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  They continued east, but the basketball arena, Eddy Street Commons, and most of the off-campus apartments up that way were all gone, replaced by more hills, trees, and strange pools of water that had collected in countless places.

  Mason eventually resigned himself to the fact that wherever he was, his friend David Pritchard was gone, whether he was dead or over on the opposite side of this strange new, alternate reality.

  He paused and said a little silent prayer for his good friend, and for Tori, and everyone else he knew.

  What about his folks in Cleveland? His parents? His younger brother Jerry and his little sister Katey, both of them still in high school?

  Were they still alive? Would he ever find them one day? Were these strange violent monsters everywhere?

  So many questions just left him numb. If he thought about everything too much, he’d break down and cry and flip out.

  He could only focus on the now. Dave was gone. Stay alive, and find Tori. That was enough to deal with, for now. Keep going. Keep busy.

  Everywhere he looked, people just like him struggled to deal with the shock of all of the changes of this new reality. As Blondie suggested, if the mix-up was like this here, it was most likely worldwide in their dimension or reality. Mason felt crazy and just silly even pondering such things, but there it all was.

  What had happened? Why had everything stopped working? Was there some evil force behind all of this?

  On their way back from looking for David, Mason tried to find the Blackwoods over on Calvert Street, older friends of his and Dave’s, not far from Mason’s ruined duplex on Allen Street by the new lake. But there were trees in place of the Blackwoods’ house as well. They were gone, too. Hopefully alive and well on “the other side,” just like David.

  Mason sat down and thought for a bit. Blondie was silent; he did seem to be very stoic and quiet much of the time.

  “Blondie, I know we’re supposed to meet Howard and the cop back at Reinert’s place, but my girlfriend Tori lives in Elkhart with her parents and her sister.”

  “Is that where you want to go? How far away is that?”

  “About twenty or twenty-five miles of more. If we found some bikes and enough connected roads we could probably reach it in a couple of days at most. Once I find Tori, I can put my mind at rest.”

  Blondie paled. “We don’t know what’s out there, Mace. Just two of us, out all alone at night, against huge bands of those monsters? You won’t be able to help your girl–or anyone else, for that matter–if we get killed. And what about your people here? Won’t they need your help, with what you can do now? I think they’re going to need all the help they can get.”

  Mason sighed heavily. “You’re right, Blondie. All good points.”

  “Besides,” Blondie added. “I have absolutely no idea what a bike is.”

  Mason looked at him. “Bikes are those things we’ve seen other people on all day. The contraptions that they peddle with the two wheels.”

  “Ohh…”

  “And just now, you said ‘your people.’ Aren’t they your people, too?”

  Blondie shrugged. “I don’t know why I said that.”

  A cold shiver shot up Mason’s spine. “What if…what if you aren’t from my world, Blondie? What if you’re from the other world, and you just can’t remember? That would explain your strange boots.”

  A couple of attractive young women walked by. One of them glanced Blondie’s way.

  Blondie smiled back and stared after them, running his hands through his longish, golden hair. “Hmm…I suppose it’s possible. Then, except for my boots, why was I wearing clothing from your world? How did I learn to speak your language?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Blondie continued. “If I was from the other dimension, then perhaps I had a way to cross over between the two. Before the…the Merge happened.”

  “The Merge?” Mason asked.

  “Let’s just call it the Merge for now. But getting back to our main line of conjecture. To obtain your clothing and learn your language and some of your ways, I must have spent a significant amount of time here on your world, prior to the cataclysm. I learned to more or less pass as one of you.”

  “But why?” Mason asked. “Why did you come here? What was your purpose for doing so?”

  Blondie shrugged. “Perhaps I was an explorer. Or maybe my people feared or knew the Merge was going to happen, somehow. Perhaps I was sent to warn you?”

  Mason swallowed hard. He couldn’t help his mood darkening. “Then why didn’t you warn us right away about what was coming? Why study us and learn our ways first, if such a cataclysm was coming?”

