by Logan Jacobs
“Breaking rocks is exactly how you make a spearhead,” Fela agreed.
After about ten minutes, the treeline cut out suddenly, and then resumed about three or four yards away. The treeless swatch of ground cut a wide convex curve through the forest for several hundred yards in either direction. Instead of being overgrown like the clearing around the abandoned barn, this curved trail was covered with neatly clipped green grass.
“We have a trail,” I cheered. “This looks mowed. I bet we can follow it to civilization.”
We started to follow the mowed trail toward town, and I decided to work on our cover story for Fela and Floppy.
“Anyway, we can’t go around telling people you’re from another world,” I said. “There are people who might want to steal the world-moving cave.”
“Then what will I say?” Fela asked. “I do not know enough about your world to think of something that will make sense to anyone here.”
“We could say you’re there for a convention,” I suggested. “Maybe the big anime convention in Detroit? Nah, that’s in fall, what’s happening now... Oh! The furry convention Aaron met his last girlfriend at is in Novi, that’s right down the street. And it’s in spring. We’ll tell them you’re testing out your costume for the furry convention, and that Floppy is your pony with some prosthetics on.”
“I am testing out my costume for the furry meet,” Fela said slowly. “Floppy is my pony with some false parts on.”
“Yep, close enough!” I grinned. I’d almost resigned myself to a life of eternal loneliness among alien worlds, but now that I was walking through relatively familiar territory with a beautiful saber-tooth cat-girl and a cool mammoth for company, I felt a little better. Maybe a little badass, even, and I wondered if I would find some version of Sol in this universe.
The sky had been blue as we’d been walking through the woods, but as we walked further along the clear-cut trail the light started to take on an eerie yellow cast. It didn’t look like the orange of sunset, or even the greenish-yellow of a storm just before a tornado hits, but like the sepia tone in an old movie overlaid on the bosky woods. An unnerving yellow halo glowed from every rustling leaf and branch, and the faint sound of thunder rumbled in the distance.
The top of my head and the tips of my fingers started to tingle and I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
“It is going to storm,” Fela said. Her mane of glossy auburn hair floated around her face like seaweed, and her bright yellow eyes searched the sky above us. “But I did not even see any clouds!”
“Yeah, this is really freaky,” I muttered. I didn’t like the idea of being caught in a thunderstorm so far away from any shelter, but it wasn’t like we had any shelter besides Floppy, whose fur was sticking out in all directions like a woolly mammoth Chia pet. I tried to remember what you were supposed to do during a lightning storm. “Lightning takes the shortest path to the ground. We’ll be fine as long as there’s a tree taller than us around. I think.”
Tiny bolts of yellow lightning started to zap from tree to tree with faint crackling sounds, and my heart started to slam against my chest. Whatever storm was upon us, it was going to be a weird one, and we weren’t going to be able to get out of its path.
A sharp, rhythmic whirring started to cut through my consciousness. As the noise got louder behind us, I realized that it was the sound of sharp metal against metal, like the snick of scissors or the whir of a distant lawnmower. It was getting louder really quickly, so I glanced behind me.
A huge machine rounded the curve of the trail behind us and hurtled toward us on gigantic steel wheels. The machine looked like an old-fashioned locomotive had mated with a push mower and had a monstrous rusty baby with a three-yard wide set of whirling rotary blades for a mouth. It fit perfectly into the path of mowed grass that curved through the trees, as though it had been clipping the forest floor here for years.
Floppy reared back on his hind legs, flipped up his trunk, and trumpeted at the machine.
“Fuck, get outta the way!” I grabbed at Fela’s hand and tried to dart back into the trees, but Fela dug her heels into the ground and raised her spear.
“Use your weapon,” she cried as she pulled her spear back in preparation for her throw.
