A Shrouded World - Whistlers (19 page)

“Well that’s gross,” I said as I trailed my sleeve across my face.

My head felt like an anvil, and I was debating moving at all when I noticed that my drool had pooled into a little recessed area on the floor. In that little recessed area was a pull ring. I didn’t think much of it at all other than I had drooled a lot. Then, my curiosity got piqued. Although, in all probability, it was an access panel for maintenance or tools for changing a tire. Even if it was a secret stash, it was probably something like pickled artichoke hearts or something equally as gross.

“Am I really going to stick my fingers in congealed goo to see a tire iron?” Apparently, yes, as I pulled up on the ring. “Holy...”

I had at least six or seven strung-together swears that would have been absolutely meaningless. I was looking at it, and I still wasn’t sure what I was seeing.

“Movie prop?” I asked as I moved down the bench so I could get off without falling in the opening. “Where did the dude that buys cheap-ass throwing stars by the case get a fr
iggin’ rocket-propelled grenade?”

I cautiously undid the latches holding it in place and gingerly pulled it out. Like most people, I’d seen dozens, if not hundreds, in the movies, but I’d never fired or even held one. I scraped against all the memories I could.

“Yup…never fired one.”

I was pretty convinced on this point. It was lighter than I expected, like maybe it was the prop I’d suspected earlier. Then I got my answer; it was a one-shot wonder. I read the directions that were printed on the side of the tube. It looked like they were written so a three-year-old, or Trip, could figure it out.

“Trip?”

I got that same funny feeling along my tongue, like I had when I said zombie.

“Trip, Trip, Trip.”

And like the third time was the charm it all rushed back at me. The escape from Trip’s home after he had unknowingly dosed me with acid. We had been in his van. I was close to hitting a fuel truck and then…what? We had found ourselves here, wherever ‘here’ was.

“Burning city, night runners, water tower, Jack.”

Everything, I remembered everything. My family, my Tracy, my Henry.

Where were they, though? Any of them?

My family was back in the fairly normal world I had left. Jack and Trip…
were they still alive?

I hadn’t seen them since Trip took out the tower with a slingshot. With or without them, my mission remained the same; survive until such time as I could be reunited with the ones I loved. Forward, ever forward, I needed to move. There was not much sense in going back to the tower. First off, I couldn’t really use it as a landmark to guide me back considering it was on the ground, and I had no idea the route I’d taken to get here last night. Secondly, if Trip and Jack survived, they definitely didn’t stay around that place. The plan all along had been to get away from there. No, if they were alive, their plan would have to be them coming back to the roadway. It was the only thing that made sense.

Although, where on the road they would come out was a mystery. We could be within a mile of each other on the road and never know it. I couldn’t let that weigh me down. If I waited here for them to show up, there was still a fifty percent chance they’d be ahead of me. I was never one for inaction. Right or wrong, I would be the master of my fate. Normally, that was Tracy’s gig, but she wasn’t here. I stood up, wavered for a second, and looked around. There were still five zombies around the bus; something I was going to have to take care of, and quickly. I let a window down.

“Zombies, hey, zombies,” I called out to them.

I started rapping on the side of the bus to get some of the thicker ones to pay attention. Within the span of half a minute, the five of them were snarling and snapping under my window. I felt like some twisted world’s version of the ice cream man, although instead of frozen treats, they wanted me. This had to happen fast. I once again threaded my barrel through the opening.

“Stay still, dipshits.”

Four shots later, three of them were dead or dying. Two moved out of range.

“Dammit.”

Wherever I moved, they moved away. It was like they were dogs and they thought I was trying to give them a bath. I would have just shot from where I was, but the screening was pretty thick.

Could it stop a bullet?

I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t want to keep making noise. More zombies would come, that was a given. I grabbed the RPG, I’ll be damned if I knew what I was going to do with it, but no effen way was I leaving something like that behind. Dumbass probably blew his entire wad on this. Who am I kidding? I probably would have done the same thing if given the opportunity. I moved the nun-chucks from their bracing position and did a quick glance to see if Lucy and Desi had moved to intercept. The female was a red-head, so it seemed appropriate to name her that even if ‘Desi’ was far from Hispanic. He looked like a skin-head, truth be told. The door opened with a loud squeal. I placed the RPG strap over my back, and got ready.

And they’re off
, came to mind as I first looked both ways and then stepped down.

I started at a jog, weaving through cars making Lucy’s approach as difficult as possible. When I turned to look, it appeared that Desi was the runner in the family. He wasn’t more than two cars away.

“I always liked you, although I never saw in you what Lucy did.”

The first round hit him in his tattooed arm. I think I’d done some serious damage to his inked-in koi fish. The second caught him in the shoulder, and his arm hung uselessly to the side. He dropped down suddenly. It wasn’t from the damage I’d inflicted, he just didn’t want anymore.

“I hate smart zombies.”

I was about to turn tail and run when I saw Lucy standing still. She was looking at me
. I don’t know if hatred even remotely conveys what she was directing toward me. She dropped down as well when I brought my rifle to bear.

“Shit.”

This time I went a little faster. I was not a fan of this new iteration of Lucy, remakes always suck. I’d gone for nearly a quarter of a mile when I turned to look over my left shoulder. Nothing. I was hoping they had gone in search of something easier to eat. It was when I turned over my right shoulder I saw them easily keeping pace with me. Unlike me, they had gone to the shoulder of the road where there weren’t any cars. While I was banging my thighs and bruising my shins as I ran into things, they were out for a Sunday stroll in the clear. I couldn’t even get my gun around fast enough before they ducked down.

