Whistlers

Michael Talbot — Journal Entry 7

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.

‘Fires’ and ‘sticks’ were pretty much one of the earliest thoughts of man. Well, that and bopping a cave-woman over the head with a club and dragging her to their cave. Upon where she would chastise him mercilessly for having a pig-sty for a home and why couldn’t he bring her home a mammoth fur like Ubrach next door? Yeah, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion. I was going to die tonight. Then, something wonderful happened as I thought about Nugla and Ubrach’s dysfunctional cave life. I circled back around to ‘fire’ and ‘stick’, only this time I stuck the two words together. At first this meant nothing.

What the hell is a ‘firestick’?

Then an internal light shone brightly. Firestick equated to rifle. I didn’t know what a rifle was per se. I wouldn’t be able to give anyone a definition, but I started to see pictures of me handling one; of me breaking one down into its individual components and putting it back together, of pulling back on a charging handle, of watching rounds enter the chamber, of rounds coming out of the barrel.

“Holy shit!”

I wasn’t quite sure what I had, but I was positive that it could do damage. I was still running for all I was worth. The things behind and to the sides of me had not dropped off. I had to find a place to make a stand, and these woods weren’t going to be that place. I could see and I had the means to defend myself. I still had no clue who I was or why I was here, but I had hope, and right now, that was the only fuel I needed to spur me on. I found another gear. I was emboldened by my ability to see and not be impaled on the very branches that were doing their best to keep me alive. I ran. My legs were ablaze, my head throbbed, my chest heaved, my lungs burned, and yet…still I ran. At times I shouldered into a tree, always losing that particular confrontation. My momentum would slow for a mere moment before I would press on.

My feet felt like bricks. My knees were protesting the uneven terrain and my back begged for a seat, but still, I ran. Hope is a wonderful thing. It can make seemingly unattainable goals possible. But it is not an infinite well into which you can dip an over-sized ladle whenever you want. Even hope demands fuel of some sort to keep burning. It can be a drop, even a mist of fine spray, but it does need something. My reservoir of hope was beginning to consume itself like the malnourished dream that it was. Then, like that, there was an opening. At first I thought I was having a hard time processing the information being supplied through the green lens, but the farther I ran, the wider the gap became. I was close to getting out of the woods. Open ground wasn’t necessarily advantageous, though. The trees were the only thing keeping those chasing me from dragging me down. At least I’d be able to better see where I was going and potentially increase my speed. I may even be able to tell which direction my enemy was attacking from, although, odds were that would be easy enough to figure out as ‘being surrounded’ came to mind.

I ran out of the woods. It was exhilarating. The air seemed fresher, or maybe it was because my personal body funk wasn’t as entrapped. However, there was no time for joy as more and more of the chasers popped out of the woods at various points. All of their eyes trained on me and the pursuit began anew.

This time I had a place in mind; there was a clusterfuck of cars and trucks up ahead. I didn’t know what they were at that moment, I only saw them as defensible bunkers; a place where I could wield my weapon. One more spurt of energy; I would have had an easier time of wresting a banana from a selfish gorilla. I saw the only thing that looked decent enough to stop at. Unfortunately, it was on the other side of the roadway. It looked like a school bus, but it wasn’t; unless it was for the kids attending St. Peter’s school of perpetually deviant little shits. The windows were covered with heavy mesh and the wheels were protected by sheets of metal. It was either a prisoner transport or some prepper’s wet-dream brought to automotive life. I figured it was the former, a prisoner bus. I mean, why would the preppers have left it? Prisoners would have bolted at the first opportunity; a prepper would have died inside that thing.

“Just let the door be open,” I managed to hiss as I made it over the median.

I was threading my way through a tight packing of cars when I literally felt air being pushed past me. One of the snarling, drooling, teeth-grinding hunters had found a faster way through the traffic and was now coming at me after having stepped on a hood and launching himself my way. I turned in time to see my field of vision dominated by a gore-caked hand coming for my face. I twisted just enough that his pinkie finger scraped against the side of my cheek. I might have smelled like I’d taken a bath in a sewer, but that was nothing compared to the aged belly-brine, nose-bristling reek he gave off as he passed. His head hit the grill of the car I was next to and I turned to make sure he got an unpleasant introduction to my knee. He seemed no worse for it. That threw me for a loop. I expected the hard hit to knock him completely unconscious, if not outright kill him.

