A Shrouded World - Whistlers

by Mark Tufo

  Come on, Mike, I think as pieces of concrete continue to be chipped away from my cover.

  I wait for several long seconds and wonder if he has been hit or decided it was time to get out of Dodge. He doesn’t seem the type to run, and would hang in there until the last, sunset-filled, heroic stand, but it seems like it is taking forever. Suddenly, there is a ‘whoosh’. He fired the rocket.

  Waiting for the explosion that is about to happen, and ready to round the corner to finish off those who remain, I hear only a metallic clang, followed by nothing.

  Where is the earth-shattering ka-boom? There’s supposed to be an earth-shattering ka-boom.

  One of two things had happened. Either I am a horrible judge of distance and the rocket hadn’t travelled more than thirty yards, or…it was a dud. I suppose, seeing where he found it, it could have also been a prop.

  Well, fuck this! I’m not going down like this.

  I round the corner, my carbine coming up, ready to take out the first target that comes into view. I’m met with a brilliant flash and percussive explosion which sends me hurtling backward. Something hard and heavy whips overhead, brushing against my forehead before it rockets past.

  Michael Talbot – Journal Entry 11

  Something was flying past me, many of them in fact. I could see the ground tearing up where they made contact. It was obviously projectiles of some sort. I felt a searing pain in my shoulder as one scraped over the top of my arm. I heard Jack’s cry of “thirty”. It seemed too close to me, but who was I to argue? I was being shot at and, sooner rather than later, one of them was bound to catch up with me. I was getting ready to spin around when I was pushed into the ground. I’d been hit. The pain was manageable and, from what I could tell, all of my extremities still worked. Maybe it was a neurotoxin, and I only had a few seconds left. Fine, I was going out in a blaze of glory.

  I spun, dropped to one knee, took a second to line up on a motorcycle, and fired. One of the beings that was closest turned to watch as the rocket shot past him. I was still thinking this was close for thirty yards as the grenade lodged itself into the chassis of the motorcycle.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I sighed.

  My heart was racing and only a little bit from the run. The monster-thing was right in front of me, and I needed to deal with it before it realized I was still in front of it. Outrunning it was not going to be an option. I dropped the RPG to the ground and was just pulling my M-16 around. A couple of things happened at once. The first was that I realized why I wasn’t dead. My rifle was split in two, it had taken a shot right where my butt stock met up with the business end and severed the rifle neatly in two. The second, and this would have been hard to miss, was the massive explosion that sent me to the ground with pieces of my pursuer raining down on me. My ears were ringing from both the blast and from the scream-speak of the ‘whistlers.’ That was what I was going to call this newest beast that would forever haunt my thoughts.

  When I was confident nothing more was going to crash down on me, I began to check my rifle to see if it would still shoot without exploding in my hands, finishing off what the whistlers had started. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jack getting up. He looked to be bleeding from a half dozen spots. There was no way I could tell if any of them were lethal, but he was firing his weapon, and he still needed help. Out of the forty-something whistlers, the RPG had killed more than half of them. There were still more than enough left to kill us a few times over.

  Jack Walker – Dazed and Confused

  Two things come to mind. The first is that Mike did it. I didn’t think it was going to work. I had hoped so, but I wasn’t really sure. The second is my incredibly bad timing. There are burning and stinging sensations all over my body. It feels like I have jumped into a nest of fire ants and am rolling around in them. I do a quick mental check and am reasonably sure most everything still works. The things that don’t…well…I’ll find and deal with those later.

  Rising into a sitting position on the concrete pad where I’d been thrown, I notice scraps of metal lying about. Below, most of the monsters are dead, dying, or wandering around in a daze. It looks like the blast has taken more than half of them out. That is the good news. The bad, there are still some alive, more than enough to overwhelm us.

  The concussion from the blast, magnified under the bridge, has them stumbling around like drunks at Mardi Gras. They will recover in a short period of time. I need to make sure that’s a luxury they don’t get.

