by Logan Jacobs
“I would, too,” Fela murmured. She sat cross-legged and lapped at the steaming cup of tea with her pointed pink tongue. “I have never seen what happens when lightning strikes something, but I felt what it was like when those dogs threw it at me. It was not like the buzzing of bees as your great-grandmother said, but like being stung by bees many times.”
“The strange thing is that it didn’t hurt her,” Emma continued. “She knew it should, but all she felt was that tingling, and it didn’t hurt nearly as much as she thought it would. Then the bright light went out like a snap, and everything went black. When she came to, she was lying on the ground under the laundry line, and she didn’t feel hurt at all. But the rest of the world wasn’t as lucky.”
I took another bite of my pickle and nodded. I was really hooked on Emma’s great-grandmama’s story now.
“Everyone who’d been out on the street or in their front yards were just piles of ashes,” Emma continued, “She said the smell was horrible, like burned fatback, and nearly all of the animals were lying dead in the road, too. All of the houses with tar paper for roofs were on fire, and half the other houses had little flames here and there where the lightning had connected with the nails. The birds had stopped singing, and the air was filled with the sounds of horrid little zaps and the clattering and pounding of every machine in town. She wandered around town looking for survivors, but if people weren’t piles of ash out in the streets they were dead in their houses. Some of them were half burnt and some of them looked like they’d just collapsed.”
“That is horrible,” Fela breathed. “And I am hungry. What are those red things?”
“Oh, do try them.” Emma grabbed a fork, speared a slice of red thing out of the jar, and handed the fork to Fela, then held out the jar to me. “They’re pickled apples with honey. It’s a bit of an experiment.”
I finished my pickle, took a slice of apple, and bit into it. The sweet honey and the intense sourness of the vinegar didn’t quite overpower the crisp apple’s woodsy taste, and it was nearly as refreshing as the pickle.
“Great-grandmama Esther scoured the town for hours,” Emma continued. “She prayed that great-grandpapa had been spared, but she found his body lying in the street halfway to the coal mine. After that, she just left. The mine had caught on fire because of the lightning strike anyway, and she could see the smoke starting to rise up into the air. She knew there wasn’t anything left for her in that town.”
“So was that when she got the electrical powers?” I asked.
“Well, she didn’t realize that right away,” Emma said. “It wasn’t until she got to the town in the next holler over that she ran across a goat who spat lightning at her, and she got so mad that she spat thunder right back in its eye.”
Emma chuckled and shook her head fondly. Her voice had gotten a little more Southern as she’d related her great-grandmother’s story, but it was still just as soft and cultured as before.
“She walked all the way to Richmond before she figured out what had happened,” Emma continued. “She had to dodge trains that had run off their tracks and were chugging along through farmland with no engineer at the wheel and no fireman to stoke the boilers, electric carriages driven by no living man’s hand, and even a streetcar that ran up and down the main street of the city just ringing its bell over and over, but there were a few survivors still roaming the streets. She managed to find them and figure out what had happened.”
“So what was it?” Fela reached over to the jar so snag another apple slice.
“Mr. Tesla’s invention had sent all that electricity into the atmosphere just like Dave said,“ Emma explained. “The whole atmosphere got electrified all at once, and lightning struck just about everywhere it could find. It brought all those machines to life, and it blessed those of us who survived with its powers.”
“So the machines are alive!” Fela turned to me. “I knew something so hungry had to be a creature and not a tool.”
“I wouldn’t say that they’re alive exactly,” Emma mused, “but they certainly do keep going long after they’ve run out of fuel. I suppose Mr. Tesla did succeed in his experiment, in his own way. He delivered endless free energy to tractors and trains and sewing-machines and things like that, even if he did kill nearly all the people in the world.”
“I guess that’s technically accurate.” I chased my last bite of apple slice down with more of the mint tea.
