Jigsaw World (9 page)

“
Whatever they are, why don’t we
just get the fuck out of here?” Charla chimed in. “I don’t see what
good figuring this out does for us, and I am not in the mood to
deal with walking corpses right now.”

“
Get the girl a cigar!” Tom said.
“I don’t think we can do a lot for this town, and we have more road
to cover.”

The group having generally agreed to vacate,
they all started walking toward the gate to the graveyard that they
had entered. At this point, they were perhaps a thousand feet away
from the RV, and once they had found a source of fuel, they could
be on their way.

“
Hey guys, I think we are a little
late!” George said. He pointed at the gate they were approaching,
where several disheveled and dirty people were blocking their
exit.

“
We were just leaving!” Tom called
out. “Leave us alone, and we will leave you alone!”

A few of the people ahead smirked at that.
Tom’s group continued toward them, while surreptitiously checking
themselves for ready access to their weapons. Tom and George took
point, and Sidney took up position behind Charla. A quietly
growling Bailey walked just to the right of Charla.

If the people blocking their exit were a cross
section of resurrected corpses, they were certainly in better
physical shape than Tom would have expected. While some of them
looked as though they had been awakened to pursue activities from
the middle of some pig pen without getting their morning coffee,
none of them had flesh rotting off of their bodies. None of them
were even missing body parts!

As the group got within a dozen feet of the
possible zombies, Bailey launched himself at the nearest one. As he
made contact with the person, there was an arc of some sort at the
point of contact, and Bailey was propelled back the way he came
from at about the same rate as his charge. When he hit the ground,
he rolled a couple of times. He regained his feet promptly, and
looked more surprised than hurt.

The opposing group looked as though they were
about to charge. Tom produced his knife and a machete that he had
found in the RV. George had a two pound sledgehammer, and Sidney
had a Katana and now Tom saw that he was in possession of a nice
silver toned Colt Anaconda 44 caliber revolver with a long eight
inch barrel. Charla had her good looks, which would buy her more
protection than any weapon would.

Just as the Dead were about to strike, a shot
rang out, and the lead Deader fell. Sidney opened up with his own
pistol, and Tom and George each felled one of the Deaders. Bailey
stayed back to guard the Queen, and to direct the
battle.

Thirty seconds later, the last of the group of
Deaders were down. A man came out from his vantage behind a large
headstone, and approached. The group examined him as he approached,
but could find no evidence of him being a member of the Deader
community. He had assisted with putting down the Deaders, and he
wasn’t graveyard messy, so he passed first muster.

When he reached the group, he extended his
hand, and George shook it. “Hello. I am Markus.” The man said. “I
suggest that we get out of here, before the bodies get back
up.”

Tom looked at the bodies, and noticed that
each of them were the source of a softly luminescent fog. In the
case of one body, Tom had used the machete to sever the head from
the body. The fog from that body extended to the head, which seemed
to be dissolving into the fog.

“
Okay then.” Tom said. “I formally
offer you a ride on my RV down to a less dangerous situation. Do
you know where we can gas up in town, before we go?”

“
I know just the place.” Markus
smiled. “Let’s move.”

A few moments later, the group had boarded the
RV, and it was bouncing down the slightly ill-kept road. Markus
directed Tom to take the left side turn-off, and after a few
hundred feet, the group had arrived at a small two pump gas
station. No one was around, but a brick and a short search yielded
the necessary means to activate the pumps and lift the cash out of
the register.

In short order, the RV was gassed up, and the
crew was ready to depart this Dead infested town. As they pulled
out onto the interstate, Sidney drove the RV, and the rest of the
group settled down around the table to interrogate their new friend
Markus. Tom took the opportunity to get right to the
point.

“
Markus, why don’t you tell us
whatever you know about what took place back there?” He queried.
“You are the only living person we saw in town, although we didn’t
do much of a search. How did you survive?”

“
Well, I woke up this morning in
this body.” Markus reported, as he raised his hand to indicate to
which body he was referring. “I went to sleep very much in
different circumstances.”

Markus went on to recount the events of the
last day. He said that he woke up in the body of a person named
Mike, who by the evidence of a suicide note and a bottle of
tranquilizers was contemplating suicide. For whatever reason, what
he got instead was an unanticipated resident in his
body.

Markus believed that Mike was still in the
body with him, because he could access all of Mike’s memories, and
there was a sense of someone else being there, but totally passive.
Markus had also noticed some small habitual type details that he
was doing now, that he had never done before.

During the time that Markus had been exploring
the situation today, he had encountered two other people with the
same situation as his own, and had met a few still alive normal
people. All had gone their own ways, and the Deaders had been very
active, trying to catch and kill them all.

Markus had caught and to some extent
interrogated one of the other types, the Deaders, and had formed
some preliminary theories on what was happening in the wonderful
town of Mildew. The dead bodies that had been resurrected were
being animated by things that claimed that they were spirits,
trapped in a tormenting place. They didn’t know if it was some type
of hell, or if all the dead go there, or why they were there, but
for whatever reason, a pinhole escape hatch from that place opened
up to this place.

Once they escaped, they discovered that they
could not force their way into a living person, but they could
enter a dead body. They also found that they had the ability to
repair those bodies, even the rotted ones, and walk around inside
of them. Once in those bodies, they could find and kill the
townspeople, and then one of their un-bodied compatriots could take
up residence in the newly dead body.

The Deaders had some pretty significant Chi
powers, some ability to throw things around telekinetically, and
the Walk-Ins like Markus had no such powers. For all intents and
purposes, Markus was a regular person, just in someone else’s body,
and remembering a different world. Why both of these types of
transfers took place at the same time, no one really
knew.

