A Shrouded World (Book 2): Atlantis (17 page)

“They have shootie things,” Trip muttered, still not looking.

I’d been so lost in the horror of what I’d seen that I had missed the silver lining. Silver lining for me, I mean—certainly not for them. They were fucked. I could only hope that somehow their souls hadn’t gotten all knotted up like their bodies had. I’m sure they’d have some explaining to do at the gates, if that were the case. Ken was right-handed and Harry was a leftie, and they had both been armed—damn shame they’d been attacked by an enemy beyond anyone’s scope. They hadn’t known they were about to die; their pistols were still firmly buttoned in their respective holsters.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” I groaned; I didn’t want to look as I reached over, but I also didn’t want to just blindly grope in the dark.

Who knows if I would involuntarily touch something that was supposed to be there or not? Whatever gods ruled this planet had a twisted sort of humor, but were not completely without mercy. I was now the proud owner of two Lawther 8.5 mm handguns and four extra magazines. I had about ninety new bullets, and the guns seemed to have been cared for by someone who was exceedingly anal retentive in regards to their maintenance. Another boon for me.

I turned my back on the abomination behind me. I needed to focus my entire psyche on the happiness that was our chance at escape. I noted that Trip had still not moved.

“You all right?” I asked, reaching out to touch him.

“I’m pointing to where you said I should.” Part of me wanted to believe it was just Trip being Trip, but naw; he’d been thrown for a loop, hard for him to explain what he’d seen, even if it had only been for the half second it took for the image to travel through his beam of light.

“I think I saw a picture on one of the small televisions, Trip. Maybe you should check it out.” I steered him away, waiting until he lit his lighter, and then I gently took the flashlight from his hand. I peeked my head into the closet, looking for a trap door, hand grenades, the wardrobe to Narnia—anything that might help. All I got were two old pairs of boots and three jackets emblazoned with the logo of the Guardian Security Company. I checked the pockets, and was thrilled when I found a pack of gum. I grabbed the melted-together belt of the two three-quarter men, and with some wrangling, shoved them back in the closet where I hoped they would never be discovered—not even by some alien archaeologists who would forever wonder what they had found and would waste the rest of their lives hunting down missing links to a specimen that didn’t or shouldn’t have ever existed.

I shut the closet, hopeful that one day I would be able to as effectively shut the sight from my mind. I unwrapped a piece of gum, walked over to Trip, and placed a piece in his hand. He put it in his mouth without ever looking to see what it was. For all he knew, I could have handed him a porcupine. He was watching the monitors as though they were on, completely enraptured by things only he could see.

“You ready to go?”

He looked at me, and I swear he was about to ask if we could wait until the show was over. Instead, he just nodded.

“Thanks for the candy bar. I think it’s stale though, really chewy stuff.” He swallowed hard.

“It’s gum, Trip, you’re supposed to keep chewing for a bit.” I handed him another piece.

“You maybe should have told me.”

“Maybe I should have.” I spun him gently toward a door he had no desire to go through.

“Please don’t make me shine the light again, I don’t want to see any more mooshies.”

“Yeah, me neither Trip. No mooshies this time, just the funky ones.”

“Concert line cutters?” His eyebrows furrowed.

“Yeah, those asshats. The line cutters.” Whatever made him angry, I was going to use it to my advantage. A checked-out Trip was a liability—well, to be fair, he’s usually checked out—but this was something different. He was half a step from catatonic. I checked my weapons for the fifth, maybe the tenth time. OCD sucks ass. Whatever screwed with these people seemed to only have messed up organic material, although I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about that. We could open that door, I could pull the trigger, and for all I knew the gunpowder could have fused with the brass cartridge or something equally disastrous.

“Hold on for a sec, keep watching your show.” He seemed relieved. I went over to the body that was at a ninety-degree angle to the wall and placed the muzzle right up against his rib cage. I was sorry for possibly desecrating a body that had already been through so much; I was also sorry for making an explosion in another enclosed space, and I was even more sorry that any zombies in the general area were going to make a beeline for the dinner bell.

