An oddity in the rails a few feet from the pickup draws my attention. There is something different that I can’t quite put my finger on. Pulling up my scope and turning it to the 4× setting, I focus on what has caught my attention. A chill runs up my spine and my arm hairs stand on end. On the inside of one rail, a pair of eyes is staring out. The bottom flaring of the rail hides where the nose must be, but I can make out the top and back of a head on the other side of the track. The unblinking orbs just stare out from the rusting metal and are as clear as if they’re alive. The truly fucked-up thing is that they seem to stare right at me regardless of where I move.
The sight is so horrific that I can’t stop staring at it. It’s like my brain is trying to make something different out of what my optic nerve is sending it.
Eyes: “There’re eyes staring out from a railroad track.”
Brain: “No there’s not. That’s impossible.”
Eyes: “Nope. They’re there. I’ll send you another picture.”
Okay, I’ve had enough fun and I’m ready to go home, I think, looking skyward as if a big hand might swoop down and pick me up from this nightmare.
“I’m just going to pretend that didn’t happen,” I mutter, leaving the edge of the trees and continuing on.
The shadows under the trees deepen as the day heads toward its appointed end. I’d like to build a fire and smoke myself before the night comes, but with the number of whistlers I’ve seen along the tracks, I don’t want to draw attention by the sight or smell of smoke. However, it’s time I found some kind of refuge. Just because night runners may not be in the immediate area, it doesn’t mean there aren’t other creatures. I have to find someplace secure where I’ll actually be able to sleep.
In the late afternoon, I stumble across a line of Phrito wrappers scattered along the tracks. I feel like I’ve reached landfall; finally some evidence of Mike and Trip…or, at least Trip. A little farther along, I come across a line of tankers and boxcars parked in a siding. Attached at the end are a couple of flatbed trailers with shipping containers.
“That’s about as good as I’m going to find,” I mumble, working toward the boxcars.
I’m not a fan of being next to the tracks, but I’m even less one of remaining in the open overnight. I can’t be more than a few miles from the town, but I’d rather not explore the place at night. The shipping containers would be more secure if they didn’t lock from the outside. One of the box cars is shot to hell, the sides holed and dented. Outside, the gravel under the tracks is darkly stained in many places. This is verification that Mike and Trip are ahead of me and I’m on the right track, so to speak. The holes in the side are punched outward and it seems fairly obvious that they’re from a small-caliber weapon.
Rolling the sliding door of the boxcar open, Trip’s calling card aroma of pot rolls out like the car was used as a smoking den. The interior is a mess of torn boxes, wrappers, and juice cartons on the floor. These pretty much remove any doubt that I’ve encountered the trail of Mike and Trip.
I close the door and climb into another boxcar, this one also strewn with a few wrappers. I prefer the one without all the bullet holes. The fact that the dynamic duo had stayed in the car and their bodies aren’t nearby is reassuring. Using para-cord, I tie the doors to stanchions set on the metal walls and settle against a far wall. While eating, I wonder where Mike and Trip are spending the night.
The light showing through cracks in the opening fades as night falls. It’s been one hell of a day, but so has every preceding one. I know at some point I may have to come to terms with the fact that I may not be able to return home—that this is now my life. However, I know I won’t be close accepting this until I meet up again with Mike and explore the quarry. There has to be something somewhere that will explain this entire mess. My thoughts stray to someone popping into my own world and trying to find out what happened. They’d probably be as lost as I am. The fact remains that I was transported here, and even if I were to figure out how, I’m not sure I’d be able to reverse it. I guess I’m hoping to find a simple doorway I can step through, or for Merlin to appear and cast a spell.
Chapter 1 - Mike Talbot
“Hey Ponch, you’re not Yack,” Trip said, sitting up after having taken a small catnap.
“What gave it away? My name or the fact that I don’t have nachos?”
“Nachos…definitely the nachos.”
“We’re going to be in a little trouble here,” I told him.
“Do tell.”
