by Mark Tufo
Kalandar turned to look. “Truly?”
“Mostly. When I came to this world, it was outside of town; there was an old collapsed building and a gas station, and the overseers were coming down the highway.”
“What makes you think they’ll be there?” BT asked as he rubbed his stomach.
“Not there specifically, but further down the road, I think that’s where Hvergelmir will be. Maybe when we get down there, we can get a car or a truck—a big one,” I added as I looked over to Kalandar.
BT was doing better by that night, though now I was getting worried about his potential for dehydration. We needed to stock up on supplies. The traffic jam coming in had yielded a fair amount of stores for Trip and me; I felt confident it would do the same for us on the way out.
I held on to that assumption all the way to the roadway, which was now completely clear of any and all vehicles. I thought maybe we’d just come out too far, but there was no way I would ever forget the exact location of that accursed milk truck—I swear I could still catch a ghostly whiff of its malevolent odor.
“There were hundreds of cars here,” I said, looking around.
Neither of my companions said anything. What could they? This strange land had once again exerted its strangeness. Another curveball we would have to deal with. I’m used to bad odds—it’s the way of it these days—but they just kept stacking up; manipulated, really. We started walking—there was no other choice. Being in the open like this with minimal ammunition was far from optimal. I even caught Kalandar looking around nervously from time to time. That did little to still the nerves that were firing randomly and worm-like within me. If something came down the roadway, there was nowhere to hide—confrontation would be inevitable.
“No public transportation in this shithole?” BT asked as he once again held his dress down from fluttering up in the stirring breeze.
“What do you think, Marilyn?” I was having a difficult time biting back on my anxiety and it was coming out in words.
“Hey, I didn’t put this thing on myself!” BT defended.
I mumbled an apology. It was a beautiful day, sun shining bright, wispy clouds fluttering by, temperature hovering in the mid-sixties—by all accounts it should have been a pleasurable experience. Every part of me hated it.
“I do not believe this road to be real,” Kalandar said out of the blue a few miles later. “I think it is a construct.”
He did not elaborate, but I wondered if that was why I was inexplicably feeling the way I was.
“Like some Matrix bullshit?” BT asked.
Kalandar tilted his head.
“Gonna go out on a limb and say he never saw the movie,” I replied.
“This entire world, it appears to have been made for some purpose—I do not think it exists in reality, or at least a reality we would choose to be a part of,” he added.
I didn’t even know what part of that to question. If I had to put a word to how Kalandar was acting, I would say sullen, and that didn’t change when we saw the gas station some ways off in the distance. Can’t say it made me feel any better, but it would offer some welcome cover. It wasn’t much past noon, but I would ask the group if it might be worthwhile to call it a day once we got there. Miss Monroe looked like he was favoring one of his feet, my guess was a good case of blisters or maybe some chafing.
The broken-down building I had entered this world through was once again whole; the gas station across the street had not changed except the Yeep was no longer there. It was like whoever was pulling the strings wanted to make this as difficult for us as possible.
BT was sitting and Kalandar was walking around the perimeter of our location. I pulled out Trip’s notebook to see if he had added any pertinent bits.
“Ponch, are you here yet?”
“Not yet,” I answered the words on the page.
I looked to the entrance of the small storage building, wondering if the gateway was still present. Could I possibly walk in and back to my world? I sarcastically wondered how I could leave all of this behind me.
“What to do, Mike,” I said aloud. If I could go back, the question was: would I? Would that seal BT’s fate? Jack’s? Was I really that important of a cog in this dysfunctional machine? Would my presence change the outcome at all, or was I just another prop in the play? If this place wasn’t real, were the consequences to our lives? Yeah, I had the feeling that dying here was a permanent condition, no resets.
“What are you doing?” BT was watching me intently as I stared at the door. Had to take a moment to come back from the inner retreat in my mind.
“That’s the way I came here,” I told him.
“You’re wondering if you can go back the same way?” he asked.
“I am.” Any other answer besides the truth would have sounded like the bullshit that it was.
“I’d go if I were you. There are no guarantees out here.”
I was thankful he was giving me an out, and a little disheartened that he’d pull an exit given the choice. The BT I knew would never do that, but as I was constantly reminded, this wasn’t that man.
“Michael, perhaps you should see this,” Kalandar called from across the street.
I pulled myself away from the draw of the door and reluctantly headed over. Kalandar turned and began to walk toward the gas station entrance, and I followed. Walked through the entryway and into just about any rural gas station anywhere. It looked like it had been built a half century ago, and no cleaning solution was ever going to be able to erase the decades of built up oil that was the prevailing smell. It was not altogether unwelcome. I was surprised not to see those old candy dispensers that I wouldn’t have touched even if I were starving. There was a rack of maps to my side; against the far wall were containers of various automotive liquids, spark plugs, and such.
I had a feeling about what I would find when I unfolded a map, and still I had a measure of shock when I unfolded the paper puzzle. It was blank.
