by Logan Jacobs
“Damn, that was fast,” I commented. “What about the pointy part?”
“Your knife is like magic, Dave Meyer.” Fela held the branch sideways and started to slice bits of wood off one end like she was sharpening a pencil. Her clever fingers moved in a blur as she rotated the stick, and it barely took a minute before she was blowing sawdust off the long, sharp point of her new spear. “It is not as sharp or strong as the stone tips, but it will still hurt someone badly if you stick it into their guts.”
“That does look very effective.” I eyed the cat-woman’s makeshift weapon. “Say, if you can find another stick in your pile that works, do you think you could make a spear for me?”
“Why?” the cat-woman asked, but she set her new weapon down and started to look through the pile of branches again. “You have your gun. You say it does more than make a loud noise, although I have not seen you kill a creature with it yet.”
“I only have about ten bullets left in this magazine, and I want to save ammo. It would be nice to have an alternative for melee fighting.”
“Do you know how to use a spear?” Fela inspected the end of a stick, nodded, and started to flash her knife back and forth over its surface.
“Uh, sort of?” I shrugged. “Blunt end faces you, pointy end faces the enemy, you throw it if he’s far away, you stick it in him if he’s real close. Does that about sum it up?”
“Those are... some of the basic principles, yes.” Fela finished stripping the bark, turned the stick, and started to slice at the end to make the sharp tip. “Do you really not know about spears?”
“I haven’t tried to make a spear from a stick since I was a little kid,” I said. “Most humans who carry weapons around just use guns, like this one.”
“Fearsome,” Fela muttered. Her pink lips parted to blow on the sharp tip of the spear. She nodded, then slid the knife back into its holster. “No wonder you only have monkey-folk around. Your people must have kept all the guns for themselves instead of trading them.”
“That is not how humans evolved,” I sighed. “Listen, Fela, there never were any cat-folk or bear-folk in my world, I swear. And if there were, I’m pretty sure we would have all just fucked our way into being hybrids!”
“Hybrids?” Fela’s ears pricked up and her tail curled behind her in a question mark as she handed the spear to me. “Is that possible?”
“I have no idea, but I know we would have tried really, really hard.” I curled my left hand around the spear, right next to where Fela held it. When my fingers brushed against hers, I could almost feel a spark of electricity that had nothing to do with Nikola Tesla zap between our hands.
Fela inhaled, blinked slowly, opened her fingers, and then stepped back.
“I do not know what to make of that,” she confessed as her eyes drifted to my lips. “My people do not try to mate with the monkey-folk, but when I look at you, I wond--”
A loud rustling sound came from somewhere off to the right, and we both turned toward it.
“Shit.” I held up my Glock in a ready position and swiveled to the right. My eyes searched among the trunks and branches of the oaks and maples that sprouted from the grounds around the brick building, but I couldn’t see anything that looked like a human.
“Did you see anyone, Floppy?” I whispered. I glanced back over my shoulder to see Floppy shaking his head.
Fela grabbed her spear, planted the blunt end on the ground, and leapt up to a standing position.
“They have not left the town,” she hissed as she strode toward me. “And now we can all go fight them.”
“Wait, wait,” I whispered. I waved Fela back into the corner. “I know you’re raring to go, but we gotta discuss strategy.”
“You are right.” Fela nodded. “Do you think we should charge on Floppy first to flush them out?”
“No, I don’t think we should try to get aggro right away,” I said. “I want to find out who it is, and we can’t do that if this person keeps running away from us.”
“What is this ‘aggro?’” she whispered.
“Attention from something that is going to fucking hit you,” I explained.
“Do you suggest telling them that we won’t hurt them again?” Fela asked. “That did not work last time. I do not think they believed us.”
“Let’s go in through that door.” I pointed to the short end of the T’s top bar, where I knew there was an ancient white metal door that was usually bolted. I was pretty sure that I could take care of an old iron lock that had been exposed to the elements for a hundred and twenty years. “I’ll tell you my strategy once we’re inside so they don’t overhear us, okay?”
Fela hesitated, silently nodded, then reached out with her free hand and made a little twirling gesture with her finger at Floppy. Her mammoth shuffled up a few yards so that he stood between my route to the door and any attackers.
“Thanks, Floppy.” I tucked the spear under my right arm, started toward the wall, and grinned when I saw the metal door with its paint nearly all worn off. I reached out with my left hand and gave Floppy a quick scratch behind the ear, then bent down to inspect the lock.
The lock on that back door had been my target more than once on a bored summer’s day when I wanted to sneak in and see what all the fuss was about, but I’d never gotten it to open. I figured that a century of neglect had to give me an edge. Fortunately, the bolt was the same one they’d used since the Lodge had been built, just like in my world, and the padlock was an old-fashioned hunk of iron that had gone almost entirely red and flaky. The lock’s bars gave way in my hands after just a few good tugs. The bolt stuck when I tried to slide it through its metal slot, but when I wrenched the plate off the door it came off pretty easily. I tugged at the door’s rusted metal handle and managed to pull it most of the way open with only a faint screech.
