A Shrouded World 4 Read online

  “No one fights on the side of the overseers,” Trip said.

  “So, is this a classic battle of good versus evil or not?” I asked.

  “Not so much,” Trip answered.

  “Then we’re on the other side, helping those against them?”

  “I mean, sure the Archfiends would take our help, but no one willingly fights with them.”

  “What? What the hell are you talking about, Trip? How can neither side be good?”

  “They both are known for their shitty doings.”

  “Okay, so is one known for less shitty doings?”

  He looked at me like I told him marijuana was bad for you.

  “Then whose side do we join to fight against the other?”

  “That’s the thing—we don’t pick a side.”

  “Stop them, we’re all here to stop them,” Other Jack said.

  “Great; angels, demons, night runners, steroid-enhanced woodchucks, rabies-infested cockroaches, and hey, let’s just throw in a war rabbit for the fuck of it.”

  “No one throws in war rabbits Ponch, those things are crazy!”

  “This has to do with your dimension gates, doesn’t it?”

  “We didn’t know,” Trip said resignedly.

  We’d finally found our way to the edge of town just as the inhabitants felt safe enough to exit their homes and see what had happened during the night.

  “I know of an old survival hut up in the hills; we need to get there, and then you two are going to tell me everything you know.”

  “He’s kind of bossy, like other Other Jack,” Trip stage-whispered.

  I could only shake my head. It was good to be in the woods away from people that we’d have to explain ourselves to. But the woods have a sort of agoraphobic claustrophobia to them. Yeah, I know it sounds weird. But there you are in the great outdoors, with severely limited lines of sight. We had trees all around us and a thick canopy of branches and leaves above. If anything was in here with us, it wouldn’t be difficult for them to follow without being detected. I wondered if this Jack was as well versed in stealth as my Jack. I’m gonna have to think of another way to differentiate them—“my Jack” makes it sound like we’re dating. And sure, Jack is a good-looking guy and all, but I really think Tracy would be more than a little pissed if I brought home a boyfriend. My heart panged as I thought about my wife. I knew that the passage of time in here was much like Narnia, like I could maybe live an entire lifetime and only moments would pass in my world. But what if I never made it back? Never is a long time no matter what dimension you reside in.

  As for me in the woods, meaning my stealth, what can I say? I’m a Marine, my normal operational mode is “Here I am motherfucker, do something about it!” Ah, so cocky when there’s no one there. All right, so I’m not special forces; I could be stealth-like when needed, but Trip was like a flashing neon sign that simultaneously played the drums. The guy could make noise in a pillow factory. No, that’s no good; I’m sure pillow factories are noisy. How about a pillow warehouse? Like instead of lying comfortably on the pillows, he would gather up all the cellophane bags they had been wrapped in, arrange them in a large pile, and start rolling around in them like a hound dog might in a mud puddle.

  “Trip, you’re killing me,” this Jack said, referring to Trip whistling what sounded like Jane’s Addiction.

  “Different world,” Trip said without missing a beat. Not sure if Jack caught it, but it felt like someone had stuck the tip of an ice-cold knife into the base of my spine and quickly dragged it upwards and over my scalp.

  “Hey um, Jack-ish.” I even had a difficult time saying it. “Do you have, like, a nickname or something I could call you? This whole thing is really messing with my head, and calling you ‘Jack’ is only making it worse.”

  I saw him stiffen before he stopped and turned. “How do you think this is working out for me? I held you, or the man I called my best friend, in my arms as he bled out.”

  “I’m sorry man, I am.”

  “You and this other Jack, you friends?”

  “We are, maybe out of necessity, but yeah, we’re friends, though only since whatever this is started happening.”

