The Furred Reich Page 6

  Hans smiled. “Thank you, comrade. I will… Find The Black Ship.”

  The midnight air felt heavy upon him when Hans stepped off in the sweltering capital the next night. It was time to find an inn and regroup for what looked to be a long journey into the unknown. Tomorrow he’d ask around about the fighter plane, just to be sure. The North Continent sounded promising, as did the Cottonwine Lands.

  Deltia seemed dominated by the black, elegant canines, which were more appealing to Hans’ eyes. Especially the women, of course. He inquired about an inn and trudged eastward to find a torchlight brick box nestled in between residences.

  Stepping in, his eyes adjusted to the light. Behind the desk he saw the flash of a green helmet with netting over it. Against his better judgment, Hans took a cautious step inside. It was another human. And in a light green uniform. The man’s eyes bugged out when he saw Hans.

  But Hans was faster on the draw, and before the surprised American could reach for anything, Hans’ Mauser was pointed right at the enemy’s face.

  So there were other humans here, and obviously not just from the North Continent, either.

  Allies

  The barrel of Hans’ Mauser remained pointed in the face of the other human.

  “Hey, come on. There’s no war going on here. You—you don’t need to do this.” The American to Hans in perfect Deutsch.

  “You speak German?” Hans asked.

  “Uh… No. Do you speak English?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm… Interesting…”

  Hans backed away slowly and made his way to the door. Deltia had plenty of other inns.

  The American protested. “Wh-what… Where are you going? Come on, man. Don’t go! You’re the only person I’ve seen form home!”

  Hans spent a second looking at the blue eyes under that netted helmet. “Do you mind if I search you?”

  “No! Sure, go right ahead!” The American leaped up to his feet.

  “No! Just stay there, Comrade. I’ll… come over there.”

  Hans came behind the desk and took the pistol the American surrendered. He then stood behind the ‘Ami’ and patted him down.

  “Been here long?” Hans tried to sound friendly.

  “Four months.” He sighed. “I was just playing video games and ‘boom!’ Here I was.”

  “Video games?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry I’m from the future. Well, your future at least.”

  If Hans wasn’t in this world, he wouldn’t have believed such a wild claim. It sounded ridiculous on its own. “What year is it?”

  “Two-thousand nine. I just saw this white light and here I am.” The American smiled. “I’m James, by the way. Can I sit down now?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry about all that.”

  The American had pasty skin and a frumpy chin. He could likely pass as a German.

  “Hey no worries. All from a different time, right? Here, it’s probably not as good as what you’re used to, but…”

  James slid him a ‘Rolling Rock’ beer. Hans hovered his nose over the bottle and took a careful swig.

  “It’s not bad. For North American beer.”

  “So anyway. How’d you get here?”

  “Was in a battle. In Russia.”

  “Oh? What year is it for you?”

  “1943.”

  “Wow.” James uncapped a ‘Rolling Rock’ for himself. “Nine-teen-fourty-three, huh…”

  Hans suddenly felt a morbid curiosity rising. Unless the war had raged for sixty years, James probably knew the outcome. The pit of his stomach dropped. Maybe it was best not to know.

  “So… have you seen a fighter plane fly by here at all?”

  “No, sorry. Did you see one?”

  “Yeah. It flew by me a week ago. My comrades are here somewhere. I’m looking for them.”

  “Trying to get back?”

  “Yes. Well… Maybe. I just want to find my comrades.”

  “…It’s… Not that bad, you know…” James responded. “Germany’s united again. It gets back together after awhile. Have a pretty good soccer team, too.”

  Hans’ heart sank. He didn’t know what to think. ‘Not that bad’ meant they lost.

  “I mean uh. Yeah, you lose, but… Germany’s the best economy in Europe again. The British lost everything they had. And the Soviet Union doesn’t even exist anymore.”

  “What? How?”

  Hans didn’t believe that. Well, he believed the part about Germany losing. But the rest just sounded conciliatory talk from a man who needed a friend.