“We can’t kill it, move!” I tugged harder at Fela’s free arm even as the lethal lawnmower bore down on us. My heart slammed against my rib cage so quickly I couldn't even count the beats, and my vision went slightly black around the edges and seemed to bulge in the middle like the magnifying lens of a fish eye peephole. Time slowed down to a near-crawl. I could see its metal blades spinning around in a rusty whirl as it got closer and closer, and my stomach twisted as I imagined the damage those blades could do to an arm or a leg. I could almost see the ribbons of torn red flesh and hear the crack of bones against steel as Fela resisted my pull, and when it became clear that she wasn’t going to come with me I finally gave up and scrambled sideways into the trees.
Fela flung her spear toward the mega-mower, but then the cat-woman’s eyes widened as the rusty blades of the mega-mower splintered the spear into tiny pieces, her tail puffed up, and she crouched down slightly as she prepared to leap. She sprang almost straight up as Floppy’s long brown trunk reached out from the woods and curled around her wrist, and the mammoth’s prehensile nose yanked the cat-woman out of the way moments before the mower’s blades dug into the patch of ground she’d been standing on.
I gasped for breath on the forest floor as I watched the mega-mower clatter past us. I couldn’t see any exhaust coming out from the metal pipe welded on top of its circular cab or from the back, and I didn’t see anyone in the cab, but the mower snicker-snacked by my reeling vision so quickly that I figured maybe I just hadn’t caught all of the details.
I also couldn’t see the eerie yellow glow around the trees anymore. My fingers and toes weren’t tingling with the electric charge of the storm, and I didn’t even hear any electrical crackle.
It seemed like the storm had passed us when the lawnmower had.
I sucked in a cool breath of fresh forest air that was weirdly untainted by gasoline fumes, especially considering the big machine that had just passed us, then turned to check on Fela and Floppy.
“What kind of creature was that?” Fela gasped. She clung to Floppy’s hairy front as the little mammoth stroked her back with his trunk. “It ate my spear!”
“Not a creature.” I propped myself up on shaking arms, scrambled to my feet, and brushed the dirt off my jeans. “Come on, let’s get out of that thing’s way. We should hit something worthwhile if we just head as close to due north as possible, anyway. I guess we’ll just watch out for lawnmower tracks.”
“Very well, what was that thing?” Fela asked as we headed away from the lawnmower’s trail.
“That was a machine,” I said. “It’s a kind of complicated tool with moving parts. That one was made to cut down plants and stuff. It didn’t eat your spear, the spear just got in its way. It can’t think for itself or get hungry.”
“Please tell me your world is not full of machines like that.” Fela shook her head. “I can understand fierce animals, but if cutting tools roam wild in the woods...”
“They aren’t supposed to do that!” I exclaimed. “Usually there’s someone controlling them, and mowers don’t normally just zip around on one path like that. I guess trains do, but there aren’t any around here anymore. I have no idea what was going on with that thing.”
“I used up my last spear trying to hurt that machine,” Fela sighed. “I do not like being without a weapon. Can we at least stop long enough for me to make another spear?”
“How long will that take?” I asked.
“Less than a day...” Fela tilted her head as though the question itself made no sense, and I remembered that the cat-woman didn’t know what an hour was and wouldn’t have much of a frame of reference even if I tried to explain it to her.
“I’m not sure we have ti
me right now,” I said, “but I do have a knife you can borrow until we have time to get you another weapon.”
“I would love to see what a blade from your world looks like,” Fela admitted with a gleam in her bright yellow eyes.
“Okay, but you have to promise not to lose it.” I stopped, unclipped the knife sheath from my pocket, pulled the knife out, and showed the set to Fela. “See, the knife goes in here so it doesn’t cut you, and this part hooks onto your, uh. Fur thing.”
“Ohh.” Fella’s lips parted slightly as she gazed at the knife and sheath . She picked the knife up by the handle, pressed the sharp edge to her thumb, and raised both eyebrows. “It’s sharper than any blade I’ve ever knapped. Is this made out of melted rock, too?”
“Yep, same as the cave,” I said. “And same as the blades on that machine that ate your spear.”