  “Mike and I were friends since kindergarten. There was this bully, Durgan something or other, biggest six-year-old I’ve ever seen in my life. Anyway, this asshole is picking on this girl Jenny or Kylie, took her lunch and pushed her to the ground. I see this kid not even half his size start yelling at Durgan. Durgan is turning red in the face, his fists are balling up; I knew immediately where this was going to go, even at that age. Durgan punched Mike flush in the nose, sent blood everywhere. I knew I had to help, so I did the only thing I could think to: I ran into his stomach headfirst. Knocked the air completely out of him. I figured the Mike kid would go running for help while I got my ass beat down for stepping in. Instead, he started punching away at Durgan’s face while he was hunched over. I stuck a foot out and Durgan went falling to the ground. We both stood over him and swore that if he ever messed with any other kids he would get more of the same.”

  “Whoa, what ever happened to Durgan?” Trip asked.

  “Oh, he stayed an asshole; it was too far embedded in his genetic code to let it go. But he avoided us like the plague. That was how Mike and I met. We battled together, no matter what life threw at us. No matter the odds, the other was there, divorce, death, war, didn’t matter. He was as much my brother as if we had shared the same womb. In the end, it was me who failed him.”

  I didn’t press him on what happened. It was easy enough to tell he didn’t want to talk about it, the wound too fresh or it hadn’t healed properly.

  “Otter; you can call me Otter. Old call sign of mine. Is Ponch yours?”

  “Not really, but it’ll work.” I resigned myself to the fact that I was now going to be named after South American outer apparel. Could be worse—had an old girlfriend in the third grade call me Stinky Pants because I wanted to play kickball at recess rather than eat snacks with her.

  “Now that we have all of this settled, can we at least pretend to move quietly? There are things in these woods we’d all rather not encounter. The world has been turned on its ear, I have no idea why,” Otter said.

  “I can pretend,” Trip said, then from left field: “Bill and Lynn are all right.”

  “I know. I was coming back to check up on them; that’s why I was at the gym.”

  “Why didn’t you say hi?” I asked.

  “It’s complicated. Bill and I are very different people, and when Lynn chose him over me, it just accentuated those differences. I care for them both greatly, but that doesn’t mean I want to be around them.”

  “I get that; that pretty much sums up how I feel about Trip.”

  “Right here, Ponch, right here. That hurts right here.” He pointed to his shin and made a heart symbol by putting his thumbs and pointer fingers together.

  “We’ve got to keep moving. It’s a long, tiring hike, and we want to beat the silvers and get there before nightfall,” Otter said, referring to the eye color of the night runners. Didn’t think there could be a much scarier name for them.

  “Not going to make it,” Trip replied.

  “I hate when you do that ominous shit, like a crappy narrator telling us the story rather than showing us.”

  “How am I going to show you a shimmer and the night coming early?”

  “Other Jack.” I started, he looked over at me funny.

  “You know I don’t consider myself ‘Other’ Jack, right?”

  “Otter—we should pick up the pace,” I said.

  “Listen, I’m a little longer in the tooth than I used to be, and you don’t look like a spring chicken yourself. We are about to start up the side of a mountain. I, for one, am not going to be able to jog it.”

  “This vision shit needs to stop.” I pointed a finger at Trip’s face.

  “Might as well tell Tracy not to get mad at the stupid things you do.”

  “Of
all the damn houses I could have fallen into while I was on fire, it had to be yours.”

  “If you think that was by chance, then you’re denser than I look,” he said as he shouldered past. I could only shake my head back and forth as I did my best to keep up. Otter and I were doing all right, but Trip was climbing like he was part goat, and of the mountain variety. The sun was high overhead when we stopped for some water and more granola bars. Otter filled up his canteen from a clear running stream, took a swig, and then handed it off. Trip killed it, then handed it back.

  “Feel free to fill it yourself next time,” Otter said to Trip after refilling it. This time he handed it off to me.

  “You don’t care about any waterborne illnesses?” I asked, looking suspiciously at the lip of the canteen that I absolutely knew was swirling with microbes that had yet to be named.

  “What’s a little explosive diarrhea among friends?” Otter quipped.

  “That’s funny to you?”

  “Relax, the canteen is treated with chlorine dioxide. Water tastes like bleach, but you won’t get sick.”

