Snivy Smitten

Chapter One

Holley drove on a side road to avoid the black Chevy that was chasing her. He seemed to have gone in a different direction, but she was not willing to risk being caught off-guard, so she made more twists and turns to escape.

Reaching a cul-de-sac, she turned around, only to find herself face-to-face with her pursuer. "Going somewhere, missy?" he sneered.

She drove backward as Mater had taught her how to do, though she could only do it for three minutes at a time. Swerving herself to face the opposite direction from the Chevy, who was hot on her tailgate, she saw that she was racing for a dead end…well, crashing into a wall and pretending to be dead (if she didn't actually die) would be better than being caught by one of Dr. Petrol's goons…

Speeding up toward the wall, she shut her eyes, expecting impact any moment now…

Why is it not coming? It seems like I'm still driving forward…maybe I'm dreaming right now and that's why I haven't crashed yet? And what's this under my tires? Yeah, this must be a dream…it feels like something soft…BLECH…dust in my mouth…I can't go on this terrain much longer, and

WHAM.

The impact she had been waiting for came, and she lost consciousness.

Several hours later, Holley came to, albeit groggily. At first she didn't notice her surroundings at all. But after a few moments, she looked around and realized she was in very strange territory indeed.

The first thing she noticed were two trees, which were what she had crashed into, not the wall that she had been expecting. The soft stuff she had felt was green and thin layers were sticking out of the ground everywhere. She did not know what they were called, for they were strange.

She also felt something on her back, which must have been very light, for it wasn't exerting that much pressure on her, just enough for her to know that something new was there.

"This is a dream, that's the only explanation. A dream," she said to herself. She closed her eyes again, sure that when she woke up there'd be more sense in the world.

She dozed off for a few hours.

When she awakened, she found herself in the same strange area, with the same odd substance under her tires. She also wondered what that weight was upon her roof, but she supposed it might be just her imagination. She tried to get her tires rolling, but for some reason the substance she was on prevented her from doing so. It wasn't meant for tires.

Did that mean she was in the Badlands? The Badlands were a place that people could not traverse because they were unsuitable for any living creature. Cars could not pass through them because they resisted tires; trains could do nothing in those areas because there were no tracks across them since only cars and trucks could lay tracks and they could not handle the terrain of the Badlands; ships could do nothing there because there was no water. Planes could fly over them but not land.

The only way Holley could be in the Badlands was if she had gone parachuting and somehow got blown here. She decided to send out an S.O.S. signal with the GPS system she had been born with. A Helicopter could send down a conveyor belt which would draw her inside…

She sent out the signal and waited. After five minutes she sent it out again, then at another interval of five minutes. After doing this twice more, she gave it up. She was probably in an area where her signal could not reach civilization. How mortifying! She would be stuck here for awhile…

If there were another car around, she would ask him or her to bump her, but she could not see anybody as far as her eye could reach. As she had difficulty turning herself about, she could not check to see if she could spot anyone that way.

Suddenly a frightful sound was heard. It was like the mixture of a plane's engine with the sounds of a taxi playing the cello. Well, that was the closest thing Holley could think of to compare it to.

The sound was repeated, and this time she heard it more distinctly as, "Fear-row!"

Holley did not know of any car that made a noise like that. But she decided to call anyway. "Is someone there? Help! I'm in an area where I can't move!"

She swerved as best she could in the unpleasant terrain. The weight on her roof seemed to shift a bit, though she didn't know how that could be, if it were something inorganic.

And then, out of the tall things with green sprouts, came a fearful creature. It was in the air, though it was not a plane, for it was too small to be one and at two low an altitude to be flying, were it a plane. Its nose was not lumpy like a plane's, but extended lengthwise. It had wings that did not look to be made of metal. It was mostly brown, with a little bit of red on what must be its head. There were also some strange extensions down beneath the part that must be the tail, since it sort of resembled a plane's tail, but not much since most planes have tails that intersect at two parts with a piece going horizontally and another piece going vertically, cutting through the horizontal piece. This creature only had a horizontal piece to its tail.

"Fear-row!" the creature said.

"Oh, good, you're here to help," Holley said. "I don't know what you are, but boy am I glad to see you."

The creature hovered for a moment there, as if puzzled.

