A Shrouded World (Book 2): Atlantis

by Tufo, Mark

  I did my best to try and forget Chester the ceiling ornament right behind me. The top drawer yielded nothing of value, unless I could staple my next enemy to death. Schedules and rosters filled the first side drawer. The bottom big drawer was locked, which meant it housed the best chance for something better than a paperclip. I put my rifle on safe, turned it around, and smashed at the nearly flush lock three or four times until I realized this was useless. I could tell by the shadow behind me that Trip was moving. I was staring at the lock when he came up beside me.

  “Try these.” He dangled a small silver key in front of me. “It fell out with his change. I was looking for gum.”

  I took a breath as I placed the key into the lock. Even after I had tried to destroy the mechanism, it still turned effortlessly.

  “Fuck,” I muttered when I opened it and discovered it didn’t house anything remotely resembling the blue of gunmetal.

  Trip reached in and pulled out a sealed plastic container.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” he started screaming loudly. He even started to dance that wild hippie dance. Arms outstretched, head lolling about uncontrollably, and his feet going up and down in random patterns.

  “What?” I thought for sure he’d found a miniature machine gun or something. Instead, he pulled out three small aluminum packets, a sleeve of crackers, and what I am positively sure was not blue cheese when it was carefully placed into the container.

  “Tuna fish!” He was still crazily moving about, his lighter making an even weirder shadow puppet behind him.

  “Lunch? He locked up his lunch?” Then I thought on it. How many times had people pilfered my lunch out of the work fridge? As much of an asshole as I have proven myself to be over the years, I would never steal someone’s food. You really can’t go much lower than that, yet it happens all the time. I’d even gone to the lengths of spiking half my lunch with laxative so I could root out the fuckers that kept doing it. Amazing how much the instances of missing meals declined throughout the building once the jackasses realized they were playing Russian roulette with their intestinal tracts.

  I was disappointed about not finding a gun, that was for sure, but I was starving and Trip very uncharacteristically shared his find, handing me a packet and five crackers. Once he realized he was still holding upwards of twenty of the crispy wafers, he gave up another five. I ripped the top of the tuna packet off, took a precursory sniff, and then rolled up the thing much like a toothpaste tube. After I rapidly swallowed that, I shoved the crackers into my mouth three at a time. In the time it took me to complete my entire meal, Trip had taken three mouse-sized bites out of one cracker. When I looked up from scarfing my food, he was watching me intently.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked him, now slightly self-conscious.

  “I’d never seen a caveman eat. I just wanted to see how it was done.” He turned his attention back to his own food. If it had been a joke it would have been funny, but that he’d actually meant it gave merit to just how much of a slovenly pig I’d been. Screw it, I’d been hungry and it took the edge off. Although it was difficult to watch him daintily eat for the next twenty minutes. I wondered if he would remember if I knocked him out and took his food.

  After he’d finished his crackers and tuna packet, he looked longingly at the one remaining and then at me.

  “Well, I’m stuffed,” he said, pocketing the food.

  My downcast eyes must have signaled something in his brain. “I guess we could have another bite each,” he said.

  He made sure that he ate his half before he handed the thing over. Smart of him, because I’m not sure I could have eaten just half. Sure, I would have felt bad about it, but it would still be done.

  A loud thumping on the door threatened to spoil what was sitting contentedly in my belly. We were still very much in trouble. Trapped in a basement without supplies. The flashlight was great, but eventually the batteries would be spent. Chances were Trip’s lighter was burning the unending fluid of divine intervention, but it did not produce very much light, and if we had to run the tiny flame would be extinguished. Three more hard knocks got me moving again. I needed something—even a heavy piece of steel would be welcome.

  “Water,” Trip said. He’d gone over to a solitary workstation. A half empty bottle of water sat on the uncluttered surface. “If I let you have the first sip, will you save some for me?”