“Trip, cover your ears,” I said, though probably didn’t have to worry about it—he was chewing his gum so loudly that he most likely wouldn’t hear anything over his wet smacking sounds. He sounded like a rabid cow chewing its cud. If I weren’t already so grossed out about the task at hand, I would have told him to stop.

The room lit up as I squeezed the trigger. The guard’s shirt caught a small flame, and a wisp of smoke that smelled much like charred pork and cotton wafted up. So the gun worked—that was one thing. What was once blood leaked through the hole I’d just made, though now it looked more like dough of some sort being pushed through a form. It was thick and looked almost rubbery. I definitely thought about touching it to satisfy my curiosity, but luckily for me my mental instability kicked in and I left it alone.

“Nothing personal,” I told the body, most likely not the eulogy he was looking for.

“Show’s over,” Trip announced.

“As good a time as any, then.”

“No, man; there have been way better times.”

I pursed my lips and tilted my head slightly. “You’re right about that buddy, just so happens this is the only time we have available to us right now.”

“I suppose.”

“Hey, if you’ve got a time machine somewhere, by all means feel free to use it.”

“If only it were that simple.”

I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, and all I was really doing was stalling. I mean, what’s the rush, right? Sure, we’d die of dehydration in here within the next couple of days, but that beat getting torn apart by zombies in a few minutes, hands down—in my humble opinion.

“Okay Trip, listen to me carefully: I’m giving you a small set of instructions and you need to follow all of them carefully.”

“Is this like the LSAT?”

“The law school entrance exam? No, it’s not like that.” Putting my faith in Trip was difficult. Sure, he usually came out smelling like roses, but the sheer amount of shit you had to wade through made you wonder. “You need to open the door, step back, and keep the light shining at about chest level. You get that?”

“Get what?” He was checking his pockets like I’d just sent him something. I was trying to figure out if I could do all those things and fire the guns effectively. “Oh, the door thing; sure, I can do that.” He started heading back to the closet.

“Wrong door, Trip, and you really don’t want to open that one again.”

The veil lifted from his features for a moment. “Yeah, definitely not.” He came back to me. “Open, step back, shine. Open, step back, shine. Open, step back, shine.”

On one hand, I was thrilled that he remembered what to do; on the other, I was mortified that he had to chant this simple set of life-saving instructions. I mean, when he was at home, did he say, “Breathe, swallow, pump blood?”

He grabbed the handle quicker than I was expecting. For a moment, the light was blocked by the door as he pulled it toward him. I saw shadowy glimpses of multiple zombies. The call to action came when the door slammed against the wall, the sound engaging my hands. My first few rounds were low. By now, the entire doorway was lit up, and packed with snarling zombies. Mouths open and chomping at the air, hands stretching out to grab me. Flashes from my rounds lit the place up like a strobe light as I fired. A point of light, zombies through the door, a point of light, one zombie falling from a death blow to the side of its skull, another advancing to its right. Flash, I placed another round into the zombie falling by my feet, flash, a zombie gripped my arm. I pivoted, placing one pistol against its temple. Muted strobe, mind matter sprayed toward a shocked Trip, bathing him and the light in a thick red mist.

The zombie fell away even as I fired again, the amber sheen of Trip’s flashlight giving the room a surreal quality. Zombies fought to get in; the light didn’t reach far enough into the hallway for me to know if we were dealing with six or sixty.

“Back up, Trip!” We’d lost the doorway. I’d hoped that I could have him slam the door shut if things looked bleak, but there were so many bodies in the way now he wouldn’t be able to do so. I kept firing. The light bobbed as he did what I asked. Surprisingly, the beam stayed pretty much where I’d asked him to aim it, even as I heard the heavy squeal of furniture being moved over the floor. Maybe he thought a little feng shui would bring some order to the room.