“Not that,” Kalandar said as he held open the door to the garage bays.
I had an unreasonable—or maybe reasonable, time would tell—fear that he was leading me into a trap.
“What am I looking for?” I asked before moving closer.
“It would be easier to see it than explain.”
I looked up at him and searched for any signs of deception, but would I know them if he even had a tell? Most likely not. It didn’t help that where he wanted me to go was dark, sunlight barely filtering in through grease-covered windows. In an ordinary place, I would expect to see some large metal lifts designed to put cars in the air for ease of repair. Definitely didn’t expect to see what I figured was a perfect miniature replica of Stonehenge. Though in this version, it had not succumbed to the ravages of time and gravity; it was all standing.
“Any ideas?” I asked.
“It is a link.”
“Like a portal?” I asked. “Is this our way out?”
“Not quite.”
“Feel free to elaborate, I’ve got a few minutes.”
Kalandar seemed to struggle with the correct words, or maybe an appropriate lie. “It is a place to view other worlds, not travel to them. That is the best way I can put it.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“No more dangerous than staring at the sun.”
“Good to know. What do we do with it?”
“One of us should see what it shows.”
“We going to draw straws to see which one of us does it?”
“We could arm wrestle.”
I looked over; he was smiling.
“You’re hilarious,” I told him. “What’s to be gained?” I asked.
“I cannot know that answer, but it is here for a reason.”
“I’ll do it,” I said a little too impulsively. I was walking to the opening in the circle.
“I was not implying you should go—we should discuss this further.”
The end of his sentence trailed off as my right foot br
oke the invisible barrier. A shock of warmth spread up my leg. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought a large dog was using me as a fire hydrant. The sensation immediately changed to one of freezing as the rest of my body found itself within the circle. A whipping wind blew past, yet had no force upon me. It was a rush of sound in my ears—this happened for a few seconds, then all was still. Then I found myself within a vast bubble. It looked as if I’d stepped into a large television set from back in the 80s after the National Anthem had played and all programming had ceased for the night. This was a phenomenon that not many of the youth were overly familiar with before the zombies came. It was all static; if there were a pattern to it, it was not something I could discern. Although this was strange in and of itself, it was not the strangest element—not by a long shot.
While I stood and watched, I was also viewing myself from an omnipresent position, as if I were looking upon myself having a dream. The duality of my sight was unnerving and impossible to reconcile. Add to that, my omnipresent self was spinning around me like a camera operator during an intense martial arts sequence. I was having a difficult time identifying which one was me—both, or neither? I tried to focus on one or the other, but when that became an impossibility, I did what I do best: I ignored it. This was when I noticed the overseers on the far side of my bubble looking intently at a stream of static. I had yet to feel the intense dread that accompanied their presence, right up until one of them turned from their meeting and began to look around the room.
It knew something was up. Could it hurt me here, possibly trap me? Its intense gaze wandered around the entire room, passing over the part of me that was rooted in the middle. It stood and looked as if it were going to investigate until one of the others with it began to speak, although calling what emanated from the orifice in its face a language of any sort would be a stretch. It was a high, sharp sound like wrapping paper being cut smoothly with scissors. You know that sweet spot you get when the blades are partially open and you’re slicing straight through—it’s almost orgasmic in a crafty type of way, until invariably the paper is turned a fraction of a degree too far and you begin to tear. That, in a nutshell, was what I was hearing. The suspicious one glanced around one more time and deferred to the other. My heart pounded as I finally got a look at what they were huddled around.
“Trip!” I yelled, unable to control myself. Whatever was going on in this room, they could not hear me—for that I was grateful. Trip heard, though; his head whipped up and then he did something so Trip-like I thought my head was going to explode. He separated from himself, looked like one of those old school videos I’d seen of a cell performing mitosis. Created a clone of himself, even the part where his side stretched and pulled away. For a second, the two stood together and then the newly formed Trip, having received its instructions, came toward me.
“Ponch! What are you doing here?!”
“Trip, where are we?” I asked, reaching out to see if I could touch him.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” He backed up a step.
He didn’t say why. It could have been as asinine a reason as he didn’t want to get any of the zombie guts I was still wearing on him—or it could be that if we did indeed touch, the overseers would then be able to detect my presence. With Trip, you could easily travel down either side of the spectrum all the way to the extremes.
He went back to my original question. “We are nowhere.” Made about as much sense as your daughter’s boyfriend bragging to you about how they were both going to lose their virginity on prom night. Basically, because his prediction of the future would be a falsehood, it’s extremely difficult to get an erection when you’re dead. I watched as he began to twirl in place, always looking up. “I wish you’d stop doing that,” he said to the other part of me.
“Yeah, because I know what I’m doing,” spinning me answered.
“We are out of time.” He would occasionally stop twisting around to look at the me standing before him.
“I know, man, I’m doing my best to get you back.”
