by Logan Jacobs
“It’s already seven?” I groaned. That was only half the time I was pretty sure I needed to get back. Even if I’d had the energy to run all the way back to where I’d met the bear-men earlier that day, I would still have to take the risk of trudging up the hill, down the valley, and then up another hill in the dark with no source of light.
Correction: I did have a source of light, and it came from the rock in my pocket.
As soon as I thought of the flint, I realized that I had no way to use it safely to light my journey. I could light the end of a branch on fire and carry it with me through the forest like a torch, but I was pretty sure that even if I managed to keep the pine branch from burning too quickly to use in my hand, the trees in the forest were packed way too close together for me to not start a huge forest fire. I would have to spend the night here, and without Honest Abe’s chassis to protect me from the elements I would need a fire.
I’d also need to wake up early enough to get back to Honest Abe by 9:15 AM, when the Dimension Engine, Patent Pending was scheduled to make its jump, so I set the alarm on my watch to 5:45 AM. I knew that leaving myself just three and a half hours to wake up and find my way back to my pocket dimension before the shift was cutting it a little close, but I was pretty sure the sun didn’t rise before that during the middle of the spring in Michigan. I felt a stab of regret at not having set it for a nice round 10 AM or even for noon, but there was no use wallowing in hindsight about that, just like there had been no use wallowing in what could have been when I’d read Sol’s letter earlier. I needed to make the best of what I had now, and that meant I had to get myself secure before the sun went down. Now that I could make sparks, I needed to make a fire. At least I had the flint already, and I had about an hour and a half to build a campfire before the sun went down.
I got up and walked toward the entrance of the cave, then stopped and peeked out between two strips of moss before I left. I half expected to see the owner of the cave standing there with a spear in their hand growling at me, but the forest was still empty, so I went out and stood on the dirt welcome mat as I surveyed the area for fallen branches that would be easy to carry. I knew that building a fire wasn’t going to be the lightest work I’d ever done, but I needed to conserve my strength as much as possible for the trip back to Honest Abe tomorrow.
Fortunately, the forest floor outside of the welcome mat and the little trail hadn’t been disturbed much. There were plenty of pine branches littering the forest floor not too far from the entrance of the cave, and I piled them up next to the moss curtain as I collected them. I only had to make a dozen or so trips back and forth between the forest floor and the dirt circle before I felt like I had enough wood to last the night.
I hadn’t exactly been warm and cozy last night when I’d slept in Honest Abe, but I’d been comfortable enough in my jeans and Carharrt jacket to get some decent sleep and hadn’t woken up chilly, so I figured that the mid-spring nights here weren’t much chillier than they had been for the past couple of weeks in my Michigan. I liked the thought that this dimension had similar weather patterns to my home universe even if the geography and plant life was completely different. I reasoned that I’d probably be warm enough in the cave if I used one of the furs as a blanket, and that the fire’s primary use was going to be to scare off wild animals, so I decided to build the fire on the welcome mat of bare dirt outside of the moss curtain.
I figured that if I built a fire about three feet across in the middle of the dirt welcome mat, the flame wouldn’t really have a chance of spreading out into the surrounding area and starting a much larger fire, so I drew a line about three feet across in the sand, drew a circle around it, then grabbed a few branches and stared at the circle I’d drawn as I tried to figure out how to start.
It had been at least a decade since the time Sol had showed me how to build a bonfire on one of my overnight stays at his place, and I’d been a lot more interested in the roasted hot dogs and S’Mores that we were going to make than in learning how to stack the wood for a long-lasting fire. I vaguely remembered that Sol had stood the logs on their thin ends and then leaned them against each other like a tepee, so I started by twisting the ends of a few thick branches into the ground and trying to make their ends lean against each other in the middle.
The branches collapsed onto each other like a losing round of Jenga as soon as I let them go.