  Blondie shuffled a bit. “I don’t know, Mace. This is all your conjecture, not mine. We don’t know it if–”

  Mason just blurted it out. “What if your people were the ones who made all of this happen? What if the Merge was deliberate?”

  Blondie nodded. “That is also quite possible. I guess for now, there’s still just too much that we don’t know. I don’t even recall who I am, so don’t start blaming me for this entire mess.”

  “No, you’re right.” Mason pulled out the piece of paper Reinert gave him with the address. “Let’s check on Howard at Reinert’s place. Then we’ll go with Reinert over to the high school and check out the militia. If it feels right, maybe I’ll show them a little of what I can do. We’ll see if we make it through this next night before we try to reach Elkhart. Does that sound fair?”

  Blondie shrugged. “We don’t have anything else to do. I don’t know anything, so I’m following you. Let’s go. Do you think they’ll give us some food and drink?”

  Mason smiled as they walked, other people streaming all around them. “I think they will, if they have any to spare. We did save Reinert’s life, after all. But let’s be polite and let them make the offer.”

  “I don’t understand. The man is indebted to us for saving his life. He should owe us a great deal. We shouldn’t have to beg for his help. Wow, will you look at the way she’s built!”

  “Blondie, pay attention. When you talk like that, I start feeling like maybe you were from the other side and–just maybe–you weren’t such a nice guy, after all. Hey, are you even listening to me?”

  Blondie grinned, keeping a distracted eye out for more pretty women. “Perhaps. I’ll follow you, for now, Mace. You can blow stuff up, so lead the way. But if we meet some pretty girls, just let me do the talking.”

  “Seriously? You have amnesia…but you’re good with women.”

  His strange friend smiled even wider. “Mace…some things you never forget.”

  5

  David looked around them in the twilight where they sat on the cold curb, freezing his butt through his jeans. Remnant patches of snow and old, matted-down oak and maple leaves lay fused together. The metal cable and electrical boxes nearby, blocked part of their view. The light yellow, two-story Victorian across the street stood on the corner. White wrought iron fence, high bushes, wooden fence down by the river, near the bridge.

  A weird mixture of chaos and ominous silence closed in all around them. It was almost suffocating. Like the chill in the still air, in the bare, wraithlike trees all throughout the neighborhood. No sign of a full spring yet.

  And yet somehow, everything around them had changed. Anyone could sense that. And they had not changed for the better.

  “We’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t we?” David said to the strange girl from another world.

  She nodded, looking as if she were in just as much in shock as he was.

  “Do you know what’s happened, Jerriel?”

  “I natta zhure, Daeved. Batta eet iz verry natta goo-ud.”

  He took in a few deep breaths.

  “What world are you from, Jerriel?”

  “Eet is culd Tharanor. Eet is verry mush lahk yoor woorld...in some vays. Baht een uzzer vays, yoors is verry stra-hange.”

  He looked around again instinctively. “These monsters.
They’re from Tharanor–your world?”

  Jerriel nodded. “Yaes. On Tharanor, theez lands are, how you zay–vild. No peeples. Jest mon-sters. Verry bad. Much danger.”

  He rose up and put his hand on his sword.

  “We should go,” he said. “Will you come with me, Jerriel?”

  She thought about it. “I weel, Daeved. I amza weery. Yoo help me. I help yoo.”

  “Sounds good. We should go. I have friends nearby.”

  They walked down Northshore as the dawn rose golden in the sky. It was all so crazy.

  David couldn’t help noticing, again: no cars were moving. No trucks. People stayed in their homes for the time being. Dogs barked and cats screeched here and there. People screamed and shouted in the distance.

  Jerriel smoothed her long black hair from her pretty face, fixing it up with her gleaming metal hair clips. She glanced at him and finally relaxed enough to smile slightly.

  An incredible smile.

  David wished they weren’t in so much trouble. That she was just a pretty coed he met in the Subway line at the Huddle. But it just wasn’t that way. Not now.

