Diary of the Displaced (17 page)

Adler was standing staring at his own skeleton when I stepped into the room. He looked up briefly.

Rudy was bursting with questions.

“How did you find the door? You never mentioned it.”

“I didn’t find it whilst you were still alive, Rudy. It was long after. I used the paths through The Warrens a lot after you died. I can’t be completely sure of it, but right after I found you dead, I travelled across the plateau. He was there, it was there. I sensed him, but could not see him. He knew where I was. So after that I took to using the paths through The Warrens, hiding whenever his creations wandered past. Every time I tried to get to the trash yard, or to the bus, I could sense him. I could feel that he was there. That fear stopped me from trying to leave for weeks.”

“Zombies,” said Rudy.

“Pardon?”

“They’re called zombies. His creatures.”

“They are? Oh. Interesting. Finally a name to the abominations. Anyway, as I was saying, I used the route through The Warrens a lot, trying to find a way through that felt safe. Then one day I came upon a set of tracks that hadn’t been there before, along one of the paths that the… zombies, didn’t use. There were many tracks. So I followed them, and found myself outside this place.”

Adler sat down on the desk next to his skeleton.

“The entrance was closed when I got here, but the footprints led straight to it, and I knew they were not old, otherwise I would have seen them before. I set up camp in the rocks above the path, and waited for days. Nothing. So I travelled again, back to the swamp, to gather provisions. How I hated those pod things, but not as much as mushrooms.”

“You never did take to the cuisine here,” said Rudy laughing.

Adler shot him a sour look.

“Don’t. Don’t call it cuisine. The filth that grows here is everything but that.”

Adler sighed.

“Well when I came back here, hoping maybe to try and open it again on my way to collect the keys. I was too hasty. The door was already open you see. I went in too quickly, didn’t think. I was so excited, like a little boy walking into a toy shop. The door was open, and I could hear movement, voices.”

“What happened?”

“They shot me.”

“Shot you? Who?”

“I never found out who they were. They were armed with guns, strange guns, the likes of which I had never seen before. Their clothing, it was like something out of the future, or the past, grey armour of some kind. The door at the back was open too. I think they were leaving. The last of them span round, and as I was calling out in welcome he levelled his weapon at me and fired. That is all I can remember. I suppose I must have dragged myself back to this room, and sat down somehow.”

“That’s terrible. They didn’t even stop to find out who you were?”

“No. I think they presumed I was a zombie.”

“You found the fourth compass though?”

“Yes. It was up near the other entrance, outside the door. That creature must have killed someone up there. What I don’t understand is why the body was buried. It would never have buried the man. Someone else must have buried it.”

“The armoured people?”

“Maybe.”

“You’ve seen outside? You saw it when they had the door open?”

The professor laughed at this.

“Oh Rudy! You’ve been like that, like this, longer than I have and you haven’t figured some things out. Walls are no barrier to you now, my friend.”

“Yes, I do know, but… ”

“Rudy, I have been sitting outside in the sun for years now.”

“Outside in the sun?”

“Yes, come. Come with me now.”

We went out into the passage and the professor walked towards the door at the back. He didn’t stop, just went right through the door. It puzzled me. Why hadn’t he walked through the wall in the room if there were no barriers, instead of going into the corridor? Habit?

“Come on my old friend. Come and see the world outside of our dark prison.”

Rudy looked at me for a moment.

“I will come back.”

Then he stepped through the door.

I knelt down and peered through the gap underneath. It was almost exactly like the other door. The gap was no more than a few inches.

I saw it.

The fourth compass.

It was a few feet away, lying on the rock floor. If I could reach it, all that would remain was the one in the safe.

They came back through the door a few minutes later. Rudy looked different, and not in a healthy way. He looked sad.

My turn for the questions.

“What’s out there?”

Rudy shook his head.

“Only endless desert. I hoped for something else, but At least I’ve seen the sun for the first time in years.”

“The key, it’s out there, outside,” I said.