He might have been a little foggy, but that didn’t stop him from attempting to get up. I kicked out at his elbow, shattering it in at least two spots. His arm folded in on itself and, for the second time in as many seconds, his face met an immoveable object. He should have been screaming in agony. Nothing…not so much as a whimper.

“Drugs?” I asked as I brought the heel of my boot down on the back of his head.

Impossibly, it was still trying to rise. I raised my leg up again and, supporting my body on two vehicles, I drove down hard enough that I damn near gave myself shin splints for the effort. At least he wasn’t moving. I made it around the back of the bus and found two more attackers between me and the door which, on one hand, was awesomely open, but on the other, depressingly blocked by two more drugged-up, insane people. They had probably been on this very transport up until recently when whatever events transpired that set them free to ravage the country side. Shit, for all I knew, I was one of them and they were hunting me down because I had ratted out Jimmy ‘the Salami’ Montevez. Nobody likes a tattletale, least of all convicts.

“Firestick, fuck-tard!” Yeah, I yelled those words out.

It was like part of me in the know was trying to gain the attention of the much larger, other idiot part that was still nearly clueless. I brought the rifle up and fired center mass like I’d been taught somewhere, at some time. The man staggered backwards and then started forward again. If I had not had on the night vision goggles, and witnessed the impacts and the stains of blood they had produced, I would have thought I was firing blanks, or somehow had missed a shot that nearly had the barrel of my weapon pressing against my enemy.

“Protective clothing,” I mumbled, even if somewhere within me, I knew that was not the case. They were bleeding for chrissakes.

“Nothing on your neck or head, though.” I was thinking or saying this as I fired higher.

A shot hit the closest being in the Adam’s apple, bisecting the protrusion. It must have severed his spinal column as it blew through the back of its neck. His head fell over to the side like he was a puppy and was just trying to recreate the cutest pose known to the animal.

“Puppy tilt my ass.”

I was horrified. The thing’s head was literally resting on its shoulder and it had not stopped. I fired a burst, not knowing what else to do. The first ripped its lower jaw clean from its body, exposing its palate and top teeth. The second went to the left of its nose. That one seemed to do the trick as the third drilled him just below the left eye. His subsequent fall tripped up his companion, who got tangled and went down hard. I would have finished him off but I was running out of time. I could hear the snarls of more of their kind coming. I had just jumped in the bus and was reaching for the silver handle to close the door when something grabbed the back of my leg. They were squeezing so hard that it felt like a damn vise. I was in serious danger of my muscle seizing up into a massive cramp from their less than careful ministrations. I shook my leg violently, but it wasn’t letting go, like a great white to a seal. I did the only thing afforded to me and just kept pushing the handle towards the driver’s seat, slamming that door repeatedly on the arm until I heard the satisfying crunch of bone. I just kept repeating that while jerking my leg forward. I should have been more horrified when the arm came loose. I was just thrilled that the door shut.

I was leaning against the handle catching my breath while the bus was being jostled back and forth from the ‘undead’ that kept hitting the sides. Another word had come to the forefront of my knowledge. I knew it was important but I just couldn’t find the necessary reference catalog to look up what it meant. I almost recognized what I was looking at. There was a name from my memory, but instead of trying to dance around what a ‘blue shitter’ was, I just went with what I know. Just remember, the bell in my head had been wrung hard and it was still vibrating at this point.

The bus was not a prisoner transport. It was indeed a prepper’s vehicle. Unfortunately, it was someone that was on a pretty tight budget. He’d somehow gotten a hold of a port-a-potty and retrofitted it to fit in the back of the bus. It looked like he’d ripped the top off with a jig saw and then used five or six rolls of duct tape to hold it into place. The door was closed and my first inclination was to blast a couple of holes into it and let the chips fall where they may. There was a sixty-seven percent chance that there was something horrible behind that door. Here’s my reasoning. One, it’s a zombie stuck inside. Two, it’s a person that hid when they saw me coming. Three, the inside is completely coated in blue chemical-infused crap after hitting a series of pot-holes and it all splashed out. Hell, I’d be doing whoever is hiding in there a favor.

