A Shrouded World - Whistlers (16 page)

He watched as Jack tossed the C-4 and Trip honed in on it with his slingshot, like it
was a clay pigeon

“NO! Trip!”

But it was too late. Mike knew the second Trip released that marble that he’d strike the explosive. The guy was nearly flawless with the weapon. The marble made a solid ‘thunking’ sound as it slammed into the side of the C-4. Mike braced for the explosion he figured was coming entirely too soon. He would count his blessings if a brilliant flash didn’t melt their faces off.

“Damn, that was close.”

Mike watched the fall of the explosive as it landed by one of the support legs for the tower.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Jack said, watching the block of C-4 get knocked out of the air.
“Cover yourself,” he shouted, and buried his face in his arms.

A blast shattered the air around them and the ripple of the explosion threatened to tear them from their moorings on the ladder.

“WHOA!” Trip shouted. “What a rush!”

Mike could see little more than a bright flare in his field of vision, but once his ears stopped ringing, the groan and creak of metal stressed to its capacity dominated.

“Jack, man, the tower’s gonna go! We have to get off this thing!”

“Too late. Hang on,” Jack cried out.

“You’re kidding, right? You and Trip think this shit up?” Mike asked. The tower began to lean. It was minute at first and then it became a full-fledged list. “Shit,” Mike muttered. “I always hated those dreams where I fell.”

With a shrieking twist of metal, the tower leaned farther. The support structure snapped with a loud clang. The group wrapped their legs and arms tightly around the rungs as the list became
a free-for-all tumble towards the ground.

The next twenty-four hours for me involved a death and a rebirth of sorts. The last things I remember with any clarity are Jack’s and my hastily laid plan to escape the water tower. Kind of had to like the guy, he ‘winged’ things about as much as I did. We were on that infernal ladder heading down towards a multitude of gnashing mouths. I thankfully swung Trip’s nasty pre-Reagan era underwear as far away from me as was humanly possible. It was just bad luck there was a prevailing wind that let me get one final intake of his crotch area. My last few cognizant thoughts, and one of them was going to be this? How bad must I have been in a former life that this was partial payment?

The underwear arced out and then plummeted to the ground where I swear (maybe not on a stack of bibles) that I heard them splash wetly down onto dry ground. Let that visual sink in for a couple of seconds. Zombies and Jack’s night runners were heading straight for it like the heavily-stained cotton cloth was a human buffet and not the accumulated dingle-berries of a burn out. I was vigorously rubbing my free hand against my poncho in the hopes I would be able to wipe off what I undoubtedly ‘caught’ as Jack was tossing the C-4. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Trip stir. It...it just happened so fast I couldn’t react. Maybe I was thinking that it wasn’t possible or that even ‘he’ couldn’t be that close to insane. I was wrong on both counts…all counts really.

I heard Trip yell “Pull!” That stupid fucking slingshot came up, and a ball-bearing was heading for a target I intrinsically knew he was going to hit. I swear I could hear Jack’s expression drop. The C-4, which had been on a trajectory that would have been a safe enough distance away, now dropped faster than a nun’s knees at church. (Oh get your head out of the gutter, I’m talking about genuflecting in prayer!) I stuck my head through the safety bars that enshrouded the ladder to watch. I guess I was either hoping it would hit the ground and miraculously bounce away, or it was a twenty car pile-up happening in front of me and I had to see how it was going to end. The C-4 literally just splatted to the ground and stopped. Of course it didn’t help matters that it was leaning against one of the support legs for the tower.

“No fucking way.” I may or may not have said that out loud.

Maybe it was Jack, I don’t know, things started to get blurry, but he recommended we cover ourselves, and that sounded like a pretty damn good idea. The explosion was deafening and blinding; my senses were rocked. I gripped that ladder hard enough that a casual observer may have thought we were lovers of some metal-human fetish. Even over the voluminous ringing in my ears, I could hear the pops and groans of the stressed support structure beginning to give. We were moving, and not because of any physical activity on our part. The tower was crashing down. John ‘wheeed’ the entire way. The tower first leaned backwards toward us, making it appear as if it were going to land on our ladder. The safety shroud was stout, but not that much. We’d be crushed like ants under boots.