I picked up the sticks and set them back on the pile of wood as I reminded myself that this was just a start. I clearly needed something a little higher to stack the wood inside, so I went back into the cave and scooped up the rocks I’d discarded while searching for my flint earlier. I lugged them back outside, then started to set them down along the inside of the circle I’d built. I realized pretty quickly that I didn’t have quite enough of the stones to outline the entire circle, so I filled in a few gaps with some shorter, fatter branches. Then I took the longer, thinner branches I’d used to make my failed cone earlier, propped their ends against the rocks, and tried to arrange them in a tepee shape again.
The sticks collapsed again, but this time the mound was a little more of a pile than a flat mess on the ground, so I considered that progress. Clearly more of the sticks were needed to balance each other out, as long as I didn’t have any split logs handy.
I experimented with stacking branches while the light through the trees got dimmer and more orange, and by the time the light started to turn pale blue I’d finally gotten the branches I collected to stand up on their own. Now I just needed kindling, but there were plenty of dry pine needles covering the forest floor. I grabbed handfuls of the pale yellow needles and dropped them between the branches into the sandy bottom of my makeshift fire pit until I couldn’t see the dirt anymore.
Now it was time for me to work my human magic. I got out my knife and my piece of flint, squatted down next to the fire, and held the rock by the pine needles as I scraped it on the underside of the flat bit of steel welded to my blade.
My first few scrapes only got me a few sad sparks, so I changed the angle of the stone up until I figured out how to get a satisfying shower out of the friction of the flint and blade. My sparks landed on the pine needles and glowed red for a second or two, then vanished and left a faint brown mark. I scraped again and blew on the red hot spots that burnt into the pine needles, and when I finally found the right timing of scrape and blow I could see the red dots glow back to life a little before they winked out. I scraped faster and blew fast, and I’d almost exhausted my lungs again before I finally saw a tiny orange flame flare up in the middle of the wooden cone. I blew on it a few more times until my lungs could barely push out air, and then I sat back and warmed my hands in front of the healthy orange flame that sputtered up into the pine branches.
The warmth of the fire was nice, but after only a few minutes of roaring flame, the thick, pungent smoke of the pine branches had me coughing like I’d just taken a huge bong hit. The fire popped and crackled as it slowly ate away at the pine bark, and I yelped a little as a few sparks hit the back of my unprotected hands.
I decided it was time to go inside, since the light had turned the deep blue that comes right before night anyway. I got up, dropped the rest of the sticks into the fire, and headed back into the cave. I didn’t want to breathe in the smoke for any longer than I had to, but fortunately it looked like the wind was blowing the smoke rightward and away from the cave’s mouth instead of into the cave. I figured the nasty smoke would keep any creatures away, and the glow through the moss curtain would give me a little bit of light to see by while I settled down for the night. I hadn’t used a night light for years, especially since the street light right outside of my apartment window gave off a yellow glow that seeped through my blinds and kept me awake at night if I didn’t close them tight enough, but I knew I’d feel more secure sleeping in this strange cave with a little bit of light than in total darkness.
I felt my guts growl painfully as I pulled back the top fur on the pil
e. I’d only had one meal today, even though it had been pretty filling at the time, and my stomach was definitely protesting. I’d gone to sleep with a third Millennium bar in my belly last night, but even though I’d had the same number of calories today as yesterday my stomach was painfully empty. It had been a long time since I’d been broke enough to have to skip dinner, but I still knew I needed to eat before I settled in, or I’d lay awake feeling like crap for most of the night and then probably retch up a bunch of stomach bile in the morning. I considered the idea that the food was actually poisonous, but decided that nobody would be likely to deliberately dry and store poisonous food in a survival situation.
If the person who slept in the cave hadn’t come back by now, I didn’t think they were going to come back tonight at all. If they came back in the morning before I left, I could probably deal with the situation by either promising them an MRE or using my Glock if they got violent.
I didn’t really want to have to kill someone over food, but the fact that the thought had crossed my mind made me realize how desperate I was to eat. I’d just have to trust that the food would power me through enough to make it all the way back tomorrow. I opened up the gourds and started to eat.