I stuck my head into the darkness of the Masonic Lodge and glanced around to make sure I hadn't just accidentally stumbled into a den of wild animals or something, but the only thing I saw was an empty corridor lined with dark wood panels, portraits of old white dudes, and what looked like black patches of mold. My nose wrinkled as the musty, damp scent of the corridor hit my nostrils. I didn’t exactly want to hang out in a building infested with black mold, but hopefully we wouldn’t spend much time in there. My eyes adjusted after just a moment, and I could see a faint rectangle of light coming from the other end of the hallway. I could see a few doors along the right side of the corridor, too, and it looked like there was a faint light coming from the small glass windows set into the top half of each door. My strategy had a chance of working.
“Okay, come on in, it’s clear.” I stepped back, turned to Fela, and gestured for her to enter in front of me. “Ladies first.”
“I do not mean to sound like a coward, but perhaps you should be in front,” Fela said. “You are the one with the gun.”
“I didn’t want to leave you out in the open,” I protested.
Fela rolled her eyes, gestured to Floppy, then gestured to the wall behind her.
“You’re right, you have cover,” I conceded. I held up my Glock as I stepped into the hallway, even though I didn’t see the person with the big shoulders and forearms, or even any scurrying that would suggest some kind of electric vermin running around. I could hear the door creak as Fela held it open for herself, and then I heard the much louder creak of Floppy squeezing himself through the already rusty door frame, so I turned around just in time to see the little mammoth’s tilted head pop through the door. “Oh, shit, I don’t think that was wide enough for Floppy.”
The little mammoth lunged through the door, and the ancient frame bulged outward as he shoved his bulk through the rusted metal. Floppy scrabbled at the tiled floor with his front feet as he pushed himself forward, and I winced as his hairy sides scraped against the door frame, but he finally managed to squeeze his elephantine ass through the opening. His grunt echoed in the dark hallway as the metal door slammed shut behind him.
“I don’t know if he’s going to be able to make it out another door,” I said to Fela. “This might have been a mistake.”
“We are in here now,” Fela said. “What is your plan?”
“See that light at the end of the hallway?” I pointed to the faint, glowing rectangle that laid before us, then gestured to the right. “The front doors are somewhere to the right, too. If they’re as easy to get out of as this door was to get in, we’ll probably be able to burst right through. Except for Floppy, who’s going to have some trouble--”
“I see what you are saying,” Fela interrupted me. “There are two different doors for us to leave by, and the person who is following us will not know which door we are going to choose. They will probably wait for us between the doors. If this cave is shaped the same on the opposite side as it is on this side, then we will be able to step out and catch them between us, as long as we split up.”
“You got it,” I agreed.
“Unless there is more than one person, and they made that noise to fool us,” Fela added.
“Then we’ll do our best, okay?” I sighed. “But if they’ve already brought a bunch of their friends back, then we’re out of luck no matter what door we use, and we just have to hope that they’re friendly.”
I had been telling myself that I was just taking precautions so Fela would be more comfortable while we tried to find the person who was following us, but I had to admit that I was starting to think they weren't as friendly as I’d hoped. Had I screwed up and scared them by waving the Glock around? I wasn’t really sure if someone who’d been hiding in town would recognize that for the defensive gesture it was, or if they’d think that Fela and I were out to hunt them down.
It occurred to me that if I was wrong about there being just one scared person out there, Fela and I would be facing electric death alone rather than together. Some fatalistic part of me didn’t think that we could outfight even one person who could manipulate electrical power at close range, so it wouldn’t make a difference to our survival whether we faced a horde of electrical mutants together or alone, but I didn’t want to suggest to Fela that one of us might have to act as a decoy while one of us slipped away. I couldn’t just run away like a coward and leave Fela to her death, but I was the one with the compass watch, and I didn’t think she would make it back to the Lincoln without its help.
Or maybe I was underestimating her, and she’d be fine.
“I think it will be easier for Floppy to go straight down the tunnel than to try to turn in this space,” Fela said. She beckoned Floppy forward, adjusted her grip on her spear so that it pointed out toward any enemies she might encounter, then started to stalk down the hallway. “You know this cave better than I do, so you should take the front door.”
“Alright, you guys go.” I flattened my back against the side of the hallway to let Floppy pass by. “Oh, and Fela?”
“Yes?” Fela paused and glanced back over her shoulder at me. Her yellow-green eyes gleamed in the near-total darkness of the moldy mahogany corridor, and her tail curled gently behind her back as she lowered one tanned heel to the tiled floor. “What is it, Dave Meyer?”
“If I’m wrong, and you end up facing a bunch of sparky humans with spears or guns or whatever they have...” I swallowed through the lump in my throat. I’d only known Fela for a few hours and she’d been trying to kill me for about half of that time, but we’d been through something pretty intense together, and there had been real sparks between us. I wanted to say something meaningful or romantic, but absolutely nothing came to mind, so I tried to go with some practical advice. “Don’t try to fight them yourself. Just come get me so I can help you.”
“Oh.” Fela’s tail drooped. She blinked slowly, turned back toward the door, and started moving again. “I will do that, Dave Meyer.”
Floppy’s hairy tail brushed past my nose and filled my nostrils with the unpleasantly pungent, earthy scent of unwashed mammoth.
