A Shrouded World | Book 8 | Asgard Read online

  A Shrouded World 8

  Asgard

  Mark Tufo

  John O’Brien

  Copyright © 2020 by Mark Tufo/ John O’Brien

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  To all our brothers and sisters that are active duty or who have ever served we want to thank each of you for your service and give special thanks to the families back home that support them.

  Other Books By Mark Tufo

  Zombie Fallout Series

  * * *

  Zombie Fallout 1

  Zombie Fallout 2: A Plague Upon Your Family

  Zombie Fallout 3: The End...

  Zombie Fallout 3.5: Dr. Hugh Mann

  Zombie Fallout 4: The End Has Come and Gone

  Zombie Fallout 5: Alive in a Dead World

  Zombie Fallout 6: ‘Til Death Do Us Part

  Zombie Fallout 7: For the Fallen

  Zombie Fallout 8: An Old Beginning

  Zombie Fallout 9: Tattered Remnants

  Zombie Fallout 10: Those Left Behind

  Zombie Fallout 11: Etna Station

  Zombie Fallout 12: Dog Days

  Zombie Fallout 13: A Perfect Betrayal

  Indian Hill

  * * *

  Indian Hill 1: Encounters

  Indian Hill 2: Reckoning

  Indian Hill 3: Conquest

  Indian Hill 4: From The Ashes

  Indian Hill 5: Into The Fire

  Indian Hill 6: Victory’s Defeat

  Indian Hill 7: Defeat’s Victory

  Lycan Fallout

  * * *

  Lycan Fallout 1: Rise Of The Werewolf

  Lycan Fallout 2: Fall Of Man

  Lycan Fallout 3: End Of An Age

  Lycan Fallout 4: Immoralty’s Touchstone

  Demon Fallout: The Return

  Lycan Fallout 5: Demon Wars

  Dystance

  Dystance 1: Winters Rising

  Dystance 2: Cedar’s Conflict

  Dystance 3: The Edge Of Decit

  The Book Of Riley A Zombie Tale Books 1-5

  Timothy Series

  Timothy

  Tim 2

  Tim 3: Sliced Diced and Cubed

  The Spirit Clearing

  * * *

  Callis Rose

  Other Books By John O’Brien

  Other books by John O’Brien

  * * *

  A New World Series

  A New World: Chaos

  A New World: Return

  A New World: Sanctuary

  A New World: Taken

  A New World: Awakening

  A New World: Dissension

  A New World: Takedown

  A New World: Conspiracy

  A New World: Reckoning

  A New World: Storm

  * * *

  Companion Books

  A New World: Untold Stories

  A New World: Untold Stories II

  * * *

  ARES VIRUS

  Ares Virus: Arctic Storm

  Ares Virus: White Horse

  Ares Virus: Phoenix Rising

  * * *

  THE THIRD WAVE: EIDOLON

  LIFTING THE VEIL

  Lifting the Veil: Fallen

  Lifting the Veil: Winter

  Lifting the Veil: Emergence

  Lifting the Veil: Risen

  * * *

  RED TEAM

  Red Team: Strigoi

  Red Team: Lycan

  Contents

  1. Mike Journal Entry 1

  2. Mike Journal Entry 2

  3. Mike Journal Entry 3

  4. Jack Walker — Chapter One

  5. Jack Walker — Chapter Two

  6. Jack Walker — Chapter Three

  7. Jack Walker — Chapter Four

  8. Mike Journal Entry 4

  9. Mike Journal Entry 5

  10. Mike Journal Entry 6

  11. Jack Walker — Chapter Five

  12. Jack Walker — Chapter Six

  13. Jack Walker — Chapter Seven

  14. Jack Walker – Chapter Eight

  15. Aftermath – Mike Journal Entry 7

  About Mark Tufo

  About John O’Brien

  A Shrouded World The Series

  1

  Mike Journal Entry 1

  Where does one even begin to explain what is going on when one has started playing a part in someone else’s story smack dab in the middle of the mayhem? Trip, the resident time-traveling perpetually stoned genius dragged and dropped me into an alternate world that was in the midst of a cataclysmic war, one that dwarfed the battle I had been going through with the zombies. My guide, knew, on some level, what was going on, but the fractures within his mind prevented him from clearly explaining what was happening, what the hell I was doing here, or what needed to be done. The only decent thing that had come from this detour was Jack. Sure, he was former Air Force, but looking past that, he was a fierce fighter and a loyal companion. He, too, had been ripped from his home world, which was suffering a fate similar to mine, and that only made the situation stranger.

  We stumbled through that alternate reality much like a crawling baby does when it first pulls itself up on the edge of a table and tries to walk. We were doing all we could just to survive to make it through to the next day, when we might possibly awaken from our nightmare. We continually witnessed things that shouldn’t be happening, people and materials embedded into rock and walls. Sonic waves that could displace time both forward and backward, carbon copies of people we knew (or that Jack knew—I was happy to be spared that small slice of hell). I really thought zombies were the worst thing that could happen—until I came across night runners. Then, just as we figured them out, we discovered there was an entirely new monster created by an enemy we did not yet know: whistlers, a parasite bent on our destruction. That was their sole purpose in life, if you could call them alive. They had no other desire. We could not create a truce with an enemy that wanted nothing more than to destroy us utterly.

