Looking back at the message logs from my stolen phone, it's not all incomprehensible. I can recognize emoticons, emojis, and a few internet memes that look older than me. I also found a variant of Tetris. None of this helps me.
The pump clicks to announce that my car is full of gas. The gas pumps have a recognizable design with all the wrong proportions, but they're close enough to what they're supposed to be that it fits my car well enough. Thank God this takes cash. The banks will let the cops know if the credit cards of the dead start being used for transactions, and where, but paper money is safe. I have a lot of paper money right now. I took the liberty of keeping it when I was figuring out which of the things had my car keys, along with some electronics and a few brochures and coupons that looked especially picture-heavy.
I could leave now. However, since getting gas went without a hitch, I want to see what buying food is like here. I might need to know soon. The gas station convenience store should have crowd-pleasers and variety. I rub my jaw. My head still hurts a lot. My shoulder, too, but not as much. If I miraculously recognize some alien tylenol, I'm taking it.
The automatic doors slide open and the bell rings to let me in. The deer cashier has her feet (hooves?) kicked up on the counter and is reading the news while listening to the radio. I can barely see her between the giant paper and the typical clutter of lotto tickets and tobacco products. That's fine by me.
I take my time searching the aisles. Every food I can recognize is vegan, which makes me wonder if carnivores ain't sapient or if it's just that none live here. Maybe that thing I saw at my uncle's house wasn't one after all? I doubt I would like to live next to a wolf-man, and if I were a deer-man it would be even less appealing. When I find something I might actually want to eat, I slam some bills down on the counter and walk away.
"Hey," The cashier calls out to me. I turn. She's delightfully nervous, nearly shaking in her seat. "Uh, nevermind." I smile through my mask and leave the store.
As I get back on the road, ready to try and see if I can find whatever portal I entered from, I wonder why she was so worried about me, what she wanted to talk about. It's not like I'd be that different from any of the other bundled-up customers she's had this season. Except, well, I'm especially dirty, and I've just killed six deer-people.
My hands death-grip the steering wheel. She knew. I bet she's already called the cops. I bet she called them before I even entered the store. I changed out of the blood-stained clothes, how did she know? MY CAR IS FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION TOO! HOW DID I MISS THAT!? She talked to me to try and hold me there and chickened out! I want to kill her so bad but I've got bigger problems right now!
Not a few minutes later, a police car passes me going the other way, siren's blaring. They turn around in the middle of the road and start giving chase to me.
FUCK.
I am not in a sports car. I am in my dad's beat-up old Wagoneer. The cop is not in a sports car either, but his is a lot nicer than mine. I put the pedal to the floor and the junker rushes forwards with all of its limited might. The engine roars, but not loud enough to drown out the fact that the police cruiser is gaining on me. As I blaze down the country road, I frantically try and figure out a way to escape the situation, but they're just so much faster, so much more maneuverable, and even though my dad's chariot is usable offroad, I can guess that a mountain P.D. buys vehicles that kind-of-work under those conditions as well, so I can't even escape that way - not that I could go far before finding a cul-de-sac in the woods or mountains.
I look out back and there's two cops in the car. One of the side doors opens and the passenger sticks out. I catch sight of a weapon and duck as far down as I can. A few shots from a shitty hunting rifle turn out to be an entire barrage of automatic gunfire and shards of glass fall into my lap, bullets cracking just overhead. When I look up I can barely see out my front windshield from all the spiderweb cracks, and the back is entirely shattered. Also I missed a turn and I'm now being thrown about by the damn hills as I speed along the grass. I try to keep a grip on the steering wheel and turn away from one of the patches of forest.
Checking back, the cop is getting back out of the car and taking aim. I bend over again and a new fucking torrent of bullets flies above me. I suddenly notice that I'm screaming. I hate my life.
My car rattles loudly and the trunk flies open when I hit a severe bump. By the time it closes, I see that the body in the back has flown out and, when the cops swerved to avoid it, they oversteered and plowed into a tree. They ain't totalled but they are rattled, I think. I keep driving and they don't follow me.
The only problem is that law enforcement now has even more up-to-date information on where I am, and my car is full of holes so that they don't accidentally overlook me. This is my fucking dad's car! They shot it up! I'm fucked!
A few miles away, I reach a place where I can't drive any further. The Wagoneer still runs and is still mostly-full of gas, but it's a liability now. With so many bullet holes and broken windows, it can only draw unlimited attention to me and that means death. One last look at the last thing my father left me, in tatters as it is, before I never see it again. I sling a backpack over my shoulders with whatever supplies I can carry and start walking.
