A Shrouded World (Book 2): Atlantis (16 page)

“Fuck.” I moved away and got the snack unstuck. “That’s gross, Trip. Flip your lighter back on.”

“How many hands do you think I have?”

“Priorities, Trip; the flame is more important than your munchie cravings.”

“Says you.”

At least he did as I asked: the lighter flared back to life. For the briefest of moments, I thought I was having a phantom Spangles encounter. The whole faux horror thing and all; the lighter was much brighter upon ignition than when it had been on steadily, and I thought I’d seen something right at the edge of the light’s influence. Now that the flame had subsided, I was certain it had been a trick of the shadows. Right then, the smell of death assailed my nostrils at full tilt. “Zombie!” blazed across my brain like a neon sign in Times Square.

I fired where I thought he’d been. I didn’t hear the whine of a bullet striking a hard surface and veering off in another direction, but to be honest I didn’t hear much beyond the actual gunshot. Like a persistent vacuum cleaner salesman, the zombie kept coming forward—by the time I could see him, I had the muzzle of my barrel placed against his head. There was no doubting I made the shot this time: His head snapped back at a severe angle as the bullet tore through his forehead and blew out most of his brains through the fist-sized hole in the back of his head. By the time he hit the ground, I realized I had two bullets left in the magazine and ten left to reload with if I was given the opportunity. I was trying to calm my system, which was threatening to capitulate to the rampant fear moving through me. I did not want to die in what already seemed so much like a tomb.

We would never be found here. We would effectively be wiped from the annals of all those who had ever known us. And they would not have the luxury of ever knowing where we were and if we were truly dead. They would never get the closure that people so desperately sought. Although, how bad is holding on to that minute hope that your loved ones are still alive? Makes moving on difficult, but as I would already be gone, it really wasn’t my problem. If you don’t look out for number one, who will? Yup, it’s those kinds of asshole thoughts that get man into trouble.

Trip had grabbed my shoulder and pulled me into an office. I caught sight of two more zombies before he shut the door and we once again found ourselves immersed in the pitch. I panicked, thinking he’d run out of lighter fluid. It was short-lived, as the flame came back on. Kind of wished it had stayed off. The strangeness of the train yard and the military roadblock had been... well, strange. Bodies planted into the ground like spring bulbs. This was a whole other level. The first body we saw looked like he had been propelled by some unbelievably strong force that had put him head and shoulders into the concrete. I would have thought this was the case if the wall had been smashed around the impact point, but it looked like the building material had been poured around his body. Only part of his upper torso and legs protruded, and they were perpendicular to the floor like his bones had fused and he was not capable of bending.

“Don’t see that every day,” Trip said rather lucidly. There was a perceptible shake to the hand carrying the lighter.

“Fug.” I had wanted to swear, but bile got caught in my throat as I realized I was going to have to touch the body. The man was wearing a utility belt. As luck—or unluck—would have it, he had a small flashlight attached to the leather band.

“What are you doing, man?” Trip asked as I reached out.

I didn’t say anything for fear of the words vomiting out along with everything else in my stomach. The granola bar had been bad enough the first time; I didn’t want to see it twice. I undid the clasp and pulled it out. It felt warm, like it had been on for a very long time and the batteries may have just petered out. I jumped when some loose change fell out of his pocket and jingled around on the floor, some rolling over to the far edges of the room.

“Please,” I prayed as I depressed the power button. I’d been so sure nothing was going to happen, it took me a second to be thrilled as the room illuminated.

The force that had melded the guard with the wall had taken his work partner and rooted him to the ceiling, much like Spiderman. His legs from the knees down were embedded in the ceiling. This was the first time we’d been able to see a face on these anomaly victims, and however he’d died, it had been extremely painful. Bits of teeth littered the floor where he had crushed them under the power of his own jaw. Broken blood vessels as thick as crayon lines crisscrossed his eyes. Half of his tongue, which must have been caught unawares, was lying on the ground like a discarded curl of roast beef. I moved past him to the large steel desk over by a bank of non-functioning video monitors.

I did my best to try and forget Chester the ceiling ornament right behind me. The top drawer yielded nothing of value, unless I could staple my next enemy to death. Schedules and rosters filled the first side drawer. The bottom big drawer was locked, which meant it housed the best chance for something better than a paperclip. I put my rifle on safe, turned it around, and smashed at the nearly flush lock three or four times until I realized this was useless. I could tell by the shadow behind me that Trip was moving. I was staring at the lock when he came up beside me.

