seventy percent of the world’s population to simply fall over dead. It then produced a genetic mutation in the rest, creating the night runners; a ferocious, unrelenting new species which hunted the streets at night. Only one percent was left to face this onslaught – either immune to the vaccine or they didn’t take it. By the time I found myself in this strange world, that one percent had fallen even farther.

  “There are still some groups that are holding out, but they are spread throughout a small part of what used to be the country. It’s pretty much day-by-day survival, but we’ve built a sanctuary where we hope to stave off the extinction of humankind,” I say.

  “That’s pretty fucked up, man,” Mike interjects.

  “Yeah. And it’s not just the night runners. We’ve run into more than a few marauding bands as well. We’re trying to scout for other survivors, but we’re finding less and less each day. We do manage to locate a few here and there, but the odds lessen every day; time is running out.”

  “And they run in packs like we’ve seen here?”

  “Initially, yes. They were in small to medium-sized packs, but we just discovered that they’re gathering in larger ones numbering in the thousands. I hate to think what will happen should they all start getting together into larger ones. If we take the percentages into account, there is something in the neighborhood of half a million in our area alone,” I state.

  Mike just looks on. I recognize the expression of someone who has been through very similar events.

  “We’ve started hitting them with an AC-130 gunship, but they disperse almost immediately. It’s hard to catch the larger-sized packs, and I have the feeling our effort at whittling them down isn’t really doing much,” I continue.

  “Holy shit!
You have a gunship?” Mike asks, incredulous.

  “Yeah. We just acquired it,” I answer.

  “And you have someone who can fly it?”

  “Well, I have some experience in a similar aircraft.”

  He shakes his head. “We could definitely use something like that.”

  “I wish we had one here, but I’m not even sure they have something like that. We also just met up with the crew from an attack sub. Do you have something like that where you’re from?” I ask.

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure we do anymore.”

  “Well, they left to explore what remains of the coastline and, even though we maintain a form of contact, I’m not sure we’ll hear from them again. I tell you the worst part, there are some very crazy-ass people out there. The breakdown of the rules and structure has allowed them the freedom of their minds to do as they please.”

  “Some people, man,” Mike states. “You mentioned your kids before. How are they holding up?”

  I pause for a moment. “They’re doing as well as they can. I think it’s me that’s having a problem. It’s that balance between keeping them safe versus giving them experience in order to survive. I still haven’t figured that one out and probably never will. They’ve seen some firefights and have held up well, but it tightens my gut thinking of them having to live in that kind of world. I need to get back to them.”

  “You will, man. We both need to get back to our loved ones. How about the rest of your family?”

  I pause even longer before looking into Mike’s eyes, my vision blurring. “I lost one of my daughters.”

  His expression saddens as he places a hand on my shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Jack.”

  * * * * * *

  “Is that a loon?” John asked.

  The only loon you hear is...Jack thought.

  Jack then heard an all-too-familiar shriek in the distance.

  Damn, how did he hear that before me? Jack thought, shaking his head in wonder.

  The distant cries of the night runners drifted across the night air, reaching the top of the tower as Mike and Jack stood near the railing.