“Grandmama Edith had the same powers and electrical field as great-grandmama,” Emma continued. “It was an awful disappointment to great-grandmama, but it was just as well, since all of the survivors, man and animal alike, had the same kind of power. There was only one boy-child in the new group of survivors who was Grandmama Edith’s age. His name was William, so Grandmama Edith married him when they were both old enough. When the rest of the older survivors died, Edith and William moved north to find more people. They found a family of survivors outside of Indianapolis and had a baby named Eleanor. And that’s where my Mama Eleanor met my Papa Charlie. Then they had to move north again because of a territory battle, so they made it all the way up by Chicago, and that’s where they had me.”
“What happened to the other survivors?” I asked. “Or was it just you and your parents?”
“It was just me and Mama and Papa.” Emma shook her head. “Everyone else died in the territory battle. I was not even alive back then, so I don’t remember. Papa never would talk about it, and all Mama would say was that they made a hard choice that day.”
“That is hard,” Fela murmured. “To be driven out of your land, alone, by a pack of vicious strangers. Did you lose another territory battle after your mother died?”
“No, nobody ever came by our little settlement at all,” Emma sighed. “That was why I left. I knew I would never meet anyone to share my life with if I just stayed in that little cabin for the rest of my life. I loved Mama with all my heart, but I was already twenty when she died! When she passed, I dug up the garden to bury her, took as many seed plants as I could, and just started walking east. When I couldn’t find anyone in Detroit, even by the river, I decided to go back the way I’d come, but then I realized how cold it was going to be soon and that I didn’t want to be lost someplace in the woods when winter came. I was honestly planning to leave as soon as it got warm out, but I’ve been putting it off rather more than I should have, even with those awful dogs around.”
“Seeds?” Fela put down her cup. Her pupils widened and her tail curled up behind her. “You have seed plants? I will trade you as many spears as you want for seed plants.”
“That’s a very generous offer,” Emma murmured, but her eyes slid sideways toward me as she spoke to Fela. “It would be nice to have something to protect me about the place. A single girl can only do so much on her own, after all.”
My breath caught in my throat as I gazed into Emma’s sky-blue eyes. Lightning seemed to crackle from my fingers and the tips of my nose as I watched the black-haired beauty’s cheeks grow pink, and I almost felt as though I’d been trapped in her electrical field like a fly in a spider’s web.
Emma obviously needed company. She’d been traveling for three years and braving untold dangers just for the chance of having someone to spend time with, and she’d been so willing to trust a complete stranger that she’d given me a huge knife and then turned her back on me not more than an hour after I’d met her. She also clearly needed protection. Not only did she stand a good chance of living her entire life alone in this world, she stood a good chance of getting ripped apart by lightning-fanged feral dogs as soon as Fela and I left, or maybe even sooner if the dogs brought back more friends.
Emma also had seed plants, and a successful garden, and pickles that she’d made herself. Hell, she even knew what a parsnip was. She’d grown up on a homestead in a post-apocalyptic Little House on the Prairie world, and she’d survived in the wilderness by herself for three years with nothing but electric wildlife for company. She clearly had a lot o
f survival skills beyond gardening, pickling, and throwing lightning at her enemies.
She was also cute, single, and just about my age.
I wanted to invite Emma to come along with Fela and I on our journey through parallel universes, but I wasn’t sure whether Fela would be likely to take offense if I invited someone else along without asking her. The cat-woman would have to spend as much time with our new friend as I would, after all, and she didn’t have much choice but to stick with me if she ever wanted to see her home again.
“Hey, Fela,” I began. “Private meeting outside real quick?”
“Oh, dear, have I done something wrong?” Emma glanced from me to Fela and back again.
“I will go outside with you,” Fela said. She sprang up from the rag rug, darted over to the door, and yanked at the doorknob.
“You gotta turn it, Fela.” I stepped in, wrapped my hand around the tarnished brass doorknob, and turned it slowly so Fela could see.
Fela shoved the door open, slipped outside, and darted over to where Floppy stood chewing on sumac leaves. She positioned herself so that Floppy was between her and the window, then beckoned me over as the little mammoth rubbed his head against her side.