  You never realize just how thirsty you are until you’re presented with a drink. The crackers had severely dried out my mouth and throat—wouldn’t have taken too much, as I was already low on my fluid intake. Even though I knew, I absolutely fucking knew that my life depended on drinking some of that water, I couldn’t make myself do it. It was open, strike one. It was half empty, which meant someone had most likely drunk it, strike two. Didn’t need a third strike—this isn’t baseball, these are my neuroses I’m dealing with. Sometimes it only takes one strike, sometimes as many as ten. Insanity has no baseline measurements, or rulebook.

  Who knows? Maybe something in the water caused whatever had happened to these people. As valid a reason for caution as any, in my humble opinion. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration whether the person that had wrapped his lips around that top had some open festering mouth sores. Some rotting, puss-oozing, partially scabbed-over juiced-up herpes, ready to explode their yellowish green junk. I don’t fucking know, no way to tell because although Chip-Toothed Chester’s pucker looked all right, who knows what Walter Wall-Mount had going in around his suck hole?

  “You gonna or what?” Trip was pointing to the bottle. I swore I could see bacteria the size of Chihuahua puppies running around the top, like on those old German cuckoo clocks, perpetually in a circle, waiting to infect their next victim.

  I ended up pulling my lips into my mouth and shaking my head much like an eight-month-old baby that is sick of eating strained kale and apricot mush. I watched jealously as he tipped his head back, his Adam’s apple working furiously to drink what I imagined tasted like pure blissful mountain spring water. When there was about an eighth of the bottle left, I had the misfortune of watching his cracker-laden backwash spill into the remainder. He handed the bottle over to me.

  “You should drink this, it will make you feel better.” Food orts swirled around the bottom like a crap vintage of homemade wine.

  “Pass,” I told him, holding my hand out for maximum effect.

  “Okay, you sure?” he asked, but he already knew the response. The bottle was up and the fluid gone by the time his question finished echoing off the wall behind me.

  “That cracker taste good the second time around?”

  “I had more crackers?”

  I shook my head. It was now time to finally do a complete sweep of the room. It was a good size, as far as security rooms go. Fifteen feet by twelve, give or take. On the wall behind me was the door that led out to the zombies and a calendar for the year 1492—not sure if that was a joke or if someone was just a big fan of Christopher Columbus. To the left was the single workstation, where the disease-addled water bottle had been, and a large dry-erase board with a decently drawn picture of a woman with abnormally large breasts. This kind of thing can only be accomplished when men are absolutely certain no women might be coming. It wasn’t half bad; if I was thirteen and alone I, um, may have appreciated them a little more. Trip thought it was a Monet.

  The wall at the end of the room was a bank of at least twenty monitors, all unfortunately off. The right—well, the right held promise. There was a door. Hopefully it led to another office and we could circumnavigate around the zombies; hell, I’d take a private bathroom if it meant a good long drink from the tap. I mean, after some healthy cleaning, but yeah I’d take a drink.

  But it was neither of those things. Instead, it contained a nightmare nearly beyond my capacity to explain. I loaded up my magazine with three bullets and was finally smart enough to chamber a round as well. Six was better than five. I tapped the door with the barrel, hopi
ng that I would not get a response.

  “Hello?” Trip asked me when I did so.

  “I’m not knocking to see if you’re home, Trip.”

  “Then whom?”

  “Whoever’s behind that door.”

  “Well, who is it?”

  We could have got into a roundabout discussion about what I was doing, but the best choice was to just stop talking about it until his micro-amnesia kicked in. Nothing responded on the other side of the door, which was as good a case as I could hope for. I handed Trip the flashlight.

  “Just keep pointing it there.”

  I had him aiming at about the center of the door; I reached out, twisted the knob, and stepped back. That one step became a frantic three-step backpedal as the body leaning against the door fell out. I turned my head as a heaving I could not control erupted from my mouth, chunks of undigested tuna falling wetly to the floor. Long ropy strings of bile-laced saliva hung from my mouth as I hunched over. Trip’s light had not moved, yet it had been enough to illuminate the vulgarity.

