by Jude Watson
“None of the animals quite look like they’re supposed to,” Dana said. “We think it might be radiation exposure.”
“From what?” Molly asked.
“A-bomb testing,” she answered. “Maybe this was a restricted area where Russia tested the Bomb.”
“The mutations would take generations,” Anna pointed out. “Longer than atomic bombs have been around.”
“And I’m not sure that explains enough of the weirdness,” Molly said.
Javi could tell that none of the Cubs believed her. They had their own crazy theories. But they were in a crazy world, so who was he to argue?
“Why were you all on the plane together?” Javi asked.
“We were at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and flying home,” Hank explained. “There was a storm, and we got routed farther north.”
“The parade was a blast,” Kimberly said. “I met Lorne Greene! Ben Cartwright! I got goose bumps, even though he isn’t crushworthy like Little Joe.”
Javi frowned. Almost every time Kimberly opened her mouth, she said something he didn’t understand. Oregon sure was a long way from Brooklyn.
Akiko pointed to her own flute and said carefully, “I play, too.”
“That’s neat,” Kimberly said. “I play the piccolo and guitar, but I didn’t bring my guitar. We … should … play … together.” She spoke slowly and carefully, and Akiko rolled her eyes at Kira.
“Plus, I’m a cheerleader,” Kimberly added.
“Of course you are,” Yoshi muttered.
“Hank plays the oboe, and I’m our flutist,” Dana said. “Pammy is trumpet, Stu is French horn, and Drew is saxophone. Crash plays the cymbals and the glockenspiel.”
Javi laughed. When the Cubs turned to him, he said, “Sorry. It’s just a funny word.”
“It’s not easy to play, dad,” Crash said. “You think because I’m a football player I can’t play the glockenspiel?” He cocked his head and frowned. Javi had a sudden uncomfortable flash to Derrick Verlanski making him hand over his math homework in third grade.
“No worries, dude,” Javi said. “I’m sure you rock.”
“I rock around the clock,” Crash said, and did a little twist. “Cooler than Bobby Darin in a snowstorm.”
“We were in New York City for two whole nights,” Kimberly said. “It was a gas. We had dinner right in Times Square at the Howard Johnson.”
“Who?” Javi asked.
“I wanted to sneak into the Peppermint Lounge, but Kimberly was a drip,” Dana said, nudging Kimberly with a smile.
“My mom would kill me if I went to a discotheque!” Kimberly squealed. “Besides, we never would have gotten in. But I practiced the twist in our hotel room,” she added, doing a little twisting step next to Crash. “I wanted to hear Joey Dee and the Starliters. They are just dreamy. If I lived in New York, I’d sneak in for sure.”
Javi watched Kimberly plant one foot and twist her hips. Something was weird. Very, very weird.
“The Beatles went there last year after they performed for Ed Sullivan!” Kimberly continued. “And when Jackie was in the White House, she put in a mock Peppermint Lounge for a party. It’s practically historic, you know?”
Jackie Kennedy? The Killbots exchanged worried glances. Had Kimberly been here too long? Had she lost her mind? The other Cubs didn’t seem alarmed.
“Um, how long has the Peppermint Lounge been open?” Molly asked. “I always forget.”
“It’s still popular!” Kimberly exclaimed defensively. “Because of the song, the ‘Peppermint Twist,’ remember? My older sister had the record, 1961.”
“Which means your plane went down … ”
“November 1965,” Kimberly said. “We told you.”
Javi exchanged an incredulous glance with Molly. “But—” he started, but Molly stepped hard on his foot. Why was Molly picking on him? Anna was the one with no filter. She blurted out the truth at the worst moments. Where had she gone, anyway? She had to hear this. Javi scanned the campground. Anna was nowhere in sight.
“We’re guessing it must be 1966 by now, right?” Dana said. “Time goes fast, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Javi said. “Supersonic fast.”
Yoshi repeated the date in Japanese to Akiko and Kira. Their eyes went wide.
