A Shrouded World - Whistlers (5 page)

“Not a chance,
” I told him. His face mirrored the howlers as it went from intense determination to rage. Apparently I had that effect on everyone I encountered. “John, we need to find some shelter from these things and try to figure out what they are…and more importantly, where we are.”

“What do you mean ‘where we are’, we’re right here.”

“I love New Age shit.”

John wasn’t quite ready to give up his idea of taking some snacks with him
, and I wasn’t completely done reconning our immediate area. I rounded the truck to discover the couple who had fought valiantly but hopelessly. They were eaten and torn to shreds almost as if the howlers, in addition to being vociferously hungry, hated people with every fiber of their being and wanted to take it out on whomever they encountered. I turned away, glad that I hadn’t eaten more of the Phrito’s than the two John had given me, or I would have had the misfortune of getting to taste it twice.

“John
, we gotta go, man,” I spoke, hoping the air flow to push the words out would hold down the gorge that threatened to rise.

I also had a fear beginning to bloom in the base of my spine
that I hadn’t felt since that first day of the zombie apocalypse. We were in unfamiliar territory with a new, more deadly enemy. I had very limited ammunition, and I had no idea where my family was or how I was going to get back to them.

“John?” I asked as I rounded back around the corner. “Really
, man?” He had cut out a piece of seatbelt from a nearby car and had tied it to the bottom of the pallet, his goal, I guess, being to pull it along like a sled. “John, you can only take what you can carry. We’ve got to go.”

On retrospect
, I probably should have been clearer. John hopped back up onto the truck and fumbled around a bit until he had a carton resting on each shoulder. He came to the edge of the truck and was looking for help from me to help him down.

“Why can’t I get stuck in an alternate universe with Rambo? Would that be asking too much?” I asked the heavens as I gra
bbed each box in turn.

“Rambo, isn’t that the deer who gets stepped on by Godzilla?” He hopped down, propping himse
lf on my shoulder as he did so.

“That’s Bambi, John
, and the Godzilla thing was a joke, not the actual movie.”

The explanation was unnecessary as I’d already lost him.

“Shit, Mike, there’s Phrito’s, did you put them here?”

“Yes.” In truth I guess I had.

“Can I have some?” he asked like a little kid.

“Be my guest.
And then, can we go?”

“I should probably take these with us.” He placed them on the pallet.

“Oh, I give up.”

“Were we playing Monopoly?”

I didn’t respond, by the time he figured out I hadn’t conceded a board game victory, he would be on to the next shiny distraction.

“No pallet
, John, we have to move fast. Just take what you can carry,” I told him referring to the cartons. I guess I’ll never learn, he wrestled with them for a minute or two until he had them once again resting on his shoulders.

He move
d surprisingly well for a Phrito-laden pack mule. I stopped at any car that looked promising in regards to supplies: namely food, water, and ammo. Not in any particular order, their importance changed with the circumstances. If howlers came, ammo rose to the top. At the moment, I would just about kill for a cheeseburger. Sadly, I was fairly certain that I wasn’t going to come across one, at least not in edible form.

It w
as a form of food I found first; that is, if you can call the hard granola bars food. I tore the wrapper off the bar, not even caring that it was cranberry flavored. Peanut butter would have been better. John had taken the down time to rip open another bag of his snacks, something he did at every car I went through. We were a good dozen cars checked down the road; how he didn’t have a belly ache was beyond me.

There was a trail of wrapp
ers leading away from the truck. I felt like Hansel and Gretel, he was Gretel. Although, if I remember the tale correctly, Hansel left the trail, I guess that makes me Gretel, I did a small curtsy.

“What the hell are you doing?” John asked around a mouthful of salty corn.

“You saw that? You’re not even looking this way. Forget it.”

“Forget what?”

“Want a granola bar.”

“Never touch the stuff,” h
e said as if I were offering him a swig of whiskey.

“Not missing much,
” I told him as I nearly chipped a tooth severing a piece off the end.

