A Shrouded World 4 Read online

  “Oh, for the love of…” I mumbled.

  “I’ll handle this,” Joe said.

  The first question was a doozy.

  “Where do we go the bathroom?” It was Rock-Boy—leave it to him to pose that cluster of canned worms. Now that he’d said it, he had planted the thought in everyone else’s head. Honestly, where were we going to let two-hundred-plus people do their business? Pretty sure the night runners wouldn’t honor a hall pass. Joe had a huddle with his teachers before announcing their findings, like a sporting event’s officiating crew.

  “There are two equipment closets in this gym; we are going to empty those out and use them.”

  Fucking Rock-Boy again. I was ruing the decision to save him. “What are we going to use for toilet paper? I have to shit.” That got some snickers, but a bunch of head nods from other students as well.

  Notebook paper became the preferred choice of bathroom goers; lines formed, looked like a concert or a ballgame. I had high hopes the smell of urine and feces was going to be our worst problem for the night. Got to admit, if I were Hemmie I’d be putting paperwork in for a transfer. The cleanup was going to be unmentionable.

  By now the din had died down considerably, even the night runners at the doors had seemingly taken a break. Joe thought this meant good news; I had other ideas. No way were those bastards going to let a boon like this go so easily. They had pounded on that milk truck all damn night. It was about an hour later when I heard the first pop of thin metal being pushed out of shape. I wasn’t the only one, though I think I was the only one who knew it for what it was. I had my rifle up by my shoulder and was doing my best to track exactly where it had come from. A lot of questions started being asked and the murmur began to increase.

  “Get them quiet, Joe.” I was slowly walking along the gym floor, trying to pinpoint the movement. He didn’t need to do much: as the popping got louder and more frequent, the students conversely got quieter.

  “You ready for this?” Trip asked. He was right next to me, slingshot at the ready. I would have put much more credibility in those words if they hadn’t been breathed into my ear from less than two inches away, his scraggly beard rubbing up against my cheek.

  “No,” I answered honestly. When the night runners came through the vents—which they would—there was absolutely no way I could protect all these kids. I couldn’t. One rifle and one slingshot plus two hundred unarmed civvies against an army of runners was a horrible mix. I was terrified—a certain measure of fear was for myself, the majority was for all these other people who didn’t have much of a chance.

  “What time is it, Joe?” I asked, not taking my eyes from the ceiling.

  “Little after midnight,” he responded.

  “When’s dawn?”

  “Six-oh-two,” Hemmie answered.

  “That’s how long we need to make it,” I told them as I thought about my ammo stocks. I had five full mags with twenty-five rounds each. It was right about now I wished I had maxed them out to their full capacity. Why not thirty, you ask? It was an old Marine Corps throwback. We had shit mags in the Corps and we were always told that you would have a higher jam rate if you filled them, and in a hot zone the last thing you want is a potentially life-ending jam. I’d since upgraded the magazines, but old habits die hard. If I could have kicked myself in the ass, I would have. One hundred and twenty-five rounds sounded pathetically slim.

  As the pops increased, the student body figured out what was going on and began to press up against the walls. There was a large open circle in the middle of the floor, with me, Trip, Joe, a pistol-holding Mrs. Jackson, and a chain-wielding Hemmie on guard.

  “Uh, Joe, what are you going to do?” I asked.

  “Eighth-degree black belt in Jiu Jitsu.”

  “No shit?” I asked as I looked over my shoulder at him.

  “Mrs. Jackson, you realize guns are against not only school policy, but town policy,” Joe said to her.

  “Fuck the rules, Joe,” she told him.

  I liked Mrs. Jackson. Hemmie was slowly swinging his chain around; he had about six feet of it played out and a heavy lock secured to the end. A deadlier looking mace I had not encountered. I was going to make abundantly sure I gave him as wide a berth as possible. There was nothing for the moment except the woosh of air being displaced by the chain and then the explosive sound of metal rivets giving way under weight, the accumulated screams of two hundred kids, and the murderous shriek of a night runner as it fell to the ground. Gravity did the majority of the job, as the runner belly flopped onto the ground, right next to the cover, fan, and large motor. There was a disgustingly loud crack as numerous bones in its body were shattered; I thought that was the worst of it until Hemmie brought the lock down on its head. The collective scream that the student body wanted to expel was sucked back in by the shock of the brutal blow.

