by Amira Rain
Once she realized what had happened, she collapsed back in her chair, laughing so hard she was barely making any noise. Abbey, Liz, and Angie joined in, and even I laughed, though maybe a little uneasily.
Once Nikki had mostly regained her composure, she wiped her eyes, gaze on me. "Thanks, Mom. I'd probably be a raging inferno without you."
I smiled, and even chuckled faintly, although her calling me "Mom" had kind of rubbed me the wrong way. However, maybe I should have been glad that I had now been brought down in age to "Mom." At my apartment, where we'd all met up earlier, Nikki had called me "Grandma" because I'd had food ready, insisting that everyone at least have some kind of a light dinner before we headed out to drink.
She'd reluctantly had half a turkey-and-Swiss slider, a few crock-pot barbequed meatballs, a tiny serving of fruit salad, and a couple of baby carrots, grumbling that the food in her stomach was going to "slow her initial buzz." Now it had turned out that it hadn't slowed it as much as I'd hoped. Not to mention that Nikki's "buzz" was obviously quickly turning into "outright drunkenness," if it hadn't already.
Not too long after she'd nearly set her hair on fire, a large group of maybe a dozen pipeliners entered the dimly-lit bar. Up to this point, the only patrons had been women, couples, and a few "regulars," local married men who sat sipping beers at a darkened table in a corner.
Nikki immediately whipped her head to the right, surveying the group of pipeliners, and spoke just loudly enough for Abbey, Liz, Angie, and me to hear her above a country song on the jukebox. "Oh, yeah. I'm definitely going to let one of these hunky pipeliners lay some pipe on me tonight if you all get what I mean. The dating scene in Indianapolis has really sucked lately, and I've been missing some good, hard pipe in my life."
After knocking back the last half of her second vodka shot, Liz set the glass on the table with a moderately loud bang. "You know what? It's been one month to the day since Gary and I broke up, and I think I'm going to let myself have some fun. I feel like I could go for a little pipe tonight myself."
Nikki turned her gaze from the group of pipeliners to Liz. "Well, with any luck, the pipes we get won't be little."
The two of them burst into howls of laughter. Abbey and Angie joined in and I just sat there, only faintly laughing out of politeness. Not for the first time since she'd moved to Germany, I found that I missed Erin badly. I thought how if she'd still been in town, we'd surely be at the fair, having the sober kind of fun that didn't make me feel vaguely uncomfortable.
The group of pipeliners sauntered over to the bar, where three attractive middle-aged women were sitting. After one of the pipeliners, a tall, extremely well-built man wearing jeans and a dark green t-shirt, said something to Dana, she set out a line of about a dozen shot glasses and began pouring shots of what looked like whiskey. Once everyone was served, four of the pipeliners quickly pulled bar stools over to the three women sitting nearby. Breaking into wide smiles and turning their stools so that they could talk to the men, the women were clearly welcoming of the attention.
The remaining seven men did their shots with their backs to the bar, seeming to be kind of surveying the whole scene, their gazes quickly settling on Nikki, Angie, Liz, Abbey, and me at our table. It took them all of ten seconds to send Dana over with a tray of vodka shots for us, saying they were "compliments of the gentlemen at the bar."
Nikki raised a shot glass, smiling at the men in a seductive sort of way, before downing the vodka in a gulp. Not particularly liking where things seemed to be heading, I took a polite little sip of vodka, not making eye contact with any of the men.
Once Dana had returned to the bar, she refilled shot glasses for some of the men and served beer to others. Once they all had drinks in hand, all seven of them made their way over to our all-women group, and the well-built man in the forest green t-shirt surveyed us all with a little smile before speaking with a thick Southern accent.
"Any other men sittin' with you lovely ladies tonight? Any boyfriends in the john or outside for a smoke or anything?"
Nikki immediately shook her head. "No, and it's been getting kind of lonely over here. Why don't you guys push another table up to ours and pull over some chairs, and we can all sit together."
The man in the green t-shirt grinned. "I think that's a fine idea."
Nikki smiled at a red-haired man next to Green Shirt. "You, Red, can sit right next to me if you want."
The man grinned, saying that he'd like that.
I wasn't surprised at all that Nikki had seemed to make her "choice" already. She'd always had a thing for red-haired guys, and this guy was also particularly handsome, maybe the most handsome man of the group. He was also fairly tall and well-muscled, too.
Soon two tables were pushed together, and I found myself sitting next to Green Shirt, who immediately asked me why I hadn't finished my vodka. "A little hard liquor is good for little ladies like yourself sometimes, you know. Helps get little ladies in the mood for fun."
What he'd said had only gotten me in the mood to vomit.
Not wanting to stick around for any further nausea-inducing comments, I abruptly stood and addressed Angie and Liz, who were on my right. "I think I'm going to go up and get another beer."
And visit with Dana for a while instead, I thought.
In response to what I'd said, Green Shirt piped up right away. "You want me to buy you a beer? You can even sit on my lap while you drink it."
I worked hard to stifle a snort of irritation and indignation. "No, thank you. I'll buy my own beer."
