A Shrouded World (Book 2): Atlantis (14 page)

“Well, shit, what do you think? Just mosey into the muck that is Atlantis and wander around, hoping that something important jumps out at us?” Mike asks.

“For lack of anything else to guide us, I was thinking along those lines,” I answer.

I am kind of hoping Trip will come up with one of his cryptic statements, that we could get a glimpse into the maze that is his mind and figure out what to do next. He is, however, completely oblivious to our needs. Standing with a joint between his fingers, the smoke drifting lazily from its lit end, he stares down the tracks on which we just arrived. It’s like he doesn’t acknowledge the strangeness of the missing bodies; or perhaps he does and it simply fits in with his version of reality—like that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

The thought of entering the city without knowing where the horde of zombies or whistlers has gone is unnerving. I don’t like the cramped feel that urban areas give me. The lines of sight are all fucked up; there could be eyes watching us from a hundred different places and we’d never know. Ambushes within city streets are easy, and come fast and furious without any warning. Sound carries differently, and with night runners inhabiting the place in great numbers, there won’t be any escape into the darkened buildings. On the plus side, there probably won’t be any whistlers or zombies who could blindside us from them, either. The buildings will be the sole property of the night runners, leaving the daytime streets to the zombies, whistlers, and us.

“If that’s what we’re going to do, we should start while we have daylight,” Mike states.

I open up for a couple of seconds, just to see if the night runners are still in the area. I mean, who knows what happened after we left the party? The whistlers could have taken down the zombies and night runners, which I wouldn’t complain about too much. However, that would make the whistlers much more dangerous than I originally thought, so it doesn’t leave a warm and comfy feeling. Images of resting night runners immediately flood my mind, some rousing from their slumber at my intrusion.

Nope, they’re still in the city in force
.

“I’m with you. If we’re going to do this, then we might as well get along with it,” I reply. “However, this whole thing is making me rethink the idea of us splitting up.”

“I wasn’t big on that one, anyway,” Mike responds.

I recheck my mags, adjust my pack and M-4, and we start across the rail yard together. The lines running through the middle of the yard are open, which leaves me feeling a little uneasy. Before rounding several linked boxcars, I look left and right. Not from fear of some speeding locomotive racing down the tracks, but rather from fear that I’ll see a line of dust with whistlers at the front as they speedily descend on us. Thankfully, there is nothing but tracks receding into the distance.

We run across the open area and enter the banks of rail cars on the other side. Not much is said as we warily make our way over and around them, finally coming to the last of the sidings. The air seems both thin and oppressive, knowing that we’re heading into a hornets’ nest. This may not be my best move ever, but really, have any of them been?

Beyond the rail yard is a warehouse district. A chain link fence separating the properties lies in ruins, entangled within trampled scrub brush. Without a word spoken, betraying the prevalent tension, we gingerly cross the fallen barrier. Cargo containers and trucks of all sizes sit within a large paved compound. Numerous docking bays fill one side of a long freight depot, some with truck trailers parked at the entrances. The lot, which should be teeming with people loading and offloading goods, gives me the same sensation I had in the early days of the downfall in my own world, one bordering on loneliness—as if all of the equipment is merely waiting for people who will never arrive.

Traversing the empty lot, I keep my head on a swivel, scouting for the slightest motion. A light breeze brushes past, but its coolness does nothing to alleviate the tension I feel. We don’t have an avenue of escape should enemies appear. I mean, we could run from zombies, provided there aren’t any speeders with them. It’s the whistlers that I’m mainly concerned about. However, if they stay true to form, I should be able to hear the motorcycles they’re apparently fond of long before they actually appear. And the groan and stench of the zombies should be easy to identify, if the wind isn’t against us. The true worry, then, is whistlers that may be wandering around without their bikes. And there’s always the possibility of survivors, although I doubt any would be alive within a city filled with night runners.

