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Part 3-16: Shotgun
The car shook and jittered like an old wooden roller coaster as it barreled down a road more advisably traveled by Jeeps or junkers. I’d taken off my seatbelt when we’d stopped and now had to focus every bit of effort and concentration on redoing it amid the virtual earthquake.
I let out a painful whoop of air out as it finally snicked home, and became aware that someone was shouting at me.
“What?” I yelled.
“I said, what’s the plan?” shouted Persi.
“I go in, you two ghost in!” said Dack.
“What about me?” said Deluxe, who held onto the wheel for dear life. The path ahead curved ever so slightly, but I still had to brace to sit upright.
“Getaw—,” began Dack, then we all lurched as the brakes slammed and we came to an aggressive, skidding halt.
I coughed as the seatbelt gave me back my lungs, and tried not to think about the timeline in which I failed to solve the shaking rebuckling puzzle from a mere seven seconds ago.
A giant cloud of dust billowed ahead of us, half bright orange and half dark brown, its colours starkly divided by the jagged line of the treetop shadowline. Pebbles and debris tinkled on the hood of our purple car—I could have convinced myself we’d just landed on Mars. It seemed equally as plausible and probably less hazardous compared to whatever fresh hell we were about to jump into.
“Getaway driver,” wheezed Dack, as the blur outside dissolved. The back of one of the police cars blocked the way, disturbingly close.
“Lobster-like reflexes,” I intoned, and squeezed Deluxe’s shoulder.
She gave me a look that seemed to say ‘good thing, huh?’ and then rounded back on Dack.
“You want me to stay behind?” said Deluxe.
He was already making to exit. “Try and break the signal, or something. Plus if anything nasty gets to the car, the girls will be defenseless. I’ll take the knife and the wifi booster.”
“It makes sense,” I said, needing to avoid an argument, and because it was actually good thinking. Deluxe would be much more useful plugged into her tech. There was only one adjustment I needed to make.
“But I am going,” I said.
“What? You need to phase into Clockworld,” said Deluxe.
“Yes, that too.”
“Too?” Deluxe blinked. “Oh, oh no, I…”
“Dack will have my back,” I said. “And I’ll have his, literally.”
“With the jammer up, it’s a good idea. She can guide me,” said Dack, cluing in.
“Just dump me in a bush if you need the mobility,” I said, half-jokingly. “Let’s go, let’s go.”
There were no more gunshots, but I thought I heard a shout as I got out of the car. After Dack got his gear: machete in one hand and the wifi stick in the other, I clambered up on his back, piggyback style. We both wore headsets, and looked utterly insane. We stood by Persi’s door as both passenger side windows came down. She gripped my ankle.
There was some dizziness as I pulled us in, being this far away from town and having already done it twice, but I felt I was getting better at it. It was no harder than the day before, and I’d been fresh then.
“Here!” said Persi.
I bit back a ‘Giddyup!’ and instead said, “Me too,” to Dack.
“Be safe, hey? Get out if it gets hairy,” said Dack to Deluxe, who watched us wide-eyed from her seat.
“You won’t be safe,” she said.
“No,” he said, then there definitely was a shout from the woods. And: PRA-PRAPrr! P-P-P-PRAPRrrr. PRAP-RR!
“Fuck,” said Dack, and ran as the echoing roars bounced and faded.
I’d hoped my ghost-me would stay with him and not float in place when he moved, and it seemed I was right. There was no splitting sensation yet, only a weird almost-double vision indicating that both my eye pairs overlapped. I concentrated on the feeling of my grip around Dack’s neck, closed real-me’s eyes, and lifted my ghost head a little higher.
A grey forest, dotted with tinges of blue. Behind me, a dense cloud of mine and Dack’s lifeforce or whatever, and Persi’s colourless ghost, zigzag-hopping after us like a little frog.
“Left, duck!” came a cry, not too far ahead. It sounded like Roman.
