A Shrouded World (Book 5): Asabron Read online

  “Well, I can’t imagine this leading to anything good,” I state.

  Otter stares at me, his expression one of confusion and perhaps a hint of concern. Not able to do anything about it, I brace for whatever it’s going to bring.

  Zombies are swallowed up by the quickly advancing line. The sparkling light is just feet away and then suddenly I’m engulfed. The sounds of gunfire and shouts of people in combat vanish. There’s nothing but white with flashing sparks of silver all around me … and complete silence. I expected to hear something like static or the sound of electrical sparks, but there’s just nothing. It’s like I’ve been placed in one of those sound chambers where nothing can be heard.

  Even though I was cold in the storm-driven rain, I kind of expected the inside of the light to be even colder. But again there’s nothing. I don’t even feel the chill I did before. There is a complete absence of sensation except for the flashes. I can’t even feel my chest rise from inhalations or feel my breath being expelled.

  For the time I’m inside this bubble of existence, I feel excited … I feel hope. Perhaps the universe is rectifying itself and this is my way home. If and when the light passes, perhaps I’ll be dropped back into my world and able to see Lynn and my kids again. I know tears are forming in my eyes even though I’m unable to feel them, but I do feel the warmth suffuse my heart. I know I’ll be leaving Mike in some angel/demon battle, but I want to go home. Perhaps the light has reached them as well and he’ll be able to see his family again.

  A bright light flares, blinding me for just a second. Sensations return. My face and shoulders feel the warmth of sunlight and I smell the faint aroma of pines. Opening my eyes, disappointment replaces the momentary joy I felt. I won’t be seeing my kids or Lynn.

  Instead, I’m standing in the highway on the outskirts of Valhalla. There aren’t any zombies rushing the town, no defensive works. As a matter of fact, there’s no one to be seen in any direction. The elation I felt with possibly seeing my loved ones again comes crashing down as the realization that I’m still in this other world firmly settles in. Not caring where I am at the moment, I sink to my knees, my head hanging as tears streak down my cheeks.

  2

  Mike Talbot

  Usually, when the cavalry came, they were bugling bugles, firing rifles, partridges in a pear tree, and the thunderous sound of hundreds of hooves beating the ground, the yells of the men and women rushing in to save the day, all of that heroic stuff. This was not like that.

  It was BT and it wasn’t—I’ll make that clearer. He was donning tiger-print leggings and an oversized Hawaiian shirt in an attempt to hide the protuberance. If he were further away, I might have assumed he was a pregnant woman mere minutes from giving birth to triplets.

  “What the fuck is this, Mike?” he asked as he approached slowly, looking around at his surroundings and gathering great eyefuls of the large red demon next to me.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Am I? Last I checked I was at Burgundy’s yoga studio with my wife—actually, in the bathroom putting these ridiculous pants on—and now here I am.”

  He looked different, less wary—though that part I mean only by a degree. The BT I knew had accumulated wariness built upon his features, there was not a scenario we entered where he was not cautious. There was just no way not to be after having been exposed to as much violence as we had. This BT, he was different. Sure, he was concerned, and rightfully so, about Kalandar and where he now found himself, but it was not something that had been beaten into him over an extended period of time. And he was softer, if a giant bear of a man could be considered soft. To go with his barrel-shaped chest, he had the stomach to match.

  “Been packing on a few pounds?” I asked cautiously. Although the words were out—how cautious could it have been? One shouldn’t slap a bear just because they can.

  “Why do you think I’m doing yoga!” He pulled up twenty feet short of where we were. “Is he real?” He was pointing to Kalandar. “And what of you? You look different. No way you lost fifty pounds since our card game last week.”

  Kalandar voiced what I was already thinking. “He is not of your reality.”

  “Did I hit my head on the sink? Or are these stupid pants cutting off the oxygen to my brain?”

  “How do you know me?” I asked.

