Mark Tufo - Whistlers

I notice that the farther I walk, the greater the number of darkened streaks of dried blood there are on the sides and windows of cars. I can’t even imagine the panic that must have been prevalent. People fleeing from whatever cleared out their city only to become stalled and unable to proceed any farther. Desperate families trying to decide what to take and knowing they are at the mercy of the elements and those around them. The mass of people taking to the road with their meager possessions on their back. Kids wailing from fear of the unknown, and the parents trying to figure out what to do. Mayhem and crowded roads. I wonder if they even had a destination in mind, or whether it was just blind panic. With that massive horde of zombies trailing me, I can guess what must have been the cause of their exodus. This entire roadway must have been the scene of a tremendous amount of terror.

The places between the cars are filled with debris of all kinds: Bags, papers, boxes, clothes, empty water bottles, and other goods. Open and partially open doors attest to the fear that must have prevailed. It is what I always thought a post-apocalyptic scene should look like. I search a few random vehicles looking for ammo, food, and water bottles, replenishing my consumption of the latter two.

Besides the entirety of this place being off, there is something else amiss that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s one of those things where you know something is not quite right, but it’s not readily apparent. As I haul myself across yet another grime-covered trunk, it comes to me — the license plates. I could have checked early on to determine where I’m at, but there aren’t any plates. Looking at the rear of the cars around, they are absent.

An idea forms that I could check the registrations. That will show where in the hell I’ve landed. Opening the nearest vehicle, I check the glove box. Sure enough, there is a paper with a name and address. However, it makes no sense at all. The state listed is ‘Amissus’. Now, I’m not a genius at geography, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t a state named that. It just adds to the mystery of what I’ve fallen into.

What the fuck? Where the hell is this place? I think, looking around at the cars again.

The fact that the driver’s wheel is located on the left says that I could be in my world, but the registration says differently. As if this place couldn’t get any stranger. Everything is so tangible — the smells and feel — and seems like reality, but it isn’t the one that I know. The bumps and bruises I have certainly indicate this place is the real deal. It’s all rather confusing and this brings my kids and Lynn to mind once more. The ache in my heart returns. I need to find them or at least know they are okay.

Taking a drink from one of the water bottles, I notice another difference — minor, but one nonetheless. The water is labeled “Arcadia”, from the pure springs located high in the Arcadia Mountains. Again, I don’t have a master’s degree in geography but I’ve never heard of any Arcadia Mountains.

“Well, it is what it is,” I say softly, taking a last swig and moving on.

As I make my way through the tangle of cars, I pass several decaying bodies…or what is left of them. They have all been ravaged to the point that mostly only their skeletal remains are left. It’s reminiscent of the bodies I found at McChord and elsewhere. Small, dried pieces of tendons, ligaments and tissue remain attached to bone, but the rest has been picked clean. This could be from wildlife in the area, but my guess is that night runners were here. It could also be from the zombies, but I’m not sure if they pick their kills clean. Whatever it is from, the bodies become more numerous the farther I go which isn’t giving me that warm glow of comfort.

The zombies departed the roadway as they watched our retreat. The one beauty of them was their inability to forecast our location. Instead of plotting an intercept course and meeting us at some point ahead, they kept adjusting to our present location. As long as we kept at a good clip, they wouldn’t catch us…at least the slow ones. The fast ones I had to keep stopping and culling through, they could seemingly run forever. Stamina was of no concern to them. Whatever drove them onwards did not get cramps, get winded, or even apparently care about blisters. Even the barefoot ones with ground-shredded feet didn’t miss a step. Relentlessly they ran.

It didn’t help in the least, no matter how many times I told John to keep going and that I’d catch up, he’d turn and ask me why I had stopped. Since my encounter with Eliza’s brother, I had some slight advantages over the normal man. As of yet though, I had not fully recovered from my injuries when I found John; add to that the fact that I hadn’t eaten or drank anything in sufficient quantities for days, and I was beginning to flag. Killing the rapidly approaching faster ones was going to be the only way we’d escape.

The Phrito fanatic next to me seemed to be doing wonderfully, like corn, oil, and salt was somehow a super food and he was deriving all the energy he needed and then some. Maybe I should have eaten more of them. I sighed as we got to our first chain link fence eight feet high and topped with everyone’s favorite—barbed wire. John tossed the metal ammo box over before I could warn him to do it a little differently. I ducked thinking we were in for one hell of an explosion. It struck a small outcropping of grass, and seemingly in slow motion, it teetered to the side and fell over. No explosion. Now I knew in the back of my head that unless a bullet is fired from a gun the odds of it going off are incredibly small but who wants to take that chance.

“Let’s go, John.” I grabbed the links in my hands.

“This is just like breaking in to the Pentagon,” he said gleefully.

Normally I’d cry ‘bullshit’, but in this case I believed him. First off, because I doubt he lacked the memory to sustain a lie.

For a career stoner, he was pretty spry John got up and over without too much trouble. The only hitch was when a bag of treats fell out of his pocket and onto the ground we had just yielded. I saw him debate whether to go back over and down to get it.

“I thought you were out?” I asked him as he stared longingly at it on the other side of the great divide. “It’s alright, man, I didn’t want any anyway.” I patted his shoulder. “Come on, they’re getting entirely too close.” Zombies were now within a couple of hundred yards of the fence, and some of them looked like track stars.

We still had at least a half a mile to the water tower. The horde that was coming would easily push through this latest barrier.

“I hate zombies,” I said as I turned and followed John who had already started his flight.

The howlers had picked up the chase as well it seemed. Their screams blistered through the burgeoning night. The sun, our greatest ally, had decided to sit this battle out and was rapidly descending as if it were a thief in the night.

“I hate howlers,” I added.

We were maybe somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a mile from our destination when we heard the metallic clanging of a fence meeting its demise. We had slowed up a bit to catch our breath, and right now that seemed like the least smart thing we could have done. The water tower was a great idea. The problem was that I had no idea if we would be able to get up to the maintenance ladder. We probably needed a ladder to get to the ladder if that makes any sense.

Most towns will have a water tower secured in a locked area or have the ladder only accessible with a cherry picker (those vehicles that extend out and are usually used for line repair). I was a dumb enough teenager to know that if I could have got up one of those monstrosities, I would have done so in a heartbeat. You got to figure that the townsfolk here figured out that little problem as well. I guess there are dumb teenagers everywhere. Oh yeah, and that doesn’t even bring into account those lovelorn folks that would pull a nosedive off the thing because Suzy or Sammie Rotten Crotch dropped them for someone else.