I had the wrapper in my left hand and was about to add
it to our trail when I thought that maybe the wrapper itself may hold a key to our location. ‘Made proudly in New House, JL, United States of Columbia.’

I dropped the wrapper faster than if it had been on fire. It was safe to say we weren’t in Kansas anymore. And then it finally dawned on me, something that had been nagging me in the back of the neck like an overly persistent sand flea
. (If you need further explanation, join the Marine Corps and make sure you go to boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina. Then that sentence will make complete sense.)

Why I hadn’t thought to do it earlier I don’t know
. Maybe whatever John the Tripper had was catching. I looked to the cars and where their license plates should have been. Now, either there was an extreme plate hoarder on the loose, or this new place we found ourselves in just didn’t mark cars like that. I checked at least four cars; none of them even had so much as a placement holder for a plate.

“What the hell?” I
stood up, scratching my head.

And there it was, a cellophane-
looking placard with nearly translucent numbers adhered right to the rear windshield. My guess was that it became back lit when the car was running. Some god had a hilarious sense of humor. I moved in close so I could see what the plate said. It was a vanity plate ‘SCREWD’ stared back at me.

“Take you all day to think of that!” I yelled up.

“I didn’t say anything,” John replied. “Was I supposed to?”

“You’re good,
” I yelled back. I could barely make out the ‘state’; it was so small, and I also had no reference. ‘Amissus’ is what I read. “Is that in between Georgia and Alabama?” I asked.

“Man
, I’m getting full.” John rubbed his belly. However, that did not deter him from opening another bag.

“John
, any chance you know where Amissus is?” I figured ‘what the hell.’ Geography had never been my strong suit in school. Although, if I were truly being honest here, there were no classes in school I had been particularly great in.

“Lost.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“No…
that’s what Amissus means.” He walked over, the bag now tilted up as he poured its contents into his eager mouth. “Have you found any green tea? I’m thirsty.”

“No green tea, there’s some water in this car though. Amissus means lost?”

“Latin.”

“You know Latin?”

“Nope.” He grabbed the water bottle and headed back to his stash.

“Thanks for the clarification.”

He raised his bottle up in response.

What I assumed was the expiration sticker read 14.14.13, I scratched my head again. Even if this was some sort of British thing where they put the year first (talk about strange)
, this date still made no sense. Any way you looked at it, there was either most likely fourteen months or thirteen; still more than the normal twelve I was used to. I could feel the deep pulses of a killer headache beginning to radiate out from the center of my taxed mind. No matter how hard I looked, the placard was not going to yield anymore knowledge except that I was ‘screwed’ and ‘lost’. I wanted to tell the gods they could kiss my ass, but apparently they already had, and hard.

I debated looking in the glove box
, but I was fairly certain the registration would have a street address of Ha Ha Lane or something equally as inane, and we needed to get away from the howler’s hunting grounds. John was like a machine when it came to eating. I figured at some point he would have to yield to the limits of his stomach, but just when I figured he was getting to the breaking point, the soft sweet smell of seductive smoke would drift lazily around us. His supply of medicinal marijuana seemed to rival his Phrito hoard.

It took approximately somewhere in the neighborhood of trip
le digit cars ransacked before sweet Mother Mercy yielded her prize. Although ‘prize’ is grossly exaggerated. There was a box of 22s—close to fifty. Great little round, but without something to shoot them out of, they were virtually useless. I tore everything out of the car, hoping that whoever had been in here had just so happened to leave behind the projectile launcher.

“Holy sweet mother of all that is sanctimonious!” I shouted as my hand came in contact with the cold steel of gun metal. I was in an awkward position
, leaning over the back seat of the car, my hand thrust out as far as it could go under the driver’s seat when I felt it. When I pulled my hand back with ‘prize’ in hand, I moaned.

“It’s
a fucking Derringer.” I sighed.

“Can you eat them?” John asked
, coming over quickly. He slouched back to lightening his load when he realized it was a gun.

