A Shrouded World 7

by Mark Tufo

  “Fuck me.” I took another step, it hadn’t yielded any space, but, to be fair, it couldn’t. On a side note, wart-beast had pulled up short. It either knew something about Gummy I didn’t or it was being exceedingly cautious, something that I should have been. Warty was moving closer and soon would be able to grab the back of me and do whatever it is wart-beasts do with their enemies. I got close enough to Gummy I could smell him; it wasn’t completely unpleasant, something along the lines of Play-Doh mixed with hamburger.

  “Now what, Gummy?” Maybe his head tilted in question; little jelly arms stuck out, then stretched as if in preparation for an embrace, an embrace that could see me eaten. “You do look like my Aunt Beluga.” I meant Bettie; she wasn’t technically related; we just called her that. “She was built…” I looked for the right term that wouldn’t offend him/it, “sturdy, yeah, she was sturdy. Wet fucking kisses, man, hated the wet kisses, loved the five bucks she used to hand out. Do you think that made me some sort of boy gigolo?” I walked into the arms. The regret was immediate, I was pulled into it like I was the loops and he was the hooks of Velcro. I tried to pull away, he pulled his arms in. Then it got weird—I know, right?! This is where it gets weird?

  His arms swiveled with me in them. For a fleeting second, I was out over a hole, thinking this was it. The next, I was again on the pathway, though, this time, Gummy was between me and Warty. He released me and said something; it was a long drawn out “ooo” sound, but was cut off as our captors were telling us to get moving. I stumbled a few steps, thanked him/it and began to put distance to the entire affair. When I figured it was safe to look back, Gummy was moving along slowly and Warty was still behind. I was happy to have got away from the threat, but the affair had left me even more drained than I already was. The inverted pyramid was closer, but no part of me thought there was a reprieve waiting for me inside. Once there, it was a very good chance I would wish I was back out on the walkways. The shit is always less smelly on the other side of the fence or something like that.

  Three more times we were given a food drop, and three more times this was followed with a five-minute break which was almost more torturous than continuing. Dropping into a hole was beginning to look more and more like a viable option. It might not even be on purpose; sleep deprivation will make the steadiest of people tremulous. I looked back, Gummy was still slushing along, the top part of his body, head, whatever you call it, was sagging down like a Starburst left on the dashboard during the summer. I could make out Warty behind him, our feud, for the time being, forgotten. I was finally in the shadow of the great tower, the holes, thankfully, were gone. That was good because I could weave around and not have to worry about plummeting to my death, but bad if Warty still had a problem with me.

  It was starting to get dense with entities, like Walmart a week before Christmas, though most of these things didn’t look as bad as a lot of those people, and a lot less frantic to get somewhere. I was trying to cheer myself up; it wasn’t working so well. I kept walking, my head down so low I didn’t even see the thing that bumped into my shoulder and scurried away. Not sure why it would be afraid of me; I could barely lift my legs, much less throw a punch. It was small, humanoid—in the fact that it had two legs—its arms were more like claws, and if it had a face, it was hidden under gray scales. Small fights broke out as so many species were forcibly integrated. None lasted more than a few seconds. Either they were like me and too tired to bother or the skull cap was being used against them.

  I was doing my best to pretend the press of things around me were fellow concertgoers after the event was over. Hard to do when it seemed half of them oozed slime or smelled like a whale, washed up on the beach, laying in the Caribbean sun for a week, after having eaten a metric ton of hundred-year-old eggs. Zombies had, for me, moved way down off the top of the odiferous offenders' list. I was shuffling along; I had no more speed to give and no room afforded me anyway. Had I not been so exhausted as to literally be propped up by the multitude, there was a good chance I would have been in the full throes of a panic attack induced by my claustrophobia.