The green pumpkin seeds were my first course. They tasted oily and bland and nothing like the pepinos I’d tried from Mexican snack stores, but those pepinos had been roasted and salted with chili and lime.
I chewed the seeds until they turned to a heavy mush in my mouth, washed the seed mush down with a mouthful of water, then scooped the white dried garbanzo beans up and popped them into my mouth. The dried chickpeas had a much sweeter and nuttier taste than I had expected, but they were hard to break through and splintered between my teeth, so I took a mouthful of water and let the bean shards sit for a minute before I finished chewing.
I expected the purple raspberries to be at least a little sweet, but they curled up my tongue with their tart taste. I figured that anything that sour had to be just full of Vitamin C, and I knew that was supposed to be really healthy for you, so I forced the mouth-puckering berries down. I had no idea what my food supplies would look like in the next few days, weeks, or even months, and I couldn’t afford to skimp on calories or on anything that would keep me from getting scurvy.
The night was dark and the woods were full of danger, but I had food, fire, and a digital watch.
I washed the seeds and berries down with half of the water that I had left, put the gourds down next to the foot of the bed, and laid down on the pile of furs to rest. I realized that I was actually starting to get a little chilly, despite the warmth of the fire that threw a flickering orange light through the patchy green curtain, so I pulled one of the furs over my body and snuggled down to sleep.
I’d barely started to drift off when I felt something sharp scrape against the tip of my nose. I opened my eyes and froze as I realized that I was staring right at the gray point of what looked like an old-fashioned stone arrowhead.
“What are you doing in my cave?” growled a husky, rough, but unmistakably feminine voice.
Chapter 5
My bleary eyes traveled from the arrowhead, up the shaft of the bark-stripped stick it was attached to, to the sharp white claws and slim, tan fingers that held the spear, and finally landed on the face of the spear-holder.
The person holding the spear to my nose looked so much like an early 20’s Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC that for a second I wondered if I was dreaming, but there were a few things about her that made me pretty sure that she wasn’t a sexy chick from my subconscious.
Either that, or I secretly had a thing for cat-girls and I just hadn’t had that talk with myself yet.
The woman's long, auburn hair tumbled down in a silky mane around her tanned face with its high, chiseled cheekbones, and the tawny, tufted cat ears that laid back against her head told me that not only was she part feline, she was also pretty pissed off. Her arched black eyebrows framed her huge yellow-green eyes, and I couldn't help but stare in awe at those gorgeous orbs and their slitted pupils even as she stared down the shaft of her spear at me. Her mouth opened in a snarl to show off every inch of the two pearly fangs that extended down from the corners of her top jaw and curved down until the points just touched the bottom of her full, pink lower lip.
Those fangs reminded me less of cat teeth than of the scene girl I’d picked up on Tinder whose snakebite piercings had felt incredible during a blowjob, and I could feel my dick twitch at the memory even as the tip of the cat-woman's spear scraped the end of my nose. Tanned muscles bulged from between the black leather thongs wrapped around the feline female’s arms, and her brown leather tube top only barely hid her full, round breasts. A brown leather loincloth decorated with a row of white teeth hung low on her slim hips and exposed nearly every inch of her long, muscular legs. Her thighs were smooth and bronzed, but a thin layer of tawny fur started halfway down her calves and covered her legs all the way down to her long, graceful feet, and a long, thin tawny tail with a black tuft of hair on the end lashed about angrily on the floor.
She looked like what I imagined a saber-tooth tiger girl would look like. If I had to get all detailed about the specific breed of cat-girl she was.
“Holy shit, you’re hot!” I blurted out.
“Hot?” Her eyebrow raised with confusion and the tip of the spear pressed against my chest a bit more.
“Uhh, let me start over. I mean you no harm. I got lost and found your cave and there was no one here and I have to get back to my car or I’ll miss the… okay you know what? I just have to go. Cool? Cool.” I kept my hands up, lowered my elbows to the ground, and propped myself up so that I could sit upright. I could feel the stiff fur slip off my lap and legs as I rose from the makeshift bed. “And I’m kind of on a time limit, do you mind if we speed this up and you just let me go?”
