A Shrouded World - Whistlers (6 page)

The lack of disorder when we first found ourselves on the roadway made me think that whatever had happened here was more of a controlled migration rather than a fight-for-life retreat. That and the ground wasn’t littered with brass casings unless this was some abysmal land that had taken gun rights from their citizens. In that case, they never really stood a chance. Sure, they left enough granola bars to keep a hippie commune going for years, but no guns worth a crap or jewelry. Most of the car doors had been shut; certainly something people in panic mode wouldn’t have cared about.

The farther we went along, the more that changed. It was subtle at first, like a car door open or full bottles of water discarded on the side of the road. Then it began to become more insidious, bloody handprints and then blood trails. Next came the true panic, possessions became afterthoughts as everything was shed in a desperate attempt to lighten loads. Aunt Mabel’s fine china set held little importance when your life was endangered, especially from an enemy that wished nothing more than to strip the meat clean from your still breathing body. The only question now was where were they trying to go?
It took another mile until I got my answer.

“This place is a jun
k food addict’s worst nightmare,” I said to John as I looked in another car, hoping they had something that didn’t say ‘healthy’ on it.

“Shit,
” John said as he placed his boxes down and began to stuff paraphernalia deeper down into his pockets.

“What’s the matter?” I asked
, doing a quick scan. I was not overly concerned at this point. John and my versions of problems were vastly different.

“The Man, man.”

“English, John, we talked about this.”

He pointed instead
, which was probably better. I could barely make it out through the maze of cars and trucks ahead. But once I really started to look, it was difficult to miss the olive drab of military vehicles. How he had seen it through the haze in his eyes was a mystery.

“That would explain the controlled movement of the people in the cars.”

“I figured it was the Rapture,” John crunched out.

I looked at him for a moment. “Don’t lose that thought
, it’s still a possibility.” But anytime you really want a situation to get all screwed up, just throw the military into the mix. “Now, if we could figure out where everyone went, maybe we could get some answers.”

“Awesome
, man, I always wanted to know how whales communicate.”

“Yeah maybe that answer
, too. Let’s go.”

I was torn.
A part of me wanted to make as much haste as possible to the blockade. Odds were high we would find out what happened here, who the howlers were, and maybe how to get back to where we belonged. On the other hand, I had a healthy fear of all things governmentally controlled. In times of severe crisis, the government is FAR less concerned with the safety and well-being of its citizens than it is the smooth running and continuation of the government. People merely became an obstacle, or a way and means for that end.

It’s funny how depth pe
rception works on the open road. The waves of heat that emanated off the pavement somehow magnified the military vehicles, or maybe that was just how everything was in this new place. What seemed like half a mile, was taking us close to an hour to traverse. Even going as slow as we were, we would have been traveling at a three-mile-an-hour clip. We were burning through daylight like Deneaux burns through cigarettes. (If you are new to my journals, she is one of the most cantankerous old women that ever walked the face of the planet. She has the blood of Calamity Jane and the steady aim of Annie Oakley coursing through her veins.)

We were finally within a hundred yards, I had yet to see any movement or have that sense I
was being watched through crosshairs. It was John that nearly gave me a heart attack. I was crouched low, trying to keep as small a profile as I could on my approach, when he dropped one of his boxes.

“Done,” h
e said as he stretched.

The convoy completely forgotten
, I walked back towards him. “Bullshit.”

He proudly held the cardboard flap back.

“You ate an entire carton of Phrito’s?”

He smiled, his teeth most likely permanently stained corn yellow.

“Tonight, when we finally hunker down, you make sure you’re down wind. You ready, or do you need a few minutes to say good bye?”

“I’m good,” he replied as he put the still full box on his shoulder and marched on.

“Not sick of those? Really?”

“Why would I be?”

“Just stay low…let’s see what this is all about,” I told him.

We came up slowly.
As the wind shifted, it was not difficult to ascertain that there was nothing living in the general vicinity. The oh-so-ever-present reek of death assailed at least my nostrils, John didn’t seem to care. Then again maybe it did.

“Stink weed?” he asked me.

I didn’t reply. To open my mouth would have sent jets of throat lubricating water to spray from my mouth. A fierce battle had been waged, and my more normal friends (zombies) were the opponent in this drama. A good number of civilians had been ripped apart as they approached the military blockade. I wondered if the zombies had come out of the woods much like our howlers.

Did they co-exist?
From all I’d ever learned, predators don’t play well together.
So, if not the woods, where then?

Zombies by nature were nomadic, roaming to where the food was. So
, in all likelihood, zombies had migrated to this spot en masse. Zombies, people, and spent shells littered the ground; in some places, a few feet thick. It made traveling the roadway impossible, stepping on to the shoulder was far from my favorite idea as it brought us closer to the howlers and whatever other fucking nightmare lingered in there; my guess is there was a Bigfoot or two just for good measure.

John was openly weeping as we passed family after family
; either ravaged or hewn in half by excessive crossfire—caught in the middle of an uncaring machinegun nest. If I ever found the puke that had manned that gun, I’d put the Derringer to his temple.

I understand panic, I do
. I get it; in spades as a matter of fact. But to just mow civilians down; at that point, what are you saving? Certainly not your soul, because I’m sure Saint Peter will have something to say about that. I checked out a couple of the people, only to get an idea of how long ago this travesty had taken place;
rigor mortis
had come and gone, the bodies had not quite bloated. The ones that had not been infected were covered in flies and the beginnings of maggots. The insidious little bastards hadn’t taken up root yet.

