Alex Reynard
The Library
Alex Reynard's Online Books
PART 55
He must have dozed, or otherwise lost track of his surroundings, because soon enough Toby blinked away his inner thoughts to realize they were in a very different place. A lighter place. Either the sun had rolled back in or things just seemed brighter because of the snow.
Toby got to his feet. There was only the lightest dusting of white across Red's red back. Ahead though, the snowstorm blurred everything to the horizon. The ground looked like a brier patch. Leafless trees with black bark grew up from the snowy forest floor like zombie hands rising from graves.
Yet with all this snow, Toby realized he didn't feel cold. 'Polycoria was like that,' he reminded himself. He tipped back his head and stuck out his tongue to catch a snowflake.
Junella was just about to stop him, but figured he'd learn on his own.
A second later, he did. Toby winced and spat out the acrid, charcoal taste. He looked all around him, unease rising.
This wasn't snow at all.
It was ash.
He thought back to programs he'd seen about volcanoes. The fallout that covered nearby villages, entombing them in a burnt blanket that rained down from the eruption cloud. Toby imagined himself frozen in place like a Pompeii statue. He had a feeling he was going to want to stay in the car until they got to their next location.
Since his mind was so preoccupied with doom, he nearly fell over on his nose when Red came to an abrupt stop.
Junella stretched and stood. "Looks like disembarking time."
George stirred. The lights in his sockets came on. He lifted his head: several dozen record shards were lodged in his face like porcupine quills. "Hm? Have we arrived in Anasarca?"
Junella knelt down to pat his cranium, sweeping bits of herself away tenderly. "Nope. Just a cheap ripoff of a winter wonderland."
He grunted. "That's a pity. It would have been nice. Although I believe I may have dreamed. I am not certain though." He staggered to his feet and all four of his knees made skin-crawling popping sounds.
By now Zinc and Piffle had long since gotten the gatling back together and had been passing the time polishing it. When Red halted, Zinc lurched sideways. "Marasmus already? Geez. Time flies. Not to be a freeloader or anything, but I kinda wouldn't mind if he took us all the way to Phlegmasia."
Piffle nodded. "I can ask him." She patted the canine's arm softly, then spread her wings and disappeared.
Junella, Toby, and George all watched from the edge of Red's back as Piffle hugged the rustbeast's head and asked him questions. He turned and stretched this way and that, sometimes nodding, sometimes shaking his head back-and-forth. He also let out several more of those vibratingly-low whalesong sounds from within his core. Piffle nodded a lot and stroked his noggin understandingly.
Finally, she gave him a last pat and buzzed up to rejoin the others.
Everyone gathered in a semicircle around her. The ash was starting to accumulate in their fur. "What's the story?" Zinc asked.
"Normally he'd be fine with it," she replied, "but he was thinkin' on scootin' in another direction, towards a place he doesn't think we'd like." She indicated the direction with her finger.
Zinc knew the place. "Xerostomia."
Junella nodded. "Poison. Sharks. Landslides. Fuck that entirely."
"Not a good place for a flat tire," he agreed.
Piffle continued. "He doesn't want to be selfish about it, but he likes the place and we did tell him we planned to get off here."
"Fair enough," Toby said.
Junella sighed. "I guess all good things come to an end. Anyway, it's been a while since we've dropped in on the masked man."
Zinc made a concurring sound. "If we wereta show up on Red, you know he'll try to kill him on sight."
Junella nodded to that in hearty agreement.
"Red wouldn't do that!" Piffle said protectively.
Zinc chuckled with an uneasy grin. "No no. Gilla-Gilla would try to kill Red."
Piffle was taken aback, trying to imagine the sort of furson who'd see a moving mountain and try to take it on.
Toby asked. "So... we are getting off? Just making sure."
Junella looked to Zinc. "How's the car?"
"Uglier, but her guts are in good order."
"That'll do." She swept her arm towards the Fearsleigher. "Saddle up, mofos."
Toby was fine with this. The ash was already starting to paint everything a dusty new color, and being an albino made him alabaster enough. Plus it smelled like burnt paper. He scooped up Doll, headed for the car, and shook himself as clean as he could before getting in. "Looks like we've both got terminal dandruff, huh?" he joked.
