“Just happy to be alive is all,” Gilbert explained as he sat up. He squeezed water from his sickly chin whisker before placing one finger against his pimpled nose and blowing, sending streamers over the blankets.
Though exhausted, Nathan still found the strength to get up from the bed and frown at the gun runner.
He looked to the passenger car door.
Except there wasn’t one. Only a wall with paper on it, the showy kind covered with swirly designs, suggesting a lady’s touch. There was even a second full-length mirror there, on its own legs.
As Eli was the last one through the now non-existent door, he stepped over to the wall and rapped it with his rifle. He knocked all over, finding the studs, but nothing of a door.
“Well, then,” he said and regarded the others. “Should I say it? Or will one of you smart asses do the goddamn honors?”
“This is some crazy shit, Eli,” Gilbert muttered.
“Thank you, Gilbert. Though, I’d feel better hearing it from the three goddamn Wise Men here.”
Mackenzie traded looks with Jimmy, who didn’t say a word.
“This is crazy shit, Eli,” Nathan said and meant every word.
That actually took a lot of steam out of Eli Gallant, who nodded, sized up the room, and walked across a solid floor to a rocking chair situated in the corner. He plopped into the thing and began rocking, placing his rifle across the arm rests and closing his eyes as if meditating. Nathan had to admit, he had to admire him for even making the effort.
“Well, we got this,” Mackenzie said and went to the only door in the room.
“Not even a window here,” Jimmy pointed out.
“Don’t care,” Nathan said. “Looks like we’re back home. Somewhere at least.”
“Taking this all calm-like.”
“After all the shit we’ve seen, Jimmy?” Nathan asked, too weary to care about manners. “I don’t care where the hell we are, as long as we’re off that train. We just escaped a—an honest-to-God crash, and jumped through a door into… this.”
Gilbert collapsed on the bed and closed his eyes. Jimmy Norquay rubbed his chin and mouth, squinting at the only door, directly across from where they escaped the crashing train.
“Wonder what’s behind this one,” Mackenzie added. He ran a palm over the door’s surface.
Nathan joined him at the door. Then he cocked his head and frowned. “Not a thing,” he said.
Then Mackenzie met Nathan’s gaze.
Chumpchumpchumpchump…
So very faint, a fleeting ghost of a sound, except there, underneath the press of skin and bone.
“We’re still on the train,” Mackenzie whispered. “It’s official.”
“I’m feeling the pull,” Jimmy said and indicated the door with a nod.
That was met with a round of wary agreement.
“Catch your breath,” Nathan said. “And check your guns.”
Nathan had lost his rifle, but he still had his bandoliers of ammunition. He unslung those from his wet shoulders and handed them over to Eli and Gilbert, who, along with Mackenzie, managed to hold onto their Winchesters. Jimmy didn’t have his rifle either, but he carried Shorty’s sawed-off cannon and had managed to find a dozen or so shells for the beast while searching the sands.
Nathan checked on his Colts, actually flicked them a few times to dry them, before returning them to their holsters.
And Jimmy still had his dynamite. Hidden in the folds of his heavy winter coat. Considering the amount of water they’d all just been through, Nathan wondered if the shortened matches would work.
“All set?” Nathan asked them.
Another round of nods.
“Can’t we just camp out here for a while?” Gilbert asked. “I’m damn near done.”
“We’re in a hotel room,” Mackenzie informed him. “Best get out of here while we can, before someone opens that door and finds us here.”
“This place ain’t right, either,” Eli Gallant declared in a voice of disdain.
And it wasn’t.
It was solid enough. Even comfortable. And certainly of a higher standard Nathan had never before encountered in all of his relatively short travels. But there was a feel of wrongness here, like a splinter driven into one’s finger—not enough to hurt or bother, mind you, but lodged in the shallow portion of the skin just enough to be felt, especially when relaxing. Nathan wasn’t sure what was setting him off about the room. Perhaps it was the lack of a window, or maybe it was the knowledge that they had just entered the room by passing through a now-solid wall.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said. He squeezed at the scarf hanging loosely around his throat. Water dribbled down the front of his shirt.