“Come out.” I think my voice had a tremor to it. It wasn’t very authoritative. “Come out now or I’ll blow some holes in there.” There, that sounded more certain.

Nothing moved. The latch informed me that the toilet was indeed ‘not occupied.’

“This sucks,” I said as I shuffled closer.

I was as close as I could be without the door hitting me should it pop open and an unpleasant surprise jump out at me. Like a shitty monster. Even I had to shake my head at my horrible pun.

“Last chance,” I called out.

It didn’t help that the zombies outside were rocking the bus enough that the door would crack open from time to time like someone was peeking out. My imagination was in overdrive. I was positive there was some little girl in there with pasty pale features, a tongue half-torn out, and sharp pointy teeth getting ready to launch herself at me. With the barrel of my weapon, I exploited one of the times the door cracked open and shoved my rifle in, and slammed the door to the side. I’d done it so hard that it hit the side of the bus with enough force to come back almost as fast as I’d sent it. I damn near needed to use the port-a-potty myself after that, it startled me so much. What I did notice before I almost crapped myself was that, unless someone was inside the refuse holding tank, there was no one in there.

I just about turned, and was going to scope out the rest of the bus, when I decided I needed to check. I’d read more than one news story in my life where some sicko would bind himself up in plastic wrap and hide inside that blue goo with the hopes of getting some sort of thrill. On a side note, what has to go wrong with your life that Saran wrapping yourself and getting into a human shit and piss-filled chemical tank for hours so you can watch random people expel waste product is your idea of a good time? I mean really, how far off the rails have you gone? Is there any chance of coming back from that? If there was someone in that tank, I may have had to shoot them just out of principal, because I’m not ever going to shake their hand.

“This cannot really be what my life is reduced to. Can it?” I was nervous talking as I slowly moved closer.

I’m pretty sure my gun was shaking as I moved it to point down the hole. There were things that went bump in the night, and then there were monsters, and anything that had the power to hide inside a chem-potty was the latter. My finger, instead of merely resting on the trigger guard, was applying nearly all of the force necessary to give someone a high speed enema. Fitting I suppose, considering where I was. I moved as fast as I could, my weapon pointing straight down to where I was looking. For a moment, I did see the beady eyes of something looking back at me—a white, wide smile plastered on its face, and a thumbs-up just for good measure. My trigger finger tightened an imperceptible amount.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I laughed as I loosened my grip on my rifle. “What kind of sick fuck puts the logo of a smiling man on the bottom of a shit can?”

The potty had never been used, or it had been cleaned thoroughly. Either way was fine with me. It did give a clue that whatever had happened in this place had happened suddenly, because I had to believe that if this person had spent the time retrofitting this thing in here, that he fully intended on using it. Why go through all that work otherwise? He’d had to have fled before he got the chance to fill it. Once the bathroom was checked out, I gave the rest of the bus a looking over. He had moved all the seats on the right side from the traditional school bus configuration to placing them against the bus wall, thus making a very large bench or thin, long bed. I guess it just mattered how you were going to use it.

On the left, he had the aforementioned toilet, then a couple of rows of seats. Some were removed and an old, round kitchen table, that looked like it had been weathered in Minnesota, installed. There were a few more rows of seats and then right behind the driver’s seat, there were two military footlockers secured to the floor of the bus.

“That’s what I’m talking about! Fuck you, wormies!”

I had not yet realized the pale ghostly figures looking in were zombies. I quickly got down onto my knees so I would be closer to the serious cache of weapons I just knew had to be stored in there. I was even more excited by the padlock that was in place and locked. That just meant he hadn’t had the chance to take anything out. I don’t know if an orphan kid just adopted by super rich parents on Christmas morning could have been more excited than I was at that point. I looked around for something to bust the lock, which I found next to the driver’s seat. It was a club, but not the traditional club you might be thinking of. This was an anti-theft deterrent, popular back in the 1980s from where I’d come. It had a U-shape on each end; this was so that you could put one end around your steering wheel, adjust the bar by telescoping it out, and using the other U to go on the brake pedal. In theory, a car thief could still start your car, but could not steer it, rendering it useless for their despicable ends. Thieves had since figured out how ineffectual the thing was, steering wheels bent with surprising ease, letting the club be removed and the car still stolen. I should have realized that his outdated deterrent was a portent of worse to come. He either got this thing at a dollar store or a yard sale. Either way, he’d paid too much.

