Diary of the Displaced (16 page)

We headed back to the shack.

All quiet. No zombies today. I walked down to the swamp to see if there was any sign of the fire.

Nothing.

Even the gargants are not around.

Day 36

We set off back towards the junkyard soon after I awoke, but rather than heading back over the plateau I took Rudy’s suggestion and we made our way across the river, following the foot of the slope. I would rather have gone back across the plateau, but I couldn’t ignore the possibility that The Warrens might be hiding something.

Rudy was cheerful today, and talkative.

“If you stand on the plateau and look down into The Warrens it’s a sheer drop, too high to clearly see any of the paths that run through the rocks. It’s the way that the zombies go when they are on their way to the junkyard, but they seem to stick to one particular path and there are hundreds of paths.”

“So we can avoid the zombies, by using another path?”

“Hmm, I’m not sure we should. It would be quite easy for us to get lost down there, but saying that, I’m still curious as to what Adler was searching for down there, and he went there a lot.”

We travelled past the spot where Rudy had died, and were both a bit disturbed to find that it had been messed with. Some of the ground had been churned up and bones had moved, and I don’t mean the bit that I had disturbed to get the compass.

“Maybe I should bury you?”

“What?” he looked shocked at that. I have to admit that it was a strange comment to make, considering he was standing right next to me, well, his ghost was.

“Your… remains. You’re kind of just… maybe I should bury you?”

I pointed at the bones that were scattered along the riverbank, overgrown with the bright, glowing grass.

“No. It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I don’t want you too. It would be like admitting I’m dead, and I’m still here. I don’t believe I am dead yet.”

That was that. Decided.

Over the river bank the ground sloped downwards past the rocks and then flattened out into a rough, open plain littered with small stones and debris. The grass gradually thinned out and was replaced by hard, cracked ground that was covered in a kind of salty sand. It reminded me of some pictures I’d once seen in National Geographic, of the Gobi desert.

DogThing was waiting for us where the rocks ended and plains began. I like to think that somehow he knew where we were heading.

We stayed along the edge of the plain, near to where the plateau rose up, higher and higher in a sheer wall of marble until I could no longer see the top.

Across the barren ground, in long trailing lines, were sets of footprints. Rudy said that not even the storm and the rain managed to touch anything here, so the footprints were still there from the times that he and Adler had travelled through The Warrens, all those years ago. It was eerie seeing a small, thin bicycle track, cutting into the ground. I was excited about it at first, thinking that maybe it was a clue of some sort, but Rudy pointed out that Adler had always taken the bike with him, so the tyre tracks could well have been quite old.

Littered across the ground here and there were bones and junk. I didn’t examine any of it long enough to figure out what kind of creature the bones belonged too, but they looked like they had been there for a long time.

We got to The Warrens a lot quicker than I expected. I would say about an hour across the plain, so only a few miles. They came into view through the mist and were so eerie that I almost stopped and turned back. I don’t know how they were formed, but they didn’t look natural. Sheers walls, maybe forty feet high, lined a dozen entrances. The rock arched at the top, almost like it had been cut from the stone by a machine. The paths were all roughly twenty feet across, and the same thin, salty sand lay on the ground. The mist, that covered everywhere, made the entrances even more foreboding.

I saw where the zombie trail continued into The Warrens before we even reached it. It wasn’t hard to spot. A path that was maybe ten feet across, that looked like it had been worn away over many years, by thousands of pairs of feet, stretched across the plain and entered the tunnel nearest to us. There were no zombies in sight, but I didn’t like how deeply cut into the ground the trail was.

“I’m hoping that we won’t be using that path?” I said, pointing at the trail.

“Unfortunately we will. We have to follow the same path at least most of the way. I think we might get lost otherwise.”

But something we both noticed almost at the same time changed that.

A short distance from the entrance, a bicycle track crossed the zombie trail, and led into the third tunnel. I looked closer, and the track seemed as though it had been used a lot of times.

“We never went that way,” said Rudy.