How could they tell these kids that they’d actually been here for over fifty years?
And they were exactly the same age as when they’d arrived.
Hank looked around the campground. “Hey,” he said. “What happened to Anna?”
Anna followed the flying insect just a few steps into the woods. She’d never seen such an unusual insect. The iridescence of the wings was off the charts—a mixture of aqua blue and deep green and a shock of orange. It looked like a praying mantis, but the head was so large it was hard to believe it could fly with such accuracy and speed.
She had to get a closer look.
The insect flitted from one branch to another. Here the trees were spaced widely enough that she could easily follow. She wished that Kira were with her to draw it. If she ever got out of here—when she got out of here—she wanted to have a whole book of drawings and descriptions of what they’d seen. She’d started out here as a robotics nerd, but she was coming back a biologist.
Or, considering what they suspected, some sort of astro-biologist.
The insect flew on, and she ran after it. Anna had always been interested in science. It was her best subject in school, and she constantly read science books at home. Her mother was a nurse who wished she’d become a doctor. Her father was a contractor who had wanted to be an architect.
Anna wasn’t going to compromise. Ever.
She darted through the forest after the insect. It zoomed upward and she lost it in the blur of green and blue. She turned around. Then around again. She didn’t feel dizzy, or disoriented. She felt completely clear. Yet she had lost sight of the compound, and worse than that, she wasn’t quite sure how to get back.
She couldn’t discern one blade of grass that had been flattened, one footprint in the soft dirt. She couldn’t see the high ridge in order to orient herself. It had been just there on her left when she’d started.
She walked in one direction, but nothing looked familiar. She turned and walked a different way. Then another. She felt her breath beginning to shorten, sweat springing up on her hairline.
She couldn’t panic. Panic didn’t help the lost. She looked around for a tree to climb, and noticed for the first time that the branches started high up on the trunks, too high for her to reach.
Some of the trees had dropped enormous, stiff cones. She gathered twelve of them and placed them in a circle. She placed a stick on top of a cone, marking the twelve o’clock position.
She walked forward for a hundred yards, looking for the ridge. Not this way, she was sure of it. She went back and moved the stick to the one o’clock position. She struck out again in that direction, walking another hundred yards or so before turning around.
Slowly, she made her way around the circle. Nothing looked familiar.
She was still lost.
She’d only been walking for maybe … ten minutes? The compound couldn’t be far. Probably she should just remain right here and wait.
Someone would find her.
She tried not to think about when dusk would fall. Triple D hunting time. Big cats. A bird that could pick up a person.
To keep her mind off her fear, she examined the woods around her more closely. Something was nagging at her. There was something off about this environment. She didn’t recognize the species of the trees or bushes, but that was the new normal, so that didn’t bother her. Something else did, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.
Maybe it was why she’d chased the mantis in the first place. It was sort of hyper-real, with that big head and bulging eyes. Now she was in a grove full of unfamiliar trees. Their trunks were massive, each as big as a small car, but then they narrowed above her head, then wid
ened again. The leaves were different colors at different levels, blue and green.
She watched as a yellow flower bloomed before her eyes, then drooped, dried, and fell. She stooped to pick it up and examine it. She wished she could enjoy the difference and variety here. She wished she could shake her uneasy feeling.
A rustling in the underbrush to the right of her sent her shooting to her feet.
“Hello?” she called. “Yoshi?”
A pair of yellow eyes stared at her. Blinked.
Not Yoshi.
It has a tail like a boa constrictor … It uses the tail to squeeze the air out of you, and then bites …
Slowly, she took a step backward. Then another.
“Okay,” Anna murmured to herself. “I’ve got this.”
If you see it, get out of the open.
She was in a clearing.
She heard a growl that sent a jolt of panic through her. She had to pick a direction. She walked slowly through the trees, trying not to hurry. The creature stayed hidden, but she could hear it following. She stayed in the thickest part of the woods, squeezing past the trunks of the massive trees. The creature would need space to make a charge.
