A Shrouded World 5

by Mark Tufo

  We had gravity on our side most of the day as we came down off the mountain. There were a couple of ravines we had to traverse back up, but for the most part, it had been smooth sailing. The front of my legs burned from the excursion—they were muscles not often used in this manner, or at least for this long. I mean the ones that kept me from wildly running down the mountain as momentum made me go faster and faster until ultimately my legs would not be able to keep up with the speed, sort of like trying to hop onto a treadmill operating at full speed.

  “We should find a location to make camp,” Kalandar said as he looked up.

  The sun had passed its zenith and was heading down, but I didn’t think it was much past two in the afternoon. I don’t know if he sensed something like one of those time rifts, or perhaps he could smell a night runner lair—although if that were the case, it would be best to put more distance between us and it.

  “It’s still early,” I said, prodding for more information.

  “If you wish to continue having this other paunchy person make this journey, we would be wise to stop.”

  I looked over to BT, who looked like shit. Pale, pasty, slightly gray, and dripping sweat from every pore he possessed. Even with a good night’s sleep, the odds he was going to be able to answer the bell tomorrow were unlikely. I rued my decision not to have Kalandar drag him back to the cabin.

  “Shit.”

  “I’m all right,” BT said, his head hanging down, his left hand propped against a tree. I thought he was going to throw up.

  “Looks as good a place as any,” I said, not meaning it. We were in a small clearing, no real protection, nothing against the elements and certainly nothing against a hostile force, whether that be zombies, night runners, or something far worse. I figured it was in the mid-sixties, most likely would get down to the low fifties once the sun went down—not inclement weather but BT was going to freeze his ass off once his clothes began to dry and he got an evaporative effect going on. I had no experience, but his yoga pants didn’t look all that warm to start with. Building a fire was out of the question.

  I took my pack off and grabbed a green T-shirt. It wasn’t much and it would look like a kid’s garment on him, but it was all I had. I tossed it over to him. He proceeded to wipe down his head and face and under his arms before he tossed it back.

  “I meant for you to wear it,” I said, making sure to let it fall to the ground. As far as I was concerned, that shirt was dead to me.

  “I have washcloths bigger than that.”

  “Maybe that other Mike is an asshole, but brother, you aren’t any great shakes either,” I told him as I went over to Kalandar. I wanted to discuss our lookout schedule and any ideas he might have about making us somewhat safer for the night.

  “What about food?” BT groused.

  “What about it?” I asked him.

  “Where is it?”

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I mumbled.

  I stood and made a great show of looking around and back the way we had come before finally returning to my seat next to Kalandar.

  “What the hell was that?” BT asked.

  “I was looking for the chuck wagon. Cookie must have gotten lost again.”

  “Good to see this version of you is funny. Where’s the food?” he asked again.

  “Listen man, I know things are different where you come from, but these days, in my world, it’s not uncommon to go two or three days without food. Not going to tell you I like it, that’s just the way it is.”

  “You’re just holding out because I’m fat!” he roared, pushing himself up so he was standing.

  “That’s right, we’re hoarding all the food because I felt like your extra girth was slowing us down. Fuck needing calories for energy. Here.” I tossed my backpack at his feet. “Eat whatever you want.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” he said as if he’d won some great victory.

  He undid the top and dumped the contents on the ground, then proceeded to kick through them looking for the twelve-pound brisket he was sure I had hidden among my magazines, ammo, and meager amount of clothes that were now getting dirty.

  “Bullshit,” he said as he bent down and began to toss each individual item aside.

  “Satisfied?” I was more than a little pissed as I began to pick up my gear. When BT and I had first met in my reality, there had been tension and we had been far from fast friends, but this was different. He knew a version of me and actively disliked everything about him. Getting over that kind of bias was going to be a challenge. And I wasn’t overly inclined to even try. I needed help, Trip needed help, Jack and Otter needed help, and I did not need another person in need of help to be added to that list.