He had pulled a joint from behind his ear, lit it, and taken two quick tokes. He looked about as interested in what I had to say as a teenage girl might when listening to her parents berate her for her actions.
The Budge-O van we’d taken from the rental car facility, the one with the almighty three-cylinder engine and all the speed and horsepower of a matchbox car, apparently was as fuel-efficient as something with four times the engine size. Now, you know how some people tell you that their car is so horrible on gas you could watch the needle move? You smile and nod because, yeah, you know what they mean. But everyone realizes it’s an exaggeration. Not this time, not with the Budge-O van that should have been able to get something like forty miles to the gallon. Every fucking time I pressed the gas pedal, the gauge moved down. I mistakenly thought that perhaps the whistlers had pierced the tank. I risked stopping long enough to see if I could spot the leak. I waited and then waited some more. I did not see gas nor smell any spilling onto the roadway. This was alarming. Either this thing got a mile to the gallon or it only had a gallon-sized gas tank. Either way, we were going to come up woefully short of the thirty miles we needed to make it to where I told Jack to go.
I coasted when I could, but it wasn’t like I could build up a bunch of momentum with the piece of shit. I was having a hard time imagining what good this thing was worth in the real world. It was more like a prop, like maybe someone rented this if they were trying to convince their spouse they were actually working or something.
“We’re going to be out of gas soon. You up for some walking?”
He wasn’t listening to me. He’d gotten out of his seat and was crawling into the back cargo area.
“You smell that?” he asked, looking wildly around the empty area.
“I smell chronic and not much else.”
“Chronic? I’ll have you know that this is the finest alpine kush known to man.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Street corner in Detroit, guy named Flemmie.”
“So a guy in Detroit named Flemmie has the best weed known to man? You sure it’s not just laced with something?”
“Pure as the old woman who lived in a shoe’s vagina.”
“What the fuck, Trip? Plus, she had so many kids she didn’t know what to do. And I can’t believe I know that.”
“It was never proved they were hers. Look!” he exclaimed as he ripped a hidden panel up.
“Weapons?” Now I was excited.
“Better!” He ripped into a box. “Phritos!”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Knock-off corn chips? Is that why this thing won’t move? Are we overladen with boxes of that shit? And for what reason? Wait, are they drugs?”
“Might as well be.” Trip was alternating between shoving handfuls of the chips into his mouth and taking puffs from his joint. “Party size bags!”
He wasn’t kidding. He pulled out a bag of the chips that was roughly the size of your standard kitchen trash bag. There was one stupidly large bag and then other bags stuffed with smaller Halloween-sized fun bags. Yeah, they were actually called fun bags. I was wondering if that was a euphemism for female breasts here, as it was in my world. I think it would make for a strange conversation if little Johnny came home from an awesome candy haul and asked his dad to come and see all the fun bags he got, and then to see the father’s dismay when he realized they were only snacks. Someday I won’t tangent off into left field, but today is not that day. I’d been so busy
looking to see if he’d found anything worth a shit that I didn’t pay any attention to the gas-guzzling machine. We coasted to the side of the road, the van sputtered once like it wanted to let us know its dying wish, and then was silent. Except for the pops, creaks, and groans of an engine that sounded like it had been ridden long and hard on hilly terrain.
“Fuck, the company that made Yugo’s would be ashamed to have you on their line.”
I opened my door and got out. I wanted to kick the thing repeatedly, but knew without a doubt I would make contact with the only solid part of this thing and it would hurt like hell.
“Trip, come on man. We gotta go, it’s going to be night soon.”
“Gotta eat a couple more pounds before I’ll be able to carry it!” he shouted out, splattering the windows in chewed-up corn orts.
“You realize you’ll still be carrying it, right? Just on the inside?”
“Like my little food babies. I miss them. I wonder how they’re doing now.”
“Get the fuck out of the van, Trip. Who knows when those whistlers will be back? We have got to find somewhere to hide for the night. Jack’s night runners freak me the fuck out. Who would have thought that a good old fashioned zombie would be the least scary monster?”
