Fuck it. We had time to kill, and I’m not sure what I had to lose from letting him know a little of the world I came from. Did I believe his tale? Jury is still out. I did, however, believe the part about the night runners. Those fuckers were all too real. Truth be told, if something seemed a little too fishy about him, I’d kill him. Right now, though, I kind of liked him. We were kindred spirits and, until he proved otherwise, we were good to go. Talk about doing a one-eighty, maybe Tracy (my wife) was right, I do have a feminine side after all—changing my mind at the drop of a hat.
* * * * * *
“Alright, I’m looking at your clothes and your impressive weapon. They seem exceedingly earth-like. So I’ve got to assume you’re not an alien. That leaves alternate realities, which I can relate to as well. We’ve established that in my particularly much better NOW reality, we do not have night runners, just your garden-variety zombies. Who would have thought that would be a good thing?” I asked. He nodded at that statement.
“I come from a relatively long line of survivalist types, I used it as more of an excuse to get my wife to acquiesce to me getting more guns.”
Jack laughed.
“She hates…sorry, hated them. Maybe on some level she realized I was full of shit when I kept telling her that anarchy was only five missed meals away. Then, you throw kids in the mix and what mother wouldn’t protect them by any means possible? I had ten or twelve guns when the thing started and damn near a thousand rounds for each one of them. It wasn’t near enough. It was like three weeks before Christmas, do you have that where you’re from? Because that would make for some fascinating conversation if you didn’t.”
“We have Christmas,” Jack replied.
“Too bad,” I answered. He looked at me strangely. “Oh, I just meant in a philosophical way. I was wondering for a sec what a world without religion might be like. Sorry, I tend to digress at the worst times. I…um…had a colorful youth, though not near as sustained as Trip over there, but I had my moments.”
Jack looked a little concerned that he had hitched himself to my cart.
“Right…moving on. So, I was in the shower of all damn places when the zombies came. I just got back from work and wanted to relax. No sooner did I get in when I hear this blood curdling scream from my wife. I’m thinking, is it bad enough that I need to get out? It was. I ran downstairs almost in my birthday suit. It’s a zombie apocalypse and I’m wrapped up in a towel, go figure. It got real bad, real quick. It went from a few zeds ambling about my shared front yard to an all-out war for the preservation of the human race. Once I made sure my kids were safe, our hope had been to ride the whole thing out in my walled community.”
“How’d that go?” Jack asked.
“Not so well. I knew I should have packed up my friends and family and took off long before they could get in.”
“Why didn’t you?” he asked.
“Duty, honor, morality, stupidity, a combination of any of them. Take your pick, feel free to mix and match. I stuck it out until the bitter end, and my family almost paid the ultimate price for my indecision. Once we struck out on the road, I figured I’d head back east and see if my family was alright.”
We had more than a few detours along the way and there were many more variables involved than I was telling him, but he was getting the gist of the story
“Where were you headed?” he asked.
“Started in Colorado and headed for Maine.”
He took in a big inhalation. “Those are states, right?
I nodded.
“We have the same names for a couple of ours. We may be from the same place. Did you have a plane?”
“I wish. That would have saved us a lot of heartache. I never thought to ask anybody if they knew how to fly. Although I’ve got to hope that it would have come up in a conversation. I was in the Corps, and most of my time involved jumping out of them. I never thought to figure out how to fly them.”
“Colorado to Maine is quite the road trip,” Jack stated.
“Is it the same for you? I’m really having a hard time with this cross-over happening here. I mean, it sounds very much like we are from the same place…and then there’s here. Wherever the hell here is.”
“Twenty-one hundred miles, give or take a few,” he replied.
“Well, that’s the same.” I paused for a moment, reflecting back on all that had happened on that trip. “Lost a lot of good people on that journey. Made it though, somehow.”
“And your family?” he asked with concern.
“Better than I could have hoped. Took some hits, lost a brother and his family, plus a niece.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I appreciate that,” I told him, looking him in the eyes. His response seemed genuine enough and I liked him all the more for it.
* * * * * *
I’m not sure what to think about this whole thing. First of all, there is arriving in this place that I’m still not certain is real. Then, rapidly approaching the end of the line, I’m snatched from the proverbial jaws by a pair that is from yet another world. It seems like the quantum world gone haywire. Yet, here I am.
Mike seems like a pretty good guy and someone you can trust at your back, once that trust is established. I don’t think we’re there yet, for either of us. I’m just not all that trusting right off the bat. However, he did save my life, so there’s that. I’ll trust him to a certain point, but keep my reservations. I’m sure if we lived in the same world and hadn’t met up in this one, we’d probably be great friends. I kind of like his attitude and can certainly understand his reservations.
Trip is seriously that…a trip. I don’t know what to think about him. He doesn’t really seem all there. He seems like some kind of savant, pulling shit out of thin air. I’ve been snatched from my kids and Lynn and thrown into this. I can’t figure anything out, and I’m surviving one moment to the next in the hopes that this all vanishes in a wisp of smoke.
Listening to his story, especially about losing part of his family, I have a sort of kindred feeling toward him. We seem to have been through the same kind of thing, albeit in different worlds. If this didn’t seem so real, I’d say he was an extension of me in some way. Perhaps this is all a dream and I’m seeing another part of me. Hell, I don’t know.
With some reservations, I begin telling a little more of my story. I leave out some parts, such as the changes that have occurred to me. I’m sure he suspects something by the look on his face at times. I’m sure when night falls, he’ll have more of those when I manage to make my way through the dark without goggles.
* * * * * *
I relate how the deaths from the Cape Town virus spurred a quick reaction from the pharmaceutical companies to produce a vaccine. The live virus vaccine triggered an increased number of deaths, eventually causing seventy percent of the world’s population to simply fall over dead. It then produced a genetic mutation in the rest, creating the night runners; a ferocious, unrelenting new species which hunted the streets at night. Only one percent was left to face this onslaught — either immune to the vaccine or they didn’t take it. By the time I found myself in this strange world, that one percent had fallen even farther.