“Yes, again, I don’t know how or when I put it there, or if it was even me. The first thing I remember after the pain of the shot was waking up, sitting outside in the sun.”

“So barren,” said Rudy, “So desolate. I’d hoped that London was outside the door, or at least somewhere familiar.”

“Ah but we are not somewhere familiar are we, my old friend? This is not Earth. I figured that out a long time ago. But at least the sun shines out there.”

I wish I could have seen the sun again.

It took me at least an hour to get the compass. I pulled apart bits of furniture and tried poking it through the gap. Eventually I managed to drag the damn thing back within reaching distance. I could hear the two of them talking in the room with the computer, but wasn’t paying attention. I probably should have been, no doubt Adler had a lot of things to say that would be important.

Adler was bound to the compass, just as Rudy was. He couldn’t explain how. He had numerous ideas about trapped souls and their spirit having nowhere to go. Most of his ideas seemed like fairy tales to me. Are ghosts magnetic? Compasses don’t draw things to them, do they? Surely it should have been the other way round?

We left quickly. I took the professor’s hat. He insisted I keep hold of that. Not sure why, it wasn’t like he was ever going to be able to wear it again. There was also a small rucksack full of his stuff. I turned it upside down and left the contents on the floor. There was nothing useful, but it was a stroke of luck to have something to put my things in again.

One thing that was handy, though. There was a small bottle filled with oil of some kind. Adler was reluctant to leave the bicycle behind, and finally convinced me to use some of the oil on it and push it along at least for a while. I agreed, even though I didn’t think there was any point. It seems that I was wrong. After a few hundred yards, most of the dust and crap that had built up simply broke off, and the wheels and chain were turning again. I still wasn’t quite ready to try riding it.

Further into The Warrens was where Adler took us, all the time chattering away. It was nice to see Rudy full of spirit again. By the way he was going on I even thought he was raring for our next encounter with the zombies. I guess I’ll never understand that bit, being potential zombie food myself, but I figured that being dead didn’t give you too many perks, so I couldn’t begrudge his enthusiasm at discovering that he was an untouchable zombie killer. When I think about it, it was handy. I could sleep, knowing that I had a demon guard dog and two ghosts that never needed to sleep, watching over me, all three of which were utterly deadly as far as zombies were concerned.

Adler hadn’t figured out why he was so lethal to zombies.

“I don’t even feel them,” he said. “There were a few of them, loitering around outside the door when I first became aware that I was still here. I was confused, staring down at my own body as it died. I walked outside, and in my frustration I tried to attack the nearest one. I don’t know how or why it works, but it does. They can’t touch me, but I can destroy them. I don’t physically tear them apart. They sort of just fall apart at the seams.”

We found a small alcove further into The Warrens a few hours later. It was only a short climb, up some rocks. Adler said he’d used it several times. The zombies couldn’t get up there.

Only one more compass to get now, and thankfully Adler told us where the key to the safe was hidden.

I almost laughed until I was in tears when he told me. Talk about irony. It was one of the keys hanging in the ignition of the bus.

Day 37

Is it really thirty seven days since I got here?

Every time I write the day in this journal now it seems like an eternity. I feel like I’ve been here much longer, which worries me. What If I end up stuck here for years like Rudy and Adler?

That’s not the plan, I know. If I get out of here and I take the compasses with me, hopefully my ghost friends will go with me. What happens to them wherever we end up next, I don’t know. I don’t think either of them cares, so long as it isn’t an eternity stuck in this place.

We spent nearly the entire day heading through The Warrens, and I camped out again in another nook up in the rocks. The trail was easy to follow and I wouldn’t have needed directions. The footprints and bicycle trail left in the dirt, long ago, by Adler, seemed quite permanent, which wasn’t promising as far as water was concerned. I didn’t have many bottles left.

The entrance to The Warrens came out not far from where I’d first stepped up onto the plateau. About half a mile of walking across the open rocky ground and I saw the rocks that lined the bottom of the slope. I was missing the glowing grass already.