The forest is still how I remember it, at least. The undergrowth and the overgrowth have nothing in particular that seems out of place. I've spent months doing nothing but wandering Appalachia and my instincts still work. As I venture deeper in with nothing but a zoomed-out map that's barely useful, I start to forget my situation, funnily enough. When I'm out and about, I can't help but notice the small differences of this world's people, but I've spent so long in the woods that as I wander it's like I never left my homeland. Although it feels like there's a lot more trash on the ground here...
It was still early in the morning when I left my vehicle behind, but before I know it, it's past noon. There is a calming process in navigating the plants, in moving over the hills and gullies, and biological needs are often the only thing that keep me above the torpor. At one point, I look up at the sky and realize that this was going to be a special sunrise and I missed it. Being shot at has realigned my priorities more than I ever thought possible. Mile after mile, I penetrate deeper into the hills.
What snaps me back to reality is a rock. It's not a special rock, except for the fact that it's been smeared with something. "TOHOPKA GO NORTH 15 KM". It's in English. It has my name on it. It's probably pointing me to a trap. Considering my current situation is definitely a dead-end, I start walking north. It's not like I can be any more screwed.
Something rumbles in the distance. I realize the noise is a distant helicopter. I can't see it, but I can hear the rotors. So the manhunt continues. I become acutely aware of how the winter chill has stripped the leaves from all but the pine trees. My clothes are a variety of earthen greens and they don't blend in quite as well against the dead brown leaves. Me moving will make me even more visible.
I stand still and look at the sky in between the bare branches. The area I could be in is a circle. Every yard I run expands the perimeter of the circle by, uh, three-point-four-one yards? That's the value of pi, right? And it increases the area by some other number that's even bigger. Even if it makes me easier to see, moving makes it harder for the law to be in a place where they can see me. I don't know how many resources they can bring in with time, but I know from experience that searching a whole area starts to suck real bad once you get into the "square miles" zone.
The only thing to do is keep going, I guess. I don't move quite as fast, but the leaves don't crunch underfoot anymore.
One time I was watching some game developers talk about how they designed the puzzles for their game. They mentioned that people don't like to look straight up, and how far they had to push things to get their players to consider the verticality of the levels.
Beneath me, two police, their big snouts barely hidden by their warm hats, loudly trudge through the underbrush. My breathing is strained by a desire to make as little noise as possible. I'm constantly worried I'll fall out of the tree and land right next to them even though I'm sitting on a large branch and practically hugging the trunk to boot. At least this trick works on members of every species.
The duo wanders away, then I wait a while longer. I crawl out of my aerial hiding spot. They went north. I go west.
I was very lucky they're so damn loud. I had time to get up high before they saw me. Still, I've seen the enemy once, there's a big chance that they have friends nearby. If it was possible for me to be any quieter, for my footprints to leave softer marks, I'm trying to do it. I'm seriously wishing I got more into airsoft when I had the chance, I can kill a dozen elk a day but I'm not confident in my ability to tackle creatures who can shoot back, especially if they are trying to kill me rather than simply not die.
Since I started walking, I've managed to cross maybe eleven or twelve kilometers (I forget exactly how many kilometers is in a mile). A while back I saw another rock with the same message as before but an updated distance of ten km. I think whoever made them just dropped a hundred of them around the place and hoped I'd notice one.
I hear something in the bushes and crouch down, my knees to the ground. It's a large insect crawling across the forest floor a few yards away. Amazingly large. It looks like a weevil but it's larger around than my thumb. I'm so out of my depth. God has a lot to explain to me, and sending me here is somehow the worst offense yet. My fingers curl and uncurl around my rifle with nervous energy.
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It's not just a large insect. Coming out from behind the curtain of trees is someone dressed a lot like me save for a bright orange hi-vis vest, carrying a double-barrelled shotgun. A few seconds later, a second one comes around. In the dense woods, we're like two ships in the fog, meeting for a second before we both disappear into the near distance. I slowly back away when I don't think they're looking.
It's then I realize that I'm not looking at more police, who are combing the woods with everyone they can get and helicopters overhead. I'm looking at common hunters formed into a militia just to get rid of me personally.
You know, soldiers get to go through shit like this with friends. I barely have friends and they sure as hell ain't here. Soldiers also have to wait until they're eighteen. I am going to fucking STRANGLE God.
I get out of sight quickly enough. My weapon ain't the best for this situation and even if I won then the gunfire would bring hell down on me. Something semi-automatic, with a red-dot or some other short-range sight rather than this high-power night-vision scope. That's something I could start a firefight with. Better yet, something fully automatic. With a grenade launcher attached. And a belt-feed system. And smart bullets that curve towards whoever I'm shooting at. And a squad of goons to take bullets for me. How about I just get to the point and get a one-way ticket back to my house?