“Jesus, Jimmy,” Eli observed. “You drown back there or something?”
Jimmy only smiled.
Nathan watched them all before gripping the doorknob, wondering, hoping that some unholy mass of tentacles wasn’t waiting for him on the other side. He pulled one of his Colts, just in case.
Then he opened the door.
And damn near had his hat blown off his skull by the force of BOHM-BOHM-BOHM-BOHMBOHMBOHM.
That tremendous roar staggered Nathan into the others, but the sight beyond the door amazed them even more. There was light and shadow, but the light was in blazing tethers, streaking, shining through clouds of smoke. Searching, strobing, in lines that swept over everything in perfect unity. There was a stout-looking railing that materialized within pinkish clouds, and a significant drop beyond that. The lights changed color in beat with the boot-stomping BOHM-BOHM-BOHM, but jigged and jagged over everything like wingless birds with their tail feathers on fire.
And there were people down there, beyond the stout railing, two levels below at least. Silhouettes drowning in a stygian cloud—figures that lit up for the briefest moments as the lights flashed over them. There was a damn town meeting below, townsfolk numbering perhaps in the hundreds, all packed in tight and jumping around as if walking barefoot over scorching coals.
“Holy shit,” Nathan said, and he realized he couldn’t hear his own voice.
He glanced back at the others, who were gawking at the scene beyond their room. Circles of light found Jimmy and Gilbert’s bearded expressions of shock and flickered over them. The explosions of noise continued to hammer their eardrums, but there was an energy about them, a toe-tapping, boot-stomping goodness therein, almost like… music.
And then there was the air…
Three seconds, from opening the door to the earth-shaking booms of sound and the aimed bolts of lighting, from taking in the multitudes thrashing below to the very air they breathed.
Nathan gasped, and his nervous energy dissipated.
In fact, he felt like he might’ve downed half a bottle of rye whiskey. His mind swam, leaving only a very contented, extremely good mood in that drunken sense of awareness. The lights didn’t bother him so much. The not-quite cannon shots were no longer frightening. And the people below…
A figure walked by the open doorway, because Mackenzie had pulled the thing as wide as the hinges would allow, and Nathan didn’t have any recollection of that happening. But that didn’t matter, because what just walked in front of them did matter. It mattered very much indeed.
It was a woman. Perhaps seven feet tall. Wearing only wisps of clothing that were goddamn inappropriate in Nathan’s mind. He only thought that in a micro-second, however, before the notion dissipated like a hand poo-pooing away curls of smoke. The woman’s… white-colored clothing—ribbons really—only covered her female parts—barely—and displayed an eye-popping amount of blue skin. Honest to Christ blue skin. She had a figure that was damn fetching, sleek and athletic, with hips a man just wanted to grab onto and hold for dear life. A black jet of hair flowed over her back in a thick tail, but in a single mane, while the sides of her head had been shorn to the quick.
But what really got Nathan’s attention… were her breasts. The most obvious indicator of her being a female.
&
nbsp; She had six of them.
He clearly saw she had six of them, because, as Nathan stood and stared—as they all stood and stared—she had actually stopped and sized them up in turn, turning herself about to face them.
Well.
Those wisps of material barely covered the breasts’ areolas and prominent nipples, coating them like the finest fancy cake sweet frosting. The material hefted them, as well, giving gentle support, but leaving very little to the imagination. A crisscross of fabric accentuated the cleavages, which wasn’t deep, but notable. Everything bounced. And below, deep into the valley of her female-hood, her lady parts were, as her breasts, covered in a sliver of silver.
Nathan lifted his eyes to hers.
She had four. Long-lashed and flashing. Her face possessed no nose, just an empty space that didn’t seem very empty as all, and quite fetching to tell the truth, and a mouth twice the size of his. A mouth that smiled at him, in the coyest way, instinctively understood across the universe. Any universe.