Maybe it doesn't understand my language, Holley thought.

But whether it did or not, the creature lunged at her, tapping the area above her eyes with its nose.

"Hey, that hurts!" Holley exclaimed.

Then the creature moved to her side mirror, tapping it as if to break it. And she believed that its sharp nose would break through, if it kept on tapping.

"Stop it! Please!"

But the creature mercilessly kept on.

And then there was the sound of a whip, which Holley knew as a stinging kind of weapon that was used to torture cars in war. It freaked her out, even though she had never been to war herself.

The creature with the sharp nose had ceased tapping her side mirror. She wondered what it was going to do next, when she turned to the side and saw that it lay as though dead on the ground.

Holley couldn't say she was sorry to see it dead. Perhaps creatures like that only lived for a few hours. Its body didn't look strong. How anything without a metallic body could survive at all was beyond Holley's comprehension.

Then there was another noise, this time one that sounded like a train that had run out of oil and was slowing to a standstill. And from between the tall things with green sprouts came a creature even stranger than the first. It had a golden body with some brown around it, and three strings sticking out of its backside. Its head seemed too small for its body. But the strangest thing was that out of each side of its head, there were two gray horns that reminded Holley of the design on a Mustang…though these were a bit shorter.

And the creature charged at her, knocking its head into the area directly above her mouth.

Then it raised its hooves, but them on her hood. It thrust the horns as close as it could to her eyes, but they couldn't quite reach.

"Hey, don't you know what will happen if you hit me with those? My eyes are sensitive, you know."

"The creature took no heed of this and kept trying to poke her eyes with the horns.

And then, when the horn was just a millimeter from her eye, something dropped from below and grabbed both horns. They were two green somethings, and they came from Holley's roof. Did she have a compartment she didn't know about, a self-defense mechanism that activated when she was in danger? The things one did not know about one's body…

The green somethings lifted the creature with the golden tone into the air, and tossed them. Holley wondered how she could be doing that when she didn't feel her muscles doing any work.

The creature with golden fur landed with a thud. It lay there for a moment, moaning, before picking itself up and running in the other direction.

Holley breathed a sigh of relief. And then she felt something jump down from her roof. It was a green creature. Holley did not know how to define it at all. She had never seen anything with those contours. It did not look metallic, it had no wheels. Neither had the other creatures she saw. But at least the creature with the sharp nose was relatable to an airplane, and the one with the horns reminded her to the Mustang logo. This one looked like nothing she had ever seen before. She didn't know if she liked it.

The creature blinked its eyes in a demure way. It didn't make any noise. Then it sent up the green extensions that Holly had seen grab the horns of the creature with the golden body. The green creature sent them down and Holley was afraid that she would be hit by them. She shut her eyes.

But instead of something slamming down on her side or roof, she felt gentleness on her axles. It did tickle, though, and she couldn't help giggling. She opened her eyes.

The creature was dragging her, for all its little body could do.

"I'm too heavy for you," Holley said. "Better leave me here."

The creature turned and gave her a sly look. It did not remove its extentions, and it continued to drag her somewhere, inch by inch.

It was three hours before they reached a road. Holley was glad to feel something under her wheels that she could move on. She turned to say "Thanks" to the creature, but it was already gone.

Then she felt something land on her roof from above. For a second she was afraid, before thinking that it must be the little green creature. As if to confirm this, the little green creature sent down an extention and waved it in front of Holley's eyes, as if it would be waving its side mirror, were it a car.

Holley guessed that the little green creature had hopped onto her back from the tall things with green sprouts. The little green creature must have used its extensions to propel itself upward, and then jump down. The tall things had their own extentions which could make grabbing onto easy for such lithe creatures.

The car supposed that the little green creature wanted to go along with her. Well, that was fine. Maybe if she went along the road, she'd find someone who could answer her questions about where she had been, and why there were these strange, oddly shaped creatures with no wheels and—as far as she could tell—no motor. Though that was impossible. If something didn't have a motor, it couldn't move. Maybe these things just had smaller motors in their bodies, in someplace undetectable from just looking at them.

She started on the road, thinking about the old saying about all roads leading to civilization. She hoped she'd find it soon. The tall things with green sprouts gave her the creeps.