  Slowly we were making our way to the center of the behemoth above us. My stomach grumbled, letting me know it was gruel time. I had a feeling we weren’t getting any more drone packages while we were under here; there were simply too many beings pressed together, short, tall, wide, narrow…there would be no way, no matter how tech-savvy the whistlers were, to get that many drones in and out of here. Oh, and being able to catch a full breath was again becoming an issue. I’ve been in stressful positions in my life, but this was shaping up to be an all-time worst. Don’t even know how it happened, but at some point I’d fallen asleep. I had dreams of hovering just above the ground, the tips of my boots dragging on a dirt pathway.

  When I awoke, I was indeed hovering, but along the lines of delirium, lack of food, water, oxygen, the heat from the horde, lack of meaningful rest, stress…I could continue, but suffice it to say I was at my breaking point. The entrance was maybe closer, so that was good, and I’d not been trampled while I’d passed out, but I knew no good was going to come from within there, it would only represent a change from this untenable state. I looked down. My feet were not on the ground. Why I was still moving my legs was beyond me. I about didn’t give a shit. My back was soaked through with sweat. I turned my head slightly; I was looking at Gummy, who had gone from his vibrant hue of fire engine red to a washed-out pastel version of himself, something you’d see on an old 50s gas station sign. “Weathered” would be a more succinct description.

  Two little arms were clamped around my midsection; it was clear to me I was his prison bitch. He’d paid someone a pack of smokes for my company. That was my last thought before I once again went to night-night land. When I came to, it was to the blessed coupling of my feed tube to a drone. No idea how long I’d been out, but I was now at the threshold to the building. I felt a heavy, low grumbling, like that an angry gorilla might make, and it was right behind me. It was Gummy, eating. I turned and could see that he was feeling better as he'd begun to recoup some of his lost color. Then he surprised the living hell out of me.

  “Foooooood.” It was a long, heavily vibrated pronunciation but clear enough to hear. Now I had to hope he was talking about the drone hovering over him and not the individual stuck to where I assumed his gut was. I felt better for the sustenance, and felt maybe it was time to earn my keep.

  “Umm, Gummy, you can let me down now.” If I could understand him, there was no reason to think he couldn’t understand me. Don’t get me wrong, I hated the fucking skull cap and what it could do and what it represented, but it acted as a universal translator, and that was something I was going to use to my advantage.

  “Bob,” he answered, this time in a much more condensed way.

  I didn’t know what to make of that.

  “Bob,” he repeated.

  “No fucking way. Is that your name?”

  I’m going to go ahead and give him traditional human components because I needed to make sense of what I was dealing with, but, in reality, I had no way of knowing if the top of his body was his head or his anus, or if he had either. He did have eyes, and they could seemingly swim around the entirety of him. They tended to reside high up, but that could merely be because he wanted to be able to see better; maybe he kept them much lower during normal times. He did have a mask adhered to his face and a skull cap in the same places I did, so…I’d like to say that was helpful, but either the whistlers knew exactly what they were doing or had absolutely no clue. Anyway, he bobbed his “head” at my query.

  “Mike,” I told him.

  “Milk.” I was thinking something got lost in translation.

  “Mike,” I repeated, and he said “Milk” again.

  I wanted to try something different. Said “Milk” the next time. If it is somehow possible to get exasperation from a tub of Jell-O, that was what happened. As far as Bob was concerned, my name was Milk. We were off to a decent start;
most don’t name their food…or I’m generally just known as an expletive.

  “Can you put me down?”

  I could only hope that didn’t come across as “could you tear me limb from limb because I’m really into unicorns.”

  My feet gently touched down, and I folded in on myself. My legs were numb and my knees were, for the moment, made out of the same stuff as Gummy—I mean Bob. I stumbled a few feet forward before things began to work of their own accord. Heard a grunt over to my side; thousands upon thousands of beings in the general area, yet Warty was somehow nearby, our feud not forgotten, I guessed, otherwise, we would have lost each other in the shuffle. I had Bob to thank for still being alive, that went without saying. Warty was yelling something at me, but I could not hear it over the general din; plus, his voice had that robotic tinniness to it. This would normally have been a source of amusement for me, but I was just so damn weary.