  The thing was dead, or should I say things. Two men had forcibly become one. Most of the head on the right was intact—he’d been a clean-cut older guy, with a crew-cut, pencil-thin moustache, and a nose that may have borne witness to a bar fight or three. His compatriot joined him on the left side of his jaw. Half of the man’s skull was gone, presumably inside of Crew-Cut Ken’s head. He had one accusatory blue eye looking for a vengeance he would not find. The full lips of Ken gave way to the lopsided thin lips of Harry Halfway. Their chests were thankfully still clothed, but the sheer width implied that they were much like the head and now contained one-and-a-half times the mass. Trip lowered the flashlight and I was given witness to an old joke, because here indeed was a three-legged monster. Most guys that read this journal will get it—if you’re a woman and you do not, ask the nearest guy. If, due to apocalyptic circumstances beyond your control, there are no guys nearby, then just let your imagination run wild—it’ll come to you. Again, thankfully the clothes were still on. Whatever had caused this, it wasn’t in the water. I wished now that I had saved some to get the awful taste out of my mouth.

  “They have shootie things,” Trip muttered, still not looking.

  I’d been so lost in the horror of what I’d seen that I had missed the silver lining. Silver lining for me, I mean—certainly not for them. They were fucked. I could only hope that somehow their souls hadn’t gotten all knotted up like their bodies had. I’m sure they’d have some explaining to do at the gates, if that were the case. Ken was right-handed and Harry was a leftie, and they had both been armed—damn shame they’d been attacked by an enemy beyond anyone’s scope. They hadn’t known they were about to die; their pistols were still firmly buttoned in their respective holsters.

  “Dammit, dammit, dammit,” I groaned; I didn’t want to look as I reached over, but I also didn’t want to just blindly grope in the dark.

  Who knows if I would involuntarily touch something that was supposed to be there or not? Whatever gods ruled this planet had a twisted sort of humor, but were not completely without mercy. I was now the proud owner of two Lawther 8.5 mm handguns and four extra magazines. I had about ninety new bullets, and the guns seemed to have been cared for by someone who was exceedingly anal retentive in regards to their maintenance. Another boon for me.

  I turned my back on the abomination behind me. I needed to focus my entire psyche on the happiness that was our chance at escape. I noted that Trip had still not moved.

  “You all right?” I asked, reaching out to touch him.

  “I’m pointing to where you said I should.” Part of me wanted to believe it was just Trip being Trip, but naw; he’d been thrown for a loop, hard for him to explain what he’d seen, even if it had only been for the half second it took for the image to travel through his beam of light.

  “I think I saw a picture on one of the small televisions, Trip. Maybe you should check it out.” I steered him away, waiting until he lit his lighter, and then I gently took the flashlight from his hand. I peeked my head into the closet, looking for a trap door, hand grenades, the wardrobe to Narnia—anything that might help. All I got were two old pairs of boots and three jackets emblazoned with the logo of the Guardian Security Company. I checked the pockets, and was thrilled when I found a pack of gum. I grabbed the melted-together belt of the two three-quarter men, and with some wrangling, shoved them back in the closet where I hoped they would never be discovered—not even by some alien archaeologists who would forever wonder what they had found and would waste the rest of their lives hunting down missing links to a specimen that didn’t or shouldn’t have ever existed.

  I shut the closet, hopeful that one day I would be able to as effectively shut the sight from my mind. I unwrapped a piece of gum, walked over to Trip, and placed a piece in his hand. He put it in his mouth without ever looking to see what it was. For all he knew, I could have handed him a porcupine. He was watching the monitors as though they were on, completely enraptured by things only he could see.

  “You ready to go?”

  He looked at me, and I swear he was about to ask if we could wait until the show was over. Instead, he just nodded.

  “Thanks for the candy bar. I think it’s stale though, really chewy stuff.” He swallowed hard.

  “It’s gum, Trip, you’re supposed to keep chewing for a bit.” I handed him another piece.

  “You maybe should have told me.”

  “Maybe I should have.” I spun him gently toward a door he had no desire to go through.

  “Please don’t make me shine the light again, I don’t want to see any more mooshies.”

  “Yeah, me neither Trip. No mooshies this time, just the funky ones.”

  “Concert line cutters?” His eyebrows furrowed.