“Do you think Adler found another route?” I asked.

“He must have, but he never mentioned it.”

 I was still nervous going in there. No open ground and not a lot of choices when it came to escaping if we came across anything, but DogThing wasn’t growling and didn’t seem disturbed, so I followed Rudy into the third entrance.

I was expecting hours of wandering around, lost, but about an hour later, after following the bicycle trail, we were looking down into a gulley that ended in a sheer wall. The tracks led down to the very bottom, where another metal door was built into the rock.

A door that was open.

We looked at each other, puzzled.

Leaning against the rock only a few feet away from the open door, was an old, rusty bicycle.

“The professor’s bicycle,” said Rudy, as we approached the door.

There was no light coming from inside, just pitch darkness. Rudy knelt down next to the bicycle and tried to wipe some of the dust and sand away that had gathered on it. His hand went straight through.

 “Well I guess that answers where he went.”

“Yes, I suppose it does, almost.”

“He must have come here a lot if all these footprints are anything to go by,” I replied, indicating all of the different footprint trails coming to and from the entrance. Most of them came from the path opposite the one we had arrived by.

Why so many visits?

I moved the bicycle away from the wall. Years of gathered dust and sand fell from it. It had been here so long that both the chain and the steering column had seized up. The bicycle may have been ancient even back when the professor had used it, so the cracked paint and rust wasn’t much of a gauge to go by.

Rudy stood there, peering at the doorway. I could see he was reluctant to go inside.

“I don’t know whether I want to see what’s in there.”

I nodded my understanding.

“It’s okay. I’ll go.”

“No. No. I’ll go first, safety and all that. It makes sense. Just give me a moment.”

I took my time lighting up one of my newly made chair leg torches and waited quietly by the door. I knew the torch wouldn’t last as long as the others. I’d had no cloth to wrap around the top, and no petrol to soak it in, ironic really, since I’d probably burned thousands of gallons of fuel in the swamp fire. It didn’t matter though; this was Rudy’s friend we were expecting to find dead inside the door, unless it led somewhere else. I was hoping it did.

After a minute or so, Rudy stepped through the doorway; his own glow filled the corridor that was revealed, casting dim shadows over the broken furniture that littered the ground and the cobwebs that hung from the ceiling. I thought that was a bit odd, having not seen a single spider the entire time I had been here.

DogThing didn’t follow us in, but he also didn’t seem on edge.

There were three doors along the left side of the corridor, all of which were open, and then a dead end with another door in it that was shut. The door at the end looked almost identical to the door in the cave near the shack.

Rudy was standing in the corridor, not moving, so I decided it was down to me to look after all.

The first room was no larger than a decent sized bedroom, containing little apart from a row of turned over filing cabinets, all of which were empty. More cobwebs filled the dark corners of the room, and the floor was littered with rotten books and piles of folders. I picked up the nearest folder and opened it, but the pages inside crumbled to dust in my hands.

The second room along was the same except the cabinets, again empty, were still standing against the far wall. There was also a stack of tables and chairs in one corner.

We found him in the last room, sitting upright facing an aged computer screen that was still plugged into the wall. Where the hell the electricity had come from originally I don’t know, the plug was hanging by one rusted wire that clung to the concrete wall. The screen of the computer had been broken in a long time ago.

Adler had been dead for a long time. So long that there wasn’t a shred of flesh left on him, just a decaying skeleton inside a smart, grey, dress suit. There was a hat sitting on the side of the computer desk, caked in years of dust and grime. Yet more cobwebs covered the walls, the desk, and Adler.

Rudy recognised the hat and suit immediately, walked over to the body, and knelt down with his head bowed.

I didn’t need to ask, but I did anyway.

“It’s him isn’t it?”

Rudy nodded.

“I’m really sorry Rudy.” It was all I could think of to say.

After a few minutes Rudy stood and began searching the room. I joined him. I couldn’t think of anything else to say that might make Rudy feel any better, so I got on with the task, finding the compass, the key.