  Warty made a step toward me but veered off when he saw Bob. In appearances, Warty was much more intimidating than Bob; I wondered if I could ask him why he was so scared of the blob, and if he feared him, shouldn’t I? I could ask Bob about it, but I wouldn’t want to offend.

  I’m throwing pronouns around again, just for my sanity, there was zero way I could decipher gender; I certainly wasn’t going to check under the hood, and, fuck, I mean, what would I even be looking for? For all I knew, they had classifications and parts in locations I couldn’t even begin to imagine or understand. Where’s BT when you need him? Oh, to see a friendly face just about now! I used to love watching the show Survivor; the contestants always talked about how difficult it was to be surrounded by people you could not trust. I now knew implicitly how they felt. Now that break time had expired, we were on the move again. We were underneath the inverted mountain, and all heading deeper into the interior. It was so vast I could not see any of the other three walls, only the one behind us, and it was the gray of a summer sky threatening to storm. The floor, in contrast, had at one time been white; this I could tell through the smears of blood, entrails, and feces.

  “Bob.” I turned to my traveling companion; he wasn’t looking at me, but further off.

  “Great. I get the Groot of the Apocalypse. Bob, I’m not Rocket Raccoon, I’m not going to be able to tell what you’re talking about from your inflection of the same word.”

  “Bob,” he said sternly, this time he was looking directly at me.

  “Oh, for the love of…” Then a long, thin, jelly arm protruded from about his shoulder height. I could see just over some of the beings in front of me, and I could see something happening, but as of yet, couldn’t figure out what was going on. Creatures of all kinds were walking on air…but that doesn’t make any sense, right? Then it started to coalesce. They weren’t hovering; they were walking up an enormous clear ramp. I could make out the shimmer of the pathway as it snaked its way to the sky, and I craned my neck to look at the impossibly high walkway. “Fuck me, that doesn’t look safe.” And, as if to punctuate my point, something close to the size of an elephant that looked more like a hydrangea bush came plummeting down and crashed, or, more like crushed, into the unlucky ones beneath it. “Bob, it doesn’t have handholds! Who builds a stairway without a railing?”

  “Bob,” he said solemnly.

  I would have stopped in stunned silence if not for the continued press of those around us. “Do we have to climb that? We have to stay close to the middle.”

  This time he said nothing—didn’t need to. I had to admit, I was pretty happy he had common sense; it wasn’t quite as common a trait as the words would lead you to believe. We’d been walking for what felt like weeks. My legs thrummed with pain that flared up with every step taken. I was beginning to hobble, fearful of placing my feet down because of the ensuing pain. Bob asked if I wanted a belly ride. I declined, politely. Some of it had to do with the weird sensation when I would make contact with him, but mostly it was because I figured he had to be suffering as well. His red hue was once again waning, and carrying me would expedite the matter. As we got closer to the walkway, I was in awe of the sheer magnitude of it. Three jumbo jets could have been wingtip to wingtip and still have plenty of room, and still it was packed full of beings from across the cosmos.

  Just how many of us had they taken, and for how long had they been doing it that necessitated this type of facility? I still had no idea what awaited us inside. My first step upward occurred just as a random thought about how they were feeding us came into mind. There was no doubt we were eating the pureed remains of all those that had fallen before us. How many Bobs, Warties, Spider-things, and zombies had I consumed so far? I wanted to retch out my entire existence; the tube shoved down my throat prevented that from happening. If only it could have taken the thoughts away as easily. If just walking straight ahead was torturous, traveling upward was approaching the inner circles of hell. My calves burned to the point I was wondering when they would catch flame or merely explode. They were so tight I was in serious danger of tearing a muscle, and right now, that was a death sentence. More than once, I contemplated getting on my hands and knees and crawling. Good chance it would be faster than I was moving now.