The cat-woman’s spear didn’t waver from the end of my nose even as I sat up, but she also hadn’t impaled me just yet, so I figured that maybe I had a chance to escape with my life.
And maybe I could get back to Honest Abe and the Dimension Engine, Patent Pending in time to escape this world altogether.
The cat-woman’s yellow eyes flicked downward to where I’d set the empty gourds next to the fur bed after I finished eating the night before. She nodded down at the three gourds.
“Open those gourds,” she commanded me.
“Okay, okay, shit. I’m sorry. I ate your trail mix,” I admitted as I shoved my back against the sandy wall of the cave. “Listen, I was really fucking hungry. But I’ll make it up to you, I promise! I have food back at my--”
“Those were seeds for planting, you gluttonous wolf!” the cat-woman growled at me. She pressed the sharp point of her stone spear to the soft tip of my nose as her tail slammed against the floor. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you now and eat your body.”
My mind raced like I’d just downed a Red Bull. I’d been feeling bleary and drowsy when I woke up, but mortal terror had chased the cobwebs away from my mind more quickly than caffeine ever could. I couldn’t blame the cat-woman for being cautious about an intruder in her cave, but I also wasn’t going to sit there and let her cut me up for dinner like a cat-girl version of Hannibal Lector while the timer on my watch ticked down the minutes. If I pulled the knife on her, she’d certainly recognize the blade for what it was and stab me before I could do anything. I knew that cats hated having water flicked on them, but I was also pretty sure that she wasn’t going to just run away if I tossed the contents of my Nalgene into her face.
My only chance was the Glock. I didn’t really want to kill someone as gorgeous as her, but I knew it was my life or hers. I also reminded myself that cats had insanely quick reflexes, and if I was going to beat her to the draw I had to be tricky about it.
“The reason you shouldn’t kill me is right in my pocket,” I hedged. I lowered my shaking right hand slowly, curled my fingers around the grip of my Glock, and took a deep breath t
o try to calm myself. My racing heart refused to slow down, but I was pretty sure that the cat-woman’s patience was running out a lot faster than the timer on my watch, so I couldn’t wait for myself to calm down before taking a shot. I had to trust that the close range would be enough to take my would-be devourer down. “Do you want to see it?”
The cat-woman stared down at my lap for a long moment, and then nodded.
“Okay.” I pulled the Glock out of its holster and kept the barrel pointed down while I raised the pistol to the cat-woman’s eye level. “Do you see this? Watch closely.”
The cat-woman leaned forward to peer at the Glock. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed at the gun, and the tip of her spear slowly started to droop down away from my nose.
I flipped the barrel of the gun up as I pushed myself away from the pile of furs with my other hand. My finger tightened on the trigger just as the wooden shaft of the cat-woman’s spear slammed into the side of my gun hand, and my shot went wide.
My bullet buried itself into the sandy wall in front of me as the Glock’s deafening retort echoed inside the cave.
“Ahhhh!” The cat-woman screamed over the sound of my ringing ears, and then she dropped her spear, covered her pointed ears with her hands, and fell to the ground.
My head rang like a gong, but I’d been braced for the sound, so I pushed off the ground with my left hand and scrambled toward the green moss curtain. I shoved the scratchy veil out of my way, ducked to avoid hitting my head on the earthen overhang, and skidded through the cold ash of my fire as I blinked in the faint gray light of the mountainous pre-dawn. I’d slept through the night without realizing it.
I glanced down to check the watch’s compass before I darted off, noticed that the arrow pointed upward to the left, and turned on my heels so I could match the compass’ direction.
As I started to scramble away from the dirt welcome mat, I noticed a dark shape moving around out of the corner of my eye. The dark shape looked like a huge lump on the ground but with two long curly things pointing up out of it, and I was pretty sure that it hadn’t been there before, but I didn’t have time to check it out.