by J. Thorn
“They do,” Shallna said. “But I like to think of it as the Butterflies Effect. In the multiverse, the consequences of decisions play out exponentially. The detonation of nuclear weapons in that version of Colorado 1988 may have begun hundreds or thousands of years earlier. It may have been triggered by one person or it could have been stopped with something as simple as a phone call. You’ll never know so it’s pointless to speculate.”
Kole agreed with Shallna. The possibility of so many universes existing in parallel strands made his head hurt. He could understand the basic concept but getting Colorado wiped off the map in a nuclear war was so removed from logical consequence that Kole agreed it was pointless to speculate.
“Maybe if I didn’t get drunk and pass out in that alley in 1986, that version of Colorado would still be there.”
“Maybe,” Shallna said. “But the Great Cycle would have replenished the horde with a descension from another time and place. In this moment of humanity, they all come from civilization and its addiction to war. It has been such for a long time.”
***
Jack woke up first and knew immediately something was wrong. Even more wrong than things normally were in a world getting eaten by a cloud where zombies marched through dead cities. He opened one eye and then the other.
Alex was gone.
“Fuck.”
Jack sat up and used his hand to massage his right hip, numb from sleeping on the warped floorboard. The pallid light filtered through the upstairs rooms and Jack could see footprints in the dust on the floor. He could not tell how fresh they were, but he assumed Alex either leapt from a window or left the brownstone via the stairs.
He looked around the room for his belongings until he remembered he came through a local slip without a backpack or weapon. Following Alex into this reversion, Jack knew there would be plenty of opportunities to gather weapons in the dead city. With a final glance at the room, leaving the nameless memories of its former occupants to their eternal hauntings, Jack started down the steps in search of Alex. He turned the corner and from the landing could see the front door was open. Alex was standing on the sidewalk with his back to the brownstone. Jack jumped down the last three steps and into the green-tinged daylight. He looked up into the sky and visually marked the progress from the night before. The cloud was moving faster, as it always did when getting closer to the end.
“Double shot of espresso with soy milk and cinnamon.”
Alex looked over his shoulder and wiped the tears from his face. He shook his head and looked to the left where the highway disappeared into the sharp edge of the horizon.
“I can’t protect her. Who am I kidding? I’ve always been a loser and I always will be. I forced myself on her. Bet you didn’t know that.”
“Bet I did,” Jack said. He looked at Alex’s face and let him continue.
“I was the kid organizing role-playing games in the basement, pretending I was a knight on a quest to slay the dragon. I’ve been wearing glasses since I was seven, been called four-eyes ever since. Lindsay’s mom, the fucking bitch. She set me up in high school. Lured me to the woods behind the school and got me to take my pants off when a few of the guys from the football team jumped out and snapped pictures with a Polaroid. After that, I pretty much had to do whatever she said. She threatened to pin them up in the school cafeteria. Can you imagine something so—”
“Brilliant? I love it.”
Alex continued as if he did not care what Jack thought.
“Evil. She was fucking evil and years later when I saw her in a bar on the South Side, you know what she said? She told me she still had the pictures and if I didn’t come to her secret party she’d send them to the Homestead Volunteer Fire Department where I was working. So it started all over again.
I was a regular at her parties. I never touched any of the girls because even then I knew I lived only for Lindsay. I took them in the bedroom and we’d talk or play cards and I’d make them promise to tell her I fucked them. Lindsay’s mom would charge me and the next weekend we’d do it all over again. That last time there, with Lindsay, I fucking lost it. I broke. I wanted so much to save her and yet I lost my mind. That’s why I’m here. I’m paying for that.”
“Are you done?” Jack asked. “Because I’d like to get moving toward the center of town ahead of the cloud. But if you want to slop up more self-pity with your breakfast, I’ll wait.”
Alex glared at Jack and clenched his fingers together into fists.
“You gonna swing at me, Sir Lamealot? We’ve tried this already and I kicked your ass. I will kick your ass. I will be kicking your ass. Reversion or not, your ass will be kicked. By me. So shut the fuck up and let’s get moving.”
Alex hunched over, hanging his head down as he turned to face the city.
“One last thing,” Jack said.
“What?” Alex asked.
“We’re going to find them. And you’re going to save Lindsay so stop the goddamn whining.”
Alex wiped the last tear from his face and nodded, following Jack down the highway. They left the quaint neighborhood behind and walked toward the heart of the city and into the mouth of the reversion.
***
Alex and Jack walked for miles until the skyscrapers towered overhead, breaking through the cloud. Although they were almost the same height, Alex had at least twenty years and sixty pounds on Jack. He could not tell exactly how old Jack was but Alex thought he was in his late teens or early twenties. The young man was too old to be reckless and too young to know how to avoid trouble.
The black birds dropped lower, circling the buildings below the cloud as if they wanted to see the end of the multiverse from a prime vantage point. Alex looked up a few times and identified them as crows, which did not surprise him. They were always associated with death and pestilence regardless of whether or not they should have been. Whenever Alex saw a crow he thought of classic horror, The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe.
“How much farther?”