  More rivets popped, more night runners fell through, sprays of blood plumed up like the world’s most disgusting lawn sprinklers. I hadn’t shot a round yet and was thankful for it. Fifteen night runners had broken through and fifteen ruined bodies laid there, never to move again. Any one of them that showed even the remotest sign of life was dealt a merciless blow by Hemmie, who looked every bit the Greek god as he meted out his rough-handed justice. I could see night runners peering out of the openings, eyes fixed on us; we were close, yet so far away. I fired up and right under the jaw of one of them, whose head slammed off the top of the duct before he swan-dived headfirst into the ground. A small acrid cloud of smoke drifted up from the end of my barrel. My shot was met with a bevy of shrieks.

  Don’t know if that was the impetus, I hope not, as I already have an arsenal of nightmares to keep me awake. The rational part of me says they were just not ever going to give up; the Catholic guilt-ridden side might always hold a measure of responsibility for what happened next. The night runners started coming out of those holes, en masse. Like water pouring out of a faucet, they dropped. The first ones were destroyed, as was to be expected when falling from that height, but the more bodies that hit, the larger the cushion became for those that followed. I can’t imagine those first few were being overly altruistic for the rest of their clan, but it was having an adverse effect for us as more and more of the runners came through with less and less injuries.

  I could hear the pop, pop, pop of Mrs. Jackson’s small caliber pistol and the occasional thunk of Trip’s steel balls, and even a few of Joe Fondue’s karate chops, but over it all was the steady whistling and crushing blows of Hemmie’s homemade mace-chain. It was louder than my 5.56 supersonic rounds. The kids, and adults as well, were going batshit crazy—how could they not? We were four strong, trying to stop dozens, possibly hundreds. We could only do so much.

  The first night runner that escaped our clutches tore into a trio of girls who mistakenly believed that if they huddled together, they would be safe. The runner bit the first girl’s arm so brutally that he took off nearly all the muscle on it; she couldn’t even scream, the shock had settled in so deeply and quickly. He lunged for the next one’s throat, removing any chance she had of crying out. The third girl was frozen as she watched her friends die right in front of her. It was not a horror she would have to live with long, as the runner ripped into her cheek and pulled off a swath of her face. Yeah, she was the one who let go of a full-throated scream, the side of her face a rippling wet mass of exposed muscle and tissue.

  What I noticed was that the runners, unlike my beloved zombies, weren’t stopping to eat their kills; they wanted to cause as much death and destruction as they could, subdue any dangers first, and eat later. I could understand the directive, but it had to be stopped. I shot the trio-killer in the lower back before he could go further up the stands and into the arms of the innocents. I could hear screams all around us; Joe, Trip, Hemmie, and myself were being forced back, nearly into each other. I burned through my first magazine in under three minutes; at this pace I’d be tossing shell casings pretty soon.


  Hemmie looked like he could swing the chain for another hour, though heavy beads of sweat were falling from his brow and I noticed he had to occasionally wipe his hand dry to keep his grip tight. Mrs. Jackson was fumbling in her pocket for a few loose shells, safe to say she was on her last reload. Joe was kung-fu fighting like a video game character, but I didn’t know how much more life we were going to get out of that quarter; all it would take was one bite on his knuckles or extended foot and it was game over for him. It was Rock-Boy who instilled some hope, as he ran over to the sporting equipment with some of his friends and they all grabbed baseball bats. We now had a team’s worth of hitters, lining up to take swings. We were actually pushing back now. The bat wielders had taken two of the ducts off of our defend list. The night runners were suffering massive losses, though we had also taken a few ourselves; I hoped the number was under a dozen, but in the maelstrom, it was impossible to tell.