It was no picnic to watch as
human skin shifted underneath the movements of the fly larvae. Three days at the most, this had happened three days ago. Half a week ago, these people were concerned about their mortgages, car payments, whether Timmy or Tina needed braces, if their favorite baseball team was going to win a game. Just normal, everyday bullshit, the way life was meant to be.

“Fuck,
” I said, dragging my hand over my face.

John was looking into the woods, fat
tear drops cascading to the ground. “My wife isn’t here.”

“Let’s hope not,
” I answered, although that wasn’t what he was thinking.

He meant she wasn’t ‘here’, wherever ‘here’ was. My initial answer still held more validity. We had zombies and
these new howlers, this new world sucked. I grabbed John’s arm gently and turned him towards the olive drab of the military vehicles.

“I know you don’t want to head up there, but I’m not leaving you behind
, and I need to see if I can salvage some ammo.”

John didn’t say anything, his cheery disposition wiped clean. He kept his head down and moved the
Phrito box to his left shoulder as a barrier to the atrocities that lay on that side. We walked in stony silence towards the blockade. I received no measure of satisfaction when I found the machine gunner’s position had been overrun. He died with his finger on the trigger. The irony of it was that it looked like a child zombie had inflicted the death blow before being shot herself. A zombie girl had latched herself onto the man’s neck and had been tearing a chunk free when someone had come up behind her and spilled her brains over the side of the gunner’s face.

“Guy that shot the zombie shot the machine gunner
, too. Dumbass. Although I guess he was already dead.” I pushed the girl out of the way. She fell wetly to the side. Shock was etched on the man’s features as he seemed to look pleadingly at me. “Karma’s a bitch,” I told him. “This is what I’m looking for,” I said triumphantly, bending down, picking up a metal ammunition box.

Th
ey were 5.56 which were perfect; the only problem was they were linked for machinegun fire. Simple enough remedy, it would just take some time. I was going to keep this box close and go look for something that was ready to use right from the can. I helped John and his Phrito’s up into the cab of the closest truck. I also stashed my ammo with him.

“You alright
, pal?” I asked him. He hadn’t said much and, more surprisingly, he hadn’t eaten anything in a bit.

Instead of asking me who pal was
, which would have been normal, he asked something much more serious. “Why’d they all have to die, man?”

I looked him in the eyes. “Don’t know, I really don’t
. But me and you…we’re going to find a way out of this mess. And to be honest, John, I’m not sure that everything we’re seeing right now isn’t some sort of dream. Figments of our imagination or, more than likely, a drug-induced conjuring. Last thing I truly remember was your van and then being here.”

“This is a flashback?” John asked with pleading eyes.

I’d been in some shitty situations along the path of my life but never anything quite like this right now. I hope it wasn’t a flash forward, a portent of things to come. “Let’s just hope it’s only a vision of zombie-things-to-come if we don’t change it.”

And like the intuitive person he was
, he answered, “This is the worst rendition of the
Christmas Carol
I’ve ever lived through.”

You
know
I wanted to ask him how many he had lived through, but I dropped it. Maybe tonight, if we found some place safe to hang out I’d bring it back up. Odds would be he wouldn’t remember this conversation, though. As it was, I didn’t like to be out of his view for too long because we’d have to go through the introduction process again.

There were spent magazines everywhere
, which was actually pretty cool considering I had left a couple of mine behind in my haste to leave. I saw more than one soldier that had been shot by a civilian. Easy enough to tell from the exit wounds. M-16s didn’t generally travel all the way through a human body. Usually it got hung up somewhere inside, which caused more destruction that way, bouncing and ricocheting off of bones and internal organs. More than once, the Geneva Convention had wanted to ban the cartridge because of this ‘design flaw’. The Russian-made 7.62—a much larger and heavier round—was considered to be more humane as it would travel clean through just about any soldier, whether they had a flak jacket on or not.

Some of the soldiers had fist-
sized holes in their backs; indicating high-powered hunting rifles. It didn’t look like a coordinated attack or an ambush. I just think it was scared people trying to get away from the blockade. Unfortunately, without much success. I don’t really know how long I’d been doing my survey of the destruction. Enough to know that men, women, children, civilians, military, howlers, and zombies had all met gruesome ends here.

The one and only blessing I found in regards to howlers was
that it appeared that it did not necessarily need to be a head shot to take one down. I might have overlooked the female howler had she not had the signature sunburn I’d seen outside of the truck. She had on torn Capri pants, her ankles a blistered and angry red. Her forearms and hands were also the same tortured color. What stuck out was her long blond hair that glowed like golden wheat in the sunshine. It wasn’t the hair color; it was the lack of blood in it that I found interesting.

Was it a ruse?
She was face down and I’d have to get close to turn her over.
Son of a bitch
.

The knowl
edge was worth the risk. Howlers were faster and smarter than zombies. If I didn’t need to be particularly concerned with putting a bullet in their skulls, then we were that much better off.

I made sure the safety was off,
I had my finger resting lightly on the trigger guard. I licked my lips and, with my left foot, I hooked it under her thigh, lifted, and pushed her over. I looked at her face for any signs of life, some clue to her deception, a fluttering eyelid a twitch of her mouth. Nothing. Her face was frozen in fury, she was pissed off and left nothing to the imagination in that regards. She had a series of at least three bullets, traveling up from her navel and across her right breast. The bullets had torn her open, blood had cascaded from her. Flies swarmed to the wounds and enjoyed the banquet.