“Hello,” Nathan said, still not hearing his own voice, yet feeling just fucking fine off the very air he breathed.
She cocked her head, and her multi-fingered hand that resembled a spider on its back—which didn’t bother Nathan much at all—rose to the side of her shaved head, to the place where her ear should’ve been, but wasn’t. That didn’t bother Nathan, either. She reached over her shoulder and pulled that enticing length of ebony hair back, letting it tumble over her amazing chest.
Nathan very much liked women with long hair.
Her mouth, which didn’t have any lips at all, rippled, in a line, and exceptionally fine teeth peeked out. But her eyes—all four of them—were painted the deepest, seductive, shade of brown.
She reached down and took Nathan’s arm, feeling her way to his hand, taking his five fingers into her eight. Nathan didn’t resist. Her touch was as soft as the fluff on a baby chick, and her grip was as snug as snug could be.
She led him out of the room and onto that dark, smoky shelf of a walkway, half-turning and flashing her muscular back, the enticing dimples just above her waistline, and the jaw-dropping curves of her buttocks. Bare and salaciously on display. That strip of silver emerged at the top in a criminally small triangle, held in place by two silver strings that were only noticeable when one searched for them. Identical strings crisscrossed her back.
Light dazzled Nathan as he walked along the upper deck. He floated on his boot heels, and he looked down into the pit below him, taking in all those people jumping and shivering and flailing, all in beat with that mechanical thunderstorm that was no longer overpowering. In fact, the damn sound was… music to his ears.
“What’s your name?” he asked plainly.
The lady giant merely smiled back at him. Her mouth rippled again, but damn if he could understand any of that, not that it stopped him from smiling right back at her.
How the hell could you not smile?
As if waltzing through a dream, they passed other figures on the walkway. Those individuals were either lounging about, leaning on the railing, or standing before closed doorways. Some were man-shaped, while others most certainly were not. Some had slick, thick torsos of muscle while others had no definition at all, or limbs for that matter, appearing as piled up gobs of substance Nathan didn’t quite understand but was quite at ease with. Those wondrous individuals greeted Nathan with boneless waves of purple tentacles, or flutters of multi-fingered hands. Neckless knobs that might’ve been heads dipped with welcoming warmth, while a few of the males reached out and warmly gripped Nathan’s shoulder. His female guide spoke to them, her mouth rippling in their direction, and the males produced their own smiles—or at least the alien equivalents.
They nodded at Nathan, and he nodded back, smiling all the while, not detecting a flicker of danger from any one of them, nor a trace of fear.
It was as if those emotions had up and vanished.
As he was led along, Nathan glanced over his shoulder to check on his boys. They were all there, strung out behind him, greeting and smiling at the creatures on the walkway, as those astounding examples of otherworldly life greeted them in turn. Mackenzie positively glowed, his face lit up with a rare combination of awe and overwhelming joy at the plethora of assembled species around him. Even dour-faced Eli appeared to have a considerable change in attitude, and he was, in fact, holding onto the hand of a female much like the one leading Nathan along.
Except she was… of all things… rose-colored, with bovine splashes of black covering her skin.
Not that it bothered Eli Gallant, who was obviously quite taken with the lady.
Then they were descending, over ebony steps that were filled with stars. More creatures, on the stairs and at the base, where the crowd thickened even more. Smoke obscured everyone in a dreamy gauze, but that didn’t bother Nathan from spying a few well-endowed males—or what he deduced was the male equivalent of the species leading him along—dancing around that gyrating mass. They wore perhaps just as much clothing as Nathan’s lady friend, and that wasn’t saying much. Well defined to an almost Adonis-like quality, physically gifted, with male members that would make a horse jealous.
But that was fine with Nathan. Just peachy, in fact. And he turned back to his lovely guide with an incredulous shake of his head. The music rumbled away, getting in three beats to every one of Nathan’s relaxed heart. All manner of creatures parted for them, multitudes of them, but not before offering warm nods, smiling faces, or even a fond pat on the back, shoulders, or top of the head.
