The Reality Bug

by D. J. MacHale

  We had a long ride into Old Glenville, and there was a lot I wanted to talk to her about. I figured this was as good a time as any.

  “When I was on First Earth,” I said to her, “things didn’t go too well.”

  “Saint Dane failed,” she said. “That is all that matters.”

  “Did he?” I said. “We saved the territory, but no thanks to me.”

  “And how did that make you feel?” she asked.

  “Like I never want to let him get the better of me again,” I said. “And I won’t.”

  Loor looked at me and said, “I know you, Pendragon. Your heart is in the right place, but you have been unsure of yourself, and of our mission.”

  I wanted to argue, but she was right.

  “It sounds to me as if Saint Dane tried to take away your confidence, but instead made you more determined. If that is the case, he made a very bad mistake, for all he managed to do was bring you fully into the conflict. He will regret that.”

  In that single moment, things became incredibly clear. I had been struggling with my failure. But now, Loor made me believe that my weakness at that critical moment on First Earth might actually have been the best thing that could have happened. Any doubt I had up to that point about wanting to battle Saint Dane was taken away. Uncle Press always said that this conflict was about more than a single battle. Heck, even Saint Dane said that. By facing my own weakness, maybe I was now ready for the long haul.

  “I missed you, Loor,” I said. I wanted her to tell me she missed me, too.

  She didn’t. “I will always be there when you need me,” she said. “As I know you will be for me. That is our destiny.”

  Okay, maybe not exactly a statement of undying friendship, but it was better than nothing. I guess.

  We rode for a long time, mostly in silence. I was beginning to think those cowboys had pointed us in the wrong direction, when …

  “Look!” Loor exclaimed, pointing ahead.

  I looked to see the tops of buildings peeking up over some trees. This had to be Old Glenville.

  “Last one there buys the sniggers,” I exclaimed.

  “The what?” Loor said.

  Too late. I kicked my horse into action and galloped toward town. Loor probably could have beaten me, but I had gotten such a head start that there was no way she could catch up. A few minutes later, I rode straight down the center street of Old Glenville.

  It was a ghost town. I pulled up my horse and Loor stopped right beside me. The two of us sat there in the middle of the dirt street, looking around at the empty town.

  Old Glenville was something right out of an old-time Western movie. There were two-story wooden buildings down either side of the main street, with wooden sidewalks and hitching posts in front. I saw painted signs on the stores that identified them as: GENERAL STORE AND DRY GOODS; BARBER AND DENTIST; SHERIFF; TELEGRAPH OFFICE; and even one that said: CORONER. At the end of the street was a church with a tall steeple that dwarfed the rest of the buildings. It was the perfect little frontier town. The only thing missing was people.

  “Here we go again,” I said. “Just like Rubic City.”

  I kicked my horse into gear and we walked slowly down the center of the street. I listened for any sign of life, but there was none.

  “I’m surprised there’s no tumbleweed blowing through,” I said.

  “What is tumbleweed?” Loor asked.

  As if on cue, a big piece of brown tumbleweed rolled past us. This was getting strange, in more ways than one. I guess I could believe that another territory was just like Earth, but this meant the territory of Veelox also had the same kind of history as Earth. This town of Old Glenville was exactly like a typical town from the Old West in America. Very strange.

  “There,” Loor said. She pointed to a barnlike building that was off the main road.

  There was a hand-painted sign leaning against a fence that said: BLACKSMITH.This was where we were supposed to leave the horses. We rode over to the barn, but didn’t find a soul. Even stranger, all the tools of the trade were lying around. There were hammers and nails and coal and all the stuff you’d think a blacksmith used. The barn even had a few horses in stalls, but they were the only sign of life. This town looked like it had been recently abandoned.

  We tied the horses to a hitching post near the barn. I was about to suggest that we start on one end of town and work our way down the street, searching each and every building, when we heard something strange.

  “Music,” Loor said.

  It was old-fashioned, honky-tonk piano music, which is the exact kind of music you’d expect to hear in a Western town.

  “I’ll bet you a dollar there’s a saloon around here,” I said.

  “What is a saloon?” Loor asked.

  “I’ll show you.”

  Not that I had ever been in a saloon, but I had seen enough Western movies to know that’s usually where the music was played. And since everything about this town smelled of the Old West, I had no doubt we’d find a saloon. So we took off walking back to the main street. The closer we got, the louder the music became. Sure enough, across the street I spotted a sign over a balcony that said in fancy gold letters: OLD GLENVILLE SALOON.

  We walked across the dusty street like a couple of gunslingers headed toward the O.K. Corral. The music was definitely coming from the saloon. As we got closer I saw a set of swinging doors in front. Classic Western. We got as far as the wooden sidewalk and were about to step up, when the piano suddenly stopped.

  Loor and I did too.

  We then heard the sound of a chair scraping across the floor inside, as if someone were standing up. It was followed by the sound of footsteps walking across the floor, headed for the swinging doors, and us.

  Loor and I didn’t move. Whoever was inside, we were about to meet them. I really hoped it was Dr. Zetlin.

  It wasn’t.

