Read Online A Shrouded World - Whistlers by Mark Tufo, John O'Brien - Free Book Online Page B

or Tina needed braces, if their favorite baseball team was going to win a game. Just normal, everyday bullshit, the way life was meant to be.
    “Fuck, ” I said, dragging my hand over my face.
    John was looking into the woods, fat tear drops cascading to the ground. “My wife isn’t here.”
    “Let’s hope not, ” I answered, although that wasn’t what he was thinking.
    He meant she wasn’t ‘here’, wherever ‘here’ was. My initial answer still held more validity. We had zombies and these new howlers, this new world sucked. I grabbed John’s arm gently and turned him towards the olive drab of the military vehicles.
    “I know you don’t want to head up there, but I’m not leaving you behind , and I need to see if I can salvage some ammo.”
    John didn’t say anything, his cheery disposition wiped clean. He kept his head down and moved the Phrito box to his left shoulder as a barrier to the atrocities that lay on that side. We walked in stony silence towards the blockade. I received no measure of satisfaction when I found the machine gunner’s position had been overrun. He died with his finger on the trigger. The irony of it was that it looked like a child zombie had inflicted the death blow before being shot herself. A zombie girl had latched herself onto the man’s neck and had been tearing a chunk free when someone had come up behind her and spilled her brains over the side of the gunner’s face.
    “Guy that shot the zombie shot the machine gunner , too. Dumbass. Although I guess he was already dead.” I pushed the girl out of the way. She fell wetly to the side. Shock was etched on the man’s features as he seemed to look pleadingly at me. “Karma’s a bitch,” I told him. “This is what I’m looking for,” I said triumphantly, bending down, picking up a metal ammunition box.
    Th ey were 5.56 which were perfect; the only problem was they were linked for machinegun fire. Simple enough remedy, it would just take some time. I was going to keep this box close and go look for something that was ready to use right from the can. I helped John and his Phrito’s up into the cab of the closest truck. I also stashed my ammo with him.
    “You alright , pal?” I asked him. He hadn’t said much and, more surprisingly, he hadn’t eaten anything in a bit.
    Instead of asking me who pal was , which would have been normal, he asked something much more serious. “Why’d they all have to die, man?”
    I looked him in the eyes. “Don’t know, I really don’t . But me and you…we’re going to find a way out of this mess. And to be honest, John, I’m not sure that everything we’re seeing right now isn’t some sort of dream. Figments of our imagination or, more than likely, a drug-induced conjuring. Last thing I truly remember was your van and then being here.”
    “This is a flashback?” John asked with pleading eyes.
    I’d been in some shitty situations along the path of my life but never anything quite like this right now. I hope it wasn’t a flash forward, a portent of things to come. “Let’s just hope it’s only a vision of zombie-things-to-come if we don’t change it.”
    And like the intuitive person he was , he answered, “This is the worst rendition of the Christmas Carol I’ve ever lived through.”
    You know I wanted to ask him how many he had lived through, but I dropped it. Maybe tonight, if we found some place safe to hang out I’d bring it back up. Odds would be he wouldn’t remember this conversation, though. As it was, I didn’t like to be out of his view for too long because we’d have to go through the introduction process again.
    There were spent magazines everywhere , which was actually pretty cool considering I had left a couple of mine behind in my haste to leave. I saw more than one soldier that had been shot by a civilian. Easy enough to tell from the exit wounds. M-16s didn’t generally travel all the way through a human body. Usually it got hung up somewhere