The second piece of the puzzle came into focus as the padlock took two semisolid hits before the haft literally fell away. I was either really strong or he’d gone the cheap route again. I wasn’t so sure this lock could have stopped a determined toddler. Even as I was opening the top of the locker box, I was reasoning that perhaps he had no money for a lock and anti-theft materials because he’d blown it all on Uzis and hand grenades.

“No, no, no,” I said, staring in disgust at the vast array of cheap weaponry that could be purchased at any mall in the same store you could get a Buddha statue or a soap stone dragon.

I picked up throwing stars, nun-chucks, and knives made from steel hardly thicker than tinfoil. There were swords that I was pretty sure would bust trying to chop a watermelon. It was packed with the crap, like he had somehow intercepted a shipment from this place’s version of China. He would have been better off hammering nails through a bat. The nun-chucks would serve a purpose, just not the ones they were designed for. I grabbed them and walked over to the bus door; the zombies seemed to go into a minor frenzy when they saw me coming their way.

“Do you ass-wipes really think I’m coming out?”

I went down one step and then, at the bottom stair, I wedged the useless batons between the step and the door. The chain that held the two sticks together looked like it was made from low grade plastic. The wooden part, though, seemed solid enough, at least for what I was asking it to do. The zombies had been pushing against the door. Hard enough that, at times, they would crack the seal, and a few unlucky bastards would get their fingers stuck when it snapped back into place. I was convinced that eventually they would get lucky and pop the handle and flood into the opening. The nun-chucks were just a little piece of insurance against that. I went back to the crap-tastic arsenal and picked up a throwing star. What the hell? I had time to kill. I tossed it with some force, flicking my wrist. The star went straight and true for the toilet wall. I was waiting for the satisfying ‘thunk’ of blade sinking into plastic. What I got was the clatter of a star point shattering and falling to the ground with the rest of the apparatus.

“Toilet…one, throwing star …zero. I really hope this idiot wasn’t trying to defend a family. Do I have a family?”

I felt this pang in my chest alluding to that fact, but I could not conjure them up in my mind. Instead, I was left with a wondering hole. I didn’t have too much time to work on the sorrow as I stared at the as yet unopened box. I was sort of debating if I should just let it be and kind of ‘hope’ that something good was inside of it instead of cracking that lock and discovering the lackluster truth. Who knows? Maybe there were Tasers in there, or maybe a big bottle of bell-pepper spray. Shit, possibly even a crossbow with a draw of hundred and twenty-five pounds. It could happen. It was not a sign of good things to come when the lock fell away while I was merely lining the shot up and bumped against it lightly. It was impossible to not get my hopes up as I flipped the lid on that box. Why I wasted the emotion was beyond me. There were boxes and boxes of Burst-Pielets that, except for their round shape, looked surprisingly like their rectangular cousins Pop-Tarts.

Of all the things I was regaining, the memory of Pop-Tarts was one of them. Not where I was, who I was, if I was with somebody, or why there were monsters straight out of a nightmare chasing me. Nope, this is what I got to remember. I didn’t even know if I liked the flat, frosted, pastry-looking thing.

“Guy really liked cherry,” I said as I pulled box after box of them out. “Now the question is, do I like cherry?”

Again, I got a pang in my gut and I had no idea why. Maybe it was the hunger I was feeling. I didn’t know if I’d eaten an hour, or three days ago. The hollowness in my stomach was an indicator it had been a while. I ripped open the foil packet and instead of nibbling around the edges, I shoved half that thing in my mouth. Yeah, I gagged. It wasn’t because they were bad but rather, I indeed hated cherry.

“Oh, fucking gross!” I was spitting out the chewed up bits onto the floor and wiping my tongue free of the offending food.

“Come on, man, there has got to be something in this bus worth the effort of getting into it.” One hundred and six boxes of the mini-pies and one hundred and five were cherry. “What kind of freak is this guy?”

The last was peanut butter. Again, I had no idea if this was a flavor I enjoyed or not and the words PEANUT ALLERGY flashed across my thoughts in angry red letters.

“Well, I’d more likely be concerned about that warning if I knew what it meant.”