  “I didn’t ask to be here.” He was sullen as he sat back down.

  “Trust me, I didn’t ask for you to be here either.”

  “I’m going to sleep.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry about it, we’ll watch your ass.”

  “That some sort of slight about my size?”

  “I’ve got first watch, Kalandar; see if you can rest,” I told him, deciding it was in everyone’s best interest that I not rise to the bait.

  “I could crush you with one of my hands.” BT wanted to make sure he kept getting in the last word. “Maybe I’d twist your head off—if I had anything in me to shit down your neck, that is. Good thing for you that’s not the case.”

  I was walking the perimeter, getting a better feel for the layout we found ourselves in.

  “Probably ate everything while we were hiking. That would be just like you, selfish bastard,” he continued. “I’d say that’s a new low, but it’s basically par for the course when it comes to dealing with you. I love my wife more than life itself, the only bad thing I can say about her is her lack of judgment when it comes to friends.”

  He was loud and getting louder. I wanted to say something—needed to say something, if only to shut him up. But I got a distinct feeling that was exactly what he wanted to continue his tirade. It was Kalandar who put an end to the fiasco.

  “You will keep silent now. If you want to endanger your own life, that is one thing. Perhaps you need to find another place to rest some miles from us, where you can grouse all you wish. If, however, you choose to stay here, you will abide me.”

  I was looking back at BT—safe to say he wasn’t used to being dressed down by anybody. For the slightest of seconds, I thought he might challenge Kalandar; as far as stupid things go, that was not something I would ever have someone hold my beer to watch me do. BT glowered at Kalandar for a few seconds more, but the giant demon had already begun to prepare his resting spot and was no longer looking toward him. A few hours later I was picking my way through our perimeter, happy that we had a three-quarter moon for light, when I heard the first of the far-off howls.

  “Fuck.” I noticed a puff of breath escape as I mumbled the word; it had gotten chillier than I expected.

  It was difficult to pinpoint with accuracy where the sound was coming from due to the topography, but for the moment it sounded distant. If a large enough group of night runners found us out here, we were going to be in some serious trouble. And right now, BT, who was generally a huge asset in any type of battle scenario, was the exact opposite of that. This one was soft, angry, and ill-prepared to deal with that level of threat. How much trouble would I put myself in to ensure his safety? I was having a hard time finding it in me to be altruistic to a man who loathed everything about me.

  “What the fuck,” I hissed as Kalandar dropped his large hand on my shoulder. “How can you possibly sneak around?”

  “I do not like those you call the night runners. They show no fear when they see me.”

  “Yeah, anything that can be so dismissive of you scares me as well.”

  “I did not say I fear them.”

  “All right, I’m afraid enough for the both of us.” He seemed satisfied with that answer.

  “Do you wish me to continue wi
th the patrol?”

  “I’d love to get some sleep, but how I’m going to do that with them out there I don’t know.”

  A distant howl seemed to punctuate my point.

  “It would appear they are moving away,” Kalandar said.

  There was the crack of a rifle, then three more shots before it was quiet.

  “Looks like they found what they were after,” I said sourly. I could only hope it wasn’t Jack and Otter. Even if it wasn’t, that still meant it was some other unlucky fuck taken down in a most unsavory way.

  “Should we move away from the sound?” Kalandar asked.

  The shot was far, a mile, maybe more. With as quiet as this world was and the fact we were in a channel of sorts, it had the potential to be even farther. Moving in the dark was an option, but not a good one, and there was still tiger-stripe-panted BT—he was surly enough, how bad would it be with no sleep for his weary body?

  “We stay put.”

  Kalandar did not question my decision, but sleep wasn’t happening. Every time I felt like it was quiet enough—that perhaps they had moved on—one of the bastards would give that soul-stirring shriek to let us know they were still out and about. I found myself constantly mumbling for the sun to get its lazy ass up.

  As the sky finally lightened up, I told Kalandar I was going to get an hour or two. He was leaning against a tree, looking out in the direction that the last of the cries had come from.