  Along our journey, we befriended a demon and made a mortal enemy of angels, though the latter was nothing like the cloud floating harp wielders I’d been brought up to believe in. Whatever was happening, whichever higher entities were monitoring this slog fest, they did not want me and Jack together. No matter how hard we tried to team up, fates continually pulled us apart. Instinctively, we both knew that this was somehow the key: that the two of us together, for a yet undetermined reason, were the flies in the ointment to ending this. It had become so much larger than just us trying to survive, I was afraid; I genuinely suspected we were fighting for all life. The whistlers were jumping from world to world, in and out of time and dimensions. As near as we could tell, there was no safe haven to hold out from this onslaught, no place to hide. Trip, in his infinite wisdom, sharper than a Magic 8-Ball and about as reliable as a Ouija Board, sent me help in the form of BT. But not the BT version from my world, my truest friend and ally, whom I would trust with my life. No, the one I got was an overweight asshole that absolutely despised me in every imaginable way. I couldn’t blame him. The Mike he knew was a dick, fed up with everything and everyone. The help Trip had sent was a whiney burden I could ill-afford to look out for. Nobody wanted him, but leaving him to the wayside was something I could not do. The man I knew and loved was in there somewhere, under all those nachos.

  Since we’d been here, we’d done nothing but run or react to what was thro
wn our way; we were being distracted from what needed to be done. When Jack found the relic, I knew we’d been given something of great importance. Unwisely, I’d decided on my own what our next move should be, and we were tossed onto the inhospitable whistler home world, where, within a matter of minutes, Jack and myself found ourselves captured. Trip and BT winked out, leaving us high and dry. The entire planet appeared to be one giant slave encampment. I was befriended by a giant blob, a being aptly named Bob, and through a trial by fire, another, rather fearsome creature became a friend of mine. He looked something like a standing, horned Komodo dragon, so I named him Churchill. Long story. You can read all about it in a previous journal.

  Turns out, Bob was the wildcard in this deck. He removed my controlling cap and ultimately Churchill’s, and we escaped our mining duties. I had a feeling this wasn’t news to Bob, but this was when I found out that whistlers were created in a factory, meaning there was something else entirely, something bigger than we’d thought, at the controls driving this rollercoaster. The whistlers were nothing more than a bio-engineered plague—it was their masters that needed to be stopped. Naively, I’d thought we’d accomplished that when we took down the inverted pyramid, only to discover that we’d not done much more than dump a pebble from our boot, in a quarry full of pebbles.

  Bob, Churchill and myself, still flush with the idea we’d crippled the whistlers’ war machine, could only look on with dismay at the dozens of towers we could see in the distance.

  * * *

  And so the story continues…

  * * *

  “Small steps, Talbot. Can’t eat an elephant in one sitting.” I didn’t like the analogy; I’d never eat an elephant, and I bet they’d taste bad anyway. This was still a morale boost; we had struck a blow in the heart of the enemy’s territory. Even one who was so dominating the field of battle had to pause at the brazenness of the attack and the success of it. You can expand your ruinous empire as far as you like, but if you become vulnerable at home, it will all collapse on itself. The whistlers might not care about the ramifications of that destruction, and maybe their overlords didn’t either, but I doubted that was the case. Those who believe they’re untouchable are highly offended at a poke in the eye. I had to believe it affected them in some manner. The question now was, how were they going to respond. Did they redouble their forward efforts or pull inwards to assess the new threat?

  I had no idea what we were going to do; there weren’t even odds we could do again what we had done to one pyramid, and the field before us seemed endless. Bob had inside knowledge of that pyramid; it was doubtful they were all the same and could be exploited in the same way. It was possible, but either way, I wasn’t starting that process again. Control cap screwed to my head, sludge tube down my throat, slave labor and all that…then what would happen if Bob and I couldn’t find each other? The idea that I’d be able to navigate through the right gates again was absurd; if not for Jack’s directions I would have been blown off the platform and made into food paste. So many things had gone right for us and still it had almost failed. When your number comes up on the roulette wheel and you win big, the best course of action is to walk away.

  Bob, Church and I were on a small plateau some five miles away from the destroyed pyramid. It was a crazy hive of activity out there. Hovercraft were either shooting down or helping to round up thousands of their escaping captives. This I watched by staring right through Bob’s head and eyes; it was like looking through red-tinted binoculars. I was fearful that at any moment some giant construction crane was going to come into the picture and right the downed structure and they’d be up and running in the next twenty-four hours. The whistlers were wholesale slaughtering creatures, and it tore me up watching, especially since I was at least partially responsible. If I thought I could have done even the slightest thing to help, I would have. The area was crawling with whistlers, easily the largest assemblage of them thus far. They must have sent reinforcement from all the nearby towers.