  I wonder if Mike knows about Mardi Gras?

  Thinking of Mike, I look back. He’s on the ground covered in gore and blood; most of it is that black substance pumping through the creatures. In the midst, I see spots of red and know that he’s been hit. He sits up and grabs for his M-16, staring down at it as he realizes that he’s holding the butt stock in one hand, and the rest of it in the other.

  Well, hopefully he can get the hell out of here. I’ll take down as many as I can to give him and Trip a chance.

  Turning my attention back to the monsters, it is time to get to business. I rise and sight in on the nearest creature, sending two rounds out on a delivery. It stumbles one more time and falls over like a drunk trying to pass a sobriety test. I advance down the pad, firing at one target after another. There are still a lot of them on their feet and it is only a matter of time before the shooting gallery turns into a firefight.

  The high-pitched scream erupts again. It is like someone dragging a needle across my eardrum. I keep moving and firing, hoping to hit whoever, or whatever, is making that god-awful noise. If I can just shut that up, I won’t care what happens afterward. I just don’t want that sound to be the last I ever hear.

  I’m not going to be able to take them all down in time, I think, changing my mag.

  The leader is rallying his troops, and they are responding in quick fashion.

  Well, I just hope that I buy Mike enough time.

  Michael Talbot – Journal Entry 12

  I never was a fan of pistols. I always liked the comforting feel of a butt stock firmly entrenched in my shoulder for control. Right now, I didn’t have an option as I fire my unwieldy weapon. The 5.56 isn’t a heavy round by any stretch of the imagination, but when you’re firing on fully automatic without proper technique…well…enough said. Although, my first spray did disintegrate the leader’s head into a fountain of gelatinous mass. I held down the trigger, blasting through my magazine in a couple of seconds at most. I had scattered all my rounds into as many whistlers as I could. I’d fallen several short. It was nice to have back-up as Jack moved among the whistler survivors like a black plague, dispatching unmitigated justice until they all lay on the ground unmoving. My head was pounding, and I felt light-headed. I reached a hand behind me and pulled it back in front to find it coated in blood, and not of the black variety.

  “I’m hit,” I said.

  Jack put a couple more rounds into a few of the whistlers that were still moving before coming over. He skidded to a stop behind me.

  “Yeah, you’re shot. I’m going to need to take this damn poncho off so I can see what I’m dealing with. Does it hurt much?” Jack asked.

  “Did you really just ask me that question?” I responded, disbelievingly.

  “Sorry, I’m just trying to figure out what in the hell the monsters are shooting.”

  “Whistlers.”

  “What?”

  “I’m calling them whistlers.”

  “Fair enough. What is that?” he asked as he carefully pulled my garments over my head.

  “Please tell me it isn’t moving,” I said.

  “Why would it be moving? No, it looks kind of like an industrial staple, or something like it.”

  “I got shot with a staple gun. Are you kidding me?”

  “That staple gun would have killed you if not for a lucky hit on your rifle. I mean, look at it. It’s completely sheared through.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I’m going to have
to pry it out. There a part that’s sticking out. Hang on.”

  “Jack, just give me a sec...OWWWWWW…motherfucker!!!!!”

  “Fuck me! And here I was about to call you a baby until I realized this thing has two prongs, and they’re each about two and a half inches long. That’s a nasty little bit of business,” he said as he handed me what did look like a staple. Albeit maybe the world’s largest staple ever created. That I’d survived the attack was a miracle, and I told him as much.

  “You getting a tattoo?” Trip asked. He was a few feet away, stretching and yawning. “Looks like a rager of a party. What’d I miss?”

  “It’s not a tattoo, Trip, I’ve been shot.”

  “Cops?” He looked around.

  “Sometimes, Trip, I don’t know if I wish I viewed the world like you or not,” I told him.

  “You should put something on that so it doesn’t get infected.” Trip pulled out a small first aid kit. I didn’t even question the fact that he had one.

