Disclaimer: I don't own Cars, all characters and references belong to Disney.
Hallo again and thank you for keeping reading this thing. Here's the next chapter, enjoy!
Objective: survive
Avgas, I could smell avgas. That was the first thing to be registered in my clouded mind. Groaning I opened my eyes and once my view was clear I found myself staring at the shattered windshield of the SR20. Everything came back to my mind as the gravity of the situation fully hit me. I quickly unbuckled my seatbelt and I noticed that the right door was open. There was no sign of my siblings. I climbed out the wreck and I checked myself for injuries.
Luckily apart of a huge bump on the left side of my head I was pretty fine. That was not the case of our poor Cirrus that now looked only slightly like an airplane. I wondered if our ELT* was transmitting. I decided to go to find my siblings, my mobile didn't want to start and we needed help. The place where we ended up looked like some kind of abandoned junk yard, there were many piles of scraps on the concrete forecourt where I was standing. There were also two big old buildings.
I didn't know where to start so I decided to go for the right one. The big sliding doors were half open and I had no problems to slip in. Inside it was almost empty, dirty and pretty dark, the only light came from the gap between the doors, at the other side of the building there was a strange concrete ramp, pretty wide and equipped with a rusty railing, it seemed to take to an upper floor. It was too dark to explore it any further safely and I was getting back to the doors when I heard a noise behind my back. I quickly hided myself behind an empty case before taking a look in the direction where the sound came from.
I could see a dark shadow holding small light coming down from the ramp and when the sunlight started to light it up I was finally able to recognize the one who was holding the light.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" I asked my sister who was now looking back at me, her expression seemed almost... Excited?
Mary ran to me in the sunlight turning off the flash of her mobile.
"You told us to go away and so we went exploring" She answered as if it was obvious.
"I didn't tell you to go anywhere" I replied annoyed.
"Yeah you did! You told us to piss off when we tried to wake you up after the crash!" I sighed. I didn't remember anything about that, I hoped that was the only thing I had forgotten.
"So, can you fix the plane? Do we have to wait for someone to come and fix it? While we were exploring we found a lot of really weird things! You really should come and check them out! Gabriel said that..."
"You really can't understand when it's the right moment to shut up, can you? The plane is totally wrecked. We just crashed in the middle of nowhere and none of you brainy kids tried to use your mobile phones to call for help before totally drain their battery?" Speaking with such a talkative person like my sister was pretty stressful, you always had to remember to make very specific questions to avoid shitloads of useless details.
"We tried but there's no signal" She replied in an offended tone.
"And anyway it's your fault if we crashed!" She muttered angrily.
Her last statement gave me something to think about. Yes, we crashed, we did hit the ground. But that didn't make any sense, we were flying in a definitely flat area when we got into the clouds. We were more than a hundred miles away from the nearest mountains, the ones where we lived, and even the place where we crashed was flat. So, having my altimeter set on the QNH with ground at 100 feet, how did we managed to drop almost 4000 feet in less than one minute?
"Go upstairs and call Gabriel we're gonna wait here for rescue. The emergency transmitter should have been activated by the crash, it shouldn't take long for them to get here" I told her, I was going to think about it later.
She was starting to head back to the ramp when we heard an explosion. I froze looking at the doors.
"Call him, the meeting point will be the crash site. I want you there in five minutes" I told my sister who stopped starring at the doors.
"Ok" She said quickly running to the ramp, far from the explosion.
I got out from the building and stealthy made my way toward the black smoke pillar.
As I soon discovered it was our Cirrus to explode. The midday sun must have caused some sparks. Without anything useful to extinguish the fire with I let it burn covering my nose and mouth with the sleeve of my hoodie and stepping back to a safe distance. A couple of minutes later my siblings joined me and together we kept starring to the burning wreckage that were once a great Cirrus SR20. RIP my friend, you won't be forgotten.
"Let's go back inside" I told them spotting some dark and bad looking clouds approaching at the horizon.
We got back in the right building, the doors of the left one were closed, my siblings tried to convince me to go upstairs with them where they told me there were some offices with old strange computers and a lot of waste paper. I refused and I let them go by themselves, I had to wait for the rescue. Two hours passed while the clouds gifted us with a short heavy rain. Then all was silent, with the exception of the occasional noise from upstairs.
