A Shrouded World 7

by Mark Tufo

  The orb was expanding; when it would be big enough to allow us entry, if that was even the case, was anyone’s guess. Right now, that was all conjecture; this could seriously just be a Facetime Across the Galaxies app. It was big enough that Jack, Trip and I could jump through. But this wasn’t a hula hoop; I had a gut feeling that anything that didn’t smoothly glide through would be left wriggling on top of this mesa, and the remainder of us would be writhing in agony on the other side with either a neatly cauterized wound or one that looked like it had been cut with an extremely sharp katana blade. And BT, he wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t think he could launch the three feet needed into the air, and his bulk, well, that goes without saying.

  “Now or never, Mike!” Night runners were all around us, most coming from the front, but a good many were pulling a flanking maneuver. BT had, luckily, figured out how to use the staple gun; Trip was his normal Robin Hood with a slingshot, myself and Jack were firing at will, but it wasn’t going to be enough. I broke my train of thought and started running toward him for back up. The funny thing was that once the link was opened, it didn’t much matter if I was thinking about it or not—if it ever really had mattered. As I ran, the filament that had been projecting outward began to add its volume to the hovering ball. Instead of holding on to its shape, it began to elongate, becoming like a teardrop, then to a wicked stepmother oval mirror. When the relic was close enough, the edges glowed a vibrant purple; all I could think was this signified it was ready. It was going to be a tight fit for BT, but he should make it.

  “Jack, it’s ready!”

  He had a murderous look of concentration on his features as he dealt with the runners.

  “Get Trip and BT through, hurry!”

  That was the thing, though; I wasn’t sure if it was truly a doorway or a food processor. How could I be? I would have gone first, but I was afraid that as I took the relic, the pathway through the stars would close with me. I was in the Marines; I knew the concept of sending people to their deaths. Didn’t mean I was comfortable with it. Trip saved me the angst.

  “Looks like Minsk in the winter!” He plunged headfirst. I think somewhere in that noggin of his, he knew the inherent dangers, and if this thing really did slice and dice, he wanted to make it as quick as possible. It was many long seconds later and a saving shot to the runner coming up behind me before I saw Trip emerge through the other side. He stumbled and fell, quickly standing and, at the time, I thought waving back at us. How wrong I was about that, but we see what we want to.

  “BT, you’ve gotta go!”

  He was in a position to see what I had; it was still preferable to what we were dealing with. A runner had launched at BT, who had lashed out with his left hand, concaving the entire middle of the unfortunate beast. With his armed right, he’d dropped a half dozen staples into the stunned face of the runner. Now, if he could do that another hundred times, we’d be all set. I caught a glimpse of Trip with his hands on his knees, right before BT obscured my view and stepped through. There was the sound like one might hear when a bubble pops and then he was gone. I had no idea if it mattered whether I held the relic stable or not, but that was getting increasingly more difficult to do. I was firing with one hand, moving my body to avoid contact while standing as stationary as I could.

  A runner completely bowled into Jack just as BT made his way onto the alien horizon; he skidded along like he was on a fast-moving walkway escalator and hadn’t thought to continue walking at the end. I saw him teeter over as I went to help as best I could with the tangle of friend and foe. Jack cried out angrily as the runner bit down on his padded elbow; it was doing its best to get through the heavy material to the meat beneath. Its head was shaking back and forth in a fervent way. I didn’t dare shoot it with a staple, as closely entangled as they were. I lined up a kick; it wasn’t quite as satisfactory a connection as I would have liked, but it was enough for the runner to be forced from its perch. Its teeth clacked together loudly and it turned to me, hatred in its eyes for what I had done. Jack was quick to put four staples under its chin and neck.

  It took longer than either of us would have liked for it to sing sweet lullabies. Jack got up quickly and gave me a look like: I hope you know what you’re doing, and, in that instant, my gaze back told him I had no fucking clue, then he wordlessly told me I was an asshole, then he took the leap. I wasn’t sure if I would jam up the line by jumping in before he was all the way through, but I had five runners within arm’s length; I did not have the luxury of waiting. The traveling looked like it took a while from my previous point of view, but it was all but instantaneous from the moving through perspective. One moment I was about to be eaten, the next I was sliding along the surface of loose green rocks that turned out to be as sharp as coral, my pants taking the brunt of the damage as I fell and rolled a few times.