“Is there danger in the house that I do not see?” Fela whispered to me.
“No, no danger,” I assured her. I patted Floppy’s hairy side and heard the little mammoth grunt slightly in response. “I was thinking of asking Emma to come with us, actually. I think she’d be a really great asset to our team. She has all those seed plants, and she knows how to survive, and she’s really nice--”
“You would tear this woman away from everything she knows on purpose?” Fela interrupted me.
“Wow, I did not think that was going to be your issue.” I held up my hands. “You don’t think she’d want to come with us? She lives in a world full of lightning dogs and no humans, Fela.”
“She understands this world and its challenges,” Fela retorted. “She hopes to find a mate of her own kind. She even planted seeds by her cave! She said she was planning to move on, but changed her mind. It is clear that she hopes to stay in one place for as long as she can hold it.”
“She won’t last for long with those dogs running around out there,” I argued. “Anyway, I’m just going to ask her. She seems really lonely, and it’s not like this world is exactly full of people for her to meet. She’s lived her entire life without meeting anyone except for her family and a bunch of cannibals in Ohio. I think she might like the chance to be somewhere else.”
“You can ask her, but I doubt she will say yes.” Fela shook her head.
“If she says no, she says no,” I shrugged. “I can take rejection. That’s not the problem. I wanted to make sure that you were okay with having her along. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together, no matter how big that circle of dirt gets.”
“You want to know if I think she is a good addition to the pack,” Fela said slowly. “I understand. I am not used to being asked what I think about new pack members before they are adopted into the tribe.”
“New pack members?” I thought about that for a second. “Yeah, I guess we are kind of a pack, aren’t we?”
“Dave Meyer, Floppy, and me.” Fela nodded. “We are a good pack. And Emma Newbold. If she will come with us.”
“So you think it’s a good idea?” I asked. “I mean, having another person along?”
“If our territory gets bigger every time we travel to another world, then we will have enough room for as many pack members as we want,” Fela said. “Emma is kind and can shoot lightning from her hands. I think she is a good choice, especially if we do not travel into many more worlds where the people and beasts have that lightning ability.”
“Then it’s settled.” I nodded. “We’ll ask Emma to come with us.”
“Yes, we will.” A faint smile brightened the corners of Fela’s mouth. “Are you ready to go back inside, or is there anything else that we need to meet privately about?”
“There are a few little things I could think of, but we shouldn’t keep Emma waiting.” I winked at Fela.
“Is there something in your eye?” She turned her head to the side and her mane of hair drifted over her sun-bronzed shoulders.
“Ahh, no,” I chucked. “It was just a wink. Like for, uhh, you know, shared stuff between people.”
“I like sharing stuff with you, Dave Meyer,” she said.
“Ohh, uhh, really?” As soon as the words left my mouth I realized I sounded like an idiot, so I cleared my throat and smiled at her. “I mean, I really like sharing stuff with you, too, Fela.”
“Let us ask Emma Newbold if she will share travels with us, then.” The cat-woman gave me a long, slow blink in return, rubbed Floppy behind the ear, then sauntered past me on her way back to the bungalow. Her tail curled out and brushed against my leg as she passed me.
I patted Floppy on the hindquarters, watched Fela’s tight, round ass swing back and forth under her curling tail as she sauntered away, and then followed her up the porch to Emma’s door. I had figured out that the cat-girl had been flirting with me on and off ever since I’d gotten her to lay down her spear, but I hadn’t realized that she’d already started to think of us as a pack. I made a mental note to ask her some more detailed questions about what pack dynamics were like in her world later so we wouldn’t talk past each other again.
Fela hadn’t voiced any problems with Emma as a person, but objected to trying to get her to come along with us on our journey across dimensions. The cat-girl just hadn’t thought that Emma would be interested. Maybe she’d been thinking about the way she hadn’t had a choice in joining my pack.