One patch of dirt is slightly wet and I regret putting my weight on it. I shift ever so slightly as I step over a branch and accidentally bring my foot down on it. It's not loud, but it's a hell of a lot louder than I want right now. My breathing stops and the forest is silent until a few running feet start to creep in from beyond the wall of tree bark. I stand up and run as fast as I can. A shotgun blast resounds behind me, and I can tell they weren't aiming at anything in particular. My knees strain under the weight of all I'm carrying as I push myself forwards. Back home, I had a hell of a lot of endurance even by the standards of prolific hunters, but I'm carrying so much. Even if I can get away, that gunshot was a signal, and I'm sure everyone with a radio is moving nearby to box me in. Standing and fighting won't fix that. The only thing I can hope to do is coincidentally slip past the converging patrols, and that means running as hard and fast as I can.
And probably dying anyways.
I'm making my escape across hills and forests, and it's on a semblance of a trail running by a steep incline that it happens. A few more shots rang out over the last few minutes, but this is the first one I've ever experienced where I could hear the sonic boom as a bullet flew past me. I'm so startled that my muscles writhe for a brief second before I realize I'm sliding down the hillside. I fall into a bramble and tumble head-over-heels, my supplies only saved by practice in packing everything tightly. Forcing myself to stand in spite of the pain of so many pounds falling on me, I resume my flight, glad that there is no fast way down except for how I done it, and my pursuers would likely rather climb slowly than go through the bruising and fears of dislocated bones that I done. I struggle to embrace the silver lining as I force myself to not limp.
And then I see the hillside again. And I turn and run alongside it. And it rises in front of me again. I panic. The map is dragged in front of me and hastily folded out and I track my progress through the mountains, only to discover that I'm in a crater and there's similarly cliff-like inclines on three sides once you look past the waviness of the lines on the map. My heart somehow pounds even faster as I trace the last side, the only place where the grade is reasonable to navigate, and realize it's back the way I came.
I'm trapped.
I smile, and begin to chuckle to myself. In the last twelve hours, I've met alien demons, killed a bunch of them, gotten into a car chase, all so that I could end up being mowed down mercilessly in a cul-de-sac. Maybe I'll fight back. Maybe once the killers start closing in I'll shrivel up and cry. Maybe I'll take the devil I know and turn my gun on myself. Now that the bony fingers of death wrap around my heart, for the first time, I don't feel like I have the courage for that.
I wipe the slobber from my deranged laughing from my mouth. I can still buy myself a few more minutes. Or seconds. I get back to moving forwards. The intention is that I'll spend that time thinking about everything that's happened, not just in the last day but in my life in general, but with my death so imminent, I find myself feeling completely free. Free of appearance, of social norms, of all the myriad obligations I once had. After all, I know it's not going to change anything whether I seem dignified or polite or clever. A haze descends upon my mind as I become satisfied with my newfound freedom, and it prevents me from thinking about anything else besides keeping my legs pumping and how simple everything is in this moment.
The far side of my hole is a very visible dead-end. It's such a lovely place to make a last stand, assuming that's what happens. I get behind one of the larger trees and start looking out. Something brushes against my head. There's an object hanging from a branch with a note attached to it. There's so much old detritus and litter in the woods that it doesn't even register at first that the note is written in my own alphabet. The letters are scrawled clumsily, but it's unmistakable. "TO TOHOPKA - THIS WILL PROTECT YOU", it says on one side. On the other is another direction and distance. The object in question is a necklace, a string with a piece of jerky hanging off of it. It's so unreal, yet it's fitting in this ghoulish parody of the world, and I put it on.
My gloves do not fit well. This is odd, they were perfect only a few hours ago. I take them off and realize my hand, once reddish-tan, is now a deep brown, and not just discolored but distextured. The fingers have lengthened, the hand has shrunk, and the whole limb is now covered in hair. I put my new hands to my face.
I've been shivering ever since the thing killed my friends, and the police wrapped a blanket around me, but I haven't once felt cold. They asked so many questions when they found me at first, and I did what I could to answer them, although I could barely understand what was happening, and it was a struggle to hold myself together long enough to talk. I bet I didn't say anything useful.
They believed me when I said it was a "thing" that killed my friends. Not any known species. A "thing", with beady eyes and no fur. Not only had he killed Marigold, he had also shot a policeman, and they were in high gear trying to get him. Outside, new patrol cars and vans are constantly rolling by, sirens blaring. Some of the vehicles are dark grey and armored. Some of them are olive green and had the military's white star instead of the elaborate heraldry of the state PD. Some of them are normal but have no license plates at all. Helicopters have been flying in and out of town for the past few hours.