  I was lucky that I still held on to the relic, as I cradled it like a football to protect it, otherwise I would have cut my hands up trying to brace the fall. By the time I came to a stop, there was a tightness in my chest and a fast-rising panic; it felt like I had the wind knocked out of me, but I did not have pain in my stomach from the impact, if that makes sense. Normally, with the air expelled suddenly from your lungs, it takes many long moments of small breaths before you can get back to a normal rhythm, until the diaphragm, which has been temporarily paralyzed from the strike, begins to move. This was different. Everything was working fine and dandy—there just wasn’t enough air.

  Some may not be able to relate, but from one that suffers from panic attacks, it was like that. Your heart rate elevates, you try to catch your breath but fall short. Each subsequent breath is struggling to make up for the deficit, and it begins to become a cascading failure.

  Trip, who had been here the longest, was sitting on the ground in a classic yoga position, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling slowly. BT’s eyes I’m sure mirrored my own, as they were bugging out.

  “Poison,” BT managed to get out in a ragged whisper.

  “No.” Jack shook his head. It was a few seconds later when he clarified. “High altitude.”

  Of us all, it would make sense he would know that. “Can’t stay long. Body’s dying.” His sentences were halting. A few years back, my wife had got on a Mt. Everest kick, meaning, we’d watched a few movies and shows, so I knew that there was a zone of death, a point in elevation in which humans began to actively die from lack of oxygen. A little over twenty-six thousand feet and a person quite literally has less than a day of life left.

  “Try…relax.” He said the words; not sure if he was heeding them quite yet. Usually, that’s one of those things easier said than done, and he had a tough time just getting them out. I stood slowly; I didn’t want to do anything that caused exertion and required more O2. I scanned the horizon; if we were indeed on a mountain, it was vast, and we had very little chance of descending before our death-o-meter expired.

  BT was hitching wildly; he was quickly riding down the terror tunnel. Trip seemed to be doing the best, but he also wasn’t moving, and that wasn’t going to help the rest of us. I took measured steps over to him and tapped his shoulder. He tilted his head slightly and opened one eye.

  “Need…to…move.”

  He nodded and stood. There was the city I had seen off in the distance. The tall towers were so thin, from this distance, they still appeared to be swaying. I can’t say I was getting used to the lack of air, but as I became familiar with it and realized I could still function, I began to calm my breathing and take account of my surroundings. The ground we stood on was green, but the green of a cheap artificial Christmas tree. A bright white sun shone against an azure sky; it was all surreal, like a dreamscape in a David Lynch movie. Hopefully it would switch soon, and I would be standing naked in a crowded subway, having left my homework undone. We were on a rocky debris field, moving with any speed would have been difficult even if we weren’t already on oxygen half-rations. We were moving toward what we figure
d was a population center; it seemed logical that they would live at a lower altitude. Later, I would blame that lack of reasoning on the lack of oxygen. It wasn’t the altitude that made this place all wrong for life, it was the inhabitants. I, at least, figured out why they wore the masks: our O2 levels were too high for them. I’m not sure what being flooded with oxygen feels like, but right now, I was willing to give it a go. The city we figured was going to be our salvation was anything but.

  The going was slow, and the rock field gave way to a purplish, thorny undergrowth. It wasn’t long before I wished for the ankle rolling familiarity of the small stones. The plants were small, but the thorns were huge, strong, and sharp enough to pierce the bottom of our footwear. Walking felt as if we were moving through a sucking mud field; every step was laborious as we had to exert effort to pull up and away from the barbed protrusions. We hadn’t seen much in the way of wildlife, not wild life, anyway. Occasionally there was the skeletal carcass of some poor beast that had wandered into this killing field. I can’t even begin to imagine what they’d gone through in their final moments, feet continually ripped open as they fought for a way out before losing so much blood they finally gave up and lay down.