“No, I meant literally: we are out of time. We are no longer in the stream of it. Worlds are being born, worlds are being destroyed, every moment that has ever happened or will ever happen is streaming by us.”
I didn’t understand it. How could I? “The overseers, do they manipulate it? Are we fated to their versions?” There were many layers of anger there. The first being that nothing we did mattered because there were omnipotent beings massaging events to their liking, and second, I was more pissed that, with all the horrible things that have happened in history, they had done nothing to prevent them.
“It’s not like that.” Trip seemed to understand what I was asking—that in itself was a small miracle. “They cannot change anything; they are merely here to make sure that time continues.”
“Huh? Someone really needs to watch out for that? Doesn’t it just happen, kind of like a Yankee Candle sale?”
“What?”
You know you’ve deviated off the path when Trip’s confused.
“Nothing—just Tracy used to love to buy those candles when they were on sale. It took me over a hundred candles and a full closet to convince her that they are always on sale. ‘Buy one get one free’ or some variation—‘buy two at fifty percent off,’ that kind of thing.”
“Relevance?”
“I’m scared,” was my only defense.
“The whistlers, they’re like a virus; they’ve infected the system, and this may seem like a jumbled mess, but it’s a very highly tuned system. Something like them can bring this all crashing down.”
“What does that mean?”
“For your sake, I’m going to go very basic.”
“Thanks, Trip.” Would have been hard-pressed to drip any more sarcasm over my tone.
“Either everything ceases to exist or everything exists at the same time. Imagine any one spot on the world—volcanoes, dinosaurs, hurricanes, people, animals, storms, buildings, wars, everything, all at once. So much going on that nothing could survive.”
“The whistlers can do that? And the overseers have you to stop this?”
“In a fashion.”
One of the overseers, I think the same one that suspected something was happening, was once again looking around. He took a few steps away from the group and was coming closer. Sometimes his eyes swept over me, and other times over the me hovering overhead like a spastic drone stuck on a loop.
“I think even in a place where time is nonexistent, I’m running out of it,” I told him.
“Oh, that’s good.”
“Trip, tell me what’s going on.”
“They think they can use the whistlers for their benefit.”
Between me and my revolving self, we figured it out. “So they’re no longer content just to watch?”
Trip placed a finger on his ear. I think he was shooting for his nose like in charades, but who knows.
“Why? What could they hope to accomplish?” Then it struck me—it was power that would be as unlimited a resource for them as had ever happened, if they should somehow gain control. “Their intent?”
“There won’t be unicorns and rainbows. They won’t be striving for misery but for dominion, which could definitely devolve into misery.”
“Eternal dominion?” It was a concept I could barely grasp. “Trip, if there is such a thing as heaven and hell, isn’t this pretty much the same-ish?”
“Life is supposed to be a series of choices, not something dictated and followed without deviation.”
I was relieved when the approaching overseer abruptly turned back to his group. That relief changed to alarm when he picked up Trip and began to peer into his face. He let go and the other half of Trip fell to the ground; the overseer again spun, this time moving quickly to our area.
“Tell me what I need to do!” I said urgently.
5
BT and Kalandar
“What the hell is going on?” BT asked as he en
tered the gas station to see Kalandar walking around the small pile of stones and Michael was standing stock-still in the middle, seemingly oblivious to the scrutiny he was under.
“I believe Michael has traveled to another realm,” Kalandar said. The large demon was taking care to avoid crossing the invisible plane that extended up from the strange formation.
“Some kid built a replica of Stonehenge?” BT was coming over.
“I do not believe this is the work of children. At least the type of children you would infer.”
“Is he all right?”
“Difficult to say. Is there a reason you are in here?”
“Didn’t mean to disturb your weird walk-around, but yeah, something is coming.”
Kalandar’s head swiveled. “Did you not think to tell me this first?”
“I got distracted. And it's still far away.”
“What is far away?” Kalandar brushed past BT and was heading out into the golden sunshine.
“I didn’t want to say anything because I wasn’t sure, but it looks like a column of hearses.”
“Do you have a pronounced accent?”
“What?”
“Horses, did you mean horses?”
“No, hearses; it’s a vehicle used to transport the deceased to their final resting spot.”
“What? Are they not eaten? Relax, it is partially a joke. I forget how sensitive your kind can be.”
“Partially?”
“There are many who would prefer consumption to being interred in the dirt.”
Kalandar and BT stood on the side of the road, both shielding their eyes to see the long black line moving toward them like a snake through the undergrowth.
“Either there have been many deaths, or somebody wishes to make a point. I think it would be best if we hid,” Kalandar said.
“Do you think they’ll go on by?” BT asked. They were now both inside the garage, a still rigid Mike behind them as they looked through a dirt-smeared window.
“I would like to believe that would be the case.”
“That doesn’t sound very convincing.” BT had his pistol out. “What are the odds I can get that rifle off of Mike?” He was looking back.