But to call a Derringer a gun was the same as calling a Yugo a luxury car. The gun was all of three inches long, the barrel maybe h
alf that. It had two chambers where I could put one round each and, unless a howler walked up and literally let me press this thing against its head, it was useless.

Who the fuck brings a Derringer to an apocalypse?

I’m not kidding when I say you’d be better off with John’s slingshot. Don’t get me wrong, I took it and, after loading it, I stuffed it in my pocket. Worst-case scenario, it would be my early checking-out implement. I was not going to be eaten, at least not alive. I felt somewhat better with my find. Then it dawned on me, now that I wasn’t quite so fixated on locating ammo. Where were all the people from the cars? They had left in a hurry, but not in an outright panic. The supplies left over looked mostly to be what was too heavy or unimportant. I’d been in enough situations that I could tell the subtle difference. When you and your family’s lives were in danger, nothing else mattered, not even fire engine red Jeeps.

We passed car
s in various stages of disarray. The pull was strong to check each of them, but the odds seemed less than worthwhile of finding anything of note, and that big, giant, uncaring survival clock was ticking in the back of my head. The howlers seemed a creature of the night, I had a couple of points to validate my argument. The first being that we hadn’t heard or seen one in the day and second they headed for parts unknown at the first hint of daylight. We needed to take more advantage of the howler free hours.

We came across a turned over
RV which reminded me of Little Turtle, my fallen community. It produced an unwelcome pang in my heart. It looked like a decent place to set up shop for the night, and I just may have if not for the relative proximity to our Phrito truck. Short of being on the other side of the planet, or in an underground bunker, I just wasn’t going to feel safe. There had to be something better, didn’t there? Plus…the smell, yeah that was no bargain. Picture an unwashed zombie. I don’t know how much more I need to say about it really. My eyes watered just getting near it. I wondered for a moment if anything was in it besides bodies, and then we moved on.

Luckily, it’s fairly easy to maneuver around the cars. That’s good, or maybe not. If there was a jam that couldn’t be walked through, or in my case now, jogged through, then perhaps the horde couldn’t get through. That wouldn’t take care of the cross-country team hot on my heels, as I’ve seen them leap cars, but it would take care of the others. I can’t keep the pace up all day and night
, so I’ll have to figure out something in the interim. The thing I have to do now is to remove the immediate threat closing in.

Turning, I brace myself
along the top of a pickup hood, looking back down the road. The runners have marginally closed the distance. My pace has created a little space between them and those following, which is the best that I can hope for at this point. I’m feeling a touch on the winded side with having to carry the supplies I picked up, along with the rest of my gear. It’s not only time to rest, but time to lessen the amount of creatures attempting to run me down.

I bring my cross
hair onto the nearest one, who is running through a small avenue between the cars. I’ll have to make head shots, which makes everything inherently more difficult. I thought the world I was in was fucked up, but I like this one even less, aside from the fact that I don’t know what happened to my kids…or Lynn. Yeah, that alarm clock can go off anytime now, thanks. I won’t even hit the snooze button.

Allowing for bullet drop,
I raise the center of the crosshair to a few inches above the creature’s head. I won’t bore you with the mil-dot details. Luckily, it’s running directly at me which makes it a bit easier. I put pressure on the trigger and feel a light kick as a round speeds on its way toward its intended meeting. I send a second chasing after it. The first round strikes just off center on the forehead, causing its skull to rock back from the collision. Its head stops while the feet continue, and the zombie crashes to the ground like a player sliding into second. The second round zips over the top of the falling body and slams into the windshield of a pickup behind.

I shift
my aim to another lane of cars, centering on another leaping figure heading slightly from my left to right. Leading it slightly, another kick to my shoulder lets me know another round is streaking outward. With a spray of black liquid, the bullet smashes into the side of its head near the temple. I observe it fall behind a vehicle, hopefully meeting its death.

Two down, eighteen to go
, I think, rising off the hood and continuing my merry jaunt down the road.