  When the swinging doors flew open, I saw something that made me question whether this was Dr. Zetlin’s fantasy nightmare … or mine. Because standing in the door before us was Saint Dane.

  He wore black from head to toe, like a gunfighter. On his hips were twin six-shooters. His gray mane of hair fell down to his shoulders, topped off with a black cowboy hat. The demon acted as if he were expecting us. He smiled a yellowtoothed grin, stared at us with those cold blue eyes, and said, “Looks like it’s time to liven up this dead little town!”

  “Howdy, Pendragon!” Saint Dane exclaimed jovially while leaning against the hitching post. “I see you brought along your violent little girlfriend. What a nice surprise!”

  This didn’t compute. How could Saint Dane be in Dr. Zetlin’s fantasy? This wasn’t like before where he was a prerecorded hologram. This was him. For real. Or should I say, in fantasy. My brain locked.

  “You seem surprised!” he laughed. “This can’t be possible, yet here I am. It seems as though Aja’s Reality Bug has completely scrambled Lifelight.”

  Loor looked to me and said softly, “This is real, isn’t it?”

  “Real enough!” Saint Dane answered for me.

  He pulled out one of his six-shooters, aimed it at the sky and pulled the trigger. The sharp crack sounded pretty real to me. A moment later four more cowboys with six-shooters appeared from the saloon. They moved quickly behind us, cutting off any chance we had of escape. These guys didn’t look like the friendly cowpokes from the mountains either. The word that came to mind was, desperados.

  “Since this is a fantasy,” Saint Dane continued, “let’s have some fun.”

  He stepped off the wooden walkway and strolled over to us with his thumb in his gun belt. He was enjoying this. We weren’t.

  “The man you’re worried about?” he said. “I know where he is, and I’m going to give you the chance to rescue him.”

  I shot a look at Loor. This had just gotten interesting.

  “Rescue?” I asked.

  “About a mile south of town is a dam. It’s an immense structure. Holds back a
n extremely large lake. Without that dam, this town would be underwater. On top of the dam is a small, stone hut. That’s where you’ll find him.”

  “That’s it?” I asked. “Simple as that?”

  Saint Dane laughed. “Pendragon, please, is it ever as simple as that?”

  He pulled out a golden pocket watch and checked the time.

  “Dynamite has been placed all over that dam, thanks to my associates here. In just about, oh, ten minutes, it’s all going to explode and things around here are going to get very wet.”

  My adrenaline spiked.

  “So you’re giving us ten minutes to get to the hut and get him out? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “With one small complication. I’ll give you a two minute head start. After that I’m sending my associates here, to stop you. Won’t that be exciting?”

  Saint Dane leaned down and looked me square in the eye, saying, “You didn’t have the strength to succeed on First Earth. How will you handle this little challenge?”

  Without thinking, I reached forward and quickly grabbed one of Saint Dane’s guns from its holster.

  “Nicely done, Quick Draw,” he said, barely showing surprise. “Now what?”

  I grabbed Loor’s hand and started to run.

  “Yahoo!” Saint Dane called after us.

  If we had any chance of getting to that dam in ten minutes, we needed the horses.

  “What is dynamite?” Loor asked as we ran.

  “It’s like tak,” I answered. “It’ll destroy the dam.”

  We made it to the blacksmith barn in a few seconds. I jammed the six-shooter into my belt and we started to untie the horses.

  “Does it matter if this town is destroyed?” Loor asked. “It is not real.”

  “It’s not the town,” I answered quickly. “It’s Zetlin. If something happens to him we’ll never get the origin code and Lifelight will—”

  Crack! Ping!

  A bullet zinged off a metal bucket that was hanging near the barn door. It barely missed us.

  “That wasn’t two minutes!” I shouted.

  Either the desperados didn’t care, or they couldn’t tell time, because I was answered with a series of gunshots.

  “Inside!” Loor commanded.

  We grabbed the bridles of the horses and ran them inside the barn. Loor quickly closed the big doors. We were safe, but trapped, and the clock was ticking.

  “What do those noisemakers do?” Loor said while pointing to the gun I had jammed in my belt.

  “It shoots out small pieces of metal. They’re deadly. But it only fires six times and they have a lot more guns than we do. And to be honest, I’ve never even shot one before.”

  More shots were fired from outside, shattering a window, making the horses whinny in fear.

  “We gotta get outta here,” I said and ran to a door in the back of the barn. I opened it and was met with a gunshot that splintered wood just over my head. To use a cliché Western phrase, they had us surrounded. I ran back to Loor and shouted, “You’re the soldier-in-training! What are we supposed to do?”

  Loor wasn’t panicking, I’m not surprised to say. She coolly looked around the barn, seeing what we had to use.

  She then said calmly, “The animals. What did you call it before? Stampede?”

  I could have kissed her. It was brilliant and insane. There were about a dozen horses in stalls, plus ours. If we could get them moving together out of the barn, we might be able to use them as shields. I was more than ready to give it a try.

  “Get them together!” Loor commanded.

  We ran to opposite sides of the barn, throwing open the stalls and yelling at the horses to get out. It was kind of scary. The horses were already nervous because of the gunshots. Having two crazy people running around waving their arms made them even more excited. This was dangerous. One quick horse kick to the head and it would all be over.

