Free A Shrouded World - Whistlers by Mark Tufo, John O'Brien Page A

sun on its downward path was making it more difficult. I had enough ammo for a sustained battle, but nothing even remotely akin to finding a safe place from which to wage this battle. I was just looking into the back of my tenth (thirtieth?) troop transport truck when I heard the slow dying bleat of a truck horn on its last legs. Too many descriptors, dying implied last legs, oh well, hopefully this journal entry won’t be scooped up by an English professor (or basically anyone with a rudimentary hold on the language).
    I popped my head out of a truck I, odds were good that John was just playing with the horn. The beauty of his condition (primarily stoned) was that his short-term memory was really only good for about three breaths or one deep inhalation; that should be clear enough, knowing John the way I do. The bleat came again, this one not much more than a goose hiccup. I walked back over to where I had left him. He was downing bags of Phrito’s and pointing out the front windshield. I couldn’t see from my location, at least not until I stepped on the running board of the truck he was in. It was a zombie hoard, and they were coming at a decent clip. Runners seemed to be intermingled with the shufflers, I could tell because they usually looked less dead if that makes sense, fresher corpses may be a better explanation. But they weren’t running…so far.
    I had yet to figure out the relationship wit h the runners and the shufflers…why they hung out together. I can’t imagine it was any sort of symbiotic relationship. I very much doubt that the runners tracked and trapped the food, and then patiently waited for the shufflers to catch up so they could eat. I could see some benefit for the runners to stay with the slow ones, safety in numbers, less likely to get shot if you’re in a group of a couple of hundred. That implied thinking, and I for one was not yet at the point where I wanted to believe that was an option. My zombies were going to stay stupid eating-machines right up until they caught and ate me. I began to scan the area, nothing worth a damn stood out as a viable defense.
    “I’m thinki ng maybe you should have yelled,” I told him. I rested the barrel of my rifle on the hood of the truck. “My old boss always told me to be proactive in the face of a crisis.”
    “I hope you don’t mind, ” John said before I pulled the trigger.
    I looked up at him. “Mind about what , John?” I asked.
    “I didn’t tell you?”
    “No, man, you didn’t tell me. What should I be minding about?”
    “When I get nervous , my fingers tend to work on their own.”
    “John , what the hell are you talking about? We’ve got some funkies coming, and I’d really like to drop some of the faster ones.”
    “The bullets , man, the bullets.”
    My heart was sinking. “Oh , John, what about the bullets?” I asked, figuring he had somehow pulled all the lead tips off. I was about to get John out of the truck and make a run for it. It didn’t look like we’d have enough for a firefight.
    He tossed all the metal clips out the window. I started laughing. He had removed the connectors that had held the individual bullets together so that they could be fired through a light machinegun.
    “I’d kiss you right now if I thought my man-card could take that kind of serious hit.”
    “Man-card?”
    “Do you know how to load a magazine?” I asked hopefully, handing him up six of the ones I had pilfered.
    “Like Sports Illustrated ?” he asked back. I put the magazines back in my pockets.
    “Worth a shot I suppose. Just make sure all the bullets are back in the box and the lid is latched , okay? We’re going to have to leave here soon.”
    “Can I keep the truck?”
    “I wish.”
    The dying horn bleat was an indicator of the good odds that this behemoth would not start. Although, in retrospect, why I didn’t try some of the other trucks eludes me; time had expired on that option, no sense on dwelling on it. Just as I