Stopping at
another vehicle, I lean across the trunk. They’ve closed the distance more than expected; I’m going to have to be quicker about this whole thing. Adrenaline is masking some of my tiredness, but that won’t last forever. Screams from the runners echo off the wall of trees to either side. Settling my elbows on the grit and grime covering the car, I take quick aim at one of the runners. Dark, viscous liquid forms a mist about its face as my bullet again strikes home. It too vanishes from view behind one of the cars.

Another head bobs just above the roof of a sedan. I settle the crosshair just ahead of where the creature will appear in greater
clarity near the windshield. The distance they’ve closed isn’t critical at this point, but it will get to that point. The goal is to have as few of them as possible to contend with when that time arrives. The figure appears, and I send my greeting out to it. Another splash of the viscous substance that resides within them tells me that my aim was true, and it falls forward out of sight.

The screams of the others escalate as if annoyed. I recognize that scream of frustration
, and I am not all that fond of it. These creatures, like the night runners, are relentless. Focusing on yet another sprinting madly in my direction, I lead it ever so slightly. A puff of smoke exits my barrel on the heels of the speeding projectile. The figure turns at the exact wrong moment causing my round to streak by its head. The bullet whines off into the distance, leaving behind a starred windshield. I adjust my aim and fire, seeing the creature lurch to the side and fall across the hood of a car. It slowly slides down toward the front, picking up momentum as it slips farther until it limply falls to the ground. Switching to a runner directly ahead, I place two rounds in its head before it hits its knees and falls forward.

That’s five
, I think, rising to begin beating cheeks to a new location.

The remaining runners sense their closeness and seem to navigate between the cars with even more speed – as if that were possible. This spurs a little more effort on my part. I notice the latent smoke in the air is winding me a more quickly than normal. I’ll have to figure this
whole thing out soon or I’ll end up completely out of breath and my options diminished. I turn in an attempt to lessen their numbers and see a few of them scrambling over the hoods and trunks of vehicles in order to close in. This doesn’t give me warm, fuzzy feelings. If I was going to be transported to another place and have zombies, why couldn’t they just be the slow, shambling ones I used to read about.

Leaning over yet another trunk, I line up my shot with the easiest runner. Intervening vehicles are blocking any clear shots to the nearest ones so I’ll have to take the shots
that I’m afforded. I just don’t have the time to pick and choose at this point. I have to adjust my position as one of the grenades hanging on my vest gets hung up on the trunk lock.

Grenades! Damn! This little transition must have really fucked with me. Here I am being chased in a large, wide-spread gas tank farm and I’m trying to plink the bastards
, I think, triggering another round into one of the runners’ heads.
Now if these vehicles actually have any fuel remaining, I can create a fire break between me and those trying to make me their dinner
.

I shift my aim to the gas tank of a car in the median and pull the trigger, making sure to pick one a little
distance away. I don’t want to be close in case the one-in-a-thousand shot actually ignites the tank. The round hits with a metallic ‘chunk’ and I’m rewarded by a trickle of clear liquid flowing out. I angle across the jam as best as I can – sliding over hoods when no clear avenue is found – putting rounds into the tanks of as many cars as I can, all the while keeping up a semblance of speed. Back and forth I transit across the congested vehicles with the runners keeping pace and following; ever closing the distance.

In one way, my strategy has worked as the horde following these Jesse Owens clones have disappeared from view. I make a few more runs across the pile of cars, placing rounds into the gas tanks.
The sound is similar to a muted cough as I fire through the suppressor, followed by the hard ‘thunk’ of the bullet hitting metal. Most of the time, I see a flow or trickle of fluid. Some are either empty or my rounds don’t penetrate the steel casings. With each round, I have to crouch in order to get a clear shot at the tank which slows my progress, allowing the screaming figures to draw closer.