  Jack did some field dressing and proclaimed me fit for duty. I stood gingerly. My back ached, but I hadn’t suffered any lasting damage.

  Jack Walker – Aftermath

  I finish with bandaging Mike’s wounds and make sure that he’ll live to see another day. Well, he wasn’t hit that hard, so perhaps that’s a bit of an over-exaggeration. Of course, I can say that. I wasn’t the one hit with a king-sized staple. But, I’m making it sound like I brought him back from the dead. There are enough of those around without my adding to it. He stands with some groaning, which I can surely relate to.

  The fight and events over the last days have taken their toll on me. I can feel the post-adrenaline sensation settling in, and along with it, an incredible tiredness. My face, neck, shoulders, and forearms are stinging from the blast and accompanying debris. The grass nearby looks inviting. Perhaps the whistlers – as Mike started calling them – had the best idea. I can certainly use a nap. I rise and seat myself on the turf, relishing the feel of sitting on the soft ground.

  Refilling my empty and partially empty mag with rounds I found at the blockades, I look down to the wreckage. Tendrils of smoke still rise from the heaps of scrap metal that were once motorcycles. A few to the sides appear relatively unharmed and look like they can be ridden. That will be a help. I can’t help but wonder where the group of monsters was able to get so many bikes. I didn’t check every vehicle along the way, but those I did wouldn’t even turn over.

  Perhaps they always had them, I think, feeling the coolness of a soft breeze flow past.

  That brings far too many other questions to mind. Were these creatures, these whistlers, were they always around? Did they start this mess or come afterwards? Were they a by-product of a disaster like the night runners were?

  Staring at the bodies of the whistlers, some lying in the open road in the sunlight, some lying in the shade of the bridge, I’m amazed that we came through it relatively unscathed. They were fast and strong, and whatever they were shooting isn’t anything I’d like to feel the full force of. I’ll have to search them before we leave and see what that’s about. Right now, I don’t have the energy to move. Looking up at the afternoon sun, I know we’ll have to move out shortly, but right now, I’m good.

  It’s not the night runners that I’m overly worried about. The packs that I felt are miles away and back in the woods, and I haven’t seen a thing that even remotely looks like it would serve as a lair out here on the plains. Sure, there’s some town named Atlantis about twenty more miles up the road, but night runners don’t travel that far in a night. The zombies…yes. Those are always a worry. These whistlers now, they seem the greater threat. I know I shouldn’t be lazing around near the scene of a battle, and we’ll move on shortly, but I need a moment to collect my thoughts and rest. Who the fuck knows what we’ll find up the road? I’ve pretty much found my limit of learning new things for the day.

  I think on my newfound comrades, Mike and Trip. The world is a very strange place. Well, this one specifically, but I mean in general. Both Mike and I aren’t really the trusting types, yet here we are, doing just that. Our recent encounter dispelled any remaining doubts I might have harbored, and I actually feel closer to him than some of those I have known for years. We’d probably be sitting around a bonfire, having drinks and sharing lies if we lived in the same world. Well, not either of our worlds as they exist today, if they still do.

  I wonder how that works? Is time the same for us all? Is time passing in the world I come from…in the world Mike and Trip are from? Is it even the same time? Have I been born yet, or have I already died in my world?

  Fucking random thoughts. I’m tired and my mind is wandering. I wonder if we would have even met. For some reason, if we lived in the same world, I don’t doubt that we would have crossed paths.

  Mike didn’t have to climb down off the beams in order to help. He could have stayed up there, remained unseen while I was discovered, and carried on afterward. What did he owe me after all? I would just have been another stranger whose path he crossed, and I came out on a losing end. He could have pushed on afterward and no one would have been the wiser. Yeah, he’s one of the good guys. And in this world…well…any world, that’s rare.