After being set down, she gestured for him to turn his head. Toby did, and heard a floomph. When he turned back, Doll was spotless. She'd taken off her bag, given it a good shake, and reapplied it.
"Too bad I can't do that with my fur," he remarked.
A moment later Piffle was bouncing into the seat beside them, followed by Junella in the front. Zinc circled the car one last time to make sure everything was shipshape, then entered too.
George tapped the driver's side window with his nose. "What am I to do now, Madam Brox?"
She turned to Zinc. "We got a plan for getting down?"
Before he could answer, Piffle's grin popped between them."Doncha fret about that! Red said he'd take care of it!"
Junella looked fretful anyway, but nodded: 'proceed'.
Piffle leaned out the window. "OKAY! WE'RE READY, REDDY!!"
A rumbling groan of acknowledgment.
Then everyone on the car grabbed on tight and screamed as Red knelt and sent the Fearsleigher sliding forward.
It was like the world's shortest rollercoaster. The Fearsleigher skidded down Red's now-diagonal back, scraping up sparks and rusty dust clouds. They all saw the ground shooting up to meet them. Then Red tipped his head up and deftly caught the car on the edge of his forehead. With another graceful gesture, he controlled its descent and landed it on the ground with a thump no worse than a speedbump.
The passengers were all a bit astonished.
George slid down and made a four-point landing in the ankle-deep 'snow' beside the car. He looked up to Red and gave a high, barking whinny in nightmare-speak. Red nodded back in a 'you're welcome' sort of way.
Then the passengers all got out again to say goodbye to their crimson pal. Red stretched down as far as he could so their tiny hands could reach him. To his ears, their voices were like the tweets of baby birds. But their thanks still warmed him. It was a good feeling to be big and powerful and to use those strengths to be helpful.
Toby held Doll up so she could give him a pat as well. Then he looked down at the rusty stains on his palm and reflected on just how much one's perceptions of another could change from a first impression.
Piffle flew up to Red's head and gave him about twenty farewell kisses. She told him she hoped to see him again in the spring when he passed through the Blackdamp. He assured her he'd be there. And if by chance they missed each other, he would always be somewhere.
Red turned and began slowly plodding away, to resume his eternal walkabout.
Piffle hovered in place and waved until her arm was sore.
***
Marasmus was not the best place to hang around in one place. Everyone hustled to get the Fearsleigher moving. Junella crossed her fingers and pushed the dash button to deploy the skates. To her great relief, success. The Fearsleigher's chassis started elevating back to normal height.
Piffle remembered the As-Much-Rope-As-You-Need and was soon circling George, hitching him up like decorating a Christmas tree. George stood patient and proud. One benefit of his body was that they could loop the ropes in and out of his ribcage to anchor them. George gave some test tugs and said everything felt quite comfortable.
Meanwhile, Zinc rooted around inside the hood for items they might need on the trail ahead, while Toby leaned out from the back seats to receive them. This would have been easier if Zinc hadn't been lobbing the supplies like footballs. Toby reached high and low, doing his best to catch the thrown objects and not fumble them. He began to suspect Zinc was testing his reflexes for the canine's own amusement. Zinc's grin confirmed this.
Piffle watched them work for a while, then said, "Oh look! Refreshments!" and wandered off.
Toby leapt up to snag the bundle of anti-transformation potions. He set them down as gently as he could, not wanting to break one and become something else (just in case they happened to work in reverse). Then another section of his brain thought to ask what in the world had Piffle just said? He looked up, blinking against the ash, and scanned the forest around them. He spotted her right away and pointed. "Zinc, what is that?"
The canine's head turned just in time to see Piffle bending over to push the buttons on a big chrome vending machine.
"DON'T-!!" he hollered, already tensing to run like lightning and stop her.
But it was too late. There was a blur of motion. Piffle's eyes went wide. She shrieked.
Then no more Piffle.
The ash puffed up into clouds where Zinc jumped down from the car. "Aw for cryin' out loud! FUCK!!!"
The vending machine turned towards the sound, its body bending like a cartoon character. It registered surprise, then grew four stumpy legs and tried to run away.
George snorted. "Foolish action!" Even with a several-ton sleigh strapped to him, he still took off like an arrow and galloped towards the fleeing construct.
Junella was thrown back in her seat so hard, the drink she'd just cornucopia'd up vanished.