As soon as I heard it, I saw the first pearl. A tiny one, a little ground glob. It zipped towards us along our path, then right past us, back towards the road. Before I could say anything about it, two more followed, along with movement in the trees.
Pearls up there. And a grey snake with no face.
“Up, right!” I said. Dack kept running. The vine coiled along an overhanging branch, poised.
Shit. I focused on the sensation of my real hands, and tried again: “Up! Right, branch, Dack!”
I felt Dack’s shoulder move as the vine whipped out at us. The machete flashed and he ducked, nearly sending me flying off his back. Something warm and wriggling bounced off my back, and we kept going.
Five more seconds, then all of sudden they were everywhere. Trees littered with pearly globs, tips and bodies of vines pulsing and waving from the sides like underwater plants in a gentle current. Dack stopped before he ran into the maw of it all.
Then, like a pack of upset cockroaches, two dozen ground globs came fleeing out the brush, and Jimena burst through, gun drawn. Her hat and glasses gone, hair disheveled and full of leaves and twigs. Uniform torn, arm bloodied.
“Down!” she said.
My world dropped as Dack dove, then my ears exploded with P-P-PAHMM! click.
Ghost me came untangled and sat up, facing back the way we came. I saw a mess of sawdust and tree gunk rain away from a fat trunk, and a fatter vine scurrying back up, part of it darker than the rest. Persi stood over me, staring back at Jimena, mouth open in a little ‘o.’ She looked at her hand, and made her thumb and forefinger into the classic gun shape.
“Roman, I’m out!” said Jimena. Then to Dack, “Run. Run!”
More wee blobs were streaming past, unconcerned with all of us it seemed. I got ghost me to her feet. Dack back pedaled, real-me still awkwardly clinging to his back. Then Roman came sprinting through the brush, wielding a baton.
Jimena drew hers out too as he passed her, parrying a snapping vine. More of them—I counted six or seven—started to rise up all around her, seeming to spawn from the place Roman had come from.
“Look out, look out!” shouted Dack. They reared, tall and thick, half the height of the big trees. Jimena saw them and flung herself backwards as one tried its luck. It slapped the forest floor like a massive whip, sending twin jets of dirt and leaves out from under it.
Dack stomped it and thrust the knife in. It split, the severed end writhing wildly. Two more stiffened, ready to fall, when a flurry of yellow streaks zipped up at them. Several hit, painting them with golden splotches. They froze, then fell like ropes. I heard sizzling and sputtering from somewhere deeper in the woods.
“Persi, was that you?” I said, not wanting to take my eye off the remaining vines. They seemed hesitant now. Dack backed himself and my body away.
“Bang bang,” she said. “Try it!”
“Oh, well, why not,” I said, and made my hand into a gun. Mental weapons, the Jailer had said something like that. I added my middle finger to the barrel, so that the Queen’s Band’s blue haze was part of the mix. I pictured a shotgun.
Dack and the cops were yelling, from behind me. It was okay though, I could still feel my hands clasped together around him. There was a fire in my hand—It was similar to when I first fought Eden. I punched it in the back of the head just by thinking. I conjured a weapon when I sparred with The Keeper. And now these vines would learn what it meant to fuck with my friends.
More appeared, bunching up like a wall of asps. There was a big thud behind them, and the trees seemed to sway and shake. The swell of pearls along the ground had become a tiny stampede; I felt their chills as they passed through my feet.
Blue haze condensed to a pulsing light, turning my hand into a flare. It reflected off the crowd of vines, even thicker now as they seemed to fear coming any closer. I itched to pull the trigger, but wanted even more to pile up. A shoot of static lightning twitched off of me, stitched into the ground and popped a few of the pearls. Awesome.
“Alena, beyond the vines, what is that?”
I risked a look beside me, to find Persi there, both her hands awash in a yellow light. Then there was another crunching thud, this one thick and bone rattling. And I saw that the trees indeed swayed, or rather, one massive tree itself had moved in a very untree-like manner.
Behind the wall of vines, something was rising.
“Let’s not find out,” I said, and squeezed my thumb down.
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