Alongside the trail, a thicket of bushes grew almost to the first branches of the trees. They were covered in brambles, but so thick and dense that there was no way the creature could attack her if she forced her way through.
Anna pushed into the bushes, ignoring the burrs snagging at her clothes. But the creature didn’t stop, crashing through behind her. She tried to move faster as the thorns pricked her skin. Suddenly, she was stepping out the other side of the thicket and found herself totally exposed at the edge of a large clearing.
The animal was behind her. She couldn’t retreat. Anna tried to swallow against the dryness in her mouth.
She saw a flash of blue-green. The insect, buzzing toward the edge of the clearing, where a grouping of dead, uprooted trees lay tangled. It was like they’d been heaved up in a violent storm. The insect disappeared into the labyrinth.
Thanks for nothing, little guy. It’s your fault I’m in this mess.
Anna looked at the trees again. They were a bleached gray color, barkless, and lay piled upside down. Their branches reached into the earth, and their roots strained upward like grasping fingers. Now that she had a second look, she realized they were alive. They were growing upside down!
And the tangled roots would provide great cover. Could she make it?
The animal was close. So close she’d swear she could smell its breath.
It smelled like blood.
How long had Anna been gone? Yoshi wasn’t sure. He just knew he was the best person to track her. He’d taken off without waiting for the others. Yoshi had a bad feeling about this. It wasn’t like Anna to wander off alone.
It was more like him, actually. And now he was … well, not lost, exactly, but not quite sure where he was or how long he’d been here. He’d thought that he could just activate the antigravity device and float above the trees for a view. He’d pocketed it when everyone was concentrating on Hank’s device. But the canopy was too thick here; getting above it would afford a view of only more leaves.
Okay, he was lost.
Ever since he’d read the letter from his mother to his dad, he’d felt himself becoming a different person. He’d found his suitcase, thrown miles from the crash, and in it the letter he was supposed to deliver but not read. He figured if your plane crashed you got a break on the ethics of reading someone else’s mail.
He hadn’t realized she’d wanted to get rid of him. Sure, he’d been a pain. He felt split between two worlds, Japan and New York, and two people, a mother who worked sixty-hour weeks and a dad who didn’t like him.
Half-American, half-Japanese. Part of half a family.
He didn’t think moms gave up on their own kids, though. You take him. I don’t want him. Well, she didn’t say that exactly. She said things in therapy-speak, like, He needs to figure out who he really is and His journey to developing his own identity depends on a more constructive relationship with his father.
He could imagine his father’s reaction if he’d ever had a chance to read that letter. His gaze would have gone flat, and he would have crumpled the paper and tossed it. His father had always been contemptuous of his mother’s emotion. Why they’d ever gotten married was a mystery.
Ever since Yoshi had read the letter, he felt himself becoming harder. He was already an outsider to the tightly knit Killbots. He was just a hafu with a secret priceless sword in the cargo belly of the plane. He’d smuggled it out of Japan the last time he’d visited his father—well, it was his, after all. His father had clearly said he would inherit the katana. But his father hadn’t mentioned that it was a national treasure and should never leave the country.
So really, it was his fault that Yoshi was on that plane, smuggling a sword back into Japan. Add it to the list of everything his father had to control. He’d turned his son into some kind of corporate ninja.
It was better, really, to accept that you were alone. Maybe a part of him had wanted to join the Killbots, to be a member of their little team. That part was gone. He was only interested in staying alive and getting to the end of whatever this was. He had a goal, and he was going to reach it.
He was tired of hearing opinions. Go this way or go that way. “Theories?” Molly would ask, and everyone would have a different one. It just slowed them down.
Inside, Yoshi was a ticking clock. He knew that the longer they were here, the more likely it was they would die.