  After a few frantic seconds, we had all the horses gathered together in the center of the barn. They were bumping into each other, kicking at the ground, and whinnying. They weren’t happy about this at all.

  “Go to the doors!” Loor yelled.

  I ran to the big barn doors and grabbed the handles. Loor took our two horses with saddles and led them to the back of the pack.

  “Are you ready?” she called out.

  I was. So were the horses. They were starting to rear up and I was nearly stomped a couple of times.

  “Let’s go!” I shouted.

  “Open the doors!”

  I threw open both doors. Loor gave off a sharp whistle, and the herd of horses charged out of the barn.

  I barely had enough time to jump to the side before getting trampled. Loor ran forward with our two horses. Without a second to think about how crazy this was, I jumped on mine and we charged out after the fleeing herd.

  Outside, it was a chaos of wild horses and dust. The horses blasted into the open and ran together toward the main street. Loor and I pushed our horses forward to stay as close to the wild herd as possible. We both crouched low in the saddle, trying to offer smaller targets. I kept expecting to hear gunshots, but they didn’t come. I guess there was enough confusion going on that the desperados didn’t want to waste their ammunition. Good for the horses, good for us.

  We were out, and we had our horses. Now it was a race. We had to get to that dam and find Zetlin before the whole thing blew up, or the desperados stopped us.

  “Which way?” Loor yelled.

  I figured we came into town from one direction, so the dam must be in the other. I gave my horse a quick kick in the butt, and we were off. We charged down the main street of Old Glenville, flew past the church, and blasted along the dirt road leading south. Side by side we galloped along the road like a couple of bandits on the run.

  I soon realized there was something else to worry about. As much as I’d like to pretend otherwise, I’m not a very good rider. This was freaking scary! The horses were fast, which was good, but I barely knew what I was doing. If I fell off at the speed we were going, something would get broken. Probably my head. I grabbed the reins with one hand, and had a death grip on the saddle horn with the other. I didn’t even look at Loor. She knew way more about riding than I did. I had no idea how much time had gone by, but every second counted. Slowing down was not an option.

  “There it is!” Loor called to me.

  Sure enough, looming up in the distance, tucked into a ravine, was a huge stone dam. Saint Dane said it was a mile out of town, but it was so big it looked much closer. I could even see the small, stone building on top, right in the middle.

  Bang!

  We weren’t alone. I didn’t turn around to look because I was afraid I’d lose my balance. But Loor did.

  “They are coming,” she announced.

  “How many?” I asked.

  “All of them. Saint Dane, too.”

  Swell.

  More shots were fired. I kept expecting to feel the sting of a bullet, but they must have been too far back to be accurate. We had to keep it that way.

  The road forked. It was clear that the right fork would take us to a trail that led up the side of the ravine, and to the top of the dam. Without a word we both steered our flying horses onto the right path. The trail quickly grew narrow as it rose up along the side of the steep ravine. But we still pushed the horses on. We couldn’t risk being caught. Soon, we had risen up so high that there was a steep drop off to the left. I was in the lead. If my horse took one wrong step, adios.

  The trail then entered a forest. Branches slapped at us from both sides, trying to knock us off. It was getting painful.

  “We gotta slow down!” I said.

  Loor and I both pulled on the reins and slowed to a trot. I could see through the trees up ahead that we were nearly at the top of the dam. There were only about a hundred yards to go.

  “Give me the noisemaker,” Loor ordered.

  I looked back and was shocked to see that Loor was getting of
f her horse.

  “What are you doing? We’re almost there!” I shouted.

  “Keep going,” she said. “Find Zetlin and get him out. I will stop the others from following.”

  There was no way I was going to leave Loor here alone. “Loor, I won’t—”

  “You are wasting time, Pendragon!” she shouted at me. “We must save Zetlin! That is all that matters. Give me the noisemaker!”

  It killed me, but I pulled the six-shooter out of my belt and tossed it to her. She looked at it curiously. My confidence wasn’t high.

  “Hold the handle, point the long end at the bad guys and pull the trigger,” was the quickest instruction I could think of. “Hold it tight, it’ll probably kick.”

  “Go!” she ordered.

  I snapped the reins, kicked my horse, and galloped for the dam. I took one last look over my shoulder to see that Loor had pulled her horse into the trees. She was setting a trap. Man, what a brave girl. But then again, if the dam blew up, she wouldn’t be on it. I would. I didn’t know which was worse, facing the desperados, or standing on an exploding dam. Suddenly I wasn’t feeling so bad for her anymore.

  It was all about time now. I had no idea how soon the dam was going to blow. A few seconds later, I broke out of the trees on top of the ridge to see the huge lake that Saint Dane told us about. A quick look to my left showed me that I had made it to the top of the dam. The stone hut was about halfway across, which I’m guessing was about fifty yards away. Fifty very long yards. I figured I could cover the distance faster on horseback.

  That’s when I heard gunfire. The quick, sharp pops told me that the desperados had caught up with Loor. I could only hope that she’d be safe, and keep them back long enough for me to get to Dr. Zetlin.