I started cutting over so that I could also get in the clear. By the time I did so, they had melted back into the tangle. I got chills at the level of skill their pursuit displayed.
They did not seem overly interested in closing the fifty or so yards that separated us, but I knew that I’d have to deal with them later. One of us would screw up eventually. Mistakes in this game ended up in death. I did the only thing I could, I kept moving, albeit at a slower and slower pace. It wasn’t that I was winded; it was just that every footfall sent vibrations of pain into my skull that reverberated back in intense pain. It had begun to take over my thought processes so completely that I almost missed the fact that Lucy and Desi had halved the distance between us. If I played this right, I should be able to get a shot off before they could hide.

I slowed down even more so that I wouldn’t fall on my ass when I spun around. They’d yet to see my ruse and had crept even closer. I could have aimed and hit individual shirt buttons at this range. I turned, my rifle was right by my side. Lucy was first to catch on. The gun was about chest level, and she did something wholly unexpected. She grabbed Desi and pulled him towards her while also propelling away. Like most guys, he was completely clueless to his woman’s intentions, at least up until I plugged him three times. None of the three shots stopped him. But it kept him still long enough that I was able to put the fourth into his face and subsequently his brain. I’d like to say he had a look of betrayal on his face, but he probably knew it was coming. After all, he
had
paired up with a woman.

I’d just added another clueless male to the long list of men that had been used and discarded by a woman for their own means. Here was a Deneaux in training. Desi always was the dead weight in that relationship. The only reason 1950’s America put up with him was because of Lucy. I debated for a second putting an RPG round into her last known whereabouts and, if I could have been convinced it would kill her, I just might have. I noticed the farther I kept running, the less of the shoulder was clear. More and more, I found myself running on the side of the roadway. More times than not, that was filling up with cars too. These people that were fleeing the city for whatever reason were becoming increasingly desperate in their bid to get away. They may have gotten away, but not in their cars, that was for sure. I was wishing I could kill Lucy so I could stop and look for some water…which I desperately needed.

Soon, I was going to have to go on the active hunt for her or I was going to have to rummage through cars quickly, always keeping one eye on the lookout for the sneaky ginger. In addition to whatever skull damage I had done, the dehydration was adding to the throbbing. I went another tenth of a mile. I knew I had to stop and seek out liquids when I realized I’d stopped sweating. This was a pretty serious indicator of how bad off I was. I pulled up to a mini-van. Odds were there were little kids, and wherever there were little kids, juice was sure to follow.

“Bingo,” I said as I stuck my head through the open sliding doorway.

I did a quick search for an unopened juice bag. When that came up empty, I grabbed one that was on the seat, a straw already poking out of the side of it. I wasn’t a fan of touching anything kids had, because they were Petri dishes for all manner of germs and bacteria, but right now, sun-stroke was of bigger concern than dysentery. The juice was tepid, stale, and had almost reverted back to a syrup state. Yet, in my current condition, it was perfect. I sucked the thing so hard I was in danger of pulling the aluminum packaging through the straw.

Lucy had not yet shown as I tossed the empty container away. I reached down and grabbed two more from the floor. Each only held a sip or two, which I greedily drank down. It wasn’t much, but it was more than I’d had in a long while.

I had a suspicious feeling that Lucy was sneaking her way to me, I did a quick scan and got moving again, feeling somewhat renewed with the fluid and sugar coursing through me. I would turn every so often and look for my zombie friend…or any sign of Jack and Trip. I did not get a glimpse of any of them. There was a down slope to the roadway coming up, and on the rise on the other side, the traffic jam mysteriously stopped. There was clear roadway for as far as the eye could see. At the meeting point between a tangled mess of cars, trucks, and all manner of motorized vehicles, was once again the familiar olive drab of military vehicles.

“What happened here?” I asked; not
for the first time.

There were cars and motorcycles on the shoulders, even on the grassy sections. They looked like they had been trying to circumvent the roadblock and had met resistance in the form of a hail of bullets.

Why were they trying to keep them contained? A virus? A terrorist cell? What?

Maybe there were some answers up there? More likely, there would be additional questions, but at least I was confident there’d be some water. There wasn’t a soldier in any place I’d ever been that didn’t carry copious amounts of water. Killing others was a parching business. I wanted to believe I’d lost Lucy, or that she’d gotten sick of this game, but I could sense her eyes on me from time to time. Like a lioness patiently stalking a zebra, she was biding her time.

Bodies were everywhere—the aftermath of a heavy battle. Shattered remains were lying in the grass, on the road, across car hoods, leaning out of open doorways. Heavy caliber rounds had done their best to dissuade these poor refugees from their present course.

Did any of them make it?
I thought as I looked at the open expanse before me.

The trees had pulled back, and I was looking at vast fields as far as the eye could see. I wondered how many families had entrusted their safety to these same military men who had haphazardly cut them down. When all was somewhat right in the world, I’d let anyone that would listen, know that, in the event of a crisis, men in uniform were not to be trusted. Their sole mission at that point was the preservation of the government, not the ones governed. Most would look at me as if I were a radical revolutionary, anti-social, paranoid, militia prepper with delusional overtones. Nope, I was just a realist.

I was right about the questions part as I approached the military blockade. I’d seen impressionist paintings make more sense than what I was looking at. It started off innocently enough. A helmet was on the roadway, well not so much on it as in it. It was sunk down about an inch or two like it had been run over by a tractor-trailer. I honestly didn’t think too much on it, even with the leakage of blood coming from the sides of it.

Some unlucky bastard had been shot and lost his helmet. It wasn’t the first time and, unfortunately, wouldn’t be the last. Well…shit…maybe it would be. This world seemed to be running out of regular people as fast as the ones Jack, Trip and I had come from.

I paused.
Were they all connected somehow? Was that possible?