  “It collapses in fifty years. Cool, huh?”

  Hans considered himself a National Socialist, even though he wasn’t in the party. He certainly believed that Bolshevism had to be destroyed. If the war was lost, then all that Hans and his Comrades fought for was a failure. That was certain.

  He sat back and thought about it for a moment. Could it have been true that they sacrificed millions of lives trying to kill Bolshevism, and failed, only for Bolshevism to fall apart anyway? If so, god sure had a sense of humor.

  “I just don’t believe that. The Soviets have the largest army in the world…”

  “You should believe it! The Brits had it even worse. In twenty years most of Britain’s empire will be gone.”

  “…And they won the war?”

  “Yeah. Pretty interesting, huh? By the time I grew up there was nothing left of it.”

  Hans didn’t know too much about the world. He knew that Britain had a centuries-old empire. How could Britain win the war, then lose everything soon after? Even he knew that wasn’t how the world worked. James was talking fantasy.

  “I doubt it…” The German finally shook his head. “You don’t need to be nice, you know.”

  “I’m not!” James laughed and took another gulp.

  “And if those English in Rhodesia knew what was in store for them, I bet they’d have joined the not-sees and hit the damned reset button!”

  “What’s a reset button?”

  “…Um. Nevermind.”

  James finally settled down. “You might find out if you can go back.”

  “We’ll see.” Hans said, “I’m going to find that plane. It buzzed me when I was further south. If all that stuff you say is true maybe my future isn’t so bad anyway.”

  The American sighed. “Just think twice before going back into it. You probably don’t believe me. That’s fine.”

  Hans folded his arms. “If you’d been through a day of what I have, you’d know how hesitant I am to go back into what I came from.”

  “Uh, yeah sorry. I suppose you’re right huh…”

  “It’s alright,” Hans smiled, “may I stay for two days?”

  “Yeah yeah, sure no charge too. Don’t worry about it.”

  “…Really?”

  “Yeah. Yeah don’t worry. But. I just have one favor to ask.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you find them, and decide to stay… Just come back for me, OK?”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because here I’ve been captured. I’m just a servant. If you stay around here long enough you’ll probably be captured by someone, too. For some reason Humans here aren’t very well-liked. I mean, this job is pretty easy but, if you guys could get me the hell out of here I’d tag along.”

  That was all the more reason for Hans to leave, but he let James know there would be no promises attached to this. After all, the ‘North Continent’ might be even worse than Deltia.

  The next day, Hans ventured out to spend his coin and stock up on food; food that was as close to his rations as possible. Deltia had races of all kinds streaming up and down its streets, as well as goods from dozens of different places, none of which Hans knew anything about. In Deltia’s teeming marketplaces he found an abundance of dried meats and many kinds of bread. If bread here was anything like bread in his world, then the darker kind was generally the heartiest. He found the darkest bread he could, and some other
bread that looked as if it were fortified with something. In the muggy evening he caught up on a little more sleep.

  On his last day in Deltia Hans returned to the dockyard intent on bribing his way into the cargo hold of some ship bound for the ‘North Continent.’ He found most outfits willing to do business with him and willing to make some extra money, so long as Hans understood that they couldn’t be responsible for his safety.

  Before that evening, Hans found himself with an agreement to board the cargo section of a passenger boat. He headed back to the inn to pick up his things and say farewell to his friend from the future. Upon Deltia’s orange-pink sunrise Hans set out to the dockyards and the long ride north.

  Hex

  Asril led Tanjung out of the fray. The two of them scurried away from the fort as quickly as they could. Ahead was a three-way fork in the mountain road from which they came.

  “Tanjung?!”

  A frightened voice called out from a nearby ditch. Tanjung and Asril went running to the source and found Tari crawling out from a ditch, a place that seemed inappropriate for such a graceful furre.

  “Anyone else make it?” Tanjung asked.

  “Ani still has a fever,” Tari quivered in shock. If this was too much for Tari, it was a wonder how she even got this far.