  “Now not only do I have to worry if I lost my mind, but yours as well? Are you kidding me with this shit?”

  “I wish I was,” I told him.

  “I’ll give you a refresher if it helps.”

  “It does, man, or it could—depends on what you say.”

  “Your wife and mine work at the children’s hospital. We met at their Christmas party. I dressed up as the Hulk for the kids; you were a fat Spider-Man.”

  “Yeah, I don’t remember the Hulk eating his way out of trouble,” I shot back. “Tracy works at a children’s hospital?”

  “Who’s Tracy? Your wife’s name is Jandilyn.”

  I’d never heard the name before in my life, yet I couldn’t figure out why I felt a dagger of ice pierce my heart when he said it.

  “There’re no zombies?” I asked.

  “You mean from those ridiculous books? I told you to stop reading that trash.”

  “Yeah man, my reading of zombie books put us in this situation.”

  “Well, why don’t you tell me what this situation is, and who that is!”

  Help had arrived, but it was not the fighting machine I was accustomed to—this was the domesticated version of my best friend. Sure, the building blocks were there for the warrior I knew, but this one was assembled wrong. Had he been handed a death sentence with this summoning? And who had performed the ritual?

  “You want to sit down?”

  “Is that a fat joke?”

  “What? No, just if you want to know what’s going on, it’s going to take a minute and it’s not pleasant.”

  “What about any of this seems pleasant? I wrongly thought that the yoga studio was going to be the worst thing to happen today; now I wish I was stretching in unnatural poses.”

  “Yoga?” I was hung up on that. Seemed to be something limber, agile people did. Certainly not me—limber had never been a word I’d been associated with, and lithe wasn’t anything this BT or any BT I knew could claim.

  “My blood pressure is at a prehypertension level; Linda thinks yoga will help. Personally, I think it has more to do with the relationships in my life.” He never lost eye contact with me as he said those words.

  “This isn’t going to make it any better.” I then spent the better part of an hour relating the events from my existence: the zombies, Eliza, Trip and his reality-skipping self. Angels, melerforns, Jack, Otter, Kalandar—all of it.

  “Any of that ring a bell?” I asked. He had found a rock to sit on; the more I talked, the more his head hung like the weight of the new knowledge being poured into it was too much for his neck to support.

  He finally looked up after I finished recounting my story. “I’m a fucking mall cop, Mike; what am I going to do about any of that—about this?” He let his arms spread wide to encompass our current location.

  “Mall cop? You? What the fuck kind of stores does that mall have that they need a guard like you? Crown Jewels R Us?”

  “We’ve been through this.”

  “Not with this me.”

  He sighed. “I was going to be a cop—I know I would have been a good one. I’d taken the entrance exam and was all ready to start the academy when I began to have these crippling dreams about a girl. They made me question everything I was—everything I thought I knew.”

  “You had an affair? Is that why Linda is making you go to yoga? Sort of a penance?”

  “At least some things are consistent—you’re a dipshit among multiple realities. I didn’t cheat on my wife. The young woman was in her teens. I shot her—had no choice. The dreams were so vivid I knew it was a truth—a future that would happen if I ever wore the uniform.
I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Ouch, man.” I felt for him. I could see the pain in his eyes.

  “I decided right there and then I didn’t ever want to hold a gun. How could I, knowing the ultimate outcome?”

  “This other Mike you know, does he have guns?”

  “No, Jandilyn put a hard stop to that.”

  Again with the stab to the heart. I felt a tortured anguish at the mere mention of her.

  “He put up with that?” I asked incredulously.

  “You are daft. What don’t we do for the women in our lives? Are you looking at my fucking pants?”

  “Honestly, man, it’s all I can see when I look at you.”

  “We have already wasted enough time,” Kalandar interrupted. “The more we talk, the further away Trip becomes. If he is indeed your way out of this, I suggest we find him.”

  “We should get going.” I checked my gear.

  “What about me?” BT hadn’t moved.