I felt wind rush by me as we began to twist to the side. We were momentarily saved from being flattened, but we sure as shit were not out of danger. You know how people sometimes will be recounting a story of some scary accident and they start with “Oh, it just happened so fast, I didn’t have time to be scared.” That certainly wasn’t the case here. My dangerous mind had done me the great disservice of slowing everything down into easily digestible bite-size morsels so that I could enjoy every fucking terrifying millisecond. My body was pulled so tight, that, if someone had the desire to ‘pluck’ me, I would have resonated with sound. I’d thought the C-4 was loud, but it had nothing on the crashing of that water tower. When we finally struck ground, my head rattled inside that cage like a marble in a tin can tossed off the side of the Grand Canyon. I felt like someone had taken an aluminum bat to the side of my head.

As I write this now, I know what happened. At the time, though, I was unconsciously conscious; meaning that I was still awake, but I had no idea who I was, where I was, or what was going on. The force of the fall had ripped the safety shroud completely clean from the ladder, I was in flight for a few seconds, and then I found myself swimming. The tower itself had ruptured, sending however many millions of gallons of water rushing to the lowest point in the lay of the land and, it just so happens that I was in that path. Zombies and night runners were flowing with and around me. I saw an empty Phrito
’s bag or three, then trees and we were all hurtling towards them. Some of the zees in front of me were being crushed and spun around large tree trunks. I was rapidly approaching my demise, and it was made of oak.

I might not have been with it completely wits-wise, but my survival instinct was in high gear. I started jamming my hands down into the surf trying to find a handhold; anything I could to stop my present ride.

Chain link!

I felt fencing. I was going to lose a fingernail, but that beat getting battered. My right hand found purchase first, and my shoulder popped and groaned much like the water tower had. I was in serious danger of wrenching my arm clean from its socket, so I shoved my left down as well and scrambled to grip something. The tension eased as I distributed the weight. I figured I could ride out the storm until, of course, I saw a zombie heading straight for me mouth-first like a shark. Water was flowing past me, and sometimes over my head. At times, I was struggling to get air as I held on, and yet the damn ‘Great White Zombie’ kept coming. I did the only thing I could in defense—I ran. In this case…that meant letting go of the fencing.

I once again found myself become flotsam in a turbulent wake. I twisted and fought the current as much as I could. I don’t know why I thought it would be better to see the trees coming as opposed to just running into them. I tried to push off just far enough as a large oak dominated my view. It wasn’t enough. My already pounding head took another shot as the top of it scraped bark. I know I cried out in pain and what little grip I had on my present reality was ripped free. It was like my thoughts had been pounded out by the beating. The force of the impact may have saved my life as it swirled my body around the tree and to a low hanging branch, which I clung to like a sailor will a piece of driftwood during a capsizing. Zorca—zombie orca—wasn’t quite as lucky. I didn’t see him hit the tree head on, but I had the unfortunate luck of hearing him do so, and then I got to feel the spray of blood whistle past me on both sides. The water was murky and it was too dark to see that it had turned to whatever grisly color he had tainted it. And then…that threat was past.

I don’t know how I knew, but I realized that wasn’t the only one. I shook my head, hoping that somehow I would unlock whatever door had been slammed shut from my concussive hit. No luck. I was scared, maybe more so than I’d ever been in my entire life, and it wasn’t because of impending death. I’ve been in its presence many times over the years. From my days in the Marine Corps to the apocalypse I had left behind, and even the world I now found myself in. No, it wasn’t death that had me so frightened, it was life. It was the life I couldn’t remember. I did not have any idea who I was. Names meant nothing, occasionally I would be served up the mental imagery of a face, but I didn’t know the person. Was it my wife, a daughter perhaps, someone I had killed in a battle, both foreign and domestic? Was I a good man or a mass murderer? Nothing…nothing meant anything to me other than my next breath.

Like all humans, I value alone time; a time to reset one’s inner workings, a centering of your chi, or whatever your belief calls it. But being alone and being lonely are vastly different. I was soul-sucking lonely. I was so alone that I didn’t even know who my self was. My mother could have come out of the woods to save me, and I would have stared at her trying to ascertain her intentions. I was basking in self-pity, which is actually kind of funny if you think about it, because I didn’t know who I was—unnecessary tangent I suppose. Errant thought aside, the water flow was beginning to ebb. My feet slogged down onto wet earth, and my knees gave out when I attempted to put weight on them. I was on all fours with water running over my bleeding knuckles; dizzy, light-headed and nauseous. Then, I realized it wasn’t my knuckles bleeding but rather a steady stream of blood coming from my head.

I reached up and froze for a second when I felt a large outcropping up there. I’m not going to lie. I panicked a bit until I realized it was some sort of head gear and not some giant lesion or protruding railroad spike—or something equally as nasty.

