by Indi Martin
Leaning her head against the headrest, she pursed her lips and stared out the window at the passing shadows. I don't know how he does that, she thought to herself, irritated at the tiny gnawing pit of guilt she felt every time she snapped at Chaz. Those stupid little puppy dog eyes. She let her face relax and closed her eyes, listening to the low thrum of the engine. At least it's quiet.
"Although it IS interesting that you mention HAARP..."
Charlie refused to open her eyes. "Oh yeah, Chaz? Why's that?" she asked tiredly, resigning herself to a very long car trip indeed.
7
"Nothing! There's NOTHING here!" Chris screamed futilely at the sky, his voice hoarse from many such outbursts. The sun shone brightly on the grass, and there was a cool late-autumn breeze that rustled through the dead leaves. Nathan shivered despite the idyllic weather. He'd never loved the sound, but now that dry rattle reminded him of things too dark and shadowy to remember.
"What do you mean nothing? What are you looking for?" he asked, exasperated.
Chris stomped toward him, his countenance murderous behind his bristly red beard. For a brief moment, Nathan thought his friend was going to throw a punch at him. "For the last time, Nathan, Jesus. Anything different. Anything we might have taken from the house, anything we might have brought with us." He took a deep breath and backed up a bit. "I know it's hard for you, or whatever, but please try a little harder."
"Okay, sorry. Sorry." Nathan frowned in concentration. "This all looks like our stuff. Maybe it's something like dirt, or bacteria. Nothing we could really do about that."
Chris sighed. "Well, I prefer not to think that because then we'd be FUCKED!" He screamed again, turning his voice up to the sky.
Nathan looked around. They were pulled off to the side in grass next to a forgotten barely-two-lane road, one of countless such roads they'd been traveling. He still didn't trust Chris' math. It had to have been a month on the road already, but he couldn't understand why they were still in Virginia. Nathan felt his mind wandering and yanked it back to the task at hand. Different, he reminded himself. Anything different.
Nathan scanned the stuff again, squatting to unzip a drum cover. He looked over at Chris, who was frantically upending boxes, searching with a singleminded zeal. Singleminded... thought Nathan, and in a flash, he understood.
He understood.
The understanding hit him like a baseball bat in the stomach, and he fell backwards, sitting with a hard thud.
"Nathan?" called Chris, tossing an empty box aside and jogging to his friend. "You okay?"
"It's me..." whispered Nathan, holding his stomach. A cold pit had formed in his gut, the awful feeling of Truth discovered, an awful truth. He thought of his mother, describing how she'd felt when the doctor had announced her prognosis, and how she’d felt it deep within herself. She told him knew she was dying, knew it in her bones, just as he knew the truth of his own words. Nate wept suddenly and openly, drawing breath in giant, raspy breaths.
"Hey, heeeey," cooed Chris, dropping to his knees, his face contorted with concern. "Whoa, man, Nate, hey..."
"I'M what's different," Nathan managed to croak between sobs. "We all were, except you. And us different ones, we're all dead, except me."
"That's..." but Nathan could see the words die on his friend's lips before he could utter them. Nathan knew he was right. He could feel it. "That's... shit, Nate.”
"Yeah," chuckled Nate, wiping his face with his palms. "It is shit."
Chris sat back and circled his hands around his knees. "Hm," he said, simply.
Nathan allowed the silence to sit for a few minutes before breaking it. "So, what do you think we do now? Do I have to die so this all ends? I'm okay with it," he added hurriedly. "Just so you know, that doesn't hurt my feelings."
"Don't joke about that," growled Chris. "It's not funny."
"I'm not being funny, Chris. Look at us. We're in Nowhere, Virginia - for forever, apparently - all our shit is laying on the grass, all our friends are dead, and anyone we meet ends up bloody. If I get to escape that and it turns out to be a good thing, I'm not that upset about dying."
"Nope," said Chris, shooting up to his feet. In a flash, he grabbed Nate and started dragging him back to the van. "We're gonna fix this."