  “We’ll circle back around. Stay in the cabin—you should be safe,” I said.

  “Should be?” he asked.

  “Were you not listening to everything I just said? How could I possibly know if it’s entirely safe? I can assure you it’s worlds better than what we’re walking into,” I told him.

  “I’m coming,” he said.

  “What can this lumpy being do for us?” Kalandar asked.

  “Lumpy?” BT looked like his prehypertension blood pressure was rising.

  “I am sorry; I have not been around humans in a very long time. Would you prefer the word ‘plump’? Possibly ‘chubby,’ ‘flabby’? I know to stay away from ‘obese,’ your kind are very sensitive to that word. ‘Curvy’?”

  “I’m not a 50s pin-up model!” he fairly yelled.

  “No lie there,” I muttered.

  “What?” BT swiveled his massive head to me; I was hoping that my utterance had been drowned out by his protests to his, umm … delicate condition.

  He might not have been quite as scary as the BT I knew, but he adequately looked the part.

  “Listen, man.”

  “Don’t ‘man’ me!” he yelled.

  I had my hands up in a placating manner. “BT, there’s things going on here I barely have a grasp on.”

  “Like most of your life!”

  “Fair assessment. Okay, I’m not attacking you, I’m just saying that there are many realities you and I share, whatever the reasons, but this version of you I don’t think is well suited to the … to what is going on. I can’t bring someone in on this who’s–”

  “Likely to get killed,” Kalandar said.

  “I was going to go with the more user-friendly ‘liability,’ but yeah, that about sums it up,” I said.

  “Does any part of this look like a liability?” He slapped his chest hard; his belly shook for another ten seconds.

  “So, you haven’t fired a gun in a good long while. Is that going to be a problem?” I asked.

  “My hands shake when I look at one.” He was angry.

  “Know martial arts?”

  “No!” He was getting angrier.

  “Any hostage negotiations skills?”

  “I am not staying here, wherever this is, by myself!”

  “I’m going to put that down as a ‘no,’” I said.

  “You’re keeping a list?” Kalandar bent down to look at my hands and the mythical notepad. He grabbed my hand and turned it around.

  “There’s no list,” I told him, snatching my hand back. My options were limited. I could have Kalandar knock him out and put him in the shack, and we could leave unencumbered by his additional mass, but what kind of asshat does something like that? There was no guarantee we were coming back from this, and he would be alone and out cold for a good long while. But bringing him could be much worse. It was like bringing my own fodder to a battle.

  “Michael, we must go,” Kalandar said, looking off into the distance.

  The longer I debated here, the more terrible things could happen to Trip, and I had no illusions that I could get out of this mess by myself. I needed the genius stoner.

  “Let’s go, all of us,” I said.

  “Will the fluffy one be able to keep up?” Kalandar asked. It looked like he was trying for an aside, but when you’re fifteen feet tall, your voice tends to travel. I didn’t answer, just started walking. It seemed a prudent move.

  We’d been moving at a decent clip, had a couple of miles under our belt when I looked behind. BT was starting to lag, his shirt plastered to his torso with sweat. It gave away just how much he’d let himself go. I smacked Kalandar’s thigh.

  “Did you kill it?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “I assumed there was a bug.”

  “No, we need to slow down.” I pointed behind us.

  “That is unwise.” Yet he said nothing more.

  Yeah, I had questions—like why was Kalandar so intent on this mission? What did he stand to gain from any encounter we were likely to be confronted with? He seemed like an ally, but I knew so little about him and his motives. There was a more than decent chance he wanted Trip for himself; were that the case, I would be as unlikely to stop him as I had been the angels.

  BT sounded like an old steam train attempting to get up to speed, or maybe it was more like Henry after a quarter-mile walk—whichever analogy fit, it didn’t bode well for the trek we needed to make.

  “I’m coming,” BT groused.