The only reprieve we got was the log jam at the door as the sheer mass of zombie bodies clogged the artery. My right pistol bolt clicked and held open as I expended the last round, the left was not far behind. I had to change magazines out and quick; unfortunately, I was not an action star who could hit the release button and slam the empty pistol down onto a special belt that housed my new full magazines before hitting the bolt release and firing again. No, my process was much, much slower and more mundane. I would need to put one gun down while I fumbled with the lever, root around in my deep pockets, pull out a fresh magazine, and I would invariably have to orientate it correctly as I would try and shove it inside the handle upside down at least once, maybe twice. Then I would mess around again looking for the bolt release; the second gun might be slightly quicker or maybe slower as the fear and adrenaline made every part of my body shake while I waited for the teeth to rip into the soft flesh of my neck. The zombie would tear back with a mouthful of skin, muscle, tendon, carotid artery—maybe bone if it could sink its teeth deep enough.

“Ponch! The desk!” I didn’t know what Trip was talking about until I turned around. He’d placed the desk kitty-cornered against two walls, giving us our own private triangle of somewhat safer real estate. It was the only lifeline we had, and I grabbed at it greedily. I turned, ran, jumped, and slid across the desk in my best Dukes of Hazzard move. It was textbook, too, at least until I came to a quick stop against the wall. Tending to the bruises and possible concussion would have to wait.

Trip had placed the flashlight on the desk, it wobbled back and forth as I messed around with the guns. He’d pulled out his slingshot and was propelling steel ball bearings at eyeball-bursting speed. Trip with a slingshot was like Legolas with his bow and arrows. The fluidity of his movements combined with the grace and lethality was staggering. He’d kept them at bay long enough for me to get reloaded. I brought my gun up and fired once, figuring this one would quite literally be pressed against the nearest head, but what I hit was the back of a retreating zombie. I felt a sick satisfaction as I severed its spine. The zombie fell over, still very much alive, its hands reaching out for the doorframe as its legs remained stationary.

“What is going on?” I wondered aloud. The room was nearly empty, except for the dozen or so dead and dying zombies.

“I like what you did with the place,” Trip said, looking around with the flashlight.

I kept an eye out on the doorway. At first, I didn’t know what I was seeing as the pile began to shift. I mistakenly believed that a couple of the zombies might not yet quite be finished and were trying to crawl out from under the pile. That would have been bad, the truth was terrifying.

“Trip, shine the light on the zombie—I mean, funky pile.” The light quickly came over. A zombie that was leaning over snarled viciously at me but kept doing what it was doing. Which was pulling a body out from the doorway. I still had hope that maybe this was a zombie friend and he wanted to give the thing whatever last rites zombies give to each other—that was dashed when another zombie came into view and pulled another body away. They were cleaning out the clog so that they could come in quicker.

“Fuck you, then,” I told the second zombie as he moved. My shot caught him above the right eye, sending him falling backwards in pulsing globules of blood. Trip had followed him all the way down with the light; we saw his head being dragged down the hallway by a zombie we could not see.

I thought about waiting until they cleared the doorway and then slamming the thing shut like my original emergency plan had called for, but what was the point? There was the chance that more zombies were coming to aid their brothers with every minute we fought for these six square feet we called ours. Plus, it would bring us no closer to getting out of here. Either we got out or we died—that pretty much summed up how these worlds worked. Trip had the light trained down at the floor; there were only three zombies left to be removed. A hand reached and felt around until it snagged the material on a pair of pants and then started pulling the body out and away. That really freaked me out—of course there was the creep factor of watching a gray, sore-crusted hand blindly moving around, but the seeming humanity of the action was worse.

Up until recently, the zombies very much looked and acted as you would think a zombie should. Walked slowly, hands outstretched, mouth open, gray coloring, tattered clothes, various wounds, missing skin, opaque eyes, and a slow stunted gait. I mean, there they were, exactly how we horror aficionados expected the things to be. Not anymore, though—things were changing. They were faster and more dexterous, and along with their insatiable hunger, they were getting smarter. Made sense though, as all predators get smart—they have to in order to find ways to attain their prey, which just so happened to be us in this case.

We did nothing except wait. The flashlight dimmed just long enough to give me a minor heart attack and then came back on quickly and brightly, letting me know just how precarious our situation was. Once the batteries died, the miniscule advantage we had at the moment would swing back hard to the zombies’ side.