"What? Man, let go!" Nathan shrugged away from him and rubbed his arm. "I'm not going to do anything stupid. I just..." he dropped his arm and hunched his shoulders. "I just know it's true. It's me. I'm the problem. I'm the reason they're all dead." He looked up at Chris. "If you'd gotten away on your own, you'd have been fine. It's because you saved me from there. You should have left me in that basement.”
"Nope," replied Chris. "And I'm not doing it now either."
"It's probably going to come to that," said Nathan, placing a comforting hand on his friend's shoulder.
"Stop being stupid and get in the van."
“What about our stuff?"
“It stays. If we survive all this, we get new stuff.” Chris surveyed the thousands of dollars worth of gear lying upended in the gravel and snorted. “I don’t ever want to see any of this again."
Nate thought about this for a moment and nodded, sliding back into the passenger seat. "Agreed."
8
The day was bright, and the sunbeams cast complex shadow patterns as they wove their way through the forest canopy. The leaf-covered ground was spongy under Gina’s feet, soft and springy, pleasant to walk on. Ahead, Kyrri darted from one bush to the next, playfully and with the vigor of a kitten, occasionally pausing to pounce after an odd bug or butterfly. Several times Gina lost sight of the cat, but each time she sighted his tail flicking straight up like a flag, bent just at the tip, before she had a chance to grow too concerned. For a “dangerous place to wander,” it certainly was beautiful, and seemed perfectly serene. They had been walking for what Gina guessed was a few hours, and the sun appeared to be just past its zenith above them. She strongly suspected that they would be making much faster progress if only Kyrri would take a more direct route. Gina opened her mouth to gently recommend exactly that, when Kyrri froze ahead of her and puffed up; she stifled a chuckle at how adorably fluffy he looked, and was glad she did when he leapt back towards her, his face contorted in a ferocious snarl.
“Down!” he hissed. Gina crouched behind the knotted roots of several dark trees winding around one another. Kyrri crept up the largest tree, carefully and silently, his long, sharp claws slicing effortlessly through the bark of the tree and sending tiny rivulets of a thin, black liquid dripping down. The droplets hissed and spat when they fell to the ground, causing Gina to sidle away from them. She was reaching for a stick with which to prod the substance, which still sat on the soil’s surface and bubbled thickly, when Kyrri landed beside her.
“We okay?” she whispered, scanning through the foliage.
“No.” Kyrri twitched his ears and gestured with his head for her to follow him; he flattened himself low to the ground and crept to a fallen set of bushes at the end of the copse. With a grimace, Gina dropped further to the ground and army-crawled to follow, keeping clear of the smoky black sap still bleeding from the tree.
“Here, Gina-Dreamer, here,” said Kyrri in a fluttering voice so low Gina had to stop crawling to hear him. “Look, and stay silent.”
Gina resumed her slow crawl and raised herself up to the small window through the bushes. She saw nothing but forest and looked down at Kyrri. He nodded and pointed at the peephole with a front paw. “Patience,” he said.
Can’t ignore any distraction that crosses his path, but tells me to have patience, thought Gina bemusedly, but she returned her attention to the view. She studied the small window of forest she could see, serene, waving slowly as the wind wound its way through the trees. Drawing on her observations over the last few hours, she concentrated, searching intently for anything that seemed out of place, anything different. She heard it before she saw it, the underbrush cracking and breaking under some intruder’s footfa
lls. She looked quizzically at Kyrri, but again he motioned for her to pay attention. The sounds grew in volume until at last she could see bushes across the small clearing reacting to something passing through them. Presently, a furry brown thing emerged, and Gina’s brain ran through its rolodex of known mammals trying to find a match. It looked a bit like an oversized, upright beaver, but it’s hands and feet were clawed and fingered, almost like a raccoon’s in their apparent dexterity, pink and fleshy. She guessed that it stood nearly as tall as she did when it raised itself up to its full height, sniffing at the air.
“That’s a zoog,” whispered Kyrri.
“String-faced rats,” murmured Gina, understanding the strange moniker in an instant. The creature’s face did indeed resemble that of a rat, but with a mass of fleshy protuberances from under its beady black eyes, a mask of worms that undulated over and beneath the creature’s face.
