shatterverse | (no subject)

Current Location: US 34, Western Iowa

Entry tags:

(no subject)

It starts the usual way: A flash, a bang, a person standing, disoriented, near a long stretch of deserted road.

But this man falls to his knees-

(thousands of voices; screaming, crying in his head; anger and despair and everything in between, and he can’t fight, can’t ignore, can’t resist them; stop, stop, Goddess why won’t it STOP)

-and clutches his head, letting loose an agonized shout of surprise.

Then it's over, and it's like it never was.

Jamie lowers his hands, noticing in a detached manner that short strands of blond hair come away in his fingers, and sits back on his haunches, blinking. The last thing he remembers is laughing at a joke -- a bad one, with three tavern wenches and a statue -- and climbing a ladder to get at the apples high in an Olau tree. His shirt still smells like the orchard: sun and fruit and green, growing things. Had he fallen? Is this a fevered hallucination brought on by his broken body and healing magic gone wrong? Grace never could get the hang of it. She’s probably given him an extra thumb.

No. All’s right with that.

Digging his fingers into the earth beside the road, he watches it sift back to the ground. It's chunky and rough, but not dry. Even so, it's clearly not the smooth, dark soil of Olau. Jamie sniffs his hand, frowns and pulls himself to his feet. The road crests a hill to the west. Maybe there's something on the other side to explain what's happened; maybe not. Nothing to do, he supposes, but to start walking.

He'll get back to the pain (voices) in his head later. When the mood strikes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Shit. You don't even know what jello is? We're going to have to remedy that asap. It's a well-known fact that everything is better with jello."

The suggestive intonation at the end and the accompanying eyebrow waggle really do not help pinpoint the nature of the substance. The truth could well be an anticlimax now. Then again...

Still smirking, she glances at the road surface.

"That's tarmac. Or asphalt. I don't know. It's a tar-like substance mixed with rock chips." Unapologetically, "Sorry. I was kinda distracted by the near-fatal wreck I'd just survived when you asked."

"Why are you so interested in it?"

"Tar."

Curiosity appeased, Jamie wipes the remaining dirt from his hands and turns a frankly sensual look on Eleanor, a suggestion that while the word 'jello' might still be unfamiliar, her intent is not. Flirtation is, after all, a universal language. He's abruptly glad of that.

The question makes him laugh. She'd seemed puzzled when he hadn't asked many himself, and now that he has -- again, because once he sets his mind to know something he doesn't easily let go -- she can't figure out why.

"Da didn't elaborate on the finer details," he explains at last, eyes bright with humor. "Tortallan roads are either dusty or cobbled stone. I've never seen its like." A hand wave at the asphalt. "I'm only sorry my preoccupation gave you the opportunity to study it at such close range."

Smirk. Near fatal his ass. He saw her haul that bike out of the ditch.

Edited 2008-07-18 15:01 (UTC)

Eleanor looks down at her dirt-stained jeans and the scrapes on the bike's muffler, before awarding Jamie a solemn nod.

"Apology accepted."

"For future reference, it's not such a good idea to wander on paved roads in this world. They tend to carry high volumes of motorized traffic. If you have to, walk on the left, so you're facing the oncoming vehicles..."

She trails off, an odd look on her face, and checks both directions of the road. It just occured to her that in the fifteen or so minutes since the crash, not a single vehicle has passed them. US-34 is a fairly major highway, and it's early afternoon. The lack of traffic is... inexplicably weird.

Jamie follows her gaze, frowning slightly.

They are utterly alone.

"Advice likewise accepted" is his absent reply. "Though I don't think I need to mention that circumstances would suggest otherwise."

He has no reason to doubt her word. So where are all the other motorbikes?

"Perhaps the road is closed ahead," he hazards.

Edited 2008-07-18 15:25 (UTC)

"I didn't see any construction signs," Eleanor replies.

She waves her arm to the east. "There's an interstate—a big four lane highway—a couple of miles that way. This road is the main connector to the town of Plattsmouth on the other side of the border. They wouldn't shut it down."

Her eyes narrow suspiciously.

"It is unusually quiet though."

The truth is that everything about the last half hour is unfamiliar territory for Jamie. He'd been transported here by unknown forces, so of course things should continue in a strange pattern. If he stopped to think about it -- to really, truly examine the potential cause and effect wreaking havoc on his sense of normalcy -- his head might start hurting again. He'd rather take things one step at a time.

What worries him more is Eleanor's reaction. This shouldn't be strange for her.

"We should have a look."

"I guess," Eleanor agrees, striding into the grass again and picking up her helmet from where she threw it. Returning to the bike, she stows the map, saddles up and kicks the engine into noisy life again.

Before sliding the helmet back on, she looks to Jamie and pats the pillion seat behind her.

"Mount up, buster. We're moving out."