  “Want me to hold that?” Trip asked in nearly a conversational manner. I was more than willing to give up the relic; it seemed to be getting heavier the farther we went.

  Oh, I wanted to bitch and complain, had epic retorts for this place, but that would have required an energy I could not conjure. Even thoughts were laborious; it was all I could do to stay standing, but to fall over would have spelled the end.

  “Plants…meat eaters,” Jack managed to say. It changed nothing. Maybe they absorbed the blood and proteins from their prey, but it wasn’t like we were thinking of stopping here for the night. All I got from those words was how tough a time he was having, which meant we all were. Even Trip, who, for some unfathomable reason, always seemed the most capable, was hunched over with a noticeable limp. My field of focus was generally down, and I caught sight of the bottom of his boot treads. He was missing gaping chunks of rubber. The thorns were tearing his soles apart. There was no reason to think it wasn’t happening to mine as well but, again, what was the point of looking? I’d be in an awkward position that would threaten to drop me on my ass. BT was stumbling, more side to side than straight ahead, and was falling behind. I’d love to say at this point I was ultimately altruistic and wanted to help, but that wasn’t the case.

  Each of us was actively dying, just a matter of fact. The body and the mind tend to get very defensive of holding on to that spark. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself; you can’t help others if you can’t help yourself, and if my oxygen mask dropped from the overhead compartment, I would help him as soon as I put it over my own face. I could feel my heart pounding through my rib cage, struggling to get enough blood pumping; my mind was desperate for the life-giving oxygen that we were being deprived of. My vision was beginning to double as a blinding headache ripped over the top of my skull. I knew enough about altitude sickness to figure nausea would be rearing its fucking head soon. Retching should be fun, given the current circumstances. I did manage an “oh shit” as Jack fell over. Stoic bastard didn’t even cry out as he rolled over and was looking up to one of the white stars this place called its sun. I trekked toward him, not sure what I was going to do once I got there. It was of a greater probability he would pull me over than me being able to pull him up. He coughed twice; it was when the third dusty dry one came out, I realized it was a laugh of sorts.

  “Ground.” He patted the earth.

  Didn’t need any further explanation since when he raised his hand, it wasn’t a bloody, tattered, ragged, mass of torn skin. I wanted to continue; I also wanted to sleep for the next week. I let gravity do its thing. My body fell to the ground; I did just enough not to strike anything vital. My arms were outstretched. There was a moment of peace where I came to an acceptance with my predicament. We were going to die; I was going to die, and I was okay with that, mostly because I had to be. You know, if you can’t fight them, join them, kind of thing. It was peaceful, in a sense, to call it a day.

  “Did…best,” I muttered.

  Jack raised a fist, which I lightly bumped. We’d rated—fuck it—we’d earned an easy out. It wasn’t the ending we wanted; it was the one we deserved. My thoughts traveled back to my family. There was a sadness they would never know I’d died on an inhospitable world, potentially millions of miles and multiple realities away. I mean, in their wildest dreams, how could they think that?

  “Tried…let’s relic out of here.” Jack, with some effort, sat up.

  I berated myself for not thinking of that earlier; too much stubbornness to get the mission complete. The reality was, I’d just never thought of a strategic withdrawal, never even dawned on me. Not going to beat myself up about it; nobody else said anything along those lines until now either. Maybe we thought we had enough strength to make it through, or maybe it was because we knew there would be no end to any of this until we put an end to it. We’d keep flitting across the universe, stomping our feet on wildfires, and this had been our chance to put a high-pressure hose to the problem. Not that it had done any good. We had no water pressure because the hose leaked like a sieve.