He was furious with Anna for going off, but he would find her. He had last seen her on the edge of the compound, far from the fire and the lean-tos. She’d been staring into the woods, then up in the air. As if she’d been watching a bird. The next time he’d looked over, she was gone.
He didn’t know how he’d lost the path, but he had. It had just … disappeared. Now he was moving through thick trees and bushes.
At first he had moved in micro-steps, his eyes darting into the underbrush. He’d found a long blond hair snagged on a leaf. He plunged farther into the woods.
There was no trace of footprints or any indication that Anna had gone this way, so Yoshi used instinct instead. Anna was careful. When she led the way on a trail she didn’t just push her way through, she examined her environment. Yoshi tried to think like Anna, move like Anna.
As he made his way through the woods, he realized that he’d been watching her more lately. He liked her company. She didn’t get on his nerves. Much. She didn’t sugarcoat anything. Unlike his mom, who hadn’t been straight with him.
He came to a small clearing and stopped. At his feet was a circle of tree cones. Anna had done this, he was sure of it, but why? The last one had been dropped carelessly, as if the person was impatient, or annoyed.
Then he noticed a flattened area inside a bush. He put his hand on the vegetation. Warm. An animal had lain here. Maybe observing Anna as she laid the cones down. Maybe for quite a while. His heartbeat sped up as he remembered the beasts that the Cub-Tones had described.
If Anna was being stalked—assuming she even realized it—what would she do?
Avoid open areas. Take the narrowest route through the trees.
Yoshi squeezed between two adjacent trunks. These trees were different, strange. The trunks wide and then narrow above, then wide again. He made his way quickly but carefully, always choosing the tightest and most difficult path. Once he found a few threads of a T-shirt on a bramble bush. Good. He was going the right way.
He kept on moving, faster now that he knew he was on the right track. He heard snuffling and pushed through the last of the scrub. Yoshi found himself in a wide clearing—standing face-to-face with a yellow-eyed beast with saliva dripping from long, brown teeth.
Not good. The beast snorted out of a piglike nose, the exhalation steaming in the cool air.
“Yoshi!” Anna screamed. “Watch out!”
“You think
?” Yoshi saw Anna across the clearing, hiding in a thicket of upturned trees, their roots reaching up as if trying to grab the sky. “Are you hurt?”
“No. It won’t come in the thicket. It’s going to charge! Run!”
He wouldn’t have a chance. Yoshi couldn’t get by this thing. He drew his katana.
“No, Yoshi, don’t, it’s too strong!”
The beast charged. He watched the bunch of its muscles, its foaming, dripping mouth, the deathly intent in its eyes. Yoshi seemed to have all the time in the world. He thought Anna was screaming, but he couldn’t hear her; his blood was rushing in his ears, and he held his sword easily, lightly.
At the last moment he stepped just a few inches to the side. The beast came close enough that he smelled its rancid breath. In one stroke he came down right behind the neck.
It all happened fast. The beast twisted, snarling. It was quicker than he’d anticipated, given its size. The blow was a glancing one, and its skin was as tough as armor. Yoshi’s blade skittered off the hide and clanged against the ground, hitting a rock under the dirt. The impact shuddered up his arm.
The blow had momentarily stunned the beast, but Yoshi saw he didn’t have enough room for a lethal strike. Tactical retreat, then. He dashed toward the trees. He’d make a stand there.
He saw Anna’s wide, terrified eyes as he dashed toward her, the run of his life. When he was almost at the stand of trees he saw her mouth open in a shout and he felt the thunder of the hooves behind him.
No time to turn. He jumped.
The heat of the beast fueled his leap. He could feel the full force of ferocity behind him. Yoshi turned sideways to push himself through the trees, and the beast rammed into the trunk, its foaming mouth digging into the bare wood in frustration.
Yoshi had one moment only. He could see the heaving side of the animal, and he drove his sword in with all the strength of his body behind it.
The animal’s eyes rolled back, and for one instant, Yoshi saw into its rage and terror. Then it backed up and fell on its side.