Secrets of Goth Mountain

by Gary J. Davies

  ****

  Near the front gate, the lead logging machine ponderously moved halfway onto Goth land before its engine sputtered and stopped. Thousands of ants had smothered the air filter of its powerful engine. Massive hydraulic arms and talons designed to pick up monstrous logs and carry them to waiting flatbed trucks sat motionless, defeated by tiny ants. “Abandon your guns and machine and walk away from here,” Black Knife advised the driver from alongside the vehicle.

  The man simply stared back at him with terrified eyes.

  “You heard me,” Black Knife shouted, as he motioned with his hands for the man to come out.

  “No damn way,” the man replied. “The bugs and animals are crazy out there.”

  This man was one of the lucky ones. He had closed the windows of the cab quickly and avoided attack for a time, although wasps, bees and flies by the thousands still swarmed around his sanctuary.

  Fen in the form of Two Bears joined Black Knife. “Look at the floor of your machine,” he commanded the logger.

  The man screamed and bolted out of the cab to escape thousands of ants that were pouring through vents and other tiny openings, and fell down into the waiting arms of the fake Two Bears. “Walk home peacefully, and you will be safe,” the fake-shaman told the shaken man as he stood him on his feet and pointed him towards town.

  The dazed man stumbled away, joining dozens of others.