“Try these.” He dangled a small silver key in front of me. “It fell out with his change. I was looking for gum.”

I took a breath as I placed the key into the lock. Even after I had tried to destroy the mechanism, it still turned effortlessly.

“Fuck,” I muttered when I opened it and discovered it didn’t house anything remotely resembling the blue of gunmetal.

Trip reached in and pulled out a sealed plastic container.

“Yes, yes, yes!” he started screaming loudly. He even started to dance that wild hippie dance. Arms outstretched, head lolling about uncontrollably, and his feet going up and down in random patterns.

“What?” I thought for sure he’d found a miniature machine gun or something. Instead, he pulled out three small aluminum packets, a sleeve of crackers, and what I am positively sure was not blue cheese when it was carefully placed into the container.

“Tuna fish!” He was still crazily moving about, his lighter making an even weirder shadow puppet behind him.

“Lunch? He locked up his lunch?” Then I thought on it. How many times had people pilfered my lunch out of the work fridge? As much of an asshole as I have proven myself to be over the years, I would never steal someone’s food. You really can’t go much lower than that, yet it happens all the time. I’d even gone to the lengths of spiking half my lunch with laxative so I could root out the fuckers that kept doing it. Amazing how much the instances of missing meals declined throughout the building once the jackasses realized they were playing Russian roulette with their intestinal tracts.

I was disappointed about not finding a gun, that was for sure, but I was starving and Trip very uncharacteristically shared his find, handing me a packet and five crackers. Once he realized he was still holding upwards of twenty of the crispy wafers, he gave up another five. I ripped the top of the tuna packet off, took a precursory sniff, and then rolled up the thing much like a toothpaste tube. After I rapidly swallowed that, I shoved the crackers into my mouth three at a time. In the time it took me to complete my entire meal, Trip had taken three mouse-sized bites out of one cracker. When I looked up from scarfing my food, he was watching me intently.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked him, now slightly self-conscious.

“I’d never seen a caveman eat. I just wanted to see how it was done.” He turned his attention back to his own food. If it had been a joke it would have been funny, but that he’d actually meant it gave merit to just how much of a slovenly pig I’d been. Screw it, I’d been hungry and it took the edge off. Although it was difficult to watch him daintily eat for the next twenty minutes. I wondered if he would remember if I knocked him out and took his food.

After he’d finished his crackers and tuna packet, he looked longingly at the one remaining and then at me.

“Well, I’m stuffed,” he said, pocketing the food.

My downcast eyes must have signaled something in his brain. “I guess we could have another bite each,” he said.

He made sure that he ate his half before he handed the thing over. Smart of him, because I’m not sure I could have eaten just half. Sure, I would have felt bad about it, but it would still be done.

A loud thumping on the door threatened to spoil what was sitting contentedly in my belly. We were still very much in trouble. Trapped in a basement without supplies. The flashlight was great, but eventually the batteries would be spent. Chances were Trip’s lighter was burning the unending fluid of divine intervention, but it did not produce very much light, and if we had to run the tiny flame would be extinguished. Three more hard knocks got me moving again. I needed something—even a heavy piece of steel would be welcome.

“Water,” Trip said. He’d gone over to a solitary workstation. A half empty bottle of water sat on the uncluttered surface. “If I let you have the first sip, will you save some for me?”

You never realize just how thirsty you are until you’re presented with a drink. The crackers had severely dried out my mouth and throat—wouldn’t have taken too much, as I was already low on my fluid intake. Even though I knew, I absolutely fucking knew that my life depended on drinking some of that water, I couldn’t make myself do it. It was open, strike one. It was half empty, which meant someone had most likely drunk it, strike two. Didn’t need a third strike—this isn’t baseball, these are my neuroses I’m dealing with. Sometimes it only takes one strike, sometimes as many as ten. Insanity has no baseline measurements, or rulebook.

Who knows? Maybe something in the water caused whatever had happened to these people. As valid a reason for caution as any, in my humble opinion. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration whether the person that had wrapped his lips around that top had some open festering mouth sores. Some rotting, puss-oozing, partially scabbed-over juiced-up herpes, ready to explode their yellowish green junk. I don’t fucking know, no way to tell because although Chip-Toothed Chester’s pucker looked all right, who knows what Walter Wall-Mount had going in around his suck hole?