  Maybe not ever again.

  That realization really shook him up.

  They could not cross 933 at the bridge over the St. Joseph River, curving up Northshore toward Angela.

  Because the river was still there, but the bridge and a long section of the street weren’t. Just more forests on both sides of the rushing St. Joe.

  In the end, they had to circle way around by the Portage Road turnabout.

  Both of them remained very nervous. They tried to keep talking and learn more about each other, despite the language problem. The cracked gem in Jerriel’s headpiece continued to flash and spark at times.

  Talking together kept them sane, even if it was with someone from another world.

  Still no traffic. No street lights worked.

  They’d reach his friends in a few miles as they circled around–Mason Tyler, Tori Nelson, and the Blackwoods.

  Just let him and Jerriel make it there safe.

  Then Jerriel pointed down along the river as the view opened on their left over the bridge. Her voice sounded both frightened and sad.

  “Look, Daeved. I’m zorry.”

  Bodies. Corpses lined both river sides. Some of them were snagged along the banks. More in the water.

  Several were human–two of them children.

  Dead monsters, too. It was still a big shock to see that many bodies.

  “The smaller creatures are called torgs,” Jerriel said. “Dere are beeger ones like dem, called ka-torgs.”

  He remembered, all too well. “I saw an even bigger monster,” David said. “Very tall, with long, hairy arms.”

  “Mor-kahls. Very strong. Then there are gozogs. They are even beegger and more powerful. They all eat everything. Even eech other. Anything they can choke down.”

  Great. Voracious monster killing and eating machines.

  A vast shadow. Without warning, an enormous green dragon swooped down over the river, scooping up bodies in its massive claws. It wheeled deftly away and sped off low over the trees, sweeping swiftly out of sight.

  Holy kah-rap. It was a hundred feet long!

  David staggered back, jabbing his finger frantically at the sky where it disappeared. He couldn’t breathe. He could hardly speak. “D-d-dragons?”

  “We call them shallavoks,” Jerriel said. As if spotting one was an every day thing. “Verry dangeruss.”

  Okay. He was seriously on the verge of flipping out once more.

  They continued on the bike path on the left side of Northshore to Angela Street and crossed the bridge there. A chilly breeze cut across the bridge from over the river.

  They crossed to the right-hand side of the bridge. An old dead locust tree lay jammed up again the bank on the right. More bodies.

  His college buddy Mason Tyler lived off campus with two roommates on Allen Street. Mason’s cute, redheaded girlfriend Tori was probably with him.

  Mason and Tori were lucky; the two of them were obviously head over heels in love. David himself had only had two girlfriends throughout high school. He had dated a few college girls, but nothing ever developed. He just never felt a spark.

  When he looked at Jerriel, it was like lightning bolts zapping him silly.

  When they were halfway over the bridge, both of them stopped and stared north, but David more than Jerriel.

  Strange trees dotted the riverbanks, their numbers increasing into the curving distance. Dark forested hills rose up beyond the river farther to the far north.

  He went by that way often.

  There had never been hills like that before. South Bend, Indiana, was notoriously flat. What in damnation was going on?

  “It’s...it’s worse than I thoot,” Jerriel said.

  “What is?” David said.

  “Yoo felt a breef instant of great pain earlee this moorning?”

  David recalled that very well. It startled him awake, right before everything went completely nuts. “Yeah. Really awful.”

  “I filt eet too. I feer evereeone in both oor deemensions did. There has been a verry greet event. A cataclysm.”

  David looked north again. His hands shook. His knees almost buckled. What she said was completely insane, but from what he had seen, it all started to make sense.

  “That’s not Earth out there anymore, is it?” He pointed at the hills in the distance and the strange trees.

  “No.” Jerriel said. “It iz Tharanor. Parts of our deemensions have gotten meexed up, somehoo. They must be sister-worlds. This is incredibly bad, Daeved.”