  “What should I do about the fat one?”

  “Don’t eat him.”

  “I don’t think he would fit.”

  “That humor?” I asked. When he didn’t respond, I didn’t prod. Ultimately, it was not an answer I wanted to know.

  3

  Mike Talbot

  It was maybe 9:30 when Kalandar kicked my foot. “You should perhaps arise.”

  “Do I want to know?” I had to shade my eyes from the sun coming up behind him.

  “There is something amiss.”

  “You talking in general or right this very moment?”

  “For the most part, I find this world pleasant.”

  It’s all about perspective. For me, this was a swirling shit stain clinging to the sides of a clogged toilet bowl threatening to overflow.

  I stood and looked around. BT was still fast asleep—curled up in the fetal position as he was, he looked like a very colorful, lumpy boulder—though I was not going to be the one to tell him so. I’m smart like that.

  “Spill it, Kalandar; I don’t see, smell, or hear anything.”

  “It is a feeling.” He paused.

  “Are you psychic?”

  “Not that kind of feeling. It is underneath. I can sense vibrations and they seem to be getting closer.”

  “Like Tremors?” I was thinking giant teethed earthworms like from the movie; Kalandar took the literal translation.

  “No, this is much more subdued. Whatever it is, though, would appear to be coming our way.”

  “So not a large animal traveling overland?”

  “I do not think so.”

  “BT, get up—we have to move!” I shouted, not necessarily because the situation merited it but because I wasn’t getting any closer to prodding him awake. Had a feeling I’d get a punch for my efforts.

  “Can’t move,” he struggled to say.

  I shook my head. I was thinking, great, how are we possibly going to carry the four-hundred-pound paperweight and make any decent time?

  “Gonna have to give it a go, big man.” There was too much going on for me to worry about whether he could make it or not. What cosmic fucking joke is it that when in a time of need, the help sent is worse than none?

  “Something’s wrong,” he said.

  I went to check. It was possible he was having a heart attack, and yeah, we hadn’t got off on the best foot, but letting anyone suffer alone and in a foreign world was not something even I was capable of.

  “What the fuck am I looking at?” I asked as I got closer. BT appeared to be the center of a meteor strike of his own making, like he had crashed down from high and indented the earth. There were a few inches of ground traveling upwards around him; meanwhile, his body was convulsing and slowly sinking. It looked like he was having a grand mal seizure in the middle of a pool of quicksand—it was not a beneficial confluence of events.

  “I’m stuck!” Panic was in his voice. “Get me out of here!”

  I grabbed his outstretched left hand. I might as well have been some random dude named Pierre yanking on the famed Excalibur for all I was able to move him. I reached down with my other hand, leveraged myself as best I could, and began to pull in earnest. Best I could tell, all I was doing was stretching the ligaments in his shoulder.

  “What fresh hell is this? Kalandar, I need some help!”

  The large demon thundered over. BT was doing his best to keep his head craned up enough so that he didn’t begin to inhale dirt. At his current descent, it wouldn’t be long before that move was no longer effective. Kalandar grabbed his arm.

  “No. You’ll rip it out,” I warned.

  “Don’t do that!” BT yelled.

  Kalandar bent down, thrust one arm through BT’s legs, and the other arm down under his shoulder. I watched every single muscle in Kalandar’s formidable body ripple and strain as he pulled. His teeth were gritted, his head back; the cords on his neck were bulging and were as thick as my forearm, and still BT did not move in the desired direction. I grabbed BT’s arms and did my best to help. There was a moment when we kept him from continuing down, but that was it.

  “Irrumabo!” Kalandar yelled as his grip slipped and he fell back hard on his ass.

  No clue what the word meant or even the language spoken, but given the circumstances, safe to say it was a swear. Considering that Kalandar was a demon, I would imagine that all those scary entities speak Latin. I was always on the lookout for a good new curse, but it didn’t roll off the tongue like some of my favorites.