  “Alright. We have to get Ani back to Miao somehow.” Tanjung piped up.

  “There IS no more Miao.” Asril stomped her hindpaw. “The monsters are probly there right now…”

  The trek back would be too dangerous anyway. There was no going back.

  “Look…” she tugged on Tanjung’s arm and pointed to the sign that stood in the fork in the road. It had three arrows. “Back that way is Miao, right? And west is Preena. Can’t go there. But the sign says that way leads to another place, Dalaam. Let’s try that way.”

  Tari looked at Asril for a moment and went to pull Ani up from the ditch.

  “C’mon Ani,” Tari said. “We’re going to Dalaam. It’s gonna be safe there.”

  Ani emerged discolored, and she shuffled up to the group. “Asril and Tanjung made it?”

  “Yep. We did. Now lets go before the orange tigers come looking for us.”

  “HEY! WAIT UP!”

  An unfamiliar voice called to them. Asril turned around and saw a ‘Foxing’ running up them. He looked familiar. And he had three tails! It was the smart-looking one that Asril had been watching the other day. Asril blushed when she caught glimpse of him.

  “Hey! Hey! Is your party going west? If so, take me with you.”

  “Yeah, we are,” Tanjung looked at the newcomer with narrowed eyes.

  “Uh, I suppose you can travel with us,” he said, “but don’t try anything.”

  The fox caught his breath and nodded.

  “Thanks. We should get going as soon as possible, shouldn’t we?”

  The canine filed behind the four of them as they hastily walked down the road to Dalaam.

  The path ahead descended deeply away from Preena. Asril was thankful for that; the further away from the border guards they were, the better. She had a sinking feeling that the border men would be out looking for them.

  “What’s your name, foxboy?” Tanjung turned back to the fox, sizing up the other male in the group.

  “I’m Hex.” The fox reached into his tanned side pouch and unfurled a well-pressed map.

  “We’re here,” Hex’s orange paw pressed against a mountainous part of the map. Asril stretched up to see that they had come a good ways west of Miamar.

  “…And Dalaam is here.”

  On Hex’s map the distance didn’t look so great.

  “I’ve been to Dalaam before,” Hex continued, “you’ll know it when you see the golden monkey nestled between two mountains.”

  “Is it safe?”

  Hex shrugged. “Nothing seems safe since the monsters broke from their desert prison.”

  Tanjung looked down. “I already know all that.”

  The group trekked on in tense silence. Ani groaned from the back. Tari propped her up as the party hiked further north and west.

  “Hey. Tanjung. I don’t think Ani is feeling good enough for this…” Tari’s usually-melodic voice called out from the back. Already the sun had sunk beneath the solid crag.

  Hex craned back and looked at Tari. “Alright. But let’s camp a ways from the road in case the tigers go out looking. C’mon.”

  It seemed Hex had the same fear that Asril did.

  “No.” Tanjung interjected again. “I’ll take over from here. Follow me.”

  Tanjung at least listened to Hex’s advice. Asril breathed a sigh of relief as the party veered off the road for the night. Once they selected an opening in the woods, Hex unrolled a blue tarp.

  “What’s that?” Asril queried.

  “A tent that I brought from home. It houses three.”

  Tari set Ani down in the tent and tended to her. The other three sat in the open moonlight. Asril folded her legs together and turned to Hex.

  “So, um. Where are you headed Hex?”

  “The edge of the world.” Hex stared off past the treeline.

  “That’s where my brother is supposed to be. I’m going to find him. He was orphaned before the monsters came to our country.”

  “…Your country?”

  “Yeah. You might know it as the Peninsula of Kitsunes.”

  “A Kitsune? Sorry I don’t know much about anything far from Miamar.”

  The golden fox smiled and took out this map once again. It seemed Hex had an explanation for everything. Asril looked on, with Tanjung standing behind them with his arms folded.

  “See that dagger-looking peninsula? Way north of Miamar?”

  “You mean… The monsters have taken all the land between there and here?!”