Finally I started hearing the unmistakable noise of the rotor of a helicopter approaching. I looked out the doors. Two helicopters, I thought as I saw two black spots in the sky getting closer.
Soon they were close enough for me to distinguish their white and red paint jobs. I decided to let them land before getting any closer, right when they were starting their descend to land in the yard I noticed something weird. I've always been a very logical person so it took me a while to fully elaborate what my eyes were sending to my brain. The helicopters had eyes. They looked a bit darkened as if they were wearing a dark visor but... they had eyes... and... and mouths... they were speaking to each other... in English... WTF?! Where the fuck did we got to?! I quietly hided myself in the shadows silently wondering if I was insane, I signalled to my siblings who were starting to walk down the ramp to get back up, they gave me a confused look and I growled slightly to them when they didn't move enough quickly.
Looking back outside I noticed that the helicopters were rolling around and that a yellow forklift had come out of the bigger one, I wasn't an expert of helicopters and I didn't know absolutely anything about forklifts but I thought I knew the model of the smaller one... it looked like an AƩrospatiale SA 365. Suddenly I heard a surprised and horrified exclamation coming from our crash site. Oops. If my theory was correct our Cirrus had to be a pretty gruesome sight for them. I kept watching as the two helicopters rushed to the forklift. For about an hour they roamed around speaking to each other and at the radio. I was too far to hear what they were talking about and I really needed some information. I sneaked closer hiding myself among the scraps. English wasn't a problem for me, I could speak and understand it pretty well. So I crouched in an old refrigerator and I listened. The helicopters were getting ready to give someone a debrief about their mission, the wreckages of the Cirrus were vanished and the forklift was getting back on the bigger helicopter who was apparently a girl. Soon the two helicopters took off leaving behind them some wake turbulence and the echo of their rotors. For a couple of minutes I just absently starred at the horizon.
At least now we knew we were in the US and that it was the seventh of April. Apparently somehow we ended up in a world like the one of the movie Cars... And now what? We needed to survive and to do that I needed to stay focused on the objective. Survive. I had to inform my siblings about the situation. I sighed quietly, that was going to be painful.
I got back to the building and I started to walk up the ramp. I didn't have any light so I kept a hand on the railing and step by step I finally reached the top without tripping and falling to my death. Once I was on the top I was surprised to find out that I could see once more. Apparently there was a hole in the roof somewhere. I kept walking down the hallway following the light until I reached an open door.
I entered in the room spotting my siblings. My sister was in front of an old, dirty, cracked mirror that she apparently tried to clean up using some tissues that were now lying on the floor near her, she was holding a pair of tweezers and adjusting her eyebrows. I snorted and took a look to my brother who was lying on an old filthy carpet and playing with his phone, apparently he still didn't realize that saving battery is a pretty good idea in this kind of situation. I scraped one of my boots on the ground to get their attention.
"Do you have any idea of where we are?" I asked them carefully observing their reactions.
"In an abandoned building?" Tried my brother.
"Wow you have eyes! The geographic location Gabriel not the building. Didn't some of you noticed that we aren't where we are supposed to be?"
"Of course we aren't you made us crash!" He replied offended.
"If it was only because of the crash we would have got back home with the helicopters. No Gabriel it's not because of the crash if we aren't where we are supposed to be, I have no idea of how it could happen but we are in the US now" I kept a careful eye on them as they were thinking about the information I just gave them. My sister looked surprised and scared. She didn't know how or what was happening but she trusted me.
"Hahaha! Are you kidding me?! Do you really think I could believe that we have just been teleported from Italy to America!?" With my brother it wasn't that easy.
"I wish it was that simple dear brother. That's not our America, the one we know, that's not our world at all" I told him coldly.
"Have you heard the helicopters?" I asked them.
"Yeah, why you told us to go back upstairs? Weren't they supposed to rescue us?" Asked my sister looking confused.
"Those helicopters were indeed supposed to help an aircraft in trouble. An aircraft. Not humans. It looks like we are in a world of vehicles now. Do you remember the film Cars?"
I took a moment to appreciate the stunned expressions on my siblings faces.