“I rould,” he said, his mouth full and again spraying food while simultaneously lifting a rapidly yellowing hand.
“Why in the fuck could I not get stuck with BT for this mess? Sure, he gives me shit constantly, but at least I don’t have to explain everything.”
“Whoa, BT’s great-great-granddaughter is a beauty!”
“I give up. Get the fuck out of the van now, Trip, or I’m leaving your stoned ass here. There’s no way BT is old enough to have a great-great-granddaughter.”
“Not yet, anyway.”
I had opened the back and, as I was pulling him out, he was taking his Phritos. It was a tug of war until the chips finally pulled free and we all spilled onto the highway. Not the fucking chips though, because apparently, that would have been a travesty of epic proportion. We stayed on the road because it was faster traveling. We’d be able to hear the whistlers coming from a long way off; I hadn’t gone more than a quarter mile when I noticed Trip was about a half mile behind me—yeah, you do the math on that one. I walked back to him; he was struggling with his pirate booty.
“Trip, you’re going to have to leave a bag behind.”
My wife has looked at me like I was less nuts when I’ve wanted to push cars out of the way with my bumper in traffic jams. Oh come on, tell me you’ve never thought about pushing Old Lady Johnson off the road, she of the twenty-five miles per hour constant speed on the fifty-five mile per hour roadway. Or Old Man Timmons who takes approximately seventeen-an-a-half minutes to take a fucking left turn. Oh yeah, you know who I’m talking about.
I thought Trip had come to his rational mind when he said, “I would travel faster with just one bag.”
Then I realized that the puppy dog eyes he was flashing at me were because he wanted me to carry a bag. We argued back and forth for about ten minutes before I realized this was a point he was not going to relent on. Would have been better off telling a shark to let go of a seal or a surfer's leg. So there we were, both carrying giant bags of Phritos, and us in a world with at least three known terrifying monsters, and I also had my rifle on my shoulder. Seems legit. We didn’t talk much most of the day; I don’t know if it was better listening to Trip crunch and chew or talk—pretty much a toss-up. I made him eat from the giant bag after I picked up the fourth discarded small bag. Why he felt the need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for anything that wanted to eat us, I don’t know.
I thought about explaining to Trip that we needed to get off the road, but as long as he was eating he was pretty compliant, and would go where I led. I’d no sooner stepped off the road when I heard a loud uumph and then a painful cry. Seemed Trip had fallen over, he’d not had the presence of mind to take his fingers out of his mouth, and had bitten down on them.
Really? This is my partner? What for fuck's sake did I do in a previous life that I’m paying back this much interest?
I reached down and lifted him up from under his shoulders. He was busy slurping corn dust off his fingers.
“Trip, do you even know where that hand has been?” He was grossing me out, looked like he was getting intimate with it.
There was a hollow ringing as he took a step toward me. He’d stepped off a round manhole cover that was slightly submerged into the ground. I looked down at the cover and then did a three-sixty of our immediate surroundings, which involved a whole bunch of nothing, and then a quick peek up to the sky, which showed the sun rapidly heading to the horizon.
“Going down that hole is about as appealing as watching you prepare dinner.”
“I make a mean Spam.”
“Make a Spam? It’s already made.”
“Nobody can open that can like I can...like I can! See what I did there?”
“Yeah, it was incredible. Let’s at least see what we’re dealing with.”
I strained as I got my fingers into a notch cut out on the side and pulled back. It was fairly big down there, seven by seven with a dry, stone floor. In each wall were round conduits that were maybe five feet in diameter, enough space for a man to fit into in a pinch. About the size of an MRI machine. I’ve never considered myself overly claustrophobic, but I’ve been in those things a couple of times in my life and I hope to never have to do it again. The north–south bisecting holes were empty as if in anticipation of some expansion that at this point didn’t look like it was ever going to happen, and by heavy wiring that cut the hole in half as it went into the east––west conduit.