It was a short chase. The Pifflenapping construct did not get far. Its legs were tiny, the ash piles were deep, and George was pissed. The machine made a despairing rattle as strong black teeth sank into its top and held it in place.
"Couff up Ma'am Mc'erricone imme'iately!" George commanded with his mouth full.
Toby had been flung backwards off the car when George took off, but was soon enough trudging alongside Zinc to catch up.
Zinc held up a wrench in front of Toby like a railroad crossing. "Don't touch it!" he barked.
"You don't have to tell me that. I'm guessing it eats anyone who tries to get a snack from it?" Zinc nodded, but Toby could already see through the construct's glass front.
Just like any normal vending machine, it was filled with several rows of candy bars and bags of chips, all held in place on spiral springs. Except, when one looked a little closer, there were pictures of people on the wrappers. People whose expressions were frozen in the last shocked instant before the machine had sucked them in.
Right there in C7 was Piffle, staring blankly out from the wrapper of a peanut butter chocolate bar.
The people's names were even printed on the labels. Toby had no idea why that detail infuriated him even more. "Smash this rotten thing!" he snarled at Zinc.
"I can't! Even though my wrenches are metal, they still count as a part of me!"
Toby popped out his hammer. "What about this?"
"I don't know!" The canine sounded a bit frantic. Worry for Piffle was painted plainly across his face. "It might count as a body part and it might not."
George bit down harder and the vending machine squealed. "I 'ould be 'erfectwy 'appy to kick the shtuffing ou' of it."
Zinc nodded. "That's good. Guess its juju doesn't work construct-to-constr-"
Toby, Zinc and George all heard a small, polite 'thup' as a lit stick of dynamite landed at their feet.
"Fire in the hole!" Junella sang brightly.
The trio all screamed and scampered away in different directions.
Though before doing so, George had the forethought to give the vending machine a good hard shove, knocking it facefirst into the ash. As he and the others escaped from the hissing stick, all the machine could do was stare and writhe in panic. Its pathetic legs swam uselessly through the air.
BARRRROOOM!!!
Shreds of metal, glass, and wiring went everywhere. At the exact same instant, about forty people all sprung into existence like a video game spawning glitch.
The vending machine's former victims stretched, crawled, flopped, and cried out in a writhing mass of utterly befuddled flesh. Some of them had been immobile for so long they'd forgotten how to move. One woman peed all over herself. Another man was rocking on his back like a turned-over turtle.
Piffle had only been inanimatized for a minute, so she suffered the least amount of disorientation. She got to her feet, dizzy, but also sensing that moments ago she had been really delicious. "Hot socks! That was almost fun!"
Junella swung herself down from the car, juggling another dynamite stick just to show off. She popped it in her mouth like a cigar and sauntered over to Zinc to clap his shoulder.
He'd been panting and staring dumbly in relief at seeing that Piffle was okay, then twitched towards the appearing hand.
"Partner, I'm fine with you liking the puffball, but don't let it cloud your thinking. I'm not gonna bail you lovebirds out every time."
He snorted, offended. "It wasn't like that! Shit just went down fast, that's all. We woulda got her out in a sec, no sweat."
"Surrrre," she purred with a wickedly teasing grin. "Like you weren't just standing there, bugeyed and helpless."
Piffle wobbled over, brushing the ash and chocolate off her skirt. "Sorry about that, fellas! I knew something like that would prolly happen, but I just couldn't resist! Either I'd get a nice snack or a new and exciting experience. And I figgered you guys were right there to rescue me if I got into trouble."
Junella's expression darkened like a rolling thundercloud. She plucked the dynamite from her mouth and popped it into Piffle's. "Hold still while I light this."
Toby's attention had been diverted by the huge pileup of moaning, lurching, perplexed people the vending machine had disgorged. All ages, all different eras of clothing. The machine had been eating people for quite some time. Toby's heart went out to them. Miles from any kind of safe city, lost in the wilderness, no idea where (or possibly who) they were.
He couldn't invite them all into the Fearsleigher. There wasn't enough room. Not even if they used the resizing window on everyone. If only there was a taxi service out here. Or...
Toby's eyes sparkled as he was struck with a really, really good idea.
He spun around and started running as hard as he could.
"RED!! WAIT UP!!"
-***-