Not even bothering to stifle his own snort, which was really something between a snort and a chuckle, Green Shirt turned his gaze to the other men. "Uh-oh, boys...looks like we got a feminist in the house!"
Nikki, who'd just knocked back yet another shot, shook her head. "No, she's not a feminist...just a grandma!"
The men roared with laughter, as if what she'd said had been the funniest thing in the world.
Green Shirt said I didn't look like a grandma. "Not like any grandma I've ever seen. Especially not with curves like that. Ooh, boy. Showin’ them off in a nice way, too."
I did have a fairly slanders-yet-curvy, hourglass-shaped figure, but I definitely didn't think I was "showing off" my curves. I wasn't intending to, anyway. In fact, for a night out at a bar, I thought I was probably dressed somewhat conservatively, especially compared to my friends. I was wearing dark-wash jeans, a hip-skimming, cream-colored silky halter top with gold beading around the neckline, and simple tan wedge-heeled sandals.
Nikki, on the other hand, was wearing a micro-miniskirt with a scoop-necked top that revealed a lot of cleavage, and Liz, Abbey, and Angie were sporting nearly identical short shorts that barely covered their rear ends. If anyone was "showing off" their curves, it certainly wasn't me.
Before Green Shirt could issue any other maddening comments, I turned on my heel and stalked away to the bar.
Honestly, I was ready to just call it a night and go home. However, maybe not surprisingly, since apparently I was a mom and a grandma, I felt the need to stick around a while to "babysit" my friends, particularly Nikki. I didn't even really know why, being that there really wasn't much I could do if I felt like things were getting out of hand, which I really already kind of thought they had on some level.
At the same time that I felt a need to "babysit," though. I knew that Nikki was an adult, and adults were allowed to do what they liked within the bounds of the law, including getting drunk and getting "pipe." I couldn't stop her, and I didn't think it would even be wise to try. Besides, I had to concede that her life choices weren't mine, and I knew that as a friend, I should respect her choices without judgment. It was just difficult.
Figuring that I'd just stay at the bar a while longer just to kind of keep an eye on things for whatever good it would do, I had a seat on a bar stool several down from the other group of pipeliners and women, and ordered my second beer of the night.
After serving it to me,
Dana had a seat on a stool behind the bar, opposite me, and pushed a newspaper she'd been reading to the side. "Crazy stuff in the news lately. And I have a feeling half of it isn't even reported, probably because people here in the USA don't even know. And isn't that crazy to think about, too? That the U.P. isn't even a part of Michigan or the USA anymore? It still blows my mind. Does the whole thing still blow yours?"
It did but it didn't at the same time. I'd kind of gotten used to the idea of "the whole thing" by this point. Even though it did all still seem absolutely bizarre and even vaguely terrifying if I thought about it too long.
*
"The whole thing" had started about three years earlier. In short, a young, brilliant, mentally troubled scientist working for the government in Washington, D.C. had used government labs to do a non-work-related side project, and that side project had been creation of some new kind of airborne germ weapon.
Whether intentionally or not, this germ weapon had been released into the air. Immediately after, the scientist had committed suicide after sending a TV station a rambling letter, saying that he'd created the weapon but hadn't been quite finished with it yet, and that there were still "things wrong with it," but that "creatures" living in his mind had "put the weapon into the air." According to media reports, the rest of the letter, at least three-fourths of it, had been primarily concerned with the scientist's love life, or the lack thereof, rather.
Over the next several days, amid national and even global panic, winds carried the germ throughout the Midwest, and by the end of the week, fifty thousand or so people had been affected by it. However, this didn't mean that anyone had gotten sick. This didn't mean that anyone had died. On the contrary, those affected, who were all men, had only gotten stronger.
The invisible airborne germ, whatever it was, had apparently changed the DNA of the men who'd breathed it in. And as surreal and unbelievable as it was, these fifty thousand or so thousand men throughout the Midwest had turned into human men that could also shift their forms into actual dragons just by thinking of it.
They could go from fully dressed, normal human men to massive scaly dragons, then back to fully dressed, normal human men within seconds. It was like literal magic, and some said that there had to be some sort of dark magic involved with it all. Some said that the mentally disturbed scientist had to have been some sort of a Satanist or a sorcerer as well.
However, being that he was dead, it didn't seem as if the mystery of his germ weapon would ever be revealed. The scientists who looked over all his papers and files after his suicide said everything was incomprehensible, written in a strange combination of letters, shapes, and symbols, as if it was an entirely different language.
The men who'd been affected by the germ, men who'd later become known as shifters, were at first taken off guard by the changes to their genetics. It had happened the same way for the majority of the men. One moment they were "normal," and the next, bright white light was shooting from their bodies. This was followed by several moments of remaining in human form, though with scaly skin. For some men, this completely involuntary "light show" happened several more times before they finally fully shifted into dragons.
For other men, it only happened once. For all men, though, one thing was the same. Once they'd shifted into full dragon form once, they never had another "light show" again. After that, shifting was voluntary and something they actually had to think about doing and want to do.
