Another figure stepped in front. The facial expression was oddly familiar to Eliza. Why did this face look so familiar to her? Her vision started to clear up. The figure in front of her also strained into focus. As the image sharpened, Eliza was more than shocked when the figure looked more and more like her. Her heart pounded harder as her vision was back to normal, and it was revealed that the figure in front of her did indeed look exactly like her. If they wore the same clothes and stood next to each other, they'd be identical!
"Ahhhh!" Eliza yelped in surprise, and tried to sit straight up. She cried in pain and clutched her shoulder. She looked at it, and noticed the white cloth.
The girl that she was looking at slowly shook her head. "I'm sorry, but you just had surgery. I don't think it would be wise for you to get up right now." Eliza blinked slowly. The girl not only looked like her, but sounded like her as well. She looked at her arm again, and looked at her.
"Where am I?"
The girl in front of her smiled, though it seemed quite dark. It made Eliza mentally shudder. "You're at my parents' campsite. Fair warning: stay out of our comvee. We're...uhh...." She tried to think of a good lie that would keep this twin of hers at bay. "....we're rather nervous about strangers coming in, okay?"
Eliza nodded softly. "What is your name?" The dark girl asked, one of her eye brows cocked upwards.
Eliza still hadn't noticed the other 3 on the scene. She was too focused on this double of hers. "My name?" The girl nodded. "It's Eliza."
The girl in front of her blinked in surprise. She straightened up, and scratched her head in confusion. "Really? My name's Eliza, too...Well call me Elizabeth. I like that better."
Eliza slowly blinked her eyes in astonishment. She then finally got a good look at the people behind her, and was surprised yet again. "Your family...they look like my family....a lot."
The man looked a tad confused and stepped forward. He cleared this throat, and asked, "What is your family's name?"
Eliza gave one answer that would probably explain this whole situation. "Thornberry."
The family looked at the girl and then at each other. "Your family....is Thornberry?" Eliza nodded gently. She didn't want to put any strain on her wound.
The woman who looked like Marianne said, "That's strange...we're the Thornberrys. How could this be?" Elizabeth nodded in agreement. She didn't know either. None of them knew right away what was going on. But then Eliza suddenly remembered what had happened hours earlier, and spoke up.
"I might know."
All heads turned towards her. The Debbie look alike nodded her head and told her, "Go on."
Eliza clamped her hands together and began to tell them. "It must be an alternate dimension. I remember....the last place my family was was in Australia, shooting a wallaby."
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. 'Why would they waste their time on such small game?'
Her counterpart continued. "I was going off on my own to see if I could find one, but this large portal came out of nowhere and I was sucked in. I think that's how it happened, but I'm sure I landed on my head when I arrived here." She rubbed her head a little. "I woke up to this monster headache."
The alternate Marianne knelt down to take a closer look. "Yeah you do have a bump. Hold on, I'll go get some ice." She turned to the comvee and walked inside. Eliza turned to her counterpart.
"This may be a stupid question, but...where are Donnie and Darwin?"
Elizabeth blinked in surprise. "Donnie? Darwin? Who are they?"
"Donnie is a wild child who was raised by primates when his parents were killed by poachers, and Darwin is a tame chimpanzee that likes to follow me around." She said simply. She was hoping that her counterpart would recognize these two descriptions. But the dark girl did not. She slowly shrugged her shoulders.
"Never heard of them." She adjusted the dark shades, and lowered them a bit. Eliza could see the girl's eyes. She shuddered mentally. 'They're so....dark.' Elizabeth's eyes looked cold and lifeless...like a poacher's. Eliza mentally shook the thought out of her mind. Elizabeth looked at her carefully. "Just remember what we said. Do not go into the comvee. Got it?" Eliza nodded. Elizabeth smiled. "Good."
Elizabeth turned and walked away, leaving Debbie in charge of watching the newcomer. She opened up the comvee door. On the outside it looked just like the comvee Eliza knew, but on the inside, it was totally different. The walls were decorated with animal prizes. Tusks, horns, feet, skin, all that stuff was clinging to the wall. There were stuffed figures of cheetahs, tigers, and mountain lions. There were also gator skins, wolf skins, and even stuffed birds. Elizabeth smiled darkly at each of them. Most of them had belonged to an animal she had met....An animal she had tricked....She could do so with the medallion. She found her parents sitting at the table.
Nigel was fumbling around with an elephant tusk. Elizabeth remembered that one. It had come from one of the few elephants killed in that shooting involving thousands of elephants. She growled. 'If it weren't for Sloan and Bree, we would've had taken the big prize!' Marianne sighed. "I just don't know if she can be trusted. So what if she's our daughter's alternate? She might be too different."
"You do have a point there, but how different could she be?"
Elizabeth shook her head. 'Arguing again as usual.' She decided to say something. Her parents turned to her to see what she had to say about this newcomer.
"She may be different on the outside, but what makes you say she's not like us on the inside?"
Marianne kept a stern look on her face, but she couldn't help but feel worried. "Well, she said that a chimpanzee follows her around in the other dimension. Could this mean that....?"
Elizabeth immediately protested, "I don't think so. I mean...why would my counterpart be such an...an animal lover?"
Nigel nodded. "Yeah, she does have a point you know. How do you know?"
"Well, maybe, but let's keep an eye on her, just in case. The last thing we need around here is a child to get us arrested." Nigel got up from the table, and peered out of one of the windows. She could see Debbie and Eliza chatting about something. "Well, doesn't look like she'll go anywhere soon."
Marianne narrowed her eyes. "Let's just be sure she doesn't leave the premises, okay?"
"Okay." Nigel replied, and then picked up the tusk again. He still treasured this piece of ivory. 'I still remember those days...heheheh.'
Elizabeth ignored her father and pulled out a small rifle. She aimed it towards the window....towards her counterpart. "If that child really is against poachers....if she really is an animal lover, then I will be forced to..." She pretended to pull the trigger, and made a fake gun explosion.
Marianne nodded gently. "You can do that, but only if you're certain that....."
The dark girl smiled. "Yes, I know. I know."
Eliza sat at one of the tables that the family had placed outside. Debbie sat down in another one. She was asking a few questions to the girl. "So, what's your family like?" Eliza didn't think that she should give away too much information. This was an alternate world, anyway. Even if these people are her alternate family, that's what they were. Alternate. They could very well be her enemy. She did have doubts against that, but she decided that it wasn't worth the risk.
"I'm only allowed to say that we travel the world in our comvee. Is that what your family does, Debbie?"
The teenager widened her eyes just a tad bit. "Yes. We go to wherever we are called to."
Eliza cocked her head to the left. "Called to? Oh nevermind...I forgot...my family's called to places sometimes too."
"Looks like your family and my family are quite alike in many aspects. But I know there has got to be some differences." Debbie assured. The red-haired girl nodded once.
"Yeah, there is at least one. In my dimension, included in our family are Donnie and Darwin. I believe I mentioned them earlier, didn't I?"
Nodding, the blonde girl smiled slightly, although also slightly darkly. "Yes you did mention then. Wild child and chimpanzee, right?"
"Yeah, my sister, whose name is Debbie as well, doesn't get along well with the chimp around."
"No surprise," Debbie commented, "Not everyone