  “What now, Bob?” I asked, finally getting sick of watching the creatures become bullet catchers.

  Church’s belly rumbled so loudly I looked up to the sky expecting a hovercraft closing quickly on our location. He rubbed his stomach in a very human gesture, and I could empathize—or sympathize—because I was hungry as well. No chance of getting gruel stuffed down our throats now, and I was pretty sure there were no food trucks in the general vicinity. As for the planet yielding any prizes, I didn’t have much hope. It was sea of grass as far as the eye could see. Bob started moving away, I followed Church, next in line. We got under an outcropping of rock and slept. Wasn’t going to do much to slake my thirst, but my body was grateful nonetheless. Bob woke me up a few hours later; one of the suns was down, and the other was barely above the horizon. Had a feeling that, because of this planet’s rotation, it never truly set, but at least it was darker.

  Bob nodded to Church. I shook him awake and we started walking again. Bob had a destination in mind; I could only hope we reached it soon and that it was well stocked. I didn’t like that none of us were saying anything, it made me uneasy. Never thought I’d miss getting those one-word responses. The sort-of-night was much cooler; considering the planet had two suns, it wasn’t quite as oppressive as one would think. Must have been a lot farther out on that ring of life, you know, the planetary orbit in regards to its sun or suns. Scientists say there's a sweet spot that makes it possible to harbor life, otherwise it was too cold or too hot. If there was only one sun, my guess was this would be a frozen wasteland. Snow meant water though, and that train of though circled me back around to wanting and needing the liquid.

  Church and I followed Bob without question; personally, I didn’t have anything else to do. We were fugitives, there was no sanctuary on the entire planet and, as of yet, my white knight (in the form of either Trip or Jack) had not shown. I had a rifle and two powerful allies, but, against an entire world bent on our demise, we were insignificant. Correction—not quite insignificant, after all we had caused a major amount of chaos but how much it would mean in the bigger picture was still in question. Japan had thought it dealt a crippling blow at Pearl Harbor and, for a while it had seemed to work, but what it resulted in was a whole lot of hurt. History showed who that victory went to.

  We traveled the entire night before stopping once again. This time we had no outcrop to get out from under the sun as we watched the second one rise. I wasn’t quite in dire straits, but that path was illuminated before me, and it wouldn’t be long before dehydration’s tendrils dug in deep and, like a dandelion, would be tough to uproot.

  Bob formed into something like a table with six legs and then urged me and Church to get underneath. He’d made a haven for us to have a little shade and get some rest. I was concerned for his well-being, but he told me he was fine in his normal “Bob” answer. I somehow got some shut eye with that red ceiling no more than a few inches from my face. Church snored like he had two deviated septums. The fact I was able to get any rest was more a testament to exhaustion than comfort. With the suns going down, Bob roused us and we reluctantly continued on. I was getting the feeling maybe he was just marching us along until we couldn’t go on any farther, better to be doing something than waiting for the end to come to us kind of thing.

  We’d been moving for a couple of hours when Bob stopped. I was looking for the sun, mistakenly believing (and hoping) it was once again time to sleep. I was doing the math in my head; I knew I was coming up on three days without water. I was going to be at my limit soon, no telling when Church or Bob would start to feel the effects.

  “Milk.”

  I came around the side of him and was about to ask what he wanted when I was looking at a pool of water, or liquid anyway. It was a green, fusty thing, no bigger than a small, backyard above-ground pool. It was impossible to tell the depth, as I couldn’t see past the thick sludge resting on top. Occasionally a bubble would pop on the surface. It looked like it was simmering, or,
more likely, dribbling marsh gas was rising to the surface, or who knows? Maybe it was some hippopotamus type of creature submerged underneath releasing its own methane. It was noxious enough to be the latter.

  “I’m not drinking that,” I told him.

  Bob moved closer to the boggy area. He then spiraled out a small part of him, a tendril, I guess. I was worried that it would burn him as he stuck his extension into the liquid. It closed around the makeshift limb like mud would. Then, I watched, incredulously, as sludge rose up and into that hose. He was drinking it.

  “That can’t be good for you!” If Bob went down with some alien E. coli we were all screwed. I wish I could stop this narrative right here and tell you we stumbled across a stalled truck full of bottled water, and I even thought of writing that in this journal just to keep from repeating what I actually saw, but that wasn’t quite how it worked out. Another hose appeared behind him, this more of the outlet variety. If I thought what was entering was on the revolting and loathsome side, what he was expelling was beyond description. Why I feel the need to elaborate, who knows. A few years back I was visiting my brother; he was having a deck built off his back door. I love—loved, my brother; he was a good person, but saving a nickel was of utmost importance to him. He never seemed to get the lesson of “you get what you pay for” or “save a dime spend a dollar.”