Velocity

4

When he got to me, his sweaty face, caked with dirt, was split in a toothy grin. I noted that the chief had ducked out of sight, and out of range, when Jason had entered the thicket. I pushed off Jason’s panting, sweaty hug of greeting.

“We aren’t out of the woods yet, Tonto.”

“Right,” he agreed immediately. His face shifted to a look of absolute seriousness. I felt that he had changed in some way, probably permanently. “Which way back? You didn’t get lost, did you?”

As he spoke he hunkered down beside me and looked back at the impaling spear. He stared at it fixedly for a moment, still slightly mesmerized by it. The goblins were nearly out of sight now.

“Let’s go,” I said. There was no argument. We moved quickly out of the thicket in the direction that I had come. By the time we reached the edge, we were crashing through the brush at run. Bleeding from the face and hands where branches of thorns had caught at us, we charged thorough the forest in full stride. Our breath came in hoarse pants. Large sweat stains turned cold and clung to the skin under our arms. Panic was overtaking us. We were running for our lives.

Unerringly, I led the way to the beach. We came out a little off from where we had started. For a minute or two I was lost. Jason knew it. He didn’t say anything, but his face was white with fear. We moved back into the forest for cover and made our way in the direction that I hoped the window was.

Laughing with relief, I found the right fern-tree and tackled the trunk, climbing like a chimp at dinner-time. Jason was right behind me all the way. We pushed our way up through the fronds and climbed onto the top of the tree.

And there we found the chief goblin. He was in the act of climbing into the window, into our world. He was alone and he was scared. He must have been the only one with enough balls after all the killing to come after us. We charged through the waving fronds after him. Fortunately, he was old, scared and slow.

I watched him get to his feet on the other side and to my horror I saw him reach for the tuning knobs. He was smiling at me in a nasty sort of way. The way an older brother would when he locks you out of the house and your folks are on vacation. Almost without thought, I snapped the rifle to my shoulder and began firing. The first shot went wild, I saw the plaster in the back wall of the workshop sprout an answering puff of dust back at me. I fired as fast as I could squeeze the trigger.

Before he could reach the knob, his smile fading, my second and third and fourth shots hit him. He jerked back flailing, and collapsed in a heap on Jason’s folding chair, which was still lying in its folded position on the floor.

We clambered toward the window quickly, but we weren’t quite fast enough. The chief goblin was a tough old guy, I have to admit that. He reached up and twisted one of the knobs. I’m not even sure which one.

The window vanished and left us behind in the alien jungle.

We both stood there, panting and dripping a mixture of blood, sweat and dirt onto the bole of the fern-tree. For once, Jason didn’t call me a moron.