Flying Buses?
1369 Words
Consciousness returned to me slowly, like surfacing through deep water.
The cave came to first through scent.
Stone. Dry mineral dust. Old blood. Marcus.
Marcus!
My eyes flew open immediately.
Light spilled faintly through the cave entrance, enough to turn darkness into shadow instead.
I paused, listening to his breathing he seemed calm, relaxed even. That weird.
I remembered the fall. The impact. The creature. Marcus’s leg bending wrong. The pain I was in as I pulled him to safety
I stood carefully.
Nothing failed.
My paws pressed into the stone with familiar certainty. No tremor. No weakness. My balance felt… precise. More precise than before. I adjusted my stance, distributing weight perfectly across all four limbs.
Marcus inhaled sharply behind me.
I turned instantly.
Marcus’s eyes snapped open, not slowly, not groggily, but alert. His hand moved toward his belt automatically, reaching for a weapon that was no longer there. His breathing was controlled, measured—trained response overriding confusion.
Then he froze.
His hand moved to his leg.
He pressed against it.
Harder.
His brow furrowed.
He shifted, sitting up fully. His jaw tightened, waiting for pain.
It didn’t come.
He grabbed his thigh and rotated his leg slightly, testing it.
Nothing.
“No..fucking way,” he murmured quietly.
He pushed himself to his feet in one smooth motion—then stopped halfway, clearly expecting something to give out beneath him.
It didn’t.
He stood fully.
Weight settled onto the leg that had been broken less than a day ago.
He took one careful step.
Then another.
He stared down at himself.
“I distinctly remember that being a problem.”
I watched him closely.
Marcus flexed his knee, then his ankle, then shifted his full weight onto it experimentally. He let out a slow breath through his nose, the kind that came when reality refused to cooperate with expectation.
He looked at me.
“You good?”
I stepped forward, immediately nudging his leg that healed
"You too, huh?"
Marcus’s eyes narrowed slightly as he studied me.
“You don’t look like you got hit by a flying bus either.”
His hand came down, resting on my head. Familiar. Grounding.
Marcus nodded once, more to himself than to me.
“Okay. Either we’re dead,” he said calmly, “or healthcare just improved dramatically.”
He turned toward the cave entrance, his posture shifting as instinct took over. Shoulders squared. Head lifted. Eyes scanning before his feet ever moved. He approached the exit slowly, favoring caution over curiosity.
He stepped out of the cave, stopping so abruptly that I smacked into the back of his legs.
I blinked up at him.
He didn’t move.
He just stared.
“Huh…”
His voice was softer than I expected.
“Well, Rex… umm… buddy… I’d say I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore…”
He swallowed.
“…but I don’t think we’re even on Earth anymore.”
I followed his gaze upward.
The sky was wrong.
Two suns hung above us.
One bright and white, high and powerful like the sun I knew. The other lower, smaller, touched faintly with gold right along the horizon. Their light overlapped across the land, creating shadows that bent in two directions.
It hurt my eyes.
But I couldn’t stop looking.
Marcus stared upward for several long seconds before lowering his gaze slowly.
The land stretched endlessly outward.
Forests thicker than anything I had tracked through before. Trees tall and heavy, their leaves edged with hints of blue and deep green so dark it was almost black. Rock formations jutted from the earth in jagged lines like broken teeth.
The air felt heavier.
Full.
Alive in a way that made my ears twitch.
Marcus wasn’t just staring.
He was working.
His eyes moved methodically. Left to right. High to low. Horizon to mid-ground. He shifted slightly to adjust his angle. Evaluating cover. Distance. Approach vectors. I’d seen that look before on traffic stops that felt wrong. On raids before entry. Yet it was also different, underneath it all excited and happy.
His hand moved instinctively toward his hip again, reaching for his firearm.
Empty.
He exhaled once through his nose.
“Alright,” he said quietly. “That’s less than ideal ." Marcus turned sharply, scanning behind us.
The corpse of the Flying Bus lay where it had fallen, partially visible beyond a slope of rock and brush. Its massive wing stretched outward at an unnatural angle, torn membrane fluttering slightly in the breeze.
Marcus stared at it.
Then he smiled.
Not a happy smile.
A practical one.
“Well,” he said, “at least we didn’t hallucinate that part.”
He walked toward it cautiously, every step deliberate. His eyes never stopped moving, checking surroundings between glances at the corpse. His posture had shifted fully now.
Work. I moved to my position next to him, scanning on alert. The Flying Bus was enormous up close. Its scales overlapped in hardened plates, each one thick and ridged like natural armor. Its head rested sideways against the ground, the ruined eye a dark cavity.
Marcus crouched beside it, studying it the way he would study a wrecked vehicle at a crash scene.
“Okay,” he murmured. “You’re real. That’s… helpful.”
He reached out and touched one of the scales cautiously.
Solid.
Heavy.
He nodded to himself.
“Good news,” he said. “You’re dead.”
He looked around again at the endless wilderness surrounding them.
“Bad news,” he added,"is that I doubt you're the only one,and I would bet this place has a bunch of you crazy critters." he sounded almost joyful
He stood slowly, looking down at me.
“Which means,” he continued, “we’re officially at the bottom of the food chain.”
He paused.
Then, he gave a small, crooked smile.
“Again.”
Marcus rested a hand briefly on his head.
“But we’ve been there before,” Marcus said.
“Alright,” he said calmly. “New plan.”
He moved near its head and studied the teeth. Then the claws.
“Okay,” he murmured. “We adapt.”
He grabbed one of the foreclaws and pulled.
It didn’t budge.
He adjusted his grip, braced his foot against the creature’s armored hide, and pulled again.
This time, it shifted.
He grunted.
“Good.”
He worked at the joint deliberately, twisting and levering until there was a sharp crack and the claw tore free in his hands.
He examined it.
Long. Curved. Serrated along the inner edge.
He gave a small approving nod.
“Congratulations,” he said to the dead creature. “You’re donating.”
He moved to the broken wing and cut free a length of membrane, testing its tensile strength. It stretched but didn’t tear easily.
He glanced at me.
“Leash,” he said.
I stepped closer immediately.
He unclipped the lead from my harness and wrapped it tightly around the base of the claw, binding it to a length of bone he snapped from the wing structure. He worked efficiently, double-knotting and bracing it the way I’d seen him secure gear in the cruiser.
He stood and tested the weapon’s balance.
A crude spear.
He thrust it forward experimentally.
It punched into the ground with solid force.
Marcus smiled slightly.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “That’ll work.”
He looked down at me then.
Studied me.
Longer than usual.
“You feel it too, don’t you?”
I didn’t know how to answer that.
But I did.
Everything felt clearer.
Sharper.
The wind shifted, and I tracked its direction automatically, calculating distance without thinking about it. I could smell movement deep within the forest—large movement.
Marcus saw my posture change instantly.
His body shifted with mine.
Not fear.
Preparation.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “That’s what I thought.”
He rested his hand briefly on my head.
Same gesture.
Different weight.
“Alright, partner,” he said. “Extreme survival fantasy edition.”
He looked back toward the forest, tightening his grip on the improvised spear.
“Let’s figure out the rules before something else does.”
- Writer