They watched the zoog travel across the small clearing in silence. It walked with a bumbling stoop, reaching down here and there to touch the grass as it lurched forward, walking half-upright and half-bestially. Their eyes followed its slow and graceless steps across the clearing. Its irregular path was not near them, but even so, Gina was thankful for Kyrri’s presence beside her; the thing was nightmarish, made more so somehow by the lovely sunlight illuminating the clearing. Eventually, the zoog wandered well out of view, and later, out of earshot. Only then did Kyrri draw himself up to all fours, trembling and panting.
“Is it safe now?” asked Gina in a hushed voice, sitting up and brushing the leaves and dirt off of her clothes.
“That was close,” panted Kyrri. “They’re getting brave again. They shouldn’t be this close to the city.”
“Are they dangerous?”
Kyrri looked up at her with wide eyes. “Oh yeah. Their teeth are like knives, and once they touch you, well. Some warriors just sheathe their claws and let themselves get eaten!” He was chattering quickly and excitedly now, and Gina noticed that his shivering was slowing. “At least, that’s what I’ve heard. I haven’t killed one yet.” He drew himself up proudly. “But I will.”
Gina stood and stretched her legs. “Shall we?”
Kyrri nodded and bounced up to his feet. He walked slowly now, keeping just a few steps beyond her. Gina surmised that the zoog run-in had sobered him up considerably. “We’ve always been at war, you know,” he called back. “Zoogs and Cats. We’re like mortal enemies.”
“Who’s winning?”
Kyrri looked back at her incredulously. “Do you even need to ask? We are, of course! But,” he continued, lower. “I will have to tell Grandfather. It’s never good when they become bold enough to venture so close to our borders.” Kyrri delivered this last line with some hesitation, as if mimicking something he’d once heard said. “Here we go!” Kyrri winked at her and jumped over a thick cluster of brambles, disappearing beyond it. “The Western Road!” she heard him exclaim from the other side.
Gina surveyed the clump and walked a few feet to the left before trying to clamber through. Even with the slightly clearer path, brambles and thorns snagged on her clothes and skin. Exasperated, she bulldozed through the last few feet, earning multiple red stripes as the thorns dug in.
“You are bleeding,” noticed Kyrri with remorse. “I forget that you cannot jump so high. I’m sorry!”
“I’m alright, this isn’t bad,” murmured Gina, taking quick stock of the tiny, shallow slices in her skin, and the multitude of tears in her clothes. “Looks worse than it is.” She looked around, taking in her new surroundings. They were standing on a wide, well-kept cobblestone road, surrounded by the same tall bramble clusters that had shredded Gina’s clothes. The stinging brambles appeared to have been planted intentionally, as they tightly lined each side of the path, creating an organic wall between the road and the surrounding forest. A single bronze track ran down the center of the road, with two deep gutters on either side. The track’s reddish metal gleamed in the afternoon sun. The road was straight and flat, and she could see white walls shimmering in the distance, topped with colorful, fluttering standards.
“Ulthar!” announced Kyrri proudly, following her gaze. “Finest city in the world!” He looked at her solemnly. “It is the one place where no Man may kill a Cat.”
“Men…” began Gina, hoping to prod Kyrri into some preparation for what she might encounter in the city.
“Oh!” interrupted Kyrri, batting at her leg and pointing down the track. “The trolley! Good, we won’t have to walk the whole way. Stand with me and we’ll jump on as it passes.”
Gina followed Kyrri’s gaze to see a bellowing plume of white smoke on the horizon. Something was coming down the track. She looked down at her feet, which were uncomfortably close to the gutters, and quickly stepped back to the edge of the road. “Anything I should know?” she ventured.
“Trolley moves kinda quick, just hop on when it passes. You get used to it.”
“I meant about the city. The Men.”
“Oh.” Kyrri thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t let any of them know that you can understand me. It’s rare for a Man to know our tongue, only the Elders do usually, and even some of them are just awful at it.” He stuck his tongue out as if spitting out something that tasted bad. “It’s like trying to understand a kitten.”