“For fuck’s sake. Why are you such a pussy?”
Alex looked at Jack’s face, hoping to find the shred of empathy he saw when they spoke in front of the brownstone. He could not find it.
“My feet hurt.”
“I guess if your lazy ass is always driving and taking the escalator, they would hurt from walking.”
Alex paused and thought about the comment, but Jack spoke up before he could reply.
“You think Lindsay would be complaining about the walk? I don’t think so.”
“You’re such a dickhead, Jack. I swear I’d kill you if—”
“You had any balls. Yeah, whatever,” Jack said. “Shut up and keep walking.”
“Look up.”
“Listen, Alex. I’m not playing games with you.”
“I’m serious. Look up.”
Jack stopped walking and turned to face Alex. He shook his head and then looked up as the cloud above began to part and the bare feet of the first wave of the new horde descended through the sky.
“Fucking run,” Jack said.
Alex looked at him and then back to the sky as the undead floated down. Puffs of sand rose into the air where their feet made contact. The horde started to gather on the blacktop, slowly choking the highway off from the city.
Jack grabbed Alex’s arm and ran for the nearest building. The creatures descended in long, slow waves. He saw their faces, some without skin and others with limbs missing. They wore clothes but most was in tattered strips clinging to their bodies. The women had chunks of hair missing and the men were toothless. Jack tried to break the spell, to run from the mesmerizing scene of the dead dropping upon them. They were not in danger of being crushed by the falling bodies, but would find themselves trapped inside the horde if they did not act soon.
Alex broke free of Jack’s grip and ran behind the young man towards the remains of a low-level office building. He shouted at Jack.
“I don’t think these are gifts from heaven.”
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“Funny, asshole,” Jack said, yelling over his shoulder. “Let’s get inside and then game plan.”
The two men raced into the building. Jack turned and slammed the door shut. The horde gathered in the middle of the street. None approached them or the building.
“What the hell is going on?”
“It’s the horde,” Jack said. “I met them before, in another reversion. But they weren’t flying zombies there. This is some crazy shit.”
Alex ran to a window. The top half was gone but the bottom pane of glass remained. It was covered in a dry film with cobwebs and dust. He looked over the top and at the scene in the street. The undead kept coming, descending like summer locusts. He estimated hundreds, if not thousands, dropped from the sky.
“This must be how they get here,” Jack said.
“Where are they coming from?” Alex asked.
“It doesn’t matter. They’re here to pin us down, keep us from moving through the reversion. In a weird way, they work for the cloud. They feed it by letting it roll over the people they trap.”
“I don’t get it,” Alex said.
“You don’t have to.”
Jack grabbed a desk that was upside down in the corner of the office. They appeared to be in a waiting room. Next to the overturned desk were a few chairs, a table lamp and a magazine rack jumbled into a pile mixed with sand. Several broken frames hung from the wall in varying states of disarray. The photos and glass were missing from some so the wood framed a bare spot on the wall. Others had the image intact but it was so faded, it looked more like an ink blotter than a photograph. Jack pushed the desk across the low-grade carpeting until it was in front of the door. He motioned at Alex, using his eyes to point at the chairs.
“Throw them on top of the desk.”
“I thought you said they wanted to pin us down, not come after us?”
“What if I’m wrong? You want to deal with them if I’m wrong?”
Alex nodded and followed Jack’s instructions. The undead gathered on the blacktop between the guardrails. So many landed in the reversion, they began to spill over and onto the sidewalks. Once their feet hit the ground, the zombies swayed back and forth but remained fixed. The sheer force of their numbers pushed the horde closer to the buildings. None of them took steps toward the building where Alex and Jack hid, although the mass pushed them in that direction.
“Looks like they’re trying to keep us from getting to the city. I don’t think they’ll attack us, but we’re going to have fight our way through.”
“With what?”
Jack cursed and spat on the floor.
“Let’s see what we can find.”
He yanked on the interior door. It came open along with a rush of air and more sand. The inner office looked as black as outer space.
“Here,” Jack said. He tossed Alex a lighter he had in his pocket. “The flame is weak but it should give us enough light to search the place.”
Alex took another look out the window. The horde swelled so much, it now covered the ground. He could not see the sidewalk or the highway. Brown looked up and noticed the flood of bodies slowed as fewer and fewer fell from the sky. He thought hundreds were still on the way down, each dropping in a straight line as if tied to a rope. But whatever started the deluge was thinning. Getting through them would be another matter.
Jack waited for Alex. He used his thumb to flick down and Jack waited for the butane to ignite. A flame grew and, as Alex suspected, it was green and sickly. The lighter was better than darkness but only slightly. Alex took three steps into the room with Jack two steps behind. They were in an open space, most likely the administrative area of a doctor’s office. A half-wall ran from one side of the room to the other with a hallway perpendicular. Alex held the flame above his head revealing open doors in the hallways with brass numbers still tacked to the face of them.
“Knives or heavy shit. Like a cane. Anything you can use to bust them in the fucking head. Probably lots of needles but I’m guessing they’re beyond rabies shots.”