  “How long is it good for?”

  “A hundred refills, more or less.”

  “And what’s this one on?”

  “One-ten, maybe eleven.”

  “This world sucks,” I said just as I took a large drink and almost felt like I could chew through the bacteria I’d swallowed.

  To be honest, I don’t think a spring chicken would have fared all that well as we climbed upward. Otter and I were pushing the pace as we struggled to keep up with Trip. That fucker knew what was about to happen and was in one hell of a rush to avoid it. My legs were burning, and it was difficult to catch a full breath as we kept moving. I was going to lobby for a break soon; if Trip was right and we were about to hit a time wall, it was arguably better that we had a little gas in the tank rather than draining it dry and trying to coast to our destination. See, the thing about threats is that it’s tough to get worked up about what isn’t there yet. I mean, sure, when something is crashing through the woods to do whatever distasteful thing it is going to do to you, well yeah, you start burning through extra gears, pumping adrenaline, forcing yourself to do things you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do. But when the sun is shining bright and you’re on what at the moment is little more than a hike through the woods, well it’s much more difficult to press on when your body screams for a break. This is where the macho thing kicks in, though—no one wants to be the weakest link. I kept an eye on Otter, waiting for him to finally stop. Every once in a while, he would lean against a tree and I was just about to ask him if he needed a break when he would invariably push off and keep moving. Trip looked like an automaton, like he had pressed the “walk” button and wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, stop.

  It was somewhere around three, sun was still high up, when Trip looked back.

  “This looks as good a place as any.” He sat, though not like a normal person. Instead of reaching back and looking for a place to park his ass while also bracing his descent, he just dropped to the ground like the power had been shut off for said automaton.

  “What are you doing, Trip?” Otter asked.

  “Bracing himself,” I replied as Trip looked over my shoulder. I decided not to. Like maybe if I ignored it, the shimmering flash would somehow avoid me.

  “Get closer,” Trip said to the both of us. Otter hesitated, I did not. Want to know what was worse than being stuck in this world? Being stuck in this world alone. If Otter wasn’t there, I very well may have crawled into Trip’s skinny lap. As it was, we were about as close as two people can be without being considered intimate.

  “Get over here man; I’ve already watched Jack wink out of our existence and I wasn’t a fan,” I told him.

  “Ponch, we should get going,” Otter said. I reached out and pulled him in just as an icy breeze blew past; following quick on its heels, the trees lit up in an unnatural glow. They shifted perspective, moving back and forth a foot or more; the pace increased so they appeared to be bouncing, then mercifully it stopped. When it was done, the sun was beginning to set over the edge of the mountain.

  “Fuck. How far?” I asked Otter.

  “Three miles.”

  “That’s not so bad,” I said, but Otter’s face said differently.

  “Two and a half of it is straight up.”

  “You ready, Trip?” I reached a hand down. He didn’t take it until we heard a distant shriek—seemed the natives were getting restless.

  “No.” I pulled him up anyway.

  “We going to make it?”

  “Of course.” I felt better for it until he finished. “Not.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  We were quiet except for the huffing and puffing as we went. Even Trip had stopped making excessive noise. The hairs on the back of my neck would occasionally stir and I would look around, never seeing who or what was causing it. I knew it couldn’t be the silvers, as they weren’t all that shy about letting you know they had crashed the party—no wallflowers in that group.

  “How good are you with that rifle?” Otter asked.

  “I’ve been known to shoot a bullet or two,” I told him; my tone must have let him know the worth of the words; he nodded.

  “We’re being followed.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?” he asked.

  “Well, not good, just good I’m not going crazier. My radar has been pinging for a while.”

  “You didn’t think to say anything?”

  “I didn’t want you to think I was paranoid,” I told him.

  “I’m okay with paranoid right now.”

  “Duly noted.”

  We climbed for another twenty minutes. I didn’t think a lung falling out of me was out of the question at the moment. Otter finally said he needed to take a minute. I wanted to keep moving but I also wanted my internal organs to stay…well, internal.