  And Trip, wow, he is still something else. I haven’t figured him out, like anyone could. I don’t know where my trust lies with him. He’s just as apt to take off, or shout something at the wrong moment. He hasn’t yet, but he definitely possesses the ability. Of course, his uncanny abilities have saved us as well…and me personally. A shot in the dark, so to speak. I still can’t fathom him shooting the zombie in the head in the complete dark as if he were standing in a lit room. And his shooting, expecting me to duck…perhaps knowing that I would.

  What if I hadn’t? Did he know with a certainty that I would? If so, how did he know? Was his surety so complete that he actually caused me to duck?

  And again, here. I have exceptional hearing and I didn’t hear the motorcycles coming until after he mentioned something. The tower thing, I’m calling that a wash. We came out of it alive, but had to ride a falling water tower in order to do so. Yeah, that’s a wash in my book.

  And this place. I mean, fuck! A motorcycle gang from outer space. No, I don’t think they actually are, but it sounds kind of cool. Their weapons, though? I didn’t see anything like those in the wreckage of cars, or near the roadblocks where gunfire was exchanged. Everything I found, both there and in the automobiles, was something I knew. And I can’t even begin to explain their features. The two-toned skin, their double-jointed nature, their…shit, I don’t want to go any farther. They die, that’s what really counts.

  I hear footsteps behind me. Mike takes a seat on the grass next to me where we sit in silence. He is still carrying the broken M-16.

  We’re going to have to find something else for him, I think, staring for a moment at the broken pieces.

  Another breeze floats by. If it weren’t for the stench of the dead below, it would be a rather nice day. I can picture sitting on my back deck, having a beer or glass of wine, doing nothing but staring off into the trees and letting my mind wander to wherever it wants to go. Kind of like it is now.

  “How’s your shoulder?” I ask, breaking the silence.

  “Sore as shit,” he answers, rolling his arm and wincing.

  “You don’t feel like there’s poison coursing through your system and about to turn you into one of those, do you?”

  “You’re funny as shit, Jack.”

  “Not many people think so,” I reply.

  “Do you know what would go down real well and be perfect? A beer. I could really use one about now,” Mike states, his face taking on a dreamy expression.

  “You’re not shitting. And why settle for just one,” I comment.

  “Now you’re talking. I wonder if this town of Atlantis has any stores,” he muses.

  “I don’t know, but if they do, the first one is on me.”

  “You have yourself a deal.”r />
  “Thanks for helping, yet again,” I say.

  He pauses, looking sideways at me with an expression I can’t read very well. “Why wouldn’t I?’

  “Well, there are plenty who wouldn’t have. You could have just sat up in the girders and never been seen. Then you could have climbed down after they left, my body being towed behind one of the bikes, skipping along the pavement. No one would ever have known.”

  “I would have. The guilt would have killed me. Besides, who would buy me that first beer?” Mike responds.

  “Thank goodness for beer, then.”

  “Amen, brother.”

  “Look, I made myself a promise that I’d share everything with you should I live through this last fight,” I start.

  Mike’s expression is priceless. I guess he’s been with Trip too long for a statement like that to be remotely comfortable.

  “Wipe the look of horror off your face. I’m not going to share everything. I’m not Trip. You won’t hear about the masterpiece of my last bowel movement. Although, I have to say, what he did back there on the road can’t even remotely be classified as human,” I state, the horror of what I saw coming fresh to my mind.

  I shake my head of the image as Mike chuckles.

  “He’s something else,” Mike says, turning to look back at Trip, who is currently sitting on one of the girders smoking a joint.

  “What I mean is, if I don’t make it out of here, and you are somehow afforded the opportunity to tell my kids and Lynn what happened here, then you’re going to need something that will prove you were with me. Plus, there are some things you should know. I haven’t been entirely forthcoming.”

  “Dude, are we going steady?”

  “No, and you can quit puckering up. I’m not going to kiss you either.”

  “I don’t know, man. It sounds like you’re about ready to ask me out on a date.”

  “You have Trip, and he seems be the jealous type.”