The Deaders had become aware of the Walk-Ins
just before the RV had hit town, and they were intent on
eliminating the competition. They could not take over a living
body, but the Walk-Ins were just as mortal as anybody, and so the
Deaders could fix the situation by killing the Walk-Ins, then
inhabiting the corpse.

As for Markus, he had Mike’s memories to
examine, and to compare to his own memories, and for the most part,
all of the history that Mike knew seemed to be the same as the one
Markus knew, up until the mid 1990s. The hinge point seemed to be
the Third Reich.

In Markus’s world, a couple of whistleblowers
had turned into a flood of whistleblowers, starting in the year
1994. A young intern in one of the world’s biggest corporations
came across a set of secret emails that dealt with an advertising,
lobbying and payoff program of activities that were clearly aiming
at accomplishing ‘The plans of the Reichsmarschall’.

Investigations by the fractured congress led
to first a few, then hundreds of pieces of evidence that the Third
Reich did not die when it was ‘defeated’ at the end of WWII.
Instead, by bits and drabs, with the most advertised bit being
‘Operation Paper-clip’, they simply integrated the Reich’s
machinations with the governments and significant businesses of the
times.
All
of the significant organizations became
part of the new, clandestine Reich.

By the end of the 1990s, a major witch hunt
for Nazi Ideology was underway. It was discovered that both Nazi
influences and overt Nazi organization were far more universal than
was ever believed. By the end of the first decade of the 2000s,
most of the Nazi structures had been destroyed, including the
oddball off-shoot in the Middle East called the Muslim Brotherhood,
and the toppling of the Argentine Republic.

With the comparative history, the briefing by
Markus began to run dry. Most of his experiences in Mildew involved
trying to stay alive, which in most cases is incompatible with
trying to conduct a comprehensive analysis of said threat. Tom
decided to close out the discussion with the most relevant
remaining question.

“
Would you like to come with us,
or do you want to disembark somewhere along the line?” Tom asked
Markus. “We can probably use your help, and George over there gets
lonely. You guys can argue it out, but I believe that George is
probably a Bottom.”

Tom ducked the badly thrown beer can that
George threw, and then he added, “See, he even throws like a girl.”
Seeing that he was about to be subjected to another inept attempt
to even the score by George, Tom forced a laugh to diffuse the
situation. He had observed that a properly placed laugh can
effectively stop most attempts to exact revenge.

“
I think that I would like to come
with you.” Markus said. “That is, if you don’t continue trying to
pair me off to George. No offense meant.”

George emitted an embarrassed laugh in
response to that remark. “No offense taken, although you should be
worried that Tom’s remarks are some form of Projection. I would
sleep on my back around him if I were you.”

The RV continued to skim down the interstate
highway at an average of 63 miles per hours as this conversation
was taking place. Sidney was in the driver’s seat, and the group
added the Walk-In Markus to their number. Tom reflected that as the
miles separated the group from its origins, new changes that
reflected the strangeness of the world around them became part of
them. In a group such as this one, Tom could claim to be the most
normal of them, and not feel as though he were lying.

A few miles further on, not more than an hour
out of Mildew, they saw a little town called Grendal. Tom noted
that it would be useful to grab a supply of food, and maybe a few
cases of beer, just to see them through the next few stops. They
all readily agreed that a provisioning stop would be wise, and so
the Town of Grendal was honored to be the place the stop would be
made.

The RV made the stop in front of another of
those universal 24 hour Wal-Marts that had sprung up across the
country as though sprouted from some Giant’s magic beans. This one
was open, unlike the one in the recent past, but when they entered
the store, they discovered something strange.

They entered beside the cash registers, and
did not see anyone down the line. As everyone knows, in moments of
low activity, the cashiers may all be pulled from the registers to
do other duties. Looking about, the group could not see any of the
‘members’ anywhere about, nor could they see any other
customers.

They grabbed two carts, and Charla dispensed
the shopping list she had put together to the men. She had a number
of cooking staples on the list, including things like flour, milk,
sugar and eggs, a variety of meats, and also a variety of handguns
and rifles. She even listed two complete outfits for archery; Bow,
arrows, quivers and gloves.

They doubled up, Tom and Markus on one cart,
and George and Sidney on the other. Meanwhile, Charla took Bailey
on a tour of the pet food aisle, and also the feminine products
aisle. As each team penetrated deeper into the deserted store, the
emptiness became almost spooky. The fact that nothing was out of
place, and there was no indication of anything unnatural happening
to make the store empty just added to the spookiness.

Tom split off from the cart once most of the
items they were to get were in the bag, so to speak. Tom went back
to the front of the store, and started to open the row of
registers, and liberate the money from its captivity. He filled up
three double bagged plastic bags with the cash. The primary task
done, he went to the restroom to relieve himself in a non-cramped
setting.

Peeing into the urinal, he had time to look
around. Everything was just like the scenery in any Wal-Mart
restroom, except for one thing. On the wall next to him, in the
middle of all the scrawled bathroom prose, was the single heavily
inked word ‘Croatoan’.

Tom washed up, and left the restroom. He
retrieved his cash, and went and stowed it in the RV. He pulled a
Pall Mall out and lit up. He sat smoking on the kick step of the RV
for the ten minutes that it took everyone to finish up their
shopping and return.

For the next few minutes, the group stowed the
groceries away in the RV, and admired the weaponry that they had
obtained. Everyone agreed that self-serve Wal-Marts were the wave
of the future, and that it was pervasively creepy to be in a
Super-Store with no one else there. Finally, the tasks were done,
and the conversation wound down. A few moments later, the RV pulled
out and headed back onto the Interstate.