“Once I find some soap, we’re giving you a bath, buddy,” I muttered as I headed toward the first door on the right. I tried the tarnished brass doorknob, found it locked, and jiggled it a little. I considered trying the next doorknob, and then I remembered that I had a Glock and that I didn’t need to pay for anything I broke no matter who yelled at me about it. I picked up the Glock, held it by the grip with the barrel pointing to the left so that I wouldn’t hit anyone I cared about if it accidentally discharged, then jabbed the end of the grip toward the glass window.
The glass shattered so quickly and thoroughly that the shards hung in the air for a moment like a crystal puzzle before they fell straight down. The chips of glass barely even sprayed out. A few small chips did land on my hand, but they slid off and tinkled harmlessly to the floor.
“Wow, they made glass like crap back in the day,” I observed. I holstered my Glock, reached into the hole left by the window, and bent my hand down toward the doorknob on the other side. My fingers brushed a metal bar, I pushed downward, and the door creaked slowly open under my weight.
Sunlight drifted down from the arched glass windows and into what looked like the inner sanctum of the Masonic Lodge. The room was lined with the same dark wood as the corridor, but somehow none of the wood paneling had molded over, nor had the red velvet armchairs that were pushed up against the walls. The floor was tiled in red except for what looked like a rectangular black-and-white chessboard in the middle of the room with a dark wooden podium standing in its center. None of that would have been creepy on its own, but the huge black banners embroidered with five-pointed stars that hung on each wall definitely freaked me out a little. Each of the arms of the pentagram were a different color--red, blue, yellow, white, or green--and each of the banners had a different color arm pointed upward, except for white.
I slammed my shoulder into the double doors and they gave way easily, so I crossed through a tiny front room filled with more pictures of old white dudes and shoved my shoulder against the next set of doors I saw. It took me two shoulder slams to get the door to creak open, and my shoulder was starting to ache in a way I really didn’t like, so I kicked the wooden double doors open as hard as I could.
The doors burst open and slammed back against the brick exterior of the lodge.
I didn’t see anyone aiming a weapon at my face, so I gave up on subtlety entirely, leapt through the swinging doors before they swung back on me, and looked to the right in the hopes that our phantom humanoid friend would be right where I’d predicted.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected when I saw that shadow through the door. I’d thought I might find some bulked-up semi-feral northern Tarzan, or maybe a mutant with extra muscles, or even a couple of scraggly survivors who’d lined up together at just the right angle for a weird optical illusion.
What I hadn’t expected was a gorgeous woman with the puffiest sleeves I had ever seen.
Chapter 10
The gorgeous woman looking over her shoulder at me could have belonged on the cover of one of those Victorian romance novels my mom used to like, if she hadn’t also been the owner of a pack of about two dozen angry dogs. The woman’s glossy black hair was pulled into a tight bun that sat at the back of her head, but a few raven curls had come loose, and they bounced around her pale heart-shaped face like small Slinkies. Her big sky-blue eyes blinked at me, her red rosebud lips parted in what looked like surprise, and one delicate hand flew up toward me in what looked like a “stay away” gesture. Her odd silhouette was explained by the old-fashioned mutton chop sleeves of her buttoned-up white blouse, although it was easy to see how slender she was up close. The hem of her pleated black skirt swished through the overgrown grass as she turned to face me, and I could see that she was wearing shiny black mid-calf button-up boots. If she’d had a black tie on, she would have looked exactly like the Warnerettes that dressed as old-fashioned suffragettes and marched in the Founder’s Day Parade every year.
As my eyes adjusted to the light again, I realized th
at faint blue flashes of lightning zapped and popped at the tips of the woman’s fingers and off the coats of the growling dogs behind her. I absolutely did not want to get on the wrong side of a lightning-slinging survivor and her pack of Pikachu dogs, so I raised my hands in the air, pointed the barrel of my Glock up, and let my spear clatter to the stone steps I stood on.
A big black dog with pointed ears snarled, showed its sparking fangs, and started to run toward me. Two other black dogs with longer but lower-slung bodies broke off from their growling friends and started to gallop behind the first.
The black-haired woman whirled back around, dug her high heels into the grass, and flung her hands out at the dogs. Two blue bolts of lightning leapt from her delicate hands toward the running beasts with a nearly deafening zap sound. One of the bolts struck the first dog in the throat, and the huge canine dropped to the ground and started to twitch. The other bolt connected with the second, shorter dog’s head and made the beast fly backward onto the long grass with a sizzling sound.
I realized then that the black-haired woman was definitely not controlling the dogs, so I pulled down my hands, aimed my Glock at the last running beast’s head, and squeezed the trigger. My bullet missed the dog’s head, but I could see a ragged red hole appear in the beast’s side, and it whined and yipped as it collapsed onto the grass.
The other dogs started to bark and whine as the Glock’s report echoed off the brick walls of the Masonic Lodge. A few smaller dogs wheeled around and headed away from the Lodge, but a couple of spindly patchy dogs that looked like Greyhounds raced toward the deserters and nipped at their heels, and the dogs started to circle back toward the pack again.