  One moment we were nearly overrun, the next we were holding our own, and then a blessed reprieve as they just stopped their assault. Oh, they were still up there, and in decent numbers, but they stopped. There wasn’t one of us not breathing like we’d sprinted a marathon. I would have stooped over to catch a breath if I didn’t think a runner would take that opportune moment to land on my back and take me out. The crying and hysterics were reaching a crescendo; classmates, friends, sons, daughters, teachers, and a parent or two were dead, or as near to it as could be.

  “Mrs. Jackson, we need to treat the wounded,” Joe said.

  “Joe, anybody bitten is infected,” I said for his ears only.

  “What’s that mean exactly?”

  “It means they’ll be the same monsters we were just trying to stop.”

  “What would you have me do? I can’t just start killing them.”

  He had me there, pretty sure the school board would frown upon the principal killing students.

  “Hemmie, Trip, help me move the bodies away.” The gym floor was soaked in blood and we had four small broken body pyramids that I didn’t want any potential second-wavers using as their personal pillow. “Rock-Boy…umm, kid with the bat!” I yelled when he didn’t look my way.

  He looked over at me and I saw a small dose of insanity pass from eyeball to eyeball before lifting up the corner of his mouth in a snarl. Might have just been me, but I was afraid that if we made it out of this, that one might need some serious therapy before he could be allowed out in public again.

  “Ludge, my name is Ludge.” Maybe I’d mistaken the crazed look for fear, there was a tremor in his voice as he spoke.

  “Ludge, I need you guys to watch our backs as we move these bodies out of the way.” He nodded and we got two batters per pile; he also got a few people from the stands to help out. If the runners started anew, they were going to have to begin at square one. Nope, the problem now was going to be the twenty-two souls among us who were going to live but had the infection blazing through their bodies. We were under constant surveillance as we dragged and stacked the dead runners in the far corner of the gym. The blood was a half-inch thick in some places and coated the floor in its entirety, giving it the hue of some triple-A college team that dared to be different and make the playing surface look as alien as possible, in an effort to psych the other team out. It was working on me.

  “Mrs. Jackson.”

  “Joyce.”

  “Joyce,” I said. “The injured, the ones with bites, maybe scratches, they’re infected now.”

  “With the same thing?”

  I nodded curtly.

  “How much time?”

  “Fifteen minutes, an hour? I’m not completely sure, but eventually, they’re going to be playing for the other team.”

  “What would you have me do? Some of those students are honor kids, cheerleaders, athletes.”

  I felt for her—I felt for all those whose lives were over—but there was still the rest of us.

  “They’re not any of those things anymore,” I told her as we both looked over at the groaning and dazed injured. Some looked in the throes of a fever. Runners in our midst was a terrifying proposition. If we had the ability, I would have strongly suggested a mass exodus. Honestly, the smart play was to get rid of them, but thinking that and actually bashing the skulls in while they were basically still humans were very different things. Killing those in desperate need of help, that’s just the stuff of nightmares. When they turned, though—that was going to be its own bad dream.

  “I still don’t know what you would have me do.” She was near to sobbing.

  “Do you have any rounds left?”

  She nodded through a haze of tears.

  “When they turn…”

  I left it like that because she knew. She nodded and went over to our makeshift triage.

  “Hemmie, how much time?”

  “Three more hours,” he answered.

  “Trip, got anything?” I asked.

  “I have some more cupcakes, but how can you even think about eating right now?” he asked around a mouthful of chocolate.

  “I meant in regards to our present situation.” I was keeping an eye on the runners above, no doubt they had a great internal clock and could tell when sunlight was coming. Would they try a massive push before that happened? They could also just sit tight—they were inside, how hard would it be to wait us out? I had to think Valhalla had some sort of security force that would help us out. Right? I had two mags to my name. What then? I could swing a bat with the best of them, but when you fought an enemy that could make you one of their own, the general consensus was that you should stay as far away as possible.