Weeks passed, and as stunned and bewildered as everyone was, the nation rejoiced that turning fifty-something thousand men into dragon shifters was the worst that the germ weapon had done, considering that most germ weapons were capable of sickening or even killing millions.
Life went on pretty much as it had before. The government had the shifters sign contracts stating that for reasons of public safety, they wouldn't shift into dragons except when in the privacy of their own homes or on their own private property, a stipulation that many late-night TV comedians found very funny, considering that most people didn't own homes large enough for a shifter to shift in without blowing the roof off.
These comedians also joked about the possibility of the government using the shifters as weapons to aid in national defense, though no one really thought they'd actually do this. The thought was just simply too far-fetched. Too bizarre. Even for people who'd recently lived through an airborne germ weapon turning thousands of human men into dragon shifters.
Over the next year or so, every now and then, another man would "turn up" as a shifter, and it became clear that for whatever reason, the germ weapon just had a delayed effect on some men. During this time, it also became clear that shifter fathers produced shifter sons. A couple hundred baby boys were born to shifter fathers, and many of them had "light show" episodes, where bright white light shot from their bodies, as if their physical forms were already trying to shift.
For the babies this happened to, though, this only happened once, but that was enough for the government to get a clue that the sons of shifter fathers would likely grow up to be shifters as well. DNA tests were conducted on all the babies that had been born to shifter fathers in the time since the germ was released, and these tests revealed that all baby boys indeed possessed DNA that wasn't typically or entirely human. All baby girls, however, were perfectly normal.
It was about this time that the government decided that maybe it would be "best" for them to "temporarily house" the male "shifter babies" so that they could just "do a few further tests" on them. They wanted to "house" and "do a few further tests" on the fathers at separate locations as well. A few suspicious shifters who were in the military did some spying and produced government plans that included possibly killing all the shifters, both men and babies.
These plans were sent to a national news magazine and published, along with other government documents that made it clear that the government was afraid of the shifters and considered them an "internal threat to national security." At the same time, though, the government wanted to study the shifters, do tests on all kinds on them, to learn more about DNA and the germ that had started the whole thing.
Several days after the government documents were published; the shifters who'd uncovered the plans went missing. They just vanished without a trace. After that, it wouldn't have been far off the mark to say that, "all hell broke loose."
All shifters in the nation, most of them still living in the US, demanded that the government give them their own land to create their own sovereign nation where they could raise their children in peace and safety. The government said no. Everything very quickly escalated, and soon the shifters were engaged in all-out war against their own government. Surprisingly, or maybe not, considering the contents of the published government documents, most people in the nation were on the shifters' side, saying that they should be given their own land and nation. After all, the shifters could now never trust that their own government wouldn't ever try to kill them and their sons.
Mass evacuations of civilians took place, and battles between the shifters and the military ensued. Whole cities were leveled; government bases were destroyed, mostly by dragon fire; hundreds of soldiers were killed; at least a dozen civilians were killed; and dozens of dragons were killed by missiles and rockets.
Very fortunately, it was a speedy war. At the end of two weeks, with public pressure mounting, the government signed a peace treaty with David Bledsoe, the leader of the shifters. The treaty stated that the shifters would be given the entire Upper Peninsula of Michigan, also known as the U.P., to have as their own small, sovereign nation. In exchange, the shifters had to agree to a complete and total "ceasefire," which they did.
As far as the three hundred and ten thousand or so residents of the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula, they were just out of luck, at least as far as remaining in the U.P. They were all ordered by the United States government to relocate within thirty days.
However, the residents were in a bit of luck as far as their finances
were concerned. To ensure their full cooperation with no trouble, the government gave every resident, every single man, woman, and child, a payment of three million dollars each to relocate, plus additional payment commensurate with the value of whatever real estate or business each resident had owned. With this being the case, most residents were absolutely fine with moving to lower Michigan or other parts of the country.
The shifters and their families moved to their new nation, which David Bledsoe simply named the Free Dragon State, or the FDS. He would wear the mantle of commander-in-chief of this new nation, which would be a democracy similar though not at all identical to the United States. It was said by some people to be "democracy-ish," whatever that meant.
For the time being, the commander-in-chief would serve an indefinite term. When David Bledsoe died or voluntarily stepped down, a new commander-in-chief would be elected by a council, who would have been elected by the citizenry. It was all going to take a little time for things to shake out, maybe even several generations.
For two years or so, everything went fairly well. The FDS was recognized as a sovereign nation by all other nations in the world. With all the shifters and their families, the population of the FDS was about two hundred thousand, which was only about two-thirds of the former population of the U.P, but still plenty large enough a population in terms of having enough people to perform functions in commerce, government, and infrastructure maintenance. Due to a high birth rate, the population was even already growing. Things in the small new nation were apparently working.
However, recently, as Dana had said, some "crazy" things had been happening, and these things had been reported by the media. Though also as Dana had said, all of us in the United States probably didn't even know the full extent of all the "crazy" things.