I was about to open the front of Adler’s suit jacket, hoping to find the key dangling on a necklace around his neck, when the apparition came through the wall. A second before it appeared I heard DogThing growling down the corridor. I felt a tingling sensation run down the back of my neck and then it was there, right in front of me.

I have never been so terrified in my life. I’ve probably said that a few times since starting this journal, and meant it each time, but this was the kind of fear that made me run for my life, Rudy as well.

It came out of the wall screaming, a high pitched screech that was ear piercing. I couldn’t understand anything that it was babbling at me, apart from GET AWAY. It was vaguely human, or at least I thought it could be if it wasn’t flailing itself around in a way that made it too blurry to see. Its eyes burned with hate and madness.

So I ran, as fast as I could, tripping twice as I dashed out of the room, down the passageway and out of the door, to the sloped opening that led up to The Warrens. It was right at my back the whole way; only I couldn’t feel its touch, just the coldness that swept around me as it flailed it arms trying to grab hold of me.

Without watching where I was going, I sprinted up the slope back towards The Warrens, straight past the two zombies that were making their way along the path towards us. I briefly stumbled sideways to avoid them and saw Rudy do the same.

Then the most god awful noise pierced the air. I stumbled again and fell forwards, landing on my back. I felt one of the blades hanging at my side nearly pierce into my leg, and rolled I over onto my back.

About twenty feet away the apparition had stopped. It was no longer chasing us. Instead it was busy tearing apart the two zombies. It was over in seconds. The zombies lurched away from it, fearful like I was. They know fear? It didn’t matter. The glowing, screaming apparition tore them both apart like they were made of paper.

DogThing had been busy during all of this, as I got back up to my feet I could see him backing away from the apparition, leaving the remains of the another zombie on the ground. I didn’t notice until afterwards that DogThing had killed three other zombies, leaving only the two standing as we came rushing out of the door.

The apparition stopped screaming and flailing, and walked towards us, halting about ten feet away. It tried to move forward again, but appeared to be blocked in some way. It stood there watching us. I was stunned, completely unable to decide what to do.

 “Adler?” asked Rudy.

The apparition looked up, and stared at Rudy.

“Do I know you, thief?” It said. It’s voice harsh and angry.

“Yes. It’s me John. It’s Rudy. Don’t you remember me?”

“Rudy. That does sound familiar. Were we friends once?”

Rudy glanced at me, worriedly.

“Yes, for many years. You don’t remember?”

“Of course I remember you, you old fool. But you are dead. I saw you dead. You are gone. You are no more alive than those pathetic creatures.”

“Yes. I’m dead. Sort of.”

“Stop talking to me. You can’t be here. You died.”

I stayed quiet during all of this, and took out my blades, watching the two paths for more zombies. They had followed us, surely?

“Just as you did,” said Rudy.

“What? How ridiculous. I’m not dead.”

“But you are. Like me. You are… a ghost.”

“Maybe so, but you are a thief, Rudy Shevchenko, and there is no excuse for such rude behaviour.”

“But… how? I haven’t taken anything.”

Adler glared at him.

“You know what you were going to take though, don’t you? Well no one shall have it. I will not allow that… creature, to find them again.”

“We don’t want CutterJack to… ”

“Don’t say its name! Damn you, you fool! Don’t you know it can hear you?”

“It can?”

“Yes. Everywhere you go. Anything you say. It can hear the living. Read their thoughts, know what they are planning, hear their breathing, their heartbeat, everything.”

My turn to cut in.

“So that’s how the zombies are finding us?”

Adler turned and glared at me this time.

“Yes boy. It knows exactly what you are planning, and now it knows what you are searching for.”

“But you led us to look for them. Your diary.”

“My diary. I was a fool, searching forever for them only, trying to keep it secret and hoping for a way to escape this hell of a place. My foolishness and my hurry caused my end.”

Adler turned and walked back down to the door. We followed, but every step I was wary of him turning on us again. I looked to DogThing, hoping to get some indication of any danger, but he was just sitting there a few feet from the entrance.