  “You’re telling me. That must be why nothing’s working.” He dug his cell out of his backpack and checked it again, and dropped it back in. Nothing. Everything technological had been disrupted. If even part of what Jerriel said was true, the world David knew was pretty much gone. Just like that.

  Those ramifications alone were pretty grim. Even without the frickin’ monsters.

  “C’mon. Follow me,” he managed to say. David took her by the hand. At first they walked up to Portage Road and turned left, crossing the street. When they spotted Sherman Street, David led them right and started to trot. Then they ran down Vassar. At Vassar and Allen they turned left around the corner.

  Jerriel kept up with him.

  They stopped abruptly.

  Past the first house on the other side of Allen Street, all the houses were gone. They just weren’t there anymore. And all of Allen Street beyond that.

  Where Mason’s house had been.

  Instead, they stared at a wide swath of dark, dangerous-looking forest, leading down into a deep hollow and a brackish pool. Old growth forest all around. Ancient, massive trees. Weird trees that were like and yet unlike trees that he knew. Something was off about each one. Oak, maple, hickory, pine, fir–all with strange bark or weirdly shaped leaves or needles or odd colorations. And like the trees, some of the heavy brush and brambles, thorns and weeds, also defied description.

  Where did it all come from? The streets and houses on the northwest side just ended. And then the eerie forest began.

  Trails led off into those grim trees. Animal trails and trails with booted feet and many strange tracks. David smelled blood, smoke, and something rank.

  Monster stench–still lingering.

  As they skirted the forest’s edge, several of the nearby houses looked broken into. They spotted blood trails and darker gory patches where victims had been cut up and dragged off. A few houses still burned or had been reduced to smoking heaps of ruin on their foundations.

  As crazy as they looked, some yards and houses on the edge of the change were half normal and half part of the other dimension’s forest.

  Tharanor.

  “What if someone was caught on the very edge of the change?” David asked.

  Jerriel grimaced. “They would be torn in half like everything else. The effects of this merging would keel them.”

&
nbsp; They started calling it the Merge. So be it.

  David held his head with both hands and rocked a little. Hell, if the Merge had taken place worldwide, even at random that would mean millions of deaths from that event, alone. An intense disaster on a planet-wide scale had taken place–for both dimensions.

  He feared the worst for his friends Mason and Tori. Mason’s rowdy roommates were also gone for spring break. What was happening to them? And to his own family in Cleveland.

  Mason and his girlfriend Tori had looked forward all month to some serious alone time together. Now they could all be dead.

  “The parts of Earth that are gone,” David asked. “Have they been destroyed completely?”

  Jerriel held up her hands. She looked lost, too. “Perhaps yess. Perhaps noo. Weeth our dimensions touching, our sister-worlds could be jumbled up, half and half on booth sides. It is amazing that booth dimensions were not completely destroyed in the Cataclysm. We could all have been obleetorated.”

  He looked straight into her large violet eyes. “How do you know all of this?”

  Jerriel shook her head. “I don’t. I’m jest guessing. Jest like yoo.”

  “You’re from another dimension. Another world. This Tharanor… How can we even speak to each other? You should be speaking another language, and yet I can understand you more and more every minute.”

  She sensed his panic and gently took him by both arms. “Eet’s all right, Daeved. I’m scared and confoosed, too.” She touched the dark, cracked gem on her forehead. “Thees enchanted jewel normally allows me to speak and understand any tongue eezily. But eet has been damaged. Eet only woorks een part, now. Eevan woorse, I can’t get any of my other magicks to woork. Not at all. No spells. Nathing.” The fear and frustration in her words were palpable.

  David needed to sit down again. He felt dizzy, and plopped down on the curb. Jerriel sat beside him while he rubbed his eyes. His brain was on overload.

  “Are yoo sokay?” she asked. She sounded worried.

  How much more of this could he take? David looked over at her, still completely flabbergasted.

  “Magic?” he inquired.