  “Yes. And then some… Anyways, my brother is here.” Hex pointed to the clear other end of the map, past the mountain range, a desert and a long sea, to a tip of rock facing some limitless ocean. Why would Hex’s brother, or anyone else, go so far away?

  “Ahem. But don’t you think the Ahuranis will stop the monsters?” Tanjung suddenly called out. “Nobody has ever toppled Ahuran.”

  “I don’t know. Ahuran is certainly the strongest nation left on the continent. Though I heard an interesting rumor: The Deltians have some secret black air machine that they’re going to use on the monsters.”

  Asril frowned. To her, this topic was so uninteresting.

  “Hex, what does your brother do?” She mewled out to him.

  “He’s too young to do anything just yet.”

  “And he’s all by himself? Who takes care of him?”

  Hex sighed. “I… Uh, that’s why I’m going to get him.”

  “But… Wait. Why didn’t you go with him when the monsters came?”

  The fox shook his head. “It’s a long story. A really long one.”

  “Hmph. Well, you don’t have to tell me.” Asril and stood up and turned her back to Hex, flicking her tail as she did.

  “…It’s been a long day.” The cat sauntered her way into the tent and disappeared.

  “OK. We’ll stay here for tonight and maybe tomorrow if Ani needs us to.” Tanjung asserted himself once again. “Then we’ll make for Dalaam and the golden monkey.”

  Crucible

  “Found them! There they are!”

  Meiss whispered as the three wolves knelt in the grass. The Green-skinned head hunters had gotten much more careful scouring the wolven, Goldgrass hinterland. Their caution may have been due to Reince, Kasha and Meiss. It was hard to know if there were other wolves stalking these grasslands, but Kasha did notice the enemy’s changing tactics. Head hunters now traveled together in large numbers. Today, five of them waded through the wheat fields in search of ‘lone wolves.’

  Reince handed Meiss a hand ax.

  “Cover for me and Kasha. The green guy in the middle should act first. So aim for the middle guy.”

  “Right,” he whispered.

&
nbsp; Reince nudged Kasha and the two stalked forward, then charged the headhunters at the same time. The headhunters didn’t know what was coming. Kasha lunged atop one of them and stabbed the thrower right through the chest.

  “Yeow!”

  Meiss’ ax whizzed by but missed. Kasha and Reince used the chance to jump and roll away before any of the head hunters even knew what was attacking.

  “Go! Go! Run!”

  The three wolves sprinted through the field as quickly as they could.

  “Almost there…”

  The headhunters couldn’t keep up. Kasha and the others bounded towards a gully which marked the informal boundary of the ‘Shattered Paw.’

  “There they are!” An infernal impish voice yelled out. This one from atop a ‘wolftaur.’

  “Kill them! I am so sick of these annoying little flies!”

  “We’re going to make it!” Reince shouted in encouragement.

  The gully was already in sight and beckoning for them to cross. With the headhunters now atop their giant canines, the three of them were no longer a match for the Grimeskins, who were gaining fast.

  “Jump it!” Reince instructed.

  Kasha leaped into the verdant green valley. He felt his legs buckle, then he stumbled and somersaulted down to the creek below. A paw reached for his arm, and pulled him up. It was Meiss’ paw.

  “They’re coming! Climb!”

  Kasha staggered up and began running up the steep incline. The Wolftaurs hesitated at the gully’s edge but came bounding down with frightening agility. Meiss pulled Kasha up over the ledge. The three of them all fell back and doubled over onto Shattered Paw soil.

  “Oh, shit!” The impish voice on the other side called out.

  “You wolfies! Come back here and we’ll kill you!”

  Kasha ignored them, staring up at the swaying sunflowers.

  “Your heart still beating?”

  “Yeah… Sure is.”

  That night the three of them made a fire without any worry of the Shattered Paw. The wolven tribe on this side of the gully didn’t seem interested in stopping attacks on a dangerous new neighbor. Still, Reince knew better than to let their celebration grow raucous.