Something catches my eye near one of the parked trucks. I get Mike’s attention and point to something sticking several inches out of the ground. It looks like a couple of broken pipes poking up from the asphalt. We change direction and amble closer. As we draw nearer, it becomes apparent what we are looking at: not pipes, but two bones standing upright and broken near the paved surface. Shreds of what look like deeply stained jeans and a boot are lodged next to one of the truck’s wheels.

Looking closer, the bones are sticking straight out of the ground, snapped off just a few inches from the surface. They, like the tattered clothing nearby, are stained and splintered as if they were broken from their current position. Deep gouges are carved into what remains and it looks as though they were gnawed on, which isn’t overly surprising given that night runners are around. The surprising aspect is that the bones don’t seem like they were stabbed into the asphalt—it looks like they are part of it, much like what Mike and I found near the blockade.

The pink meat of living tissue is visible a little below the paved surface. Tendrils of tendons snake out of the flesh, looking like they were pulled and clawed at. The thing that is lacking is the aroma of decaying flesh. With no small amount of trepidation, I kneel by the leg growing out of the ground and, removing my glove, poke a finger into the small crater to touch the tissue.

Disgusted, I quickly withdraw my hand. Wiping it on my fatigue pants, I can’t get over the feeling that I’ll never remove the sensation. Donning my glove, I rise.

“You know, the tissue still looks alive, but it doesn’t feel like it should. It’s neither warm nor cold. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t really have much of a sensation to it at all…kind of like touching a piece of chicken lying on a kitchen counter,” I say to Mike, but not really addressing anyone…mostly just voicing my thought out loud.

“Why would you touch that, and why would you touch a piece of chicken left out on a counter? That’s just gross,” Mike states.

“Sorry, man, but it’s sort of like the tissue is suspended—neither dying nor living. I don’t know if there are really words to explain it.”

“I was kind of hoping that what we found at the blockades was some sort of anomaly. We haven’t found anything like it since—but then again, we haven’t really been around population centers,” Mike says.

“It’s the fact that they appear to have been embedded into solid material that baffles me. Whatever caused it doesn’t really leave me with warm fuzzies.”

“Nope. Nothing cuddly here, man,” Mike says, looking around the open expanse, perhaps for more weirdness.

I’m wondering if this happened to everyone in the area. I didn’t see anything of the sort while strolling up the highway; it wasn’t until Trip and I came to the last military barricades that we first saw something similar. To me, that means that whatever caused this only encompasses a specific area, and may not be a worldwide thing. I’m guessing that if we mapped the anomaly to its extent, then the cause of it would be at the center. Of course, the mostly barren terrain surrounding the city would make mapping that difficult. And, so far, it only seems like people were affected. We’ve come across a few of these events, but I haven’t observed any animals involved. I’ll have to keep an eye out for that one.

Staring at the shin bones poking out of the large canvas of asphalt is so out there that I think our minds just bypass that fact. It all becomes about analyzing how…and why. I think this is the part in the movie where the audience becomes flabbergasted that the actors push on. All of the signs of impending doom are there, so why venture down the stairs in the dark? I have a little of that feeling, like I should just shrug and turn around. But, I need to get back. It’s not a matter of want: it’s a deep-seated need. And, it appears that we need to journey forward if we’re going to find any answers.

“It looks like we’ve stepped through the looking glass,” I comment, surveying the area.

“And fallen down the hole. Funny, I think I’d remember if I swallowed a pill, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a rabbit wearing a top hat wander out of the depot,” Mike adds.

Leaving the oddity behind, we start across the loading dock area. I feel a little lost, as I don’t have the first idea of where to search, let alone what we may be looking for. I’m not naïve enough to expect something to actually fall out of the sky and provide answers. The entirety of our plan is to wander around aimlessly until something catches our attention. The idea of doing that seems absolutely ridiculous, one that I would scoff at were it someone else’s. But, that’s what we seem bent on doing. So, off we go like a bunch of country kids visiting the big city for the first time, gawking at the sights.