“You all right with this?” I asked Trip. He was oblivious. I stepped down and onto the heavy wiring. “Come on, I’ll help you down.” I reached out with my hands.
“Which side are you going on?” he asked, looking over.
“Whichever side you don’t.”
“I want to be with you.”
“Half of this tube isn’t big enough for two men and two giant bags. I mean sure, if you want to stay with me, we can put the bags on the other side.”
Trip could be as easy to bend to your will as tinfoil if you had the right incentive.
“I’ll take that side.” He was pointing to my right. “But when they come, we take the bags too.”
“When who comes?” He made me nervous when he threw shit like that out there.
He said not another word, just noisily went back to crunching and munching once he’d situated himself. I pulled the cover back on and almost immediately regretted it. A little light streamed in around the edges but not enough to hit the bottom some seven feet below. Too dark, too enclosed, and too uncomfortable. It was the perfect trifecta. I hadn’t sat for more than five minutes before I thought I was going to hyperventilate. I stood up, got onto the cables, and pushed the lid to the side. Took a breath of fresh air as I poked my head out. I’d been convinced I’d not been getting enough air previously. Trip was already asleep, using the chip bags as pillows. I had to imagine that, to him, every time he moved his head it would sound like an earthquake; still, it didn’t appear to bother him. I was planning on staying like this, half in and half out of the hole, until it became absolutely necessary to do otherwise. “Otherwise” came about a half-hour later. Trip, I shit you not, started whistling Dixie in his sleep, and not five seconds later I heard the rumble of multiple motorcycle engines signifying the approach of the whistlers.
Being that we weren’t more than five feet from the side of the road, I figured it would be better to go down. At least now I had something bigger to worry about than a deep dark hole. The light I’d been begging for more of now seemed far too bright, as if it would shine back up like a floodlight and pinpoint our exact location. The rumble of the engines got louder and even began to vibrate the sides of the hole; if I didn’t know better, I would have assumed they were driving tanks. I started my mantra of “
Keep going, keep going,” convinced that the more I said it the more likely I would be to piss off the god of chance, yet still I continued because that way of thinking is insane, right? But so is wishing them away in the first place, I suppose.
The noise became so loud in the hole that I had to cover my ears. I was worried that Trip was going to wake up and start screaming; with all that I was dealing with, that was the last thing I needed. He didn’t so much as stir as the first of the throaty machines zipped by, then another, then the main group. Then there was nothing—it had gone from ear-drum shattering loudness to pin-dropping quiet in the span of a couple of seconds, far too quickly for them to have ridden off into the sunset like all those Westerns I’d watched with my dad as a kid. It was in this immense quiet that Trip had awoken, smashing cellophane bags as he did so. I could just about watch the aroma of the pungently odiferous corn snacks make their way to our only air hole. I figured it would plume from the lid like a yellow volcano.
“They’re here already?”
I jumped down to Trip’s side to tell him to be quiet.
“We’re supposed to have another hour,” he whispered directly into my face. I could not get back far enough from the feet-like smell of his breath.
“You didn’t hear the engines?”
“Night runners have cars now?”
“It’s whistlers.”
“Oh, what are they doing here?”
“I don’t know; would be nice if I did though.”
Although I did know. Way too coincidental that they would stop right here in the middle of nowhere. But it didn’t make a bunch of sense, them knowing where we were and not getting us. There was the strange clicking, whistling noise that in our hiding spot had even more distortion than usual as it traveled through their gas masks. It was their language, I had no doubt of that. What they were saying was anyone’s guess. Even the pattern of their footfalls sounded off. I could picture those backward facing knees moving underneath their heavy leather pants. Skeeved me out to no end, this uber-deadly enemy walking around like giant birds of prey. The steps were getting closer; I figured this was going to be when we fought our way out of this. Can’t imagine how hard it was going to be for them; we were basically fish in a barrel.