  Inaction had always been a curse of mine. Maybe idle hands weren’t the devil’s workshop, but they sure belonged to that fucking imp named Trouble. I thought about shooting some of the runners peeking their heads around, but the kids in the gym had finally settled into a semblance of shocked resignation and I wasn’t sure I wanted to bat the hornet’s nest at the moment.

  A scream followed immediately by a shriek snagged my attention. The unimaginable inevitable had happened: we had our first turner. Skinny little kid had to be a freshman, but now he was all silver-eyed and snarling, the girl who had been taking care of him had fallen over and had her hands up in a defensive posture. Wouldn’t do much good once he started tearing her fingers off.

  “Oh man Carl, I am so sorry,” Ludge said a split second before the gong of his aluminum bat rang out on the boy’s skull and echoed throughout the large room. Carl went rigid as the plates in his head were broken, then toppled over like a building being demolished by shaped charges. His legs danced about wildly while the upper half stayed stiff. I turned away from the nightmare. Ludge had stepped back and was hunched over, fat tears falling from his face. He was hitching; I went over to him and placed my hand on his back.

  “You did the right thing,” I told him. His head bobbed, I think in response, though he could have been trying to choke back bile. “Get the girl; in fact, get everyone not wounded to move back.” They looked to me, to Mrs. Jackson, and to Principal Fondue, who reluctantly nodded.

  Two more turned in the next hour and I drove my Ka-Bar through both of their temples. Kids—I was killing kids. Whatever god presided over this place had decided I’d paid my penance and no others had turned yet, though a few were burning serious fevers. More time elapsed and still the runners above did nothing; then, as one, we started to hear the pop and thump of metal as they started their retreat. The sigh of relief that came out of me was more a sob. Cracks of sunlight began to force their way through the windows. We were safe for another day, even if the demons we all now carried inside would chase us down forever.

  After another twenty minutes, we could hear no more movement. The nineteen who were still injured were fully bathed in light; if they changed now, their end would be swift and painful. We heard gunfire outside. I’d hoped to hear a chorus of sound, a battalion’s worth of small arms destroying all of those unholy beasts, but sadly it only sounded li
ke one gun. And a familiar one at that.

  “Hemmie, the chains!” I ordered.

  He didn’t question it, just removed the oversized lock and unwrapped the chain, despite the protests of those who hadn’t completely recovered from the night’s events. I was at the door as he pulled it open and stepped through, rifle at the ready. A lone savior was running down the hallway toward us, his rifle still smoking from the expended rounds.

  “Jack?” I asked as I dropped my barrel.

  He stopped short and took me in. “Who in the fuck are you?” he asked.

  Trip had come out beside me. “Uh oh,” was all he muttered.

  Jack Walker—Chapter 4

  Walking under the canopy high overhead, patches of blue showing between the boughs, my mind is filled with thoughts of where I’ve found myself. The experiences of the other world where I met Mike and Trip have shown that there isn’t any neon sign pointing to the obvious. It was some convoluted time thing Trip had going, and there was no way I’d have found a way out on my own. That very thought is depressing, as I have no idea what the hell is going on here.

  First, there is the difference in terrain between where I fell into this place and in the town. I’m no rocket scientist, but it’s apparent some time or space distortion is taking place. And then there was waking up in a future where the town had been abandoned some time ago and night runners ruled. Now, perhaps it wasn’t so much a future of that particular time, but rather an alternate path. It could be that variances of alternate realities rolled through the area, or I was watching a past, present, and future of this particular timeline.

  None of it makes much difference because I wouldn’t know what to do with the information anyway. It doesn’t really help at all other than to keep me on my toes and try to be ready for anything. But, how do you go about readying yourself for abrupt switches in reality? I’m really beginning to wonder if I haven’t gone clinically insane in my real world; that the blood from the night runners didn’t have some side effect of a massive hallucination. I could actually be lying on my cot, having been carried there after slumping over at the table, uncontrollably drooling on my pillow.