I would like to make a few more runs, opening up more tanks, but I’m just going to have to be satisfied with what I have. The runners have drawn too close
. If I take any more time, they’ll be through the area currently being soaked with what I hope is gas, thereby making my efforts pointless. Plus, there is the very uncomfortable aspect that this won’t work at all, and I’ll have to contend with fifteen very upset zombies. That’s not my idea of a good time. I start out at a run, maneuvering through the tangle as best as I can, unhooking one of the grenades.

Coming to a stop, I unpin and toss a grenade into the jammed cars far to the right. Quickly readying another, I toss it in the path of the loose gaggle of runners. They’re coming at me like I’ve stolen their last Twinkie – for Twinkie lovers, you’ll understand. For others, insert your favorite snack. I then take off in case my grand master plan is an epic failure. I think of Lynn and what she’d say regarding my magnificent planning ability. The thought of her brings a sharp pang of missing her
, and worry. I have no idea where I am, let alone where she might be. The thought arises that I could be stuck in this effing place without ever seeing her or my kids again. That almost stops me in my tracks. If there isn’t a chance of seeing them again, what’s the bloody use of running or continuing on? Of course, if I just give up, the odds of seeing them drops to the same percentage of winning the lottery without buying a ticket.

A thunderous explosion
from behind brings my thoughts back to the present. Another monstrous roar follows the first, causing a rolling boom to echo through the trees and across the stationary vehicles. Sliding over the trunk of a car, I glance over my shoulder. The grit stuck to the vehicle’s surface changes the slide to more of a series of shuffles, but I clear it. Behind me, a sheet of flame and smoke is shooting skyward from where each grenade landed. The back end of one of the cars, engulfed in fiery blaze, is settling back to the ground. Flaming globs and metal licked with flame are flying through the air. They settle and other fires begin amongst the cars where gas has flooded the ground. Another car is lifted as its tank catches in a burning explosion. In short order, a large part of the route behind is blocked by flames.

One figure emerges from the small inferno,
consumed in fire but continuing toward me. Yeah, they are relentless alright. I stop, turn, and bring my M-4 up, firing into the now fully engulfed runner, aiming in the general direction of its head. It slows and then drops to its knees on the paved highway before falling face forward. Flames continue to rise from the body, making it sizzle. I watch to the sides, waiting for any others that manage to circumvent the rapidly spreading conflagration.

Another detonation lifts a vehicle into the air, throwing hot metal and fiery gas outward. I feel a blast of warm air as it rushes past. The fire is now a living, feeding thing and it’s time I put some distance between it and me. With the prolific amount of fuel around, who knows how far this will spread. I begin to think I may have overdone it a bit and there’s a chance it could catch up with me if I don’t start
getting the fuck out of here. With that in mind, and the fact that I don’t see any runners emerging, I turn and begin putting some distance between my ‘carefully laid plan’ and me.

I hear the roar of the flames behind as the fire gathers strength and intensity. I keep checking for both the fire gaining on me and any runners that happen to have made it through. If they have the ability to think and reason, they will be able to go through the woods and circumvent the blockade of fire. Not seeing any of the creatures, my main worry is that the fire will catch on the grass along the sides and race forward. The wind is behind me and there is a definite chance of that happening if my ‘well-laid plan’ runs amok. I also hope that the trees don’t catch and I
end up burning down the whole…well…wherever I am. Another glance behind shows that the flames, while tall and looking rather warm, are staying relatively contained in the area where it started. The atmosphere isn’t all that dry, but it isn’t exactly moist either.

With smoke billowing into the already polluted air, I slow and continue my merry
trek to see where this leads. It’s not that I have much of a choice really. I opt to stay close to the middle of the highway, edging through the tangled metal as best I can. Although keeping me in the open, which already makes me nervous enough, it will give me warning of anything approaching from the trees. I just hope it’s clear to the front.

I stop and reload my partially empty mag with the rounds from the other partly used one. The traffic jam continues ahead in an unrelenting fashion
and I see no end to the hopeless blockade of vehicles. I think it’s a little odd that I haven’t come across any road signs that would give me an indication of exactly where I am. I guess time will tell.