I ripped this packet open. However, this time, learning from my earlier mistake, I took a bite a mouse would have been ashamed of. I didn’t immediately spit it out or go into convulsions, so I figured I was somewhat safe. I took a bigger bite. When the peanut butter coursed across my taste buds, I figured this must be what heaven was like. I ate all eight of the delectable delights in record time; my eyes were closed as I savored every satisfying chew. I wasn’t full, and I might have had a little stomachache from too much sweetness, but it was so worth it.

Now, if only I could find some milk, or better yet, a cow so I could wash it all down.

For the first time since I’d gotten onto the bus, the zombies had stopped beating against the truck. I looked up. A fair number were no longer watching me like I was a fish inside a large aquarium stationed in their favorite Chinese food restaurant while they waited patiently for their order to be filled.

“Something else on the menu, boys?”

I checked my weapon. Maybe there were other folks out there and I could give them some covering fire. I was peeking over the head of an incredibly tall monster. I felt like opening the window and tapping him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, Mr. Monster. I realize you probably had a lucrative career playing basketball, but now you’re in my way, and I need to see. So…if you could please move a little.”

Good thing the heavy mesh was in the way. I stepped back from the window when I heard the cries of the night runners, they were hunting. They were close, but not overly so. Who were they hunting? Someone had told me that they had an incredible sense of smell.

“Who?” I yelled. “Who the fuck told me that?!”

I caught glimpses of a face, then I completely stopped when the giant thing in front of me turned. He looked like a clay model man created by Picasso. Half of his face seemed normal enough, but the other side was dragged down. Half of his forehead had sloped down and was covering his right eye. His eyelid on that side, which had completely stopped working, was in the closed position. The skin under his eye had sunk down leaving a veiny red area exposed. His cheek, which was sallow and concave, was pulled down, giving him a Bulldog jowl expression. Another pang, this one almost put me in a seat before I recovered. There was either something about jowls or Bulldogs that threatened to put me in a funk. On the good side of his face, the corner of his mouth was pulled up in an ‘I’m going to eat your spleen’ kind of smile. The left side was pulled down in an ‘I’m going to eat your spleen’ kind of sneer. It was not a pleasant sight. I would have shot him just because, but I was afraid the noise would bring the others and I didn’t need that kind of trouble.

I watched the far side of the road, where the night runner cries had originated. Ten to twelve of them came out from the tree line and were jealously looking over at our party. They appeared to want to crash it, yet they were tentative. A few of my guests peeled off from the bus and pursued the night runners as they melted back into the woods.

It was ten or fifteen minutes later, the night runners returned. I’m not sure if it was the same ones, but the likelihood was high. This time, they were silent as they crossed the road and were now standing in the median.

“What is going on?”

I got my answer soon enough as they started screaming amongst themselves. They came no closer, that didn’t seem to be their motive.

“They’re luring the security away.”

I quickly crossed the bus and was now leaning on the bench, peering out into the woods on this side of the roadway. Most, but not all of my entourage had departed, it was definitely a skeleton crew.

“You crack me up.” I was talking to myself.

Whatever mirth I momentarily felt, left quickly as I watched a half dozen of the sneaky bastards come out from behind cover. A quick count showed about ten of the original monsters, who had absolutely no clue what was going on. My instincts were telling me to let this play out. Then I could deal with the remainder and get out of this cherry overload hell I was in. The night runners were swift and merciless as they descended upon the first of their enemy.

One of the night runners grabbed the female thing from the back, wrapping his arms around her waist, tightly pinning her arms to her sides. Her neck bent as she dipped down trying to get a bite on the forearm holding her. A second night runner came up behind her and grabbed a fistful of hair and wrenched her head backwards until her spinal column popped. The first one let her go and she lost her balance and fell over backwards, landing awkwardly on her lolling head. The night runner that had broken her neck brought his foot down on the side of her head until she looked like neglected road kill. A variation of this went on three more times. I couldn’t tell who I wanted to win. This was like watching the New York Yankees play the Philadelphia Eagles, I wanted them both to lose. Two names I was positive I didn’t like, but had no idea who or what they belonged to.

“Which is the lesser of two evils?” I asked myself as I watched the night runners kill another zombie. “Zombie?”