"Jamie," he repeats, grinning, above the roar of the engine.

Studying the helmet, then the bike, Jamie hesitates. There's no trepidation on his face, however. It's more like he's absorbing the details his father never mentioned, so that he can recall them later.

Whatever it is it passes in the space of a few heartbeats, and he deftly throws a leg over the bike and sits, hands lightly gripping her waist. No hesitation, there.

"You can rest your feet on these," Eleanor says, pointing out the little bars that jut out of the bike frame for just that purpose. She puts on her helmet, but leaves the visor up this time, allowing her amused smile to be clearly seen.

"We'll get you a helmet of your own soon," she tells him, and starts tapping at the screen of a small GPS unit that is molded in the center of the dash. A few seconds later, she reports: "there's a bike dealer in Council Bluffs."

A few more taps, and the screen switches from a list of stores to a three-dimensional map in shades of beige, yellow and orange. The unit then beeps loudly, and displays a bold message across the terrain:

Unable to locate satellites

Eleanor frowns at that. They have a clear view of the sky. Then again, the whole GPS network has become pretty unreliable in recent years, due to the exponentially increasing number of satellites in Earth's orbit. Lack of signal is not a terribly rare occurrence.

"Stupid fucking thing," she grumbles, and guns the throttle.

As an afterthought, she tells Jamie to "hold tight" as she executes a slow 180 turn across the road and starts driving back to the east, towards the interstate. But he doesn't really need to. She accelerates slowly until their speed reaches 55, and leaves them cruising there.

As much as he loves horses, Jamie isn't the same caliber rider as his mother. His lanky frame makes it difficult to find an animal he can move well with, and he doesn't know what he'll do when his mare, trusted and patient, gets too old to lug him about.

The bike doesn't present the same sort of problem, even if his knees do poke out a bit when he positions his feet the way she suggests. Once he balances, he has no trouble taking cues from Eleanor, leaning gently with the lines of her body when the road demands. A body that feels warm and soft under his hands and through the black fabric of her... shirt.

Fifty five miles per hour feels like flying.

Laughing quietly, Jamie turns his face into the wind and marvels, "It's a wonder you ever walk anywhere."

Eleanor is grinning, reveling in the faint tingly sensation that has crept up where his hands are in contact with her.

"Most people don't."

She is about to add to her reply as they round the last bend before the I-29 interchange. However, the view that slides in ahead is enough to make her swallow any further commentary on the subject.

Instead, she stares, and lets go of the throttle.

"What the fuck?!"

The bike coasts on under its own momentum, slowing gradually as they close in on the devastating scene.

The girl has a mouth like his Uncle Raph, but she definitely smells better.

"Hmmm?"

Jamie opens his eyes and takes in the sight that greets him: vehicles facing every which way, doors flung open. They're abandoned and, in some cases, crushed, except for the luckless few trapped in the middle. What must have been a bridge is a massive tangle of twisted rock and metal. A fine layer of dust coats the area, and a tire hangs from an exposed rod, like it was blown there with spectacular force.

"Mithros," he mutters darkly, lowering his legs back to the pavement as they slow.

On the exit and entrance ramps, vehicles are packed together so tightly and at such random angles, that there's no way even their narrow bike could pass through. And many others have spilled over onto the grass on either side of the sloping asphalt, effectively grid-locking that access route as well.

The strangest thing for Eleanor though, is the fact that there are no signs of human life anywhere. The cars and vans and trucks have clearly been abandoned for some time, and where they aren't empty, they harbor stiff corpses that are already heavily decayed. She was just here. It doesn't make any sense.

"This is crazy," she says, her complexion paler now and her voice a little choked. "It wasn't like this when I passed through less than an hour ago."

She gets off the bike when it comes to a stop, and calls out:

"Hello! Is there anybody here?!"

Concerned, Jamie watches her closely. Eleanor isn't the type to go pale and unsteady without very good reason, and if what she says is true, then something even bigger than his temporary displacement is at work, disrupting their lives.

"It's like something we might have seen during the Immortals War," he remarks, voice low. Even hushed voices are loud in all this silence. "Ogres or giants or Spidrens."

But there aren't any Stormwings feasting on the dead; thank the Goddess for that.

Jamie climbs off the bike and stares at the huge machine (a truck) dangling off the road above. There's no blood, no gore, but something-

(A terrible shriek, the wail of someone who knows, who BELIEVES with all his heart, that Death is moments away from swallowing him whole, and a flash of red polluting the sky with its darkness as it nears the...

It's close.)

He's breathing deeply, mouth tight and tense. "Let's go."

"Huh?"

"Oh, right. Tortall stuff."

She nods blankly at his suggestion, and re-seats herself on the Honda. As Jamie does the same, Eleanor turns the bike's CB radio on and pulls the stretch-corded mike up to her mouth. A loud hiss of static cuts out when she depresses the transmit button.