When I was confident it wasn’t William Tell’s missing arrow, I pulled my hand back down to find it was covered with a fair amount of my life fluid. I looked hard to make sure there wasn’t any brain intermingled within. I used a tree as a support as I rose unsteadily to my feet. I leaned against the thick bark, taking in some breaths. I might have stayed that way for a few more minutes, hours, until daylight, or the end of times, but the fucking howlers had a different idea as they began their incessant wailing.

“Night runners,” I hushed out softly, not even realizing I’d remembered something.

I pushed away from the tree. My first steps looked like I’d just left a bar at closing time with draft beers having only been a penny. I staggered and weaved, then found some semblance of stability as I departed the area. My flight did not go unnoticed. Something was coming my way, but it wasn’t a night runner. It was as pale as death and a large gash oozed blood from the side of its head. A chunk of muscle the size of my fist was flapping on its thigh, part of it having been severed; most likely during the toppling of the tower. That didn’t stop him, though. The anger in his eyes was enough to let me know that if he got within striking distance, he meant to do me bodily harm. I was lucky his attempt at fast locomotion was thwarted by his damaged leg. He groaned as he dragged his useless appendage. His arms came up; his spatial abilities were pretty terrible if he thought he was in range of grasping me.

It was sort of humorous in a dark way, right up until his buddies heard his groan for help. Yeah, then it wasn’t quite so comical. All eyes turned toward me, like I was the office intern and I just returned with the boxes of bagels the boss had ordered.

“Uh-oh.”

Yeah I’m pretty sure I said that, and then, I turned and ran. I had completely forgotten about the M-16 I had hanging down on the middle of my chest, held on by my tactical strap. Even as the thing kept repeatedly hitting my sternum, I ran. If I’d had the misfortune of running between two trees too close to each other, the rifle would have bridged the gap and I would have slammed into it like it was a crossbeam. My head ached; every beat of my heart was agony as it sent a pulse of blood into the area. The pain was nearly debilitating. The lack of light and the canopy of the trees made any kind of vision nearly impossible. I was running blind with no direction in mind. I did not know of any sanctuary, no safe haven, no help…nothing. I was running to not die; it was the pursuit of the damned. I stumbled over a root and nearly went down.

Don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip
. This became my mantra.

The word ‘trip’ seemed important, but given the circumstances I was in, it held up to its own merits without me having to look for a deeper meaning. I could hear night runners off in the distance. They were a threat, but not as immediate as the one I found myself in now. The thick woods were slowing down those that followed, but it was having the same effect on me. Plus, they didn’t seem to give a shit that they couldn’t see anything. Either they were scent driven, or they could see in the dark. I didn’t know which and it didn’t really matter. They were closing and if I didn’t do something soon, I would die a violent death.

It was a branch that saved my life. At some point in my existence, I must have been a tree-hugger, because the woody plant life was helping out whenever it could. The growth caught the apparatus on top of my head and threatened to yank it clean from my skull. I don’t know why I cared; I didn’t even know what it was, but it was mine dammit, and I was going to do whatever I could to hold onto it. I yanked the thing back onto my head with a little more force than necessary, and it crossed over the top part of my field of vision.

I damn near stopped running when I realized, for a brief second, that I could see. Clearly I mean. Sure, it was this ghostly green, but I could see a patch of poison ivy to my left, a small outcropping of scrub brush I was about to get entangled with straight ahead and, yup, the ugly green-ass zombie coming up on my right. I lost a fair amount of peripheral vision as I dropped the wonder glasses into place, but I could see the hazards directly in front of me, and for right now, that was going to have to suffice.

I quickly weighted my options: Itching for a week, ripped to shreds from thorns and possibly hung up and then ripped to shreds from a man-eating monster or, I could avoid the step of getting shredded by thorns and go right for gruesome death by ingestion. I took avenue number one. At least in this one, I’d be alive to suffer through the insufferable scratching. Odds were I had to know someone that owned enough oatmeal for a bath. Right?

I was getting a bruise on my chest from the object that kept slamming into me. I looked down, but due to the length of the optics, I could only make out a piece of the gear as it swung away from my body.

Stick
, was my initial thought, although I couldn’t figure out why I would have attached it to myself in such a way as that it would not come off. Then, the word ‘fire’ began to resonate.

Wonderful
, I thought, what a bunch of useless, random thoughts I was having as I struggled to hold on to my life.