“Okay, so follow you but don’t speak to you.”
“Nah, you can. Lots of them do. Just don’t let on that you understand when I talk to you.”
Gina was about to ask why anyone would talk to him if they couldn’t converse when the trolley came up over the hill. It was much bigger than what Gina would consider a “trolley,” a massive machine with a row of smallish wheels on either side of the long boxcar. It had ornate brass pipes, like a pipe organ, out of which billowed the steam clouds she’d seen earlier. It wasn’t exactly speeding down the track, but it was certainly moving faster than she’d have liked.
“Come on!” yelled Kyrri, as he leapt gracefully onto the platform, which stood only a few inches above the ground.
Gina pumped her tired legs to match the carriage’s speed, frowning with the effort, and sort of lurched onto the platform beside Kyrri. The jump wasn’t hard, but the detective inside her was appalled at the safety hazard. “That hardly seemed safe,” she admonished.
“Oh, uh, sorry,” replied Kyrri. “It’s normal, though. Everybody does it.”
“Welcome to the Hlanith-Ulthar Trolley, Ulthar-bound,” announced a voice behind them.
Startled, Gina sat up, twisting to get a view of the speaker.
“See?” whispered Kyrri. “It even has ticket-takers. Everybody jumps.”
The speaker was a barrel-chested man in a smart red uniform with overlapping leather plate armor. Gina couldn’t tell if the armor was functional or if it was just for show. She hardly considered herself an expert on armor, unless it was kevlar and fashioned into a vest. It looked very similar to the cat’s harness and backplate armor. He stood at attention and looked down at them. His skin was swarthy and tanned, his long black hair gathered into a thick braid that hung down to his lower back. His face was not unfriendly, but his eyes were strange and black, different, and Gina felt a sharp chill run down her back as the tiny hairs on her neck stood on end. He didn’t seem like an immediate threat, but something in her knew he wasn’t quite human.
“Ten dinieri for the trip, mum, unless you have a voucher?” he informed, his tone professional but kind.
“Oh, uh,” stammered Gina. “I don’t have any ‘dinieri.’”
“Ah,” said the man, shifting uncomfortably. “You see, I’m not really supposed to take free passengers,” he explained apologetically.
“You will let her in! She is with me!” commanded Kyrri, making Gina wonder what the Man heard exactly, if he couldn’t understand the Cat’s language.
“Cats are free, little friend,” chuckled the man. He reached into a hip pouch and withdrew a small piece of jerky, crouching down and offering it to Kyrr
i. “Don’t you worry.”
Kyrri ignored the gift and wound himself around Gina’s legs, which proved difficult, as he came up to nearly her hips. “She’s with me,” he repeated, batting with velveted claws at the guard’s leg.
“Heh,” chuckled the man again. “Go on in.” He slid the frosted glass door open just enough to let the cat pass. Kyrri looked up at him plaintively, then at Gina, then back at him, and meowed one long meow with no words.
The guard sighed. “Fine,” he smirked, sliding the door open to its full width. “Please don’t let anyone know I let you in, mum,” he whispered hoarsely, standing straight and waving them inside with a flourish.
"Thank you," Gina replied breathlessly, rushing past the guard into the cabin. Something felt wrong, very wrong, and since everything was already strange and unfamiliar, the instinctive feeling brought with it a sense of desperation. She scanned the boxcar quickly - an assortment of mismatched chairs, sofas, and chaise lounges were scattered along the sides, and there appeared to be only two other passengers, an older woman leaning over a cane at the other end of the room and a man at the far end dressed in stylish blue robes. The walls were almost entirely windows, with only a foot or so of solid wall lining the bottom, and Gina pulled a chair away from the side before sitting down. The other passengers did not give any indication as to whether they noticed the new travelers, and Gina let her body sink into the chair. She was suddenly exhausted, beyond exhausted. Too much was new, too much was just different enough to send continual alarms ringing in her mind, and she couldn't shake the feeling that something was seriously, dangerously amiss.