  “Runners!” I heard the word; it meandered slowly around the folds in my mind until it rung the bell that signified I knew what that meant. With a colossal effort, I was sitting up, like Jack. We were both looking at Trip and BT, who were about a hundred yards away, and, given the current terrain they were traversing, that was somewhere equivalent to a mile and a half. A quarter-mile past them were a dozen or so runners. I don’t know if the air thing was bothering them, but they were definitely being hindered by the thorns. They were trying to run but, more often than not, fell over in their haste. Fuck ‘em. By the time they got close enough to be a threat, they were going to be dead. I thought about laying back down, but that was before I heard a high-pitched whine coming from behind. Not sure if it was BT’s pointing or my hearing that picked it up first.

  Multiple crafts were coming. Two appeared to be hovering a few feet from the ground, another was higher up and ahead of the other two. The land-based vehicles were blocky-looking and seemed as if they could have been pulled from an eight-bit video game, while the aircraft was sleek and menacing, more along the lines of Jack’s helicopter, but without any rotors. Thought about running, but the energy to do it and a place to go were lacking.

  The ship in the air was more like Jack’s than I had initially thought. There was a loud sonic boom; this was followed immediately by a concussion of air, as a projectile was shot from the bottom. The leading edge of where the runners had been erupted with an explosion of melted rock and ground. Right then, I was happier they were killing that fucking undergrowth than the runners. I don’t know if they were just finding the range with the first shot, but then with a machine-gun rapidness, dozens, hundreds, of the strange rounds blasted the earth. When the dust settled, there was nothing left, save a newly formed crater.

  “Rail gun.” Jack was watching intently. I’d turned my attention back to the hovercrafts that were almost upon us.

  “I’m sorry, Yack. Ponch!” Trip yelled.

  I only had to wonder why he was apologizing for the merest of moments when I saw the filament form from the front of the relic.

  “Son of a bitch,” was all I could manage as Trip and BT walked through an opening to who knows where.

  I was equal parts pissed they’d gone without us and happy they’d got away. Nope, utter rubbish, that last statement. I was just pissed. I think Jack and I were in agreement; I heard more than one muttered “motherfucker.”

  “He drags us in…to this shit…then leaves.” He’d no sooner finished that statement when the hovercrafts stopped behind us. That was good on one end of the spectrum, it meant the gunship wasn’t going to melt us into the ground. There were loud exclamatory whistling sounds that could only come from one
being. Ten of the ugly bastards exited the vehicles. The last thing I remember with any clarity was the feeling of impact as one of those fucking staples punched into my shoulder. Jack was already down.

  13

  Mike Journal Entry 2

  I don’t remember much of what happened from that point forward—a lot of whistling-slash-yelling, lot of traveling, lot of poking and prodding, pretty sure none of it involved the anal cavity. I was out of my mind with fatigue, delirium, and the staple poison. Upon awakening, all I remembered was the pain. It was located primarily on my face and scalp, though there was a heavy degree of discomfort spread around. I was lying on a cold hard surface, felt a lot like concrete, a thin blue blanket the only thing given for comfort or warmth. The room, for lack of a better word, wasn’t much bigger than a standard closet. Four walls and no door made from the same material I was lying on. There was no ceiling; it opened up to the sky some thirty feet above me. I stood; vertigo put me back on my ass. My face, or the thing attached to it, hit the ground first.

  I tried to talk but was only able to produce a painful grunt, which devolved into a coughing fit. Something was in my throat. I reached up to touch a hard-plastic shell that entirely covered my nose and mouth. Either that was the reason I could breathe better or my captors had brought me down to somewhere closer to sea level. I tried to pull it off, and what I had to figure was an intubating tube, out of me. I was trying not to panic, but it’s a difficult goal when you have foreign objects inside of you that you desperately want out.

  “Do not touch that!” roared in from above me like a vengeful and angry god. The words were forceful but did not contain inflection, as if they had been spoken by the world’s loudest tone-deaf person. “Do not move! Food!” The same volume, the same disturbing lack of timbre. I ducked as I saw a small cylinder tumbling down toward me. It clanged off the ground, the sound amplified in the small enclosure. “Eat!” I was looking at something roughly the size of an old thermos. Although this did not have a discernible lid, no opening that I could see at all. “Eat!” boomed in again. I grabbed the container, if only to shut the voice up.