I said the word like my tongue was swollen. It came to my lips long before the meaning came to my mind. I had a funny feeling this happened a lot to me—even before I banged my head. The zombies were much more familiar, and it was clear to me I’d known them longer. The night runners were a relatively new threat. I don’t know how I knew that, I just did. And like any good redneck, I fear change. I grabbed the two latches on the window nearest me and pushed the window down. I placed the barrel of my weapon through a hole specifically designed for a rifle to poke through. I mean, there was even a rubber grommet to protect the bluing of the firearm from scraping against the wire.

“Why didn’t the idiot have a throwing star cut out as well? Jerk.” I said as I lined up my shot.

I put two holes into the base of the night runner’s neck. He went down fast. His assassin partner spun to look up at me and charged my gun emplacement. He grabbed the barrel and yanked me forward. If the dimensions of the gun hadn’t of stopped his pull, I would have slammed my head off the wire. He screamed in unbridled rage, as he wrapped his other hand around the barrel as well and started shaking it like he was churning butter. I could barely get my finger on the trigger. Luckily, he was presenting his chest to me, or I would have never got a decent shot off. I hit him flush in the nipple, completely obliterating this useless appendage on the male anatomy. He staggered back, the fury never leaving his features as he fell to the ground. The zombies finally caught wind that something was wrong, as they came to investigate the loud noises happening on the far side.

There was a brief struggle, but the night runners seemed very uninterested in receiving damage. It was once again me and my old pals. I put the window up more as a defense against the smell; although nothing short of industrial strength fans and a Costco-sized can of Lysol was going to help. They weren’t getting in, and I wasn’t going out—not while it was dark. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but I was fairly certain that the name ‘night’ in night runner held some significance. I pulled off the night vision goggles and lay down on the large vinyl bench. I figured the odds that I was going to end up on the floor were pretty high. By the time the sun came up, I found myself still on the bench though I had yet to find a comfortable position to sleep in.

“What the fuck did I drink last night?”

I had partially opened one eye. Sunlight was streaming in and my right arm was hanging down almost touching the floor. My face was smooshed and, what I imagine was drool, was puddled on the floor below me.

“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 friggin’ 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?

From the limited amount of time Jack and I got to talk, I was pretty sure his and my world was mostly the same. I mean at least the locations, yet his was being overrun by night runners and mine zombies. This place certainly looked like any highway in the states, yet the names were different, and probably whatever was afflicting this place was different as well. Something niggled at the back of my head.

Were the night runners and zombies we’d encountered here indigenous to this place or had whatever brought Jack and me through brought some undesired guests as well?

This was a path I did not relish going down. If the zombies and night runners were ours, then what was here? Maybe whatever it was had snagged Lucy. That would solve at least one of my problems.

I was about to travel farther down this mind-path when the next thing I encountered stopped me in my tracks. It was a leg. Now, yes, normally a random unattended leg in the middle of the roadway would be cause for concern, and definitely something you might investigate. But I’d been in the midst of a zombie apocalypse for close to half a year, an arbitrary encounter with a discarded limb was not that big of a deal. I mean, I guess it was for the person that had lost it, but these days it was more of a background prop, relegated to the status of street sign, or tree, or telephone pole. In and of itself, it generally held no value. This one was different, though, and not because the person who it had belonged to was wearing camouflage pants and black military boots, but rather the way it was planted in the ground. The leg was sticking straight up and down, the knee on the ground the booted foot up in the air, as if someone were trying to grow a human.

I was looking around as I came closer to the leg. I lightly touched it with the toe of my boot. When it didn’t immediately fall over, I applied a little more pressure. It didn’t budge. I did a quick three-sixty around my perimeter. If anyone was around, they were doing a damn good job of hiding themselves.

I got down on my haunches to get a closer look at the leg. It was seamless where the pavement met the leg; it was not broken up or dug out. I looked completely around the leg. There was no reason this thing should be standing like this; at least, none that I could discern. I poked it with my barrel. Besides disturbing a squadron of flies, it did not move.

“Super Glue?” Was all I could come up with as I stood. “For what purpose?” I was going to stick with the glue theory for a little while longer. My alternative was that it was imbedded in the ground. That just wasn’t going to fly.