  “Let’s take five,” I said. Kalandar sighed loudly and walked ahead a few steps to sit on a fallen log that creaked loudly as it accepted his weight.

  “I’m okay,” BT huffed, although he also found a place to sit. He went down heavily, like his legs had taken all they could handle. I handed him some water, which he gulped down between breaths.

  “Maybe Linda was right—I should lay off the pancakes in the morning.”

  “Does this version of you still dip your pancakes in the syrup off to the side?” I asked.

  BT gave me a sidelong glance. “I don’t like that you know me and you don’t.”

  “It’s weird for me as well. So how fat is the other Mike?”

  He did not hesitate in his response. “I look like a Kenyan long-distance runner in comparison.”

  “You’re talking shit now.”

  “Am I?” He smiled. “Can’t understand why Jandilyn stays with you. Do you have sitcoms where you’re from? Because you’re like the 90 percent of them that have a fat guy with a hot wife.”

  “I ask for help, get an asshole instead. Perfect.”

  “Hey! I’m not the one stuffing those fast food hamburgers down your mouth. Maybe if you had a little more self-restraint.”

  “Probably right,” I said as I lightly tapped his stomach and walked away. “Time’s up.”

  “Dick move,” BT said as he hefted himself up.

  “It’s not that far back the way we came. That route is still open to you,” I said without stopping to look if he was coming or not.

  Another mile down the road. BT kept pace, plodding one foot in front of the other. He’d not said anything the entire time.

  “Are we friends in that other world?” I slowed up so we were next to each other.

  “It’s not another world, it’s my world.”

  “Fine, it was just a question.”

  It was another couple of hundred yards before he spoke—not sure if he needed that time to gather the air or if he was choosing his words wisely.

  “Our wives are very good friends,” was his response.

  “We tolerate each other?”

  “I tolerate you. Except for Jandilyn, you’re sort of a prick to everyone you encounter. It’s like you don’t have any means in that head of yours to filter thoughts before you give them voice. Honesty is a wonderful trait to have, but so is discretion. Not everyone wants to know exactly what you’re thinking all the time. You once told Linda’s mom that her dress looked like hotel carpeting.”

 
“That’s not so horrible,” I cringed.

  “Yeah, but that was after you insulted the meal she had just spent the entire day cooking for all of us.”

  “Do I want to know what that Mike said?”

  “Probably not, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Told her you’d had better microwaved frozen meals.”

  “I’m a monster.”

  “She cried for two days. I do everything in my power to avoid going out on the couples’ dates our wives insist upon. Linda somehow thinks you’re quaint, though she sort of cringes when she says that. I know she loves Jandilyn and does her best to put a spin on you so she can justify spending time with her.”

  Can’t even lie about how hard it was to hear those words come out of his mouth. He actively disliked me, and who could blame him? Did I need apocalyptic events to happen around me to make me a decent person? I had my foibles with Tracy, her family, and others before the zombies came. I was far from perfect and had a limited number of friends, but that was a personal choice—or had I driven them all away and I chose to see what I wanted? I came to believe that this version of me tended toward asshole, but I was far from the version that pegged the meter in this BT’s world.

  “I wonder if there is one of me who works for the Peace Corps getting clean water for those without access to it.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud.

  “Doubtful,” BT said as he passed me by. The more I was thinking, the slower I was walking, as if the two worked independently and against each other.

  I didn’t know what to say, I couldn’t really apologize for someone who wasn’t me, and I figured attempting to explain that I wasn’t quite like that would fall on deaf ears.

  We had gravity on our side most of the day as we came down off the mountain. There were a couple of ravines we had to traverse back up, but for the most part, it had been smooth sailing. The front of my legs burned from the excursion—they were muscles not often used in this manner, or at least for this long. I mean the ones that kept me from wildly running down the mountain as momentum made me go faster and faster until ultimately my legs would not be able to keep up with the speed, sort of like trying to hop onto a treadmill operating at full speed.