I couldn’t help but be flattered that the gorgeous, athletic cat-woman was showing interest in me, but now I wondered whether she was really into me at all or whether she just figured that she had no choice in the matter. I definitely wanted Fela to be nice to me, especially since she was a ripped-as-hell survivor of a savage world and my only physical advantage over her seemed to be my ability to run for slightly longer distances without slowing down as much, but I didn’t want a girl to pretend to be attracted to me just because she thought it was her duty to the pack or something. I knew I would have to talk to Fela about that, too, if only for my own peace of mind, but that seemed like it would have to wait for later when we had a little more personal time together.
“Is everything alright?” Emma rose from her seat as we walked in. Her blue eyes were already starting to glisten, and her porcelain brow was furrowed with worry. “You don’t have to get back to your machine already, do you?”
“No, we actually have a couple of days,” I said. I glanced at Fela and then back at the dark-haired beauty. “We want to ask you something.”
“Oh?” Emma blinked a few times, but the corners of her red rosebud lips started to curve up into a hopeful smile. She patted her bun, folded her hands over each other, and straightened her shoulders. It looked like she was getting ready to receive a proposal of marriage from some beau in a mustache. “Do go ahead, Dave. Ask me whatever is on your mind.”
“So, look...” I wiped my sweaty palms on my dirt-stained jeans and tried to ignore the tightness in my chest. Just because I was asking Emma to leave the home she’d made and travel the multiverse with me forever didn’t mean I had to be nervous about it, but my body wasn’t listening to me about that. I took a deep breath and spoke. “Do you want to come with us? It seems like you’re pretty lonely here, and I’m gonna be honest, this is kind of a crappy world. Now, I can’t promise that I can ever get you home again if you decide to come with us, and I can’t promise that--”
“Oh, Dave, I will!” Emma flew across the room, threw her arms around my neck, and kissed me on the cheek. Her lips were as warm and soft as they’d looked, and I felt a blush spread across my cheeks as Emma pulled her lips away. She gazed into my eyes with pure, sparkling joy. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
“Y-yeah, it’s my pleasure,” I
stammered. I could feel Emma’s small, pert breasts pressed against my chest, and I glanced down at her mother-of-pearl buttons before I dragged my gaze up the high-waisted neck of her blouse, the few inches of swan-like throat that peeked out of her lace collar, her pointed chin, red rosebud lips, button nose, and back to those sky-blue eyes. “Glad to have you with us.”
“It’s very kind of you, really.” Emma let go of my neck, stepped away, and gave me a shy smile as she patted her bun into place. “I promise I’ll try not to be too much of a burden.”
“You are very eager to leave your own world behind,” Fela observed. “You do understand that you may never be able to come back here?”
“Oh, damn and blast this lousy world!” Emma slapped her hand across her mouth, then removed it and shook her head. “I suppose you don’t care if I use profanity, do you?”
“Shit, you can say whatever the hell you want around me, and I won’t fucking get offended.” I grinned at Emma.
“Naughty!” Emma giggled. “But I mean it. I’ve spent years reading books about what life used to be like before the Great Electrical Storm. There were dinner parties and masquerade balls and high teas, and pubs and shops and towns all full of people, and I know that I can still find places like that out there somewhere. They may not be just like the ones in my books, but I’d much rather wander through a strange city full of a thousand people speaking a language I don’t understand than have to spend the rest of my life fighting with feral dogs for my meat every night.”
“Speaking of meat...” Fela glanced outside. “The food and drink you gave us was refreshing, but we will need to get more to eat before the sun goes down.”
“I’ve got plenty of parsnips and preserves in the pantry,” Emma said. “I can even pick some pea shoots if you’d like something fresh.”
“Humans may be able to live on plants alone, but I cannot.” Fela shook her head. “You are kind to offer us your food, but I need to eat flesh or I will starve. I will need to hunt an animal, or at least find a river or pond with some fish in it.”