Getting to the military vehicles was not as easy a task as one might assume. There had to be two or three inches of brass casings on the ground. I wasn’t a fan of making so much noise, but I had no choice other than to kick them away, giving me a relatively clear spot to put my foot down. Falling over with a twisted ankle would have been worse. The civilians had fought back. The truck I was heading for was peppered with ineffectual divots in its armored hull.

Hunting rifles and handguns versus machineguns and armored transport is not much of a fight. That they’d even tried showed just how desperate they’d been. What was on the other side of this that made it worthwhile, or worse, what was behind that drove them to it? If I looked hard enough, I could still see smoke from a distant burning city.

How long could a metropolis burn? A few weeks I guess.

Yet I’d seen no living humans besides the ones that had been dragged into this mess for some reason. I could only hope I would get some answers, but right now, I was preoccupied with survival as I rooted around the trucks. I found a little more ammunition, which I gladly took, and more water than I could possibly drink, although I did my best as I bloated my belly with the wonderful wet substance.

Then I hit pay dirt, sort of. A brown, nondescript box was in the back of one of the Hummer-like vehicles. It was stamped with ‘FTE’ and then, in typical military fashion, it felt the need to spell out the acronym.

Why bother with the acronym to begin with?

No time to question it. Now that I’d slaked my raw thirst, I had another powerful need to take care of. My stomach was twisted in knots from lack of food. Two force-fed Phrito’s from Trip nearly two days ago and the sickly sweet Pop-Tarts knock-offs wasn’t going to cut it.

FTE stood for ‘Food To Eat.’

I tore open the package like I was expecting filet mignon. The heavy plastic was gray. My guess, it mirrored the food. Right now, I didn’t care. As I tore into something called Protein Mass, I discovered that it was like beef stew, but without the catchy name, actual flavor, or taste. I ate that one and one just like it. I then grabbed a couple more and stuffed them in my pockets. I wasn’t full of hope and confidence, but I felt better. I’d eaten and drank. Taking care of those base needs had greatly improved my disposition.

“Time to follow the yellow brick road I suppose.”

I shielded my eyes to look at the grand openness ahead of me.

“Lucy, you coming?” I shouted behind me. “Maybe I should have called you Dorothy. What’s that make me?” I asked, looking down at my pink sneakers and poncho. “I’m guessing I’m the Scarecrow. My geometry teacher was always saying how I was lacking in the brains department. Betcha that fat fucker got eaten on day one. This one is for you, Mrs. Weinstedder.” I looked up and flipped her the bird.

I maybe should have turned that gesture towards myself as I brought my gaze down, I saw a giant blue road sign:

Atlantis 25 miles

“You have got to be kidding me. Right?”

Was this where the fabled city had gone? Had ancient visitors from my world somehow found a portal that had brought them to this strange place?

“What is going on? And can I make twenty-five miles before dusk?”

I didn’t think so, but I was going to Atlantis. How could I not? That would be like someone asking if you wanted to see the center of the earth. I mean, you were sort of compelled to go, weren’t you?

I was a good half mile away from the tangle of cars. The day was beautiful; a deep blue canopy overhead with some wispy clouds. The sun was bright but not hot. A stirring breeze kept it cool enough that I was in no rush to shed my heavy-knit poncho. My guess was that, wherever I was, the fall season had just started. Birds were chirping, and some of the more industrious ones were migrating. Bugs were minimal to non-existent. If I had some beer and some decent company, it would altogether be a really great day. I turned to look back to Lucy, who was just emerging from the line of trucks.

“I was wondering where you’ve been,” I said.

She paused when she saw me. I raised my rifle. Five hundred yards with iron sights for a head shot was not mathematically impossible. Highly improbable, though. I was a fairly decent shot, and if I had unlimited ammo and time, I think I’d set myself up to take a crack at it. She was not an immediate threat, and time was definitely not on my side. The sun had already made its apex and was on the decline. That meant my other buddies would be coming to the party soon enough and I was about as much in the open as one could get. My priority was now going to be to find a place to hole up for the night.

Easier said than done, I thought as I looked around.

I walked another mile or so and I’d seen nothing bigger than a grassy knoll as a means of defendable position for the evening. It was looking a lot like Kansas, minus the corn stalks and billboards proclaiming that ‘I’m loved.’ If you’ve ever been to Kansas, that would make way more sense.