  Then came an unexpected rub, and not the cool ones that sometimes happen in the middle of the night, when the wife…forget it. What I’m talking about is the furthest thing away from that. I didn’t catch on at first. Built into the giant pathway were huge plateaus. Apparently, even our asshole hosts realized that, at some point, we needed to rest. I’d been on the plateau for a few minutes when the food drone rolled around. My stomach protested and praised the incoming sustenance. We ate, but unlike other times, we were not forced to continue after five minutes. I was lying back, my legs thumping with so much pain that any thought for comfort was tossed out the window. Bob was standing as a silent sentinel, guarding my body as others flowed past, too lost in their misery to notice me or stop, I suppose.

  After a bit, Bob began to thump his lower body into my head. I got the hint, he wanted to get going. I was as close as one can be, without actually doing said thing, to telling him to go on without me, that I’d make it there on my own. The deciding factor was Warty. Yup, my buddy had stopped when we had; no farther than twenty feet away, he was waiting for his opportunity. I wanted to tell him to let it go; as insane as this whole thing was, there was a chance he might break out into song if I did. That makes more sense if you think about it for a second. If Bob left, Warty was going to come over and stomp my head into the ground like he was performing pigéage…grape stomping. A useless nugget of trivia that free floated around in my head from a game played decades earlier.

  The food, the brief rest, it helped, just as duct tape can hold a nearly severed limb to a body. Sure, it works for a while, but you’re still going to need some serious care soon. As Willie would say, we were on the road again. I somehow think if I were going backward, I would have been traveling faster. I was gravity’s bitch at the moment. I’d dug down to the deepest of my reserves and was now operating on dregs and fumes.

  “I can’t fucking do it, Bob.” Wasn’t expecting an answer, I just needed him to know that when I stopped, I wasn’t going to get going again.

  “Bob,” came out as a heavy sigh.

  “I know, I know, man. I’ll miss you too.”

  “Bob!” The word had more oomph like I had missed something, and as if to accentuate this point, he bumped his belly into my backside. I looked up to see we were coming upon another platform, a mini-oasis in a desert of death. Drones were busy flying around, feeding those ahead of us. I felt a fit of unreasonable anger that they were eating and I wasn’t. As my foot touched down on the level ground, I received two things and neither was food. First was a short trilling alarm in my face mask and then a surge of what felt like electricity blasting through my nervous system. The shock couldn’t have lasted for more than three seconds, but the damage done was devastating. My muscles, which were already on their last legs, completely seized up. I had charle
y horses impairing half my body, and I could do nothing about it. I was on the ground, waiting for muscles to curl up as they were ripped free from their moorings.

  I was aware enough to know when Bob’s arms floated down to the bottom of his body, where they picked me up, much like a forklift to a full pallet of stones, which I very much felt like. We were moving at a good clip, much better than anything I could muster. Must have been about ten minutes later when my body began to unfurl like a folded flag once a stiff breeze hits it.

  “You all right?” I asked because I had the feeling he’d been struck the same way I had. We’d missed a check-in time and had paid for it with a not-so-gentle reminder of who was in charge, and no food. This was a compounding of punishments. If you missed a way station and were given a debilitating jolt along with no food, they were virtually assuring you’d never make the next; you also missed whatever rest you’d have gotten. What the hell was inside this place, and why were we being rushed?

  Bob didn’t answer with his trademark word; instead, it was with an action. My cap was somehow fused to my head; it was as much a part of me as my hands at this point. Different story for Bob. He pulled the cap down further into his body, so it looked like a file badly hidden in the Jell-O mold given to a prisoner by his mother. And if that wasn’t strange enough, he upped the ante, although I wasn’t even sure what I was seeing. The cap appeared to dissolve. One second it was whole, then it began to shimmer, lose its solid state, and became a shatter of particles before completely disappearing. Then, without skipping a beat, it began to form up again. My mouth was hanging agape.

  “Bob,” he said triumphantly, and I had to agree.

  “You sneaky bastard,” I told him. Maybe, just maybe, the whistlers weren’t quite as smart as they thought. Bob was a free agent. Now I just had to figure out if his agenda even remotely resembled my own. One thing was certain, Bob had no desire to miss his next feeding cycle, and I’d be damned if I was going to be the wrench that jammed up the works. “I’ve got this, Bob. Let me walk; let me literally carry my own weight.”