Alex laughed and scanned the hallway for anything of use. He took a step to the half-wall and peered over the counter. He could see a computer monitor on its side, the screen black like the dead eye of a Cyclops. Cables and wires lay like thin snakes in the sand and two metal shelves rested against the wall, cocked at an angle after having dumped their contents to the floor. The scene reminded Alex of a newsroom graveyard, a place where the tools of journalism went to die. In addition, several lab coats lay scattered about the room. A rush of wind came through and the edges of one coat fluttered like a dying dove.
“If the cotton lasted, then the bodies would still be here, at least the bones. Where are all the bodies?”
Jack stopped. His mouth hung open and he scratched the top of his head.
“Are you fucking serious? Have you seen the forecast today, Alex? They’re calling for zombie showers all day long… Are you really confused about where the bodies are?”
“That doesn’t explain this. I know they’re falling from the sky, but it doesn’t explain what happened to the people in this city. It’s like they vanished.”
Jack shook his head as he picked through the debris behind the counter, hoping to find a weapon. His hand brushed across something cold and he froze. He curled his fingers around the object and felt the weight of the steel. Alex held the lighter toward Jack and let out a low, long whistle.
“Sweet. You got a pipe wrench. Maybe a maintenance guy dropped that on the way out,” Alex said.
Jack smiled at Alex and held the pipe wrench up in the air. It would have been painted at one time but was now the dark orange color of rust. The adjustment rusted together over time, making it useless for shutting off water valves. But none of that mattered to Jack. He had a heavy object he could use to bash the horde.
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s see if we can find you something.”
Alex stood and walked over to Jack when the noise came from the dark hallway. Jack looked at Alex and smacked the lighter from his hand. It tumbled into the black ether in a fit of sparks before clattering to the floor amongst a heap of other forgotten items. Alex said nothing and remained perfectly still.
“Don’t move,” Jack whispered.
The noise came again. It sounded like a dragon with bronchitis, taking long slow breaths that ended with a sizzle. There was a rhythm to it Jack thought he recognized.
“If it’s fucking spider crabs, I swear…”
He let the thought trail off as he felt Alex take a step closer, curiosity taking over as they prepared to make a stand against the threat.
The noise became louder and the source of it came closer. Jack peered around the corner of the half-wall and into the hallway. Without the lighter, he could not see the walls or the doors. It looked like he was staring straight into a black hole. The air moved in syncopation with the sound.
“We have to get the fuck out of here.”
“And go out there?” Alex asked.
“I can’t take any more spider crabs. Last time, they fucked me up. I can’t stay.”
Alex grabbed Jack’s arm as the young man’s voice became louder in correlation to the adrenaline surging through his body.
“Let’s wait.”
Jack looked again into the darkness and felt the thing coming for him. He expected to see glaring red eyes followed by pincers that would skewer his heart like a summer kabob. His lungs hurt and his palms were sweaty. The wrench slid in his grip and he almost dropped it to the floor.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Jack said.
Alex reached over and felt for Jack’s hand. The young man shivered and Alex hushed him. He peeled Jack’s fingers off the wrench and took it into his own hand.
“I’ll check it out.”
Jack leaned back on the wall behind the counter. He closed his eyes and nodded his head even though Alex could not see him.
“Fine,” he said. The word came out like a raspy cough.
Alex walked to the back wall and picked his way through the debris as best as he could remember. He moved between unseen obstacles until his right thigh struck something hard. Alex winced and doubled-over, biting his bottom lip until he could taste the bitter sting of blood. He wanted to cry out, writhe in pain, but the sound was advancing down the hallway toward them. Alex swallowed and bit harder into his lip to keep from screaming. When the initial surge of pain subsided, he limped past the unseen obstacle until he was in front of the counter and in the path of whatever was making the noise. Alex closed his eyes and waited for the dark to reveal its secret.
Chapter 10
Fed from the Huron River in Michigan at a boggy spot near Lake Erie, a sulfurous spring formed a deep pool that pulsed as if a hidden monster lay just beneath the surface. In the sixteenth century, the Wyandotte tribe lived in the area and the elders spoke of the strange occurrences taking place at the water’s edge. They noted times when the water would roil and foam and then reduce to a perfect calm. The tribe warned the children to stay away from the pool, believing it to be the haunt of an evil spirit.
A party of travelers from a nearby clan camped near the spring and made offerings to it, believing the pool was home to a strange god. The warriors tossed gifts into the pool as they were instructed by members of the Wyandotte and the water erupted. They stood on the banks of the bog and watched as the water parted and a creature rose from within.
The warriors were accustomed to the natural tendencies of the woodland creatures and were well-versed in the ways of the spirits. What they saw rise out of the pool was neither natural nor spiritual.
A massive, white panther stood on the surface of the water as easily as if it was on dry ground. It faced the warriors with saliva dripping from its fangs. The panther’s eyes were as red as fire and its tongue as black as tar. It walked toward them, each paw slapping at the surface of the water. The men walked backward toward the forest, fearful of what could happen if they turned around and showed weakness. The panther stopped and turned sideways where an arrow stuck out of its side.