DogThing went all hyper as soon as we left The Warrens. I guessed that we were back on his home ground now, barely a mile through the mushrooms to reach the bus. You know I don’t think Adler and Rudy stopped talking even once during the whole time. You would have thought they were two old friends, out for a walk in the park somewhere, instead of two ghosts.

We stopped at the foot of the slope. Adler was paranoid about CutterJack being around, even though it had been years since he had been here.

“I don’t think he is here. At least I can’t sense him, like I could before, but that doesn’t mean we should be rash. He could be anywhere, waiting.”

“Or he could be back at his home, wherever that is, still licking his wound.”

Adler laughed.

“Yes. True. How did you manage that? I still can’t get my mind around it, you actually injured it.”

“Luck and clumsiness,” I replied. “I wouldn’t have stood a chance if Rudy hadn’t come running through the door at that moment.”

“Plus I think the maw had given him one hell of a battering before he got to the door,” said Rudy. “He could quite probably have already been injured.”

“Yes,” said Adler, “he is wary of the maw, and rightfully so, I have seen firsthand what they are capable of. Well, so have you.”

I looked over at DogThing and wondered again why such a creature had decided to become my friend.

I picked up the pace a bit, and soon we were walking through mushrooms again, following the marker poles. I had too many questions for Adler; so many that I couldn’t remember half of them.

“Did you ever find out who put these markers here?”

“No, though I did repair a few that had fallen down. They are old, I know that much. I can only suspect that this place has had people coming through it for a long time. Well, there is evidence all around us is there not? The junk yard, The City, buildings dotted all over the place that have been run down for what might be centuries. It has puzzled me for years, were they built here? Or are they like other things, brought here by some mysterious occurrence?”

“I think they were brought here,” I replied. “It’s all too random. Take The City for example, it just starts, there is no reason for the roads to be where they are, it’s almost like they were once attached to other roads, and still should be, but a chunk of it was picked up and dumped right there.”

Adler was nodding. “Exactly my point.”

“Even some of the roads are broken up where a rock underneath has pushed it up. Rock doesn’t do that, does it? Tree roots I can understand, but a rock pushing its way up through the road. Seems too odd to me.”

“Yes, indeed, and the building on the edge of the swamp. Have you noticed that they are sitting on top of a sand bank? I looked. In one of the cellars the walls have collapsed and sand has poured in. Who builds foundations into sand when there is solid rock only a few feet away?”

We camped out in pretty much exactly the same spot that DogThing and I had used on our trek through the mushroom field the first time, underneath the giant mushrooms. I’m almost certain that I slept under the same one. It seems so long ago since we made that journey, like it was years ago. It’s hard to believe that it has only been a few weeks.

Day 38

The weirdest thing happened. I awoke hours later, having had another dream, the first in days. Adler and Rudy were sitting over near the marker pole, a few yards away. DogThing was underneath one of the mushrooms. He was sleeping I think, though I don’t know if he ever really sleeps. It started raining again. Just like that. One moment ominous silence, and the next moment there was torrential rain, just as it had been the last time we passed this way. Yes, last time it had been drizzling for a day or so before, but the torrential downpour had happened whilst we had been under the mushrooms.

In the dream I was walking around a house. It was not a place that I had been to before, though it seemed familiar somehow. There was no furniture in any of the rooms, like it had been cleaned out before a sale. The walls were painted white in every room and there were no curtains over the windows.

I happened to glance out of one of the windows on the top floor, and saw that there was scaffolding everywhere. The oddest thing. I went downstairs to find the front door, so that I could go outside, but there was no front door. I walked all the way around the ground floor of the house and there were no doors leading outside.

There were three floors to the house, and the front door was at the top. There was only one large room up there, and in that room, tucked into the corner was a small dressing table with a mirror. Someone was sitting on the chair, facing the mirror. I spoke, but there was no answer. Then I found out why.