8

Thundranium

"No." Wilykit shook her head. "That can't be, Wilykat... I mean... if that was so, then they'd have been like that long before that big group left the village."

"It's the only thing that makes sense! Their paws, Wilykit...didn't you see how long the 'toes' were? They weren't toes, they were fingers. I mean... That Lynx-O talked about the forest affecting everyone badly. And it was Mumm-Ra's magic that messed up the forest, and it's been slowly taking over the town. Look at all the abandoned houses, Wilykit! The people just...eventually stopped living in them entirely and took to the forest."

Wilykit scowled and stood up. "But why all of a sudden? Huh? At they rate they were doing it shoulda taken a lot longer than that! Long enough for them to realize it before it completely took them over, at least!"

Wilykat frowned, thinking about this She did have a point. It had been a sudden, very violent change if he was right. Then his eyes widened. "Wilykit...remember that meteorite that he wrote about? The one of pure Thundranium? So strong and pure it made some of the hunters sick just being near it for a few seconds?" She nodded slowly. "I wonder what kinda effect it had on the forest. Maybe it intensified everything, made everything mutate more quickly...like...like radioactive...something or another..." That would explain everything, wouldn't it?

Wilykit looked unnerved. "I...I suppose. I mean I guess it could. You know more bout that kind of thing than me," she admitted. Wilykat thought that that was a rare, and pleasant occurrence, her admitting he knew more about something than she did. But he couldn't bring hismelf to enjoy it right then.

"Well, there's one way we might find out," Wilykat said hesitantly.

"What's that?"

"Look for the blasted thing."

And so it happened that a day later, the twins once again were heading for the Forest of Mists. Their belts were full of light capsules, and a few exploding ones, in case they met up with any more of the creatures, which were even more awful if their suspicious were correct.

Wilykit had protested this idea, but then the idea of her brother showing her up in the courage department spurred her to finally agree to go along with him. And so they would enter the forest once more.

It took nearly the whole day to find it, skulking around in the chilling mists until they were both actually soaked from the moisture. It smelled bad too, almost sulphurous. Their flashlights only gave them a tiny bit of illumination, but Wilykat had thought ahead. He had brought a fire pellet along, and made a make-shift torch out of a dead branch and some scrub brush. Although it took a while to coax the dampened tinder to burn, this was somewhat more effective, as it drove off the mist for a couple of feet. At least they did not feel so hemmed in, breathing the unnatural gasses.

Finally they did find the spot that was described as being where the meteorite had hit. And they felt it long before they saw it. Both recognized the draining sensation of being around Thundranium, and with it nowhere in sight yet! It must be strong indeed. And Thundranium unfortunately did not dwindle in potency after time.

When they did happen upon it, they knew it. The chunk of glowing red rock was a bit difficult to overlook in the middle of the oppressive gloom. There was no mist for a radius of fifteen yards around it, and the Thunderkittens stopped when they entered this radius. They stared at it and backed off enough that they did not feel their knees wanting to buckle. They already felt like they'd been forced to run for three days straight.

"Look..." Wilykat said in horror. She was holding onto a nearby tree for support.

There was no grass, no underbrush directly near the meteorite, instead was scorched, black soil. It was spoiled that no living thing could exist in it, and it was like that for several yards. Half buried in the sand, the meteorite gave off its sick, dull red glow. But that wasn't the worst of it.

Once the vegetation did begin again, there was nothing that Wilykit or Wilykat could recognize as being a tree or a bush. Black, twisted things, some pulsated with an unnatural parody of breath, and some merely grew along the ground like some kind of vile ivy. There was some that were a sickly yellow, and grew up tall and abnormally thin. Their twisted leaves oozed something that looked like pus, and smelled horribly like rot.

Appalled, the twins could do no more than stare, until Wilykat finally whispered, "W-w-we'd better go... The...the Thundranium..."

At that moment, a noise to their left made both twins spin around. Wilykat stumbled and fell, and to be helped up by his sister; if one of the feline creatures were to attack them now... It had been stupid to get so close.

But it wasn't one of the creatures. Instead what stood before them was something that might have been a squirrel or a rat at one time, but like the feline, its eyes were twice the size they should have been, and it seemed to be covered in boils. But then one of the "boils" blinked, and Wilykit and Wilykat could see that they were not boils but malformed eyes.

They ran.

When they got back to the Lair, at the point of collapse, they both crept up to their rooms and stripped themselves of their wet clothing. Shivering, they piled them into a bag that they intended to burn later that night when everyone else was asleep. They flipped a coin for who would shower first, and Wilykat won.

They skipped supper, which neither felt much like eating, and when the others asked them what was wrong, Wilykit told them that they had been feeling sick all day, that maybe they'd gotten a stomach bug or something. Snarf had felt their foreheads and brought up some soup, which they both gratefully ate.

They went to bed early.

The next morning, Wilykit and Wilykat decided that they would not go back again. Wilykat was right; he had to be. That creature that had attacked them had been Thunderian at one point. Was the whole village in the forest now, then? Had the meteorite so badly changed the woods that they degenerated that quickly into something less than Thunderian?

From what they'd seen of the trees and that poor squirrel creature...yes, that was likely so. It had changed the chemistry of the swamp-like place somehow., that it affected the villagers, even those that never went into the forest proper.

And now it was taking over.

Wilykat worried about what effects it might have already had on him and Wilykit, but his sister was doubtful. "We only went in a couple of times, and in the village a few more. We don't live there or anything, and we didn;t eat anything from the woods. I think we're all right." But even she hadn't seemed so certain.

They also debated telling the adults about it, but that would have meant telling them what they had been doing, and they were reluctant to do so. It was not hurting anything so far, and they would probably investigate it in time. "I mean, if we noticed something weird, I'm sure they will," Wilykit said. "We haven't even mapped out a tenth of this world yet."

"True," Wilykat had agreed, and the adults went untold.

***

Weeks later, on an island in the middle of the ocean, two men spoke to each other. "I believe it's the day to set off our transmitter," the elder of the two said.

"Oh...what's the use?" the younger said bitterly. "It's not as if anyone will find it. We've done this how many times now? In the first week, continuously, from what you told me. And no one came."

"And yet what have we to lose?" the elder asked calmly, smiling a bit.

The younger growled. "I suppose," he said sullenly, and went off to set it up once more.

***

"That's odd," Cheetara murmured to herself, gazing at the computer monitor in front of her. A signal had just appeared on it, weak, but steady. "Only Panthro and Lion-O are out, and Snarf...and I didn't think that they were doing that far." Frowning yet deeper, she grabbed the radio microphone from the nearby console and switched it to their frequency. "This is Cheetara at the Cats' Lair," she spoke into it. "Do you read?"

"Yeah I read," Panthro said, then snickered. "Novels, mostly."

"Oh very funny, Panthro," Cheetara said, but she had smiled. "Where are you?"

"We're cruising on the outskirts of the Unicorn Forest," came the reply. "Been thinking that the twins might not have been entirely truthful about where they'd gotten those bite marks. Lion-O and I haven't been able to find one, yet."

"Hmmmm. Well I am receiving a distress signal," she told them. "It's got a signature that I recognize."

"Really?" Panthro sounded a bit uneasy. "Mutant?"

"No. Thunderian."

Part 9: Excursion

Table of Contents
ThunderCat Stories Page
Main Page