He came down sort of headfirst. I thought to myself that I’d never seen anyone so happy to have his face pushed into dirt. They cut him out of his harness with those long thin blades of theirs. Then he was up and running for the thicket, ripping and spitting moss out of his mouth. I started moving back, watching the goblins rather than Jason. But they didn’t seem to be interested in attacking us. They were pulling further back, fading into the forest.
Jason was limping a bit, as if one of his legs had gone to sleep, which seemed likely. As he reached the edge of the thicket and plunged into the sheltering greenery like a burning man diving into a cool lake, the panic started to leave his face.
“Steve!” he hissed, picking his way into the brush. “Steve, where are you, man? You’ve got a kiss coming!”
4
When he got to me, his sweaty face, caked with dirt, was split in a toothy grin. I noted that the chief had ducked out of sight, and out of range, when Jason had entered the thicket. I pushed off Jason’s panting, sweaty hug of greeting.
“We aren’t out of the woods yet, Tonto.”
“Right,” he agreed immediately. His face shifted to a look of absolute seriousness. I felt that he had changed in some way, probably permanently. “Which way back? You didn’t get lost, did you?”
As he spoke he hunkered down beside me and looked back at the impaling spear. He stared at it fixedly for a moment, still slightly mesmerized by it. The goblins were nearly out of sight now.
“Let’s go,” I said. There was no argument. We moved quickly out of the thicket in the direction that I had come. By the time we reached the edge, we were crashing through the brush at run. Bleeding from the face and hands where branches of thorns had caught at us, we charged thorough the forest in full stride. Our breath came in hoarse pants. Large sweat stains turned cold and clung to the skin under our arms. Panic was overtaking us. We were running for our lives.
Unerringly, I led the way to the beach. We came out a little off from where we had started. For a minute or two I was lost. Jason knew it. He didn’t say anything, but his face was white with fear. We moved back into the forest for cover and made our way in the direction that I hoped the window was.
Laughing with relief, I found the right fern-tree and tackled the trunk, climbing like a chimp at dinner-time. Jason was right behind me all the way. We pushed our way up through the fronds and climbed onto the top of the tree.
And there we found the chief goblin. He was in the act of climbing into the window, into our world. He was alone and he was scared. He must have been the only one with enough balls after all the killing to come after us. We charged through the waving fronds after him. Fortunately, he was old, scared and slow.
I watched him get to his feet on the other side and to my horror I saw him reach for the tuning knobs. He was smiling at me in a nasty sort of way. The way an older brother would when he locks you out of the house and your folks are on vacation. Almost without thought, I snapped the rifle to my shoulder and began firing. The first shot went wild, I saw the plaster in the back wall of the workshop sprout an answering puff of dust back at me. I fired as fast as I could squeeze the trigger.
Before he could reach the knob, his smile fading, my second and third and fourth shots hit him. He jerked back flailing, and collapsed in a heap on Jason’s folding chair, which was still lying in its folded position on the floor.
We clambered toward the window quickly, but we weren’t quite fast enough. The chief goblin was a tough old guy, I have to admit that. He reached up and twisted one of the knobs. I’m not even sure which one.
The window vanished and left us behind in the alien jungle.
We both stood there, panting and dripping a mixture of blood, sweat and dirt onto the bole of the fern-tree. For once, Jason didn’t call me a moron.
5
I envisioned it all. I hadn’t gotten A’s in history for nothing.
They might just kill us out of hand when we ran out of bullets. Or maybe we would get hungry and weak and fall asleep one night. An arrow out of the night might do the trick, or maybe even something more mundane and natural, like the purplish infection that had puffed up Jason’s slashed arm.
But whatever it was, we were going to die here. Unless Mom and Dad found the workshop and the dead goblins. Maybe they could get my crazy Uncle out of the nuthouse long enough to help. Maybe he would twiddle the dials for them, returning the window to this precise spot.
Or maybe my parents would find another world, ignorantly dip the window into the bottom of some ocean, and flood our planet with a billion gallons from an alien sea.
Still, the window’s return was our best hope, so we dug in on the beach snugly up against the fern-tree. I had forty-seven rounds of ammo, a sick friend and a beautiful sunset to ponder. Wherever this world was, it was certainly wild and full of lovely vistas. Tiny blue crabs, each with ten rippling legs, ran around in the surf. When night fell, two moons rose, both bigger and more colorful than our own. One looked green and blue and had clouds of its own. A second waterworld, I felt sure.
By morning, Jason’s breathing was raspy. I thought about waking him up, but what was the point? Whatever dreams he had were probably better than this.
I’m thinking now about the blue ten-legged crabs. They might be good to eat. Then again, they might poison me. Pretty soon, I will have to try one, but not now. For now, I’m watching the sea. It’s strange, beautiful and entrancing.
Larson, B. V.
Velocity
The One-Way Gang
Beth held a limp hanky in her freckled hands and cried over the dead salesman. “You’ve got to do something, Paula,” she blubbered, rocking herself with her arms wrapped around her own shoulders. Her face was hidden by a long stringy mop of brown hair.
“Things will get better,” I lied to her. I bent over and gave her a squeeze, while she continued crying and rocking. I watched her tears make dark streaks as they rolled down through the dust that coated her cheeks. She used to be pretty. I thought. Really pretty.
“Paula, stop them this time,” she whispered to me.
Suddenly, I was disgusted with everything, including myself. I stood up and walked away from Beth. What could I do? Fight all three of them over some salesman from Fresno who should have kept his BMW on the Blowdirt instead of stopping here? The only thing I could do was ambush them, and they all slept with their guns in their hands. Killing Kyle wouldn’t be enough, the others wouldn’t let me get away with it. Besides, I considered Raymond my friend, and didn’t think I could kill him.
I glanced at Beth and frowned. If I had been planning to make a move, the last person I would have told was Beth. She would have blabbed my plans and then I would have been bleeding in the dust, with Kyle ripping chunks out of my face with those damned pliers of his. She wasn’t entirely with it these days, since Deb and Kevin had stepped out. She was too chicken to follow them alone, so she cried a lot.
I shook my head. No, I couldn’t tell her, she would have blabbed for sure. I walked over to the others, who had just found the salesman huddled up with his chin on his chest and his arms wrapped around his head. He was sound asleep, leaning against our One-Way sign, just as if he owned the place. He wore a navy blue pin-striped suit, now a patchy dust-brown, with a red tie that flapped a bit in the west winds.
Kyle gave him a long, low whistle of appreciation which woke the man up.
“Mister,” Kyle said, “you have a lot of balls to be sleeping up against our sign that way, but you didn’t have quite enough balls. You should have just stepped out, right through that ripper.” He gestured toward the flaming, shimmering fields of color that danced over the parking lot.