"Breaker breaker. This is Double E on US-34. I've got a major cluster here at the I-29 interchange. Bridge is down, abandoned roller skates and semis all over the place. At least twenty stiffs. And not a bear in sight. Looks like it's been this way for months. Anyone know what the fuck's going on?"

The static kicks in again. She waits for a reply for well over a minute, but none comes. She tries another channel.

"Anyone with a copy, come in."

Nothing.

Hope now dwindling, she repeats the call over several more channels, with the same lack of results. She then tries the bike's regular radio. That too yields nothing but white noise across the entirety of the FM and AM frequencies. Finally, she brings out her cellphone. Unsurprisingly, there's no signal there either.

"This is fucked up," she says, shaking her head in disbelief.

And with that she re-starts the engine, turns the bike around again, and begins to backtrack to where they first met.

Edited 2008-07-18 19:59 (UTC)

He starts to speak when she first puts out the call, but only manages an "I think-" before figuring out he should probably stay quiet. Not until the bike is nearly upon the original spot does he ask:

"Who were you trying to reach?"

He assumes that's what she was doing, anyway. The mechanics are lost on him.

"Anyone," Eleanor responds. "Anyone at all."

She's driving at a much slower speed now, as a precaution, and because her mind is working overtime on what could have happened back there, and... elsewhere, that could have led to the communications black out. It has the unintended benefit of allowing them to converse at more normal volumes, at least.

"Unless I'm horribly mistaken," she says eventually, "you aren't the only one who just got transplanted. This can't be my world. It just can't be. That's the only explanation."

His fingers tighten on her, then relax, as Jamie decides their situation just became that much more alarming.

If this isn't Earth -- or her Earth, at any rate -- then where are they? And how do they get back without her father?

Swallowing a round of questions, he frowns over her shoulder.

"The light. Maybe it had something to do with the light and noise."

And the agony of all those voices in his head.

"Very likely."

Eleanor slows the bike to another stop, lowers the kickstand and swivels completely round in her seat so she's facing him. The look on her face is grim, but reassuringly, it's also more focused. There's no sign of fear or confusion. Just a whole lot of gritty acceptance.

"I'm gonna be honest with you, AJ. I've no idea what's happened, or why we're here, or how the hell we can get out." Thus his unspoken worry is confirmed. "Instead of a sight-seeing tour," she continues, "we may have a full-blown quest on our hands now. As well as a survival situation."

"Hope that's okay."

AJ. That's not terrible, actually. A man could get used to a nickname like that, especially the way she says it.

Not, he suspects, that she'd give him much of a choice.

Smiling on the inside, Jamie outwardly schools his features and glances at his hands, which fell to his thighs when she moved, before heaving a disappointed sigh.

"Well. To be honest," he starts, in the way most people gear up to say That's not really going to work for me, "quests and survival situations are more my mother's idea of fun." He attempts a long-suffering, good-natured smile. "But I suppose I'll make do. Besides, there's no law that says we can't take in the sights while we attempt to keep our heads."

"Is there?"

You never know.

"Not at all. If there any sights left in this world..."

Realizing that her analysis may sound depressingly bleak, she rallies by squeezing Jamie's thigh and winking at him.

"It'll be fine. I'm sure we'll find some way to entertain ourselves."

"Ah, and I'm delightfully easy to entertain," he practically purrs.

A less confident man might wince as the words left his mouth, but Jamie just smiles wider and keeps his eyes on hers, like he knows how he sounds and doesn't care, because he's having a fantastic time trying to figure her out.

"What lies ahead?" He points in the direction they'd been traveling.

"Good to know."

Eleanor grins appreciatively at his reaction.

"First up is the Missouri River. And then Nebraska."

She nods at a nearby sign that advertises the toll charges for the upcoming Plattsmouth bridge—a privately owned crossing that spans the natural border between the Hawkeye state and the home of the Cornhuskers. She then offers Jamie a sly smirk.

"If this world is as screwed up as it seems to be, we won't be paying to cross Big Muddy today."

"I'm glad," says Jamie, with believable sincerity, "because I'm not sure one of these would grant us passage."

A coin flips into the air, seemingly from nowhere, and lands on his palm: a gold noble, bearing King Jonathan's likeness.

"And I'm afraid that's all I have."

It's gone just as quickly, one hand passing over the other. The triplets spent too much time around George and Numair not to pick up a few tricks.

Eleanor lifts an eyebrow at his antics, and snorts.

"Coin tricks. Really?"

Without hesitation, she reaches up and squeezes his cheeks together gently, forcing his lips to purse out comically. She then presses a quick kiss to them and lets go.

"Cute, AJ, real cute. You're gonna have to do better than that if you want to impress me though." Another wink. "Keep working on it."