“You gonna or what?” Trip was pointing to the bottle. I swore I could see bacteria the size of Chihuahua puppies running around the top, like on those old German cuckoo clocks, perpetually in a circle, waiting to infect their next victim.

I ended up pulling my lips into my mouth and shaking my head much like an eight-month-old baby that is sick of eating strained kale and apricot mush. I watched jealously as he tipped his head back, his Adam’s apple working furiously to drink what I imagined tasted like pure blissful mountain spring water. When there was about an eighth of the bottle left, I had the misfortune of watching his cracker-laden backwash spill into the remainder. He handed the bottle over to me.

“You should drink this, it will make you feel better.” Food orts swirled around the bottom like a crap vintage of homemade wine.

“Pass,” I told him, holding my hand out for maximum effect.

“Okay, you sure?” he asked, but he already knew the response. The bottle was up and the fluid gone by the time his question finished echoing off the wall behind me.

“That cracker taste good the second time around?”

“I had more crackers?”

I shook my head. It was now time to finally do a complete sweep of the room. It was a good size, as far as security rooms go. Fifteen feet by twelve, give or take. On the wall behind me was the door that led out to the zombies and a calendar for the year 1492—not sure if that was a joke or if someone was just a big fan of Christopher Columbus. To the left was the single workstation, where the disease-addled water bottle had been, and a large dry-erase board with a decently drawn picture of a woman with abnormally large breasts. This kind of thing can only be accomplished when men are absolutely certain no women might be coming. It wasn’t half bad; if I was thirteen and alone I, um, may have appreciated them a little more. Trip thought it was a Monet.

The wall at the end of the room was a bank of at least twenty monitors, all unfortunately off. The right—well, the right held promise. There was a door. Hopefully it led to another office and we could circumnavigate around the zombies; hell, I’d take a private bathroom if it meant a good long drink from the tap. I mean, after some healthy cleaning, but yeah I’d take a drink.

But it was neither of those things. Instead, it contained a nightmare nearly beyond my capacity to explain. I loaded up my magazine with three bullets and was finally smart enough to chamber a round as well. Six was better than five. I tapped the door with the barrel, hoping that I would not get a response.

“Hello?” Trip asked me when I did so.

“I’m not knocking to see if you’re home, Trip.”

“Then whom?”

“Whoever’s behind that door.”

“Well, who is it?”

We could have got into a roundabout discussion about what I was doing, but the best choice was to just stop talking about it until his micro-amnesia kicked in. Nothing responded on the other side of the door, which was as good a case as I could hope for. I handed Trip the flashlight.

“Just keep pointing it there.”

I had him aiming at about the center of the door; I reached out, twisted the knob, and stepped back. That one step became a frantic three-step backpedal as the body leaning against the door fell out. I turned my head as a heaving I could not control erupted from my mouth, chunks of undigested tuna falling wetly to the floor. Long ropy strings of bile-laced saliva hung from my mouth as I hunched over. Trip’s light had not moved, yet it had been enough to illuminate the vulgarity.

The thing was dead, or should I say things. Two men had forcibly become one. Most of the head on the right was intact—he’d been a clean-cut older guy, with a crew-cut, pencil-thin moustache, and a nose that may have borne witness to a bar fight or three. His compatriot joined him on the left side of his jaw. Half of the man’s skull was gone, presumably inside of Crew-Cut Ken’s head. He had one accusatory blue eye looking for a vengeance he would not find. The full lips of Ken gave way to the lopsided thin lips of Harry Halfway. Their chests were thankfully still clothed, but the sheer width implied that they were much like the head and now contained one-and-a-half times the mass. Trip lowered the flashlight and I was given witness to an old joke, because here indeed was a three-legged monster. Most guys that read this journal will get it—if you’re a woman and you do not, ask the nearest guy. If, due to apocalyptic circumstances beyond your control, there are no guys nearby, then just let your imagination run wild—it’ll come to you. Again, thankfully the clothes were still on. Whatever had caused this, it wasn’t in the water. I wished now that I had saved some to get the awful taste out of my mouth.