The lights overhead continued to thunder, drenching faces in shadow and flashing them in split-second flares.
The lady led him to a bar. A huge bar. In fact, the bar was, without question, the biggest one Nathan had ever seen. A pyramid of multi-colored cylinders rose up from the center, as magnificent as an oversized pipe organ. Circles and waves of color rippled over the metallic bulk. Standing before this shining, sometimes glittering, spectacle was what had to be… the bartender.
Two dorsal fins covered the top of a neckless head the size of a boulder. The thing had multiple brows, as if another boulder had landed squarely on top of his skull, permanently mashing both bone and skin into several dense folds that bore down on a set of eyes—narrowed, of course. A jutting jaw sprouted two lower incisors rising above a thick lip-line, touching the upper bone structure of angular cheeks. The flesh might have been purple, or some similar hue. It was difficult to tell with the current lighting. The shoulders were muscular, immense even, as were the four arms folded across its chest.
The four arms fell away.
Nathan should have been surprised. Mesmerized, in fact. But with all the different shapes and sizes all around him, and sucking down that wonderful air by the lungful, all he could do was smile and chuckle as if he’d met a dear old friend gone missing for twenty years.
The bartender had a second face, set into its chest. And that alien face, complete with eyes, nose, and mouth, was aiming a look-what-we-have-here expression of delight at Nathan and his companions.
Nathan’s lady friend led the gang to the edge of the bar, which was a scratched and well-worn hardwood counter, with a respectable coat of varnish applied to its grains. Interesting clusters of valves and spigots crenellated sections of the counter. The lady placed an elbow upon the bar’s edge, hitching up a number of breasts as she did so, the fabric stretching enough for Nathan to get his hopes up. She motioned Nathan closer, which he did. The lady spoke to the bartender, her lipless mouth working in that fascinating way that Nathan couldn’t stop watching. The head simply watched, a fleshly, impassive watchtower that neither approved nor disapproved, but the non-human face set within the creature’s chest listened intently to the speaking lady.
Then they finished conversing, and both switched their attention to Nathan, who only then realized that the rest of his boys were crowding him. They stood there like a small island of humanity rooted to the wildly undulating floor of the universe.
The lady paused, considered the men, then resumed talking.
The face in the chest continued listening, and while listening, the head above it slowly turned to the right, uninterested with the conversation.
Finally, the face in the chest hitched in an expression of well, and one of the four arms reached underneath the bar. The bartender stepped in closer as the face in the chest brought up a metal box, opened it, and gave a shake. He placed the container on the counter and pawed through the contents, all while sizing up not only Nathan, but the other men nearby.
The face in the chest stopped searching and motioned Nathan closer, while the bartender pressed its bulk up against the counter edge.
With a nod from his lady friend, Nathan leaned in.
The face in the chest reached out, one of its five fingers stuck out while the other hand gripped Nathan’s chin, turning his head to the side. There was an audible rustling in and around his ear, then both ears, as those alien fingers grazed the outer edges of Nathan’s canals.
Then the barest contact, like a hair falling across one’s lips, quickly gone and only just noticed.
“How’s that?” the face in the chest inquired hopefully.
“Yessir,” Nathan said.
While the head up above remained vigilant, the smile upon the face widened. “You hear that, Channy? He called me ‘Sir’.”
The lady nodded.
“I like you already,” the face continued. “I mean, I liked you before, you understand, but I like you even more now. And you’re right, Channy, they do look like Faknahts.”
Channy stretched out a hand, in a gesture of ‘See? Told you.’
“Fak… what?” Nathan asked.
“Faknahts. For you, that’s as close to those sounds as the translator I just installed is going to get. Some words aren’t going to convert, so they’re just going to come out as we say them. But everything else should be fine. Regional colloquial equivalents included. Now, just get in close to Channy there. I’m sure you won’t mind that. I gotta get the rest of your pack outfitted.”
Nathan looked at the dreamy lady who’d brought him here. “Channy?”
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