"That’s better."
Halfway to the front door the big hibiscus bush on the left wrapped leafless branches around Frank’s waist. He let out a yell as the branches pulled him toward a mass of leaves that concealed something wet, green, and threatening. What they needed was an ax or machete. Instead, they had to make do with Burnfingers’s butterfly knife. It sawed through the branches as the remaining landscaping began to rustle alarmingly around them. More mutations, more changes.
"See, it’s hopeless," Frank muttered as he brushed himself off. "Pretty soon we’ll be fighting crabgrass and bugs."
"Mankind’s always fought crabgrass and bugs," Flucca reminded him. "Let’s get inside."
The rose bushes were the worst because of the thorns. By the time they reached the door all three of them were scratched and bleeding. Burnfingers flailed at the clutching vines while Frank and Flucca pounded on the door.
"Wendy, Alicia, open up! It’s me!"
The door was wrenched inward and he almost fell. Alicia caught him. She was crying.
"Frank, Frank — I thought we’d never see you again."
"Same here, sweetheart." He held her close, not wanting to let her go.
Only Burnfingers’s size and weight allowed him to shut the door against the press of rose bush and hibiscus, which a degenerate reality had turned carnivorous.
Wendy stood in the center of the hall, staring blankly toward the door. Her expression was as lifeless as was possible for a sixteen-year-old to muster. Frank tried to manage a smile.
"How ya doin', kiddo?"
She blinked, focused on him. "Daddy. What’s going to happen now, Daddy? I thought it was all over and it’s only gotten worse, it’s gotten worse."
He moved to embrace her. She hardly had the strength left to hug him, having cried herself out earlier. Branches and vines beat a staccato tattoo on walls and roof as the vegetation went berserk all over the Peninsula. They weren’t strong enough to penetrate the walls.
"Got anything in the way of large and sharp?" Burnfingers inquired, feeling it was time to interrupt the reunion. "An ax would be nice."
Frank looked back at him, Alicia under one arm and his daughter beneath the other. "This isn’t exactly a mountain cabin. What would I be doing with an ax?"
"Thought you might have a fireplace."
"Two of 'em, but we have wood delivered in the wintertime. We don’t cut it ourselves." He remembered something else. "Hang on. There are garden shears in the garage. I mean, we have gardening service but we do keep a few tools and — "
Burnfingers was gone already, racing for the garage. Alicia peered up at her husband. "If we have a minute or two, would you like some coffee, dear?"
"God, I’d love some. If it runs normal and doesn’t bite."
Mouse greeted him when he entered the kitchen. He waved or said something meaningless — he wasn’t sure. Everyone sat down at the dinette and stared at the green carnage taking place in their yard. The double-paned glass kept the rampaging plants away from them but not from each other.
Decorative bushes ripped and tore at each other in eerie silence, the only noise the sound of breaking wood and leaves being shredded. Even the big elm by the back wall had gone mad, flailing away at its smaller neighbors until it found itself locked in a wrestling match with the eucalyptus nearby. Meanwhile, smaller branches and vines flailed wildly at the roof and walls of the house.
The smell of fresh-brewed coffee was a physical presence in the kitchen, its taste wonderfully invigorating. A few things hadn’t changed. His family was still human, his house still a sanctuary in a world gone mad.
Certainly Mouse’s presence helped. She was leaning against a counter, sipping tea.
"It is getting out of hand. The condition is becoming chronic."
"Now there’s a news bulletin," Frank muttered. The coffee was balm to his throat, his stomach, his soul. "The whole city’s gone."
"Gone?" Wendy stared at him, eyes wide. "You mean, like, everything?"
"Like everything, kiddo. The sea’s come up a hundred feet. Catalina’s not there anymore. First the people went nutso, then the machines, and now the land itself. It’s all underwater. You didn’t see any of it?" His gaze flicked to his wife, who shook her head negatively.
"We haven’t been outside since Burnfingers and Niccolo went looking for you. They told us to stay in and keep the doors bolted."
Frank grunted. "Sound advice."
"What’s going to happen now, sweetheart?" She was playing at drinking her own coffee, but her hand was shaking so badly she had to set the mug down until the trembling subsided. "What’s going to happen to us?"
"I dunno. Our reality’s shot regardless."
"Perhaps not," Mouse said calmly.
He stared sharply at her. "Don’t you of all people go trying to make me feel better. I’ve been through hell the last hour and I’m in no mood to be patronized. I know my own reality when I see it. This is my house. I was in my own office, among my own people, until it all turned into something out of a real bad horror movie. Whatever happens now, nothing can change that. Our world is gone."
"Are you so absolutely sure this is your world, then? Your reality? There are millions of reality lines, Frank Sonderberg. The slightest of differences would be sufficient to distinguish yours from one very much like it."
He put the coffee down. "So how do we know if this one is ours?"
"Once the Spinner has been soothed and the fabric of reality made whole again you will return to your one true reality. Only then will you know if this line is yours — or another."
"And if this one isn’t ours, where are the local equivalents of us?"
"In Las Vegas, enjoying your vacation, I should imagine. Provided Las Vegas still exists on this line."
"You mean, if this ain’t our reality and we hang around here long enough we might run into ourselves?"
"Nothing is impossible when reality lines cross."
"That’s enough!" Wendy rose from the table, screaming and clutching her head. "That’s enough, that’s enough, that’s enough! I can’t understand any more!"
Frank rose to grab her, pull her close. She kept raving. What was he supposed to do, slap her until she quieted? That was what they did in the movies, but this wasn’t a movie. This was his daughter who’d suffered too much he was holding in his arms. He couldn’t hit her to help her.
So he just rocked her gently and kept telling her everything was going to be all right and, as it developed, that was exactly what was required.
A clattering sounded in the hallway and everyone turned sharply, but it was only Burnfingers Begay returning from his foray to the garage. His hands held the garden shears Frank had remembered seeing hanging on a wall hook. Also two small tree saws and a pair of hand clippers.
"No chainsaw, but these will help. We should take all the big knives, too." He looked over their heads. "Where is Flucca?"
Frank turned a circle. He didn’t remember when the dwarf had disappeared. His return coincided with Burnfingers’s own.
"We’re all here, then." Burnfingers nodded to himself. "We will fight our way out together, as we have done since the beginning. I am glad I will be with white-eyes who have learned how to fight."
"Fight? Our way out?" Alicia sounded despondent. "Frank, we’re not leaving again, are we? Not from here, not from our house."
"It may not be our house," he told her grimly. "Burnfingers is right. We can’t stay here. We have to go on until there’s an end to all this, no matter who wins. And if this does turn out to be our reality, I don’t want to stay here anyway. Not with the whole damn city drowned. At this rate the rest of California’s going to go, too. Maybe the whole planet." He looked over at Mouse. "I wish to hell I’d never set eyes on you."