“This edge feels like teeth.” Fela rubbed her thumb over the serrated section on the blade’s flat side. “For tearing. Clever.”
“Gotta be careful.” I held out the sheath to her. “That’s why you have the sheath. Want me to help you put it on?”
“I think I can--” Fela broke off suddenly as she glanced up at me, and then the corner of her mouth curled up. She cocked her hip toward me. “Why don’t you show me so I know I’m doing it right?”
My mouth went dry, even though I’d just downed an entire Nalgene full of water. I hadn’t really expected that Fela would take me up on my offer, but it seemed like she’d taken it as the opening to flirt that I’d half-hoped it might be.
“Yeah,” I breathed. I bent the sheath’s clip apart a little to show Fela how the hook was constructed. “Here, so you just part these... and then slide it right over your skirt.”
Fela nodded, slipped two fingers under the waistband of her leather miniskirt, and held the material out about an inch away from her body so I could slide the knife holster on.
I patted the clip into place on Fela’s skirt with a shaking hand. The back of my fingers brushed against Fela’s tanned skin, and my stomach flipped as I realized that her skin was even smoother and softer than I had expected, almost like satin or the surface of a really expensive velvet coat. I pulled my hand away a little reluctantly, but the hint of a smile that had spread across Fela’s face suggested that it might not be the last time I got to touch her skin.
The gorgeous cat-woman twirled the knife in her hand a few times, then slid the blade into the sheath.
“So useful,” she purred. “Thank you, Dave.”
“Yeah, no problem,” I breathed. I wondered what kind of pick-up lines or saucy jokes might work on a cat-woman from the Stone Age. I knew very little about cat courtship except that it seemed to involve a lot of yowling, and since Fela had been acting a little like a cat and a little like a human woman I wasn’t entirely sure where things might even lead. I decided to ignore the cat part for now, enjoy whatever developed between us, and brace myself for any potential yowling. “So does it feel good on there, or should we adjust it a little?”
“It feels wonderful against my thigh.” Fela patted the sheath. She lowered her eyelids to gaze at me, and a faint pink blush started to spread across her cheeks... until those brilliant yellow eyes darted to the side, her slitted pupils dilated until they were huge black pools, and her ears perked straight up on top of her head. Her tail unfurled from her legs and started to lash back and forth behind her.
Floppy’s brown eyes darted over to his mistress. He’d had one foot up in the air, and he lowered it down to the forest floor so slowly that he barely made a noise at all. It seemed like the little mammoth knew exactly what to do when Fela reacted to something like that.
“Everything okay?” I glanced over my shoulder to see a fat brown bunny hunkered down under a thick, leafy bush maybe five yards away. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the cute little rabbit’s nose twitching as it chewed on a blade of grass. “It’s just a bun-bun eating his lunch. I’m very certain it’s not dangerous.”
“It looks like a meal,” Fela whispered. Her hand hovered over the knife’s grip. “Hold still so you don’t startle it. I think I can jump on it from here.”
“We just ate,” I whispered back. “How often do you need food?”
“Never pass up easy prey,” Fela purred. Then she crouched down, pulled the knife from its sheath, and splayed the fingers of her left hand out on the ground as if to push off. “Ssh now, you’ll startle it.”
The bunny twitched its nose, sat up on its hind legs, and stopped chewing as it sniffed the air. It froze for several long seconds, and just when I thought it would leap away from its bush it blinked a few times and hunkered back down to its chewing.
Fela wiggled her butt, rolled her shoulders, and pressed her ears back flat against the sides of her head.
A sharp, pungent scent like static electricity wafted into my nose, and I glanced back at the bunny just as the bush above it exploded into a shower of bright white sparks. The rabbit’s high, strangled scream squeaked out above a deep, snarfing growl and the eerie zap of the explosion.
“Dave!” Fela’s claws dug into my arm, but I didn’t pull away from her. I could feel my heart racing at the touch of her smooth, silken body against mine even as I stared at the fucked-up scene under the bush.
