Mark Tufo - Whistlers

I heard Trip yell “Pull!” That stupid fucking slingshot came up, and a ball-bearing was heading for a target I intrinsically knew he was going to hit. I swear I could hear Jack’s expression drop. The C-4, which had been on a trajectory that would have been a safe enough distance away, now dropped faster than a nun’s knees at church. (Oh get your head out of the gutter, I’m talking about genuflecting in prayer!) I stuck my head through the safety bars that enshrouded the ladder to watch. I guess I was either hoping it would hit the ground and miraculously bounce away, or it was a twenty car pile-up happening in front of me and I had to see how it was going to end. The C-4 literally just splatted to the ground and stopped. Of course it didn’t help matters that it was leaning against one of the support legs for the tower.

“No fucking way.” I may or may not have said that out loud.

Maybe it was Jack, I don’t know, things started to get blurry, but he recommended we cover ourselves, and that sounded like a pretty damn good idea. The explosion was deafening and blinding; my senses were rocked. I gripped that ladder hard enough that a casual observer may have thought we were lovers of some metal-human fetish. Even over the voluminous ringing in my ears, I could hear the pops and groans of the stressed support structure beginning to give. We were moving, and not because of any physical activity on our part. The tower was crashing down. John ‘wheeed’ the entire way. The tower first leaned backwards toward us, making it appear as if it were going to land on our ladder. The safety shroud was stout, but not that much. We’d be crushed like ants under boots.

I felt wind rush by me as we began to twist to the side. We were momentarily saved from being flattened, but we sure as shit were not out of danger. You know how people sometimes will be recounting a story of some scary accident and they start with “Oh, it just happened so fast, I didn’t have time to be scared.” That certainly wasn’t the case here. My dangerous mind had done me the great disservice of slowing everything down into easily digestible bite-size morsels so that I could enjoy every fucking terrifying millisecond. My body was pulled so tight, that, if someone had the desire to ‘pluck’ me, I would have resonated with sound. I’d thought the C-4 was loud, but it had nothing on the crashing of that water tower. When we finally struck ground, my head rattled inside that cage like a marble in a tin can tossed off the side of the Grand Canyon. I felt like someone had taken an aluminum bat to the side of my head.

As I write this now, I know what happened. At the time, though, I was unconsciously conscious; meaning that I was still awake, but I had no idea who I was, where I was, or what was going on. The force of the fall had ripped the safety shroud completely clean from the ladder, I was in flight for a few seconds, and then I found myself swimming. The tower itself had ruptured, sending however many millions of gallons of water rushing to the lowest point in the lay of the land and, it just so happens that I was in that path. Zombies and night runners were flowing with and around me. I saw an empty Phrito’s bag or three, then trees and we were all hurtling towards them. Some of the zees in front of me were being crushed and spun around large tree trunks. I was rapidly approaching my demise, and it was made of oak.

I might not have been with it completely wits-wise, but my survival instinct was in high gear. I started jamming my hands down into the surf trying to find a handhold; anything I could to stop my present ride.

Chain link!

I felt fencing. I was going to lose a fingernail, but that beat getting battered. My right hand found purchase first, and my shoulder popped and groaned much like the water tower had. I was in serious danger of wrenching my arm clean from its socket, so I shoved my left down as well and scrambled to grip something. The tension eased as I distributed the weight. I figured I could ride out the storm until, of course, I saw a zombie heading straight for me mouth-first like a shark. Water was flowing past me, and sometimes over my head. At times, I was struggling to get air as I held on, and yet the damn ‘Great White Zombie’ kept coming. I did the only thing I could in defense—I ran. In this case…that meant letting go of the fencing.

I once again found myself become flotsam in a turbulent wake. I twisted and fought the current as much as I could. I don’t know why I thought it would be better to see the trees coming as opposed to just running into them. I tried to push off just far enough as a large oak dominated my view. It wasn’t enough. My already pounding head took another shot as the top of it scraped bark. I know I cried out in pain and what little grip I had on my present reality was ripped free. It was like my thoughts had been pounded out by the beating. The force of the impact may have saved my life as it swirled my body around the tree and to a low hanging branch, which I clung to like a sailor will a piece of driftwood during a capsizing. Zorca—zombie orca—wasn’t quite as lucky. I didn’t see him hit the tree head on, but I had the unfortunate luck of hearing him do so, and then I got to feel the spray of blood whistle past me on both sides. The water was murky and it was too dark to see that it had turned to whatever grisly color he had tainted it. And then…that threat was past.

I don’t know how I knew, but I realized that wasn’t the only one. I shook my head, hoping that somehow I would unlock whatever door had been slammed shut from my concussive hit. No luck. I was scared, maybe more so than I’d ever been in my entire life, and it wasn’t because of impending death. I’ve been in its presence many times over the years. From my days in the Marine Corps to the apocalypse I had left behind, and even the world I now found myself in. No, it wasn’t death that had me so frightened, it was life. It was the life I couldn’t remember. I did not have any idea who I was. Names meant nothing, occasionally I would be served up the mental imagery of a face, but I didn’t know the person. Was it my wife, a daughter perhaps, someone I had killed in a battle, both foreign and domestic? Was I a good man or a mass murderer? Nothing…nothing meant anything to me other than my next breath.

Like all humans, I value alone time; a time to reset one’s inner workings, a centering of your chi, or whatever your belief calls it. But being alone and being lonely are vastly different. I was soul-sucking lonely. I was so alone that I didn’t even know who my self was. My mother could have come out of the woods to save me, and I would have stared at her trying to ascertain her intentions. I was basking in self-pity, which is actually kind of funny if you think about it, because I didn’t know who I was—unnecessary tangent I suppose. Errant thought aside, the water flow was beginning to ebb. My feet slogged down onto wet earth, and my knees gave out when I attempted to put weight on them. I was on all fours with water running over my bleeding knuckles; dizzy, light-headed and nauseous. Then, I realized it wasn’t my knuckles bleeding but rather a steady stream of blood coming from my head.

I reached up and froze for a second when I felt a large outcropping up there. I’m not going to lie. I panicked a bit until I realized it was some sort of head gear and not some giant lesion or protruding railroad spike—or something equally as nasty.

When I was confident it wasn’t William Tell’s missing arrow, I pulled my hand back down to find it was covered with a fair amount of my life fluid. I looked hard to make sure there wasn’t any brain intermingled within. I used a tree as a support as I rose unsteadily to my feet. I leaned against the thick bark, taking in some breaths. I might have stayed that way for a few more minutes, hours, until daylight, or the end of times, but the fucking howlers had a different idea as they began their incessant wailing.