The surface of the paved lot is covered with a layer of fine grit, disturbed in most places by what I guess is from numerous night runners transiting the area. Within the disturbed sand, I make out short outlines of single tread marks, attesting to previous whistler visits. I’m struck again by the situation in which we find ourselves; some kind of creature that motors around the countryside riding motorcycles, bodies or parts of bodies embedded within solid objects, night runners and zombies running around, and yet another variety of fast zombies who have the capacity to reason. It’s enough to make me want to find an out-of-the-way place and hide under a rock.

Angling for a wide drive that provides access to the loading docks, we draw closer to one side of the depot, where more oddities await. Embedded within the walls is more of the same: body parts snapped off and sticking out in places. The bone of an upper arm extending from a concrete wall, the other end lying on the ground a few feet away, partially wrapped in the remains of a shirt, visible gouges along the lengths of bone. The skeletal fingers are clenched as if frozen in the last minutes of an agonizing end.

An upper leg pokes out just above the knee, the remains scattered and covered with the same grit, the foot still wrapped in a worn work boot. Up and down the depot walls, the same thing. Shreds of clothing mixed with bones are strewn on the ground near the walls. Bones poking out like broken pipes. Several work helmets angle outward from the walls and lie scattered on the ground. Part of a stained, brightly colored safety vest dangles in one place, fluttering to the side in response to light gusts of wind. Except for the breeze, everything is still, as if the world drew in a deep breath and is just waiting to exhale…like whatever happened caught the moment and is holding the memory.

“Well, this is going to prove interesting,” I comment after we finish our silent inspection.

“Looks like it isn’t just tissue that was affected, but whatever the poor bastards were touching as well,” Mike states. “What do you think?”

“That’s as likely a scenario as I can come up with,” I reply.

“What the royal fuck could cause something like this? And worse yet, can it happen again?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, man. Whatever happened here is just too scary to contemplate. And to have occurred over such a wide area—I mean, if I remember the signs near the blockade correctly, this has to be at least a twenty-five mile radius. And that’s only if the city is the epicenter. If not, then it could be vastly larger.”

Keeping our senses attuned, we emerge from the depot and make our way carefully along a street with various warehouses on either side. Eventually, the district transitions from industrial to commercial. Some of the branching streets are covered with undisturbed layers of dirt, while others have avenues of disturbance running along their length. What the night runners find to feed on in this place is beyond me. From the bones extruding in places where people obviously congregated, it is apparent that the food source those provided had been expended long ago.

As we travel closer to the heart of the city, I keep expecting to find zombies gathering, but so far we appear to be the only ones about. I feel the sun’s rays on my shoulders as the day moves into mid-morning and begins to heat the atmosphere. The prevalent tension, the warming day, and my brain trying to wrap itself around the strangeness of this place all add to a feeling of lethargy, seeking to distract my thoughts from the present. The further we walk through the streets, the more difficult it becomes to stay focused. Time and time again, I have to force my attention back to the surroundings.

The passage of time is funny. To me, it seems like weeks, at least days, have passed since the massive three-way fight, though in truth it has only been a few hours. That’s what happens when a number of significant events occur within a relatively short period of time. I give a sharp, rapid shake of my head to clear my meandering thoughts. It’s imperative that I remain alert to the environment. First, things can happen quickly and I have to be watchful for the first indication of trouble. Second, I may miss something of importance, some clue that could lead us where we need to go, or provide an answer to our dilemma.

Step by step, we make our way deeper into the city. The wind, swirling in intervals down the streets and around buildings, is our constant companion. Occasionally, a bird or small flock of them will startle from a nearby rooftop, taking wing in a rush of motion before vanishing beyond another roof. Each time it happens, my heart stops and then pounds violently as a torrent of adrenaline is released.

Trip pauses for a fraction of a second each time before the birds take off, like whatever disturbed them is doing the same to him. Yet he says nothing nor does anything differently, just plods on in what I can only describe as a morose state.