  “Yeah, those asshats. The line cutters.” Whatever made him angry, I was going to use it to my advantage. A checked-out Trip was a liability—well, to be fair, he’s usually checked out—but this was something different. He was half a step from catatonic. I checked my weapons for the fifth, maybe the tenth time. OCD sucks ass. Whatever screwed with these people seemed to only have messed up organic material, although I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about that. We could open that door, I could pull the trigger, and for all I knew the gunpowder could have fused with the brass cartridge or something equally disastrous.

  “Hold on for a sec, keep watching your show.” He seemed relieved. I went over to the body that was at a ninety-degree angle to the wall and placed the muzzle right up against his rib cage. I was sorry for possibly desecrating a body that had already been through so much; I was also sorry for making an explosion in another enclosed space, and I was even more sorry that any zombies in the general area were going to make a beeline for the dinner bell.

  “Trip, cover your ears,” I said, though probably didn’t have to worry about it—he was chewing his gum so loudly that he most likely wouldn’t hear anything over his wet smacking sounds. He sounded like a rabid cow chewing its cud. If I weren’t already so grossed out about the task at hand, I would have told him to stop.

  The room lit up as I squeezed the trigger. The guard’s shirt caught a small flame, and a wisp of smoke that smelled much like charred pork and cotton wafted up. So the gun worked—that was one thing. What was once blood leaked through the hole I’d just made, though now it looked more like dough of some sort being pushed through a form. It was thick and looked almost rubbery. I definitely thought about touching it to satisfy my curiosity, but luckily for me my mental instability kicked in and I left it alone.

  “Nothing personal,” I told the body, most likely not the eulogy he was looking for.

  “Show’s over,” Trip announced.

  “As good a time as any, then.”

  “No, man; there have been way better times.”

  I pursed my lips and tilted my head slightly. “You’re right about that buddy, just so happens this is the only time we have available to us right n
ow.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Hey, if you’ve got a time machine somewhere, by all means feel free to use it.”

  “If only it were that simple.”

  I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, and all I was really doing was stalling. I mean, what’s the rush, right? Sure, we’d die of dehydration in here within the next couple of days, but that beat getting torn apart by zombies in a few minutes, hands down—in my humble opinion.

  “Okay Trip, listen to me carefully: I’m giving you a small set of instructions and you need to follow all of them carefully.”

  “Is this like the LSAT?”

  “The law school entrance exam? No, it’s not like that.” Putting my faith in Trip was difficult. Sure, he usually came out smelling like roses, but the sheer amount of shit you had to wade through made you wonder. “You need to open the door, step back, and keep the light shining at about chest level. You get that?”

  “Get what?” He was checking his pockets like I’d just sent him something. I was trying to figure out if I could do all those things and fire the guns effectively. “Oh, the door thing; sure, I can do that.” He started heading back to the closet.

  “Wrong door, Trip, and you really don’t want to open that one again.”

  The veil lifted from his features for a moment. “Yeah, definitely not.” He came back to me. “Open, step back, shine. Open, step back, shine. Open, step back, shine.”

  On one hand, I was thrilled that he remembered what to do; on the other, I was mortified that he had to chant this simple set of life-saving instructions. I mean, when he was at home, did he say, “Breathe, swallow, pump blood?”

  He grabbed the handle quicker than I was expecting. For a moment, the light was blocked by the door as he pulled it toward him. I saw shadowy glimpses of multiple zombies. The call to action came when the door slammed against the wall, the sound engaging my hands. My first few rounds were low. By now, the entire doorway was lit up, and packed with snarling zombies. Mouths open and chomping at the air, hands stretching out to grab me. Flashes from my rounds lit the place up like a strobe light as I fired. A point of light, zombies through the door, a point of light, one zombie falling from a death blow to the side of its skull, another advancing to its right. Flash, I placed another round into the zombie falling by my feet, flash, a zombie gripped my arm. I pivoted, placing one pistol against its temple. Muted strobe, mind matter sprayed toward a shocked Trip, bathing him and the light in a thick red mist.