Watching them all go by has been my only distraction for the past few hours. I can't help but see the faces of the dead whenever I close my eyes but it's been so long that I'm too tired to fight against it. I don't even know why they dragged me out here, to this dive bar, just to forget about me as they all crowd around maps and radio sets.
I'm not cold. Why am I shivering?
Across the room, one of the deer has gotten into an argument. I believe that a cop questioned her authority, and she yells back, "I DON'T GIVE A DAMN HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT TAKING ORDERS FROM A TEENAGER, EITHER PUT YOUR EGO ASIDE FOR ONE DAY OR I WILL BE BOSSING YOU AROUND FOR THE NEXT YEAR BECAUSE THE STREETS WILL BE RUNNING RED WITH BLOOD!" She slams her fist on the table and curses to herself, pacing the room. Unlike the rest, she's young, only about my age, and she's dressed partly for a gang fight and partly for an urban siege. I wonder why she's in charge. She puts her hand to her head and breathes deeply, then she comes and sits across from me. "Sorry about the mess. These pigs don't want to believe that they're out of their element." She apologizes. "And that includes dealing with survivors. You're Agni, ain't you?" I nod weakly. "Doefy," She offers her hand across the table. "Operator, Special Creature Services."
I shake her hand. "You're a bit young for that, ain't you?" I weakly say.
She smiles warmly. "My mother got me started at a young age. This bar is actually owned by my father, that's why it can be turned into a command post in under an hour. In case you're wondering why we're here and not somewhere more official."
"Is it?" I ask idly.
"It's true." She says. "But let's talk about you for a bit."
"I already gave my story to the police." I point out as I retreat into the protection of my warm blanket.
"I'm not after witness testimony. Your friends, they died trying to take down the human, right?" She questions.
"They did... what's it to you?"
"I want to hear about them." She says.
"They were thugs, vagrants," I admit. "If it weren't for who killed them, no one would care. Not even you."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it's not for me, it's for you, Agni." She grabs my hand. "If we catch this guy here, or if we don't, you still have a life to live. The sooner you can start healing, the better. So please, tell me about who your friends were." She looks into my eyes.
Someone calls out. "More gunshots!" She yells from a radio console. "They're from two weapons! It's starting!"
"Shit!" Doefy mutters. "Sorry, Agni, but it will have to wait a bit!" She runs off to rejoin the fray.
Last I heard, they had the human cornered in a large natural divot. It seems so strange that, considering how out of hand everything has gotten in only one day, this misadventure will end so soon. And then everything will go back to normal. Except it won't. All my friends will still have been murdered while I watched.
"We have another hunter confirming his location!" Is the last thing I hear as the command post descends into chaos and chatter.
The sun is setting. It's been hours since I saw anyone. As I step through the tall grass in the golden light, I pull the bolt on my rifle and jam in a stack of five rounds. After putting the empty clip into one of my pockets, I pull out my sawed-off and start loading new shells into the cylinder. I don't think I've ever felt more alive, more... human.
Ironic, since my skin is furry and my body has been molded into that of one of the deer-creatures who seem to populate this world.
The necklace is a magical artifact, an actual, no shit, inexplicable-by-science magical artifact that makes me take on another shape. Between that, some theatrics, and yelling "HE'S THAT WAY" at the first guys I saw, I managed to make them run in circles trying to figure out where I went, how I managed to scale that sheer wall in so little time. Or so I assume, I've been walking away ever since I got out of that. And for once it feels damn good to be alive.
I'll probably keep going until it gets dark, then find a place to sleep for the night. Whoever granted me this strange thing I'm wearing saved my life for sure, and I have to meet them for that, if not for the whole "magic" or "knowing how to write in my language" issues. That's a concern for later. For now, I'm just walking, letting the relief sink in.
I pull out one of the electronic devices I kept from the creatures I wiped out at the fairground. I can't read a damn thing on it, but I can tell it's an MP3 player, or whatever the equivalent is. I find the first playlist with a decent amount of tracks and put it on. It's pop music that wouldn't have been too out of place in the 2000's, which I guess I should have figured, but it leaves a strange aftertaste. I didn't listen to that crap in my own world and this animal-tuned version is worse. I don't care.
I step clunkily through the grass, dancing badly and swinging my arms around to a pseudo-Carribbean rhythm with lyrics about spearfishing. It's terrible and I'm smiling. I lived.