"I-it can't be... It's like in the pictures!" Said my brother.
"What pictures?" I asked.
My sister got up from the floor where she was sitting shaking the dust off her leggings and she reached the desk that was in the middle of the room. Now I noticed that on the old desk there were some old papers as well as a weird looking old computer. Mary looked through the papers picking up two pictures and showing them to me.
"We thought it was some kind of joke" She told me. The pictures were old and faded but the subjects were still recognizable as cars. Cars with eyes and mouths.
"I wanna go home..." Mary cried quietly.
"If we start acting as cry-babies we are fucked" I informed her coldly.
My brother still looked a bit stunned, apparently he was still trying to keep up with our situation. My sister was looking at me with teary eyes but she seemed also determined, waiting for orders. Good little sister.
"First things first, we have to search the area. We need food and water to survive"
"But how can we find food and water in a world of cars?" Asked Gabriel who finally managed to snap out his daydream.
"Even if there is no human life in this world at the edge of the yard I saw some bushes and if there are plants there is food. For the water part there shouldn't be any problem, did you forgot about the rain we saw a few hours ago?"
"Hum, ok. Where should we start?" Asked Gabriel.
"Gabriel, you' are going out of the yard and you'll follow the edge of the asphalt from the outside. You have to look for anything edible or drinkable. Fruits, a river, a lake. But we have to avoid any contact with vehicles. If you notice something strange or spot someone hide yourself and come back. Just one more thing, hurry up, we don't have much time left before sunset" While my brother was walking out of the room I turned to my sister.
"You are going to search inside the yard. Look for anything that you think could be useful, included water tanks. It won't be healthy but we don't really have a choice"
"And what you're gonna do?" She asked me before leaving the room.
"I'll stay here, I'll try to make this place habitable. This night is going to be cold, we'll need a fire" I told her while starting to rummage in a drawer of the desk.
Almost three hours later the sky turned orange and pink as the sun began to set, I managed to find an old matchbox proceeding to set on fire some old smashed wooden crates right under the hole on the roof, I also found some old dirty blankets and carpets that we could use for sleeping.
My brother came back with his pockets full of berries but without water. He started poking the fire with a stick while we were waiting for our sister. Mary arrived a few minutes later dragging a metal sheet with some useless wreckage and a pot full of water that she found in an old cistern on it. We put the water to boil and waited while eating the berries as the sky got darker. After our 'dinner' me and Gabriel were lying on the carpets, wrapped in the blankets and ready to sleep. My sister kept complaining about the dirt for a full hour before giving up to the cold wrapping herself in her dirty blankets and falling asleep.
I starred at the fire for almost two hours before getting up with a sigh. My siblings were both sleeping. I putted another piece of wood in the fire and I ensured that the metal sheets we used to keep it contained were still there before looking out to the hole on the roof. I took a moment for starring at the stars before climbing up on the high roof of the building and sitting near the hole. I spent almost an hour in that position enjoying the silence and the cold air. Suddenly I noticed the unmistakable lights of an airplane. I felt a heavy weight setting on my chest as I thought about all the time I was going to have to stay on the ground before I would be able to fly again. I was going to be stuck on the ground until we managed to get back home. Maybe... somehow. I let out a sigh and got back in the room with my siblings, struggling to keep my eyes off the sky, the weight I felt on my chest wasn't going to vanish until I managed to get back in the sky. I just had to get used to it.
The next morning I got up early and proceeded to wake up my siblings. Once my brother was done with complaining and insult me I putted them to work. For almost a week we managed to survive without meeting anyone. My sister was also able to find a way to wash our clothes while we were taking a bath using the water of one of the cisterns she found. Not the helicopters nor anyone else was spotted in the area.
Then, one morning everything changed. The night before that day everything appeared normal, my brother was complaining about the pain in his limbs but I didn't care. It was normal for him, he started complaining from the first day about the routine I planned for us. But I was two years older than him and four years older than my sister so I was in command. Anyway that night I felt difficult falling asleep and, as usual, I spent most of it on the roof. So, that morning I slept over a little and it took me some time to wake up enough to focus on the screams.
*ELT stands for Emergency Locator Transmitter and they are usually activated automatically by a violent shock.