  “He will not move,” Kalandar said as he stood. “How attached to him are you?” he asked, I guess implying that we just chalk BT up as a loss. I didn’t mean to, but when posed the question, I shrugged.

  “I can see you!” BT yelled. “Get me out of here!”

  I quickly grabbed my rifle.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, considering I was less than a foot from him and pointing to the ground directly under him.

  “The only thing I can think of at the moment.”

  “Think of something else!”

  He hadn’t finished that sentence and I’d already shot twice. Didn’t have much experience shooting rounds into the ground. It was soft enough I had hopes they would go more than a few inches—it would be nuts to think the bullets would travel more than a foot. I had absolutely no clue if that would be enough or if it would even affect what was happening. For all I knew, the ground itself was swallowing BT.

  There was a look of confusion on BT’s face. “It stopped pulling. Fire again.”

  The ground under us rumbled. Something moved beneath BT and was heading straight for my feet. I did what anybody carrying a rifle would do: I shot at the moving mound. It paused, then moved quicker. I ran to the other side of BT, whose body began to vibrate faster as whatever was under him was done playing the game and just wanted to pull him completely down to dine in peace—at least I assume that was the ultimate desire, couldn’t imagine keeping the big man as a pet.

  Kalandar knelt and placed his hand against the ground.

  “What are you doing?” I was concerned; I’d seen the damage that he could work.

  “I believe that what is under here is massive.” He looked up to me.

  “You said the vibrations were slight.” I was looking for some way to discredit his words.

  “It was because they were so deep.”

  “Shit.” If the beast was as large as Kalandar thought, then my 5.56 round was hardly more than an irritant.

  “We should leave.” He stood.

  B
T’s neck was now craned at a painful-looking angle as he struggled to keep his head up.

  “Don’t leave me, Mike!” he pleaded. The fear radiating off of him was palpable. I knew he couldn’t stand the Mike I was from his world, but that mattered little now.

  “K, can you send enough of a jolt to maybe force whatever this thing is to release its grip?”

  “I do not have settings like a toaster,” was his reply.

  I gave him a questioning look. “You know what a toaster is?” I found that statement to be the most absurd thing the day had to offer thus far. Given the world I was in, I didn’t think it would hold until sunset, though.

  “I could very likely destroy him and you, if I try.”

  “Dammit.” I stepped back at first, then moved closer. “You may not like me,” I said as I gripped BT’s hand, “but your counterpart and I are the truest of friends, so much so that I would die willingly for one who shares his likeness.”

  Whether there was a tear in his eye or sweat dripping from his brow, it was still easy to see the appreciation that welled in his features. I wondered if he would feel the same once we were both engulfed in hellfire—that tends to dampen sentimentality.

  “Once I start, I cannot stop—you realize this, no?” Kalandar asked.

  The tiniest sliver of a silver fiber had worked its way through the ground where I had been standing and was swaying as if in a slight breeze. It looked like it was sampling the air—looking for another victim.

  “Do it,” I hissed. I was preparing for what I figured was the inferno of an end I was rushing toward.

  Kalandar thankfully didn’t ask me again if I was sure I wanted to do this. If he had, I would have truthfully told him no. “Want to” and “need to” are two very different things. For instance, I need to eat vegetables to stay healthy.

  I saw K’s lips moving. As his hand touched the ground, it began a soft glow that radiated away in an ever-expanding arc. I hadn’t noticed before because I was fixated on BT, but more of the silvery tendrils had poked up all around us, one even sliding across the toe of my boot. As Kalandar’s fiery wave began its march toward us and over the threads, they at first hissed and popped like a live lobster dropped into a pot of boiling water. Then they immediately blackened and wilted before quickly diving back underground. The other tendrils, realizing what had happened to their brethren, retreated before they met the same fate. In theory, it was working. But if I couldn’t pull him free before the ring got to us, BT would suffer third-degree burns on fully half of his body; at that point, there would be nothing we could do for him.