A fat weasel about the size of a raccoon with a face like a bear had dropped down onto the rabbit’s back from right inside the bush, and white sparks flew from its claws as they dug into the rabbit’s furry sides.
“Holy fuck,” I whispered. “It’s an electric wolverine.”
Chapter 8
The rabbit squeaked and squealed as it writhed and twitched under its attacker. Sparks flew from the soles of its long feet as it kicked at the wolverine, but its neck and back was already a ragged mess of red flesh, and it didn’t look like it would survive very long.
“Is that... are they...” Fela raised a shaking claw and pointed at the animals struggling under the bush. “Normal? For your world?”
“Nuh-uh, nope,” I whispered. I stretched my arms out in front of Fela and Floppy protectively and started to back away. “Come on, let’s give the sparky boy plenty of room to eat his lunch.”
The rabbit’s dying scream echoed in my ears as we moved away from the hungry wolverine.
“Those creatures were not of your world?” Fela asked. “That lightning-wolverine?”
“The rabbit looked like a normal rabbit,” I said. “But wolverines haven’t lived in the states for years, there are only a couple hundred of them left in the world. And they definitely don’t have lightning powers like that. Well, not unless Marvel is scraping the bottom of the barrel for their Alterniverse series. But, uh, that’s fiction. I think? Maybe we’ll jump into a world where the X-Men do exist, and I can hook up with a bright blue Jennifer Lawrence.”
I realized I was rambling a little, but the encounter with the electric wolverine had really thrown me for a loop. Jumping into a world that looked totally different from mine had been scary enough, but jumping into a world that looked sort of like mine with some really terrifying differences, like self-propelled nightmare mowers and electric wildlife was a brand new type of mindfuck.
“That wolverine did not look so large,” Fela mused. “Are you certain that it was lightning it used? All the lightning I have ever seen looks like white scratches across the sky, and it makes a noise like boulders rolling down a hill.”
“Have you ever seen a lightning strike up close?” I asked.
“Never.” Fela shook her head. “But I have seen the fires that sometimes follow the lightning. Have you?”
“Not in person,” I admitted, “but my people learned to capture lightning and use it to power our machines. That shower of sparks and that zapping sound were pretty much what a machine that uses lightning looks like when it overloads. I don’t know how that wolverine got static shock powers, but I have a feeling it’s not the only thing around that can spark up like that.”
“Then I will
be prepared.” Fela rested her fingers on the handle of the knife.
“You need to be especially careful not to touch the blade of that knife if you’re using it to fight something in this world,” I warned her. “It’s made of metal, and lightning can travel through metal and kill you.”
Fela jerked her fingers away from the handle of the knife as though she’d already been shocked.
“I only hope your folk are as peaceful as you say they are,” the cat-woman muttered. “I do not wish to fight a troupe of monkey-folk who can throw lightning at me.”
“I’m sure we’ll be able to figure everything out when we get into town,” I assured her, although at this point I had no idea what we’d even find when we got into the downtown area. I figured that finding a town full of people who could sling electricity around had to be a better situation than hunkering down in a forest of electric animals for the next two days.
We kept on hiking through the trees toward what I had been certain was civilization, but as the time ticked past noon and the light changed angles through the trees I realized that we should have been in the parking lot of a strip mall by now. I glanced at the arrow on my watch for the fiftieth time since we’d headed out, but it pointed down and to the right just like it had when we’d left the safety of the dirt circle for the woods.
“Either we’re going in circles, or town isn’t where I thought it was,” I muttered. “Floppy doesn’t have scoliosis or anything that would make him list to one side, does he?”
“Floppy is fine,” Fela said. “I think this world is just different than your own, Dave. There may be nothing but trees here. Maybe we should head back to your cave before we get too lost.”
“We can find our way back,” I insisted. “Listen, you saw that barn. It may have been abandoned for a while, but it means that there were people here once and there might still be. I want to find them.”