  He sat down heavily on a log and rolled his pants up. From his calf to at least midway up his thigh, where his pants were, was a cross-stitch of scars. He rubbed it vigorously, grimacing as he did so.

  “I wanted to wait, but I’m going to have trouble soon. It tends to stiffen at night.” He pulled out a green-tinted pill bottle, deftly spun the cap off, and downed three large oval pills. Like a dog to a peanut butter-covered bone, Trip was hovering over his shoulder, looking down at the bottle.

  “Whatcha got there?” he asked.

  “I’m sure nothing as good as what’s in your goodie bag,” Otter said as he put the bottle away.

  “So much for pop, pop, pass,” Trip said dejectedly.

  “You going to be all right?” I asked as he rubbed his leg some more before rolling his pants back down. Seemed like just the pressure of the material on the old wound was causing massive discomfort.

  “I will be once we get to the cabin. Help me up.”

  How one guy with a crippling wound and an old stoner were kicking my ass on the climb, I don’t know.

  “One last ridge,” Otter pointed up, “then it’s a relatively flat half mile.”

  “Gravity sucks,” I said as we pushed on. My head was down as I forced my legs forward. If I had hackles, they would have raised; whatever was following us was pulling closer. I spun my head around to look but the shadows were deepening and the woods were fairly thick. If it wasn’t right on top of us, he, she, or it was going to be difficult to spot. And that was a serious problem. For some reason, I couldn’t get the damn spider of The Hobbit fame out of my mind. Yeah, just what we needed, a six-hundred-pound spider to come looking for a feast. Might as well send in some werewolves and a few crocodiles. I hate random thoughts with a dark slant to them.

  Whatever Otter had taken was beginning to work; as we hit the top, he had slowed considerably and his head was drooping.

  “I’m hurting, Ponch.”

  “Another half mile—you’ve got this,” I told him. The multitude of shrieks that echoed throughout that valley gave me pause to co
nsider my last words. The night runners must have taken umbrage with them.

  “You two should go,” he said.

  “Would other Mike have left you?” I asked. He didn’t need to answer that. I got up and under his shoulder on his bad side, giving him a human crutch.

  “Oh, that ain’t fair, man,” Trip said. “How can we be having a potato sack race when I don’t have a partner?”

  “Pretend,” I grunted as I took as much of Otter’s weight on as I dared. Trip did just that, taking exaggerated steps with his “sacked” leg.

  “Step when I do, Reggie! We’re not going to win if you keep going off step!” he admonished his fictional partner.

  We could make out the small cabin in the distance just as the first of the night runners showed herself. The moonlight caught the reflection of her silver eyes perfectly as she scanned the valley before settling on her dinner plans.

  “Trip, Reggie is a shitty partner, you should pair up with Otter,” I said as I handed him off.

  She hadn’t yet shrieked and she hadn’t yet come for us. I was only going to shoot her when it became absolutely necessary. Not because I didn’t want to get rid of her, just because of the noise.

  “Reggie was better,” Trip said to me as they began to move. Otter was sweating bullets, his color was pasty. He was in a great deal of pain—still alive though; that’s usually a good thing. Though those with chronic pain might tell you otherwise. Trip had hooked his right arm into Otter’s belt and was basically pulling him along.

  “Not going to be any apple pie left when we get there if we don’t hurry up,” Trip said—hey, whatever he needed to spur himself on was all right with me.

  The night runner shrieked, three more of her kind joined her, and the race to the finish was on. We apparently got apple pie if we won, and they got apple-pie-eaters if they did. Trip and Otter were making about as good time as they could. I lined up a decent shot and sent the first runner on her merry little way. I was a little low with the first shot, punched her right in the gut with a bullet; she stumbled and bent forward; my next round went into the crown of her head, dropping her instantly. I would have gone after the other two but the floodgates had apparently been opened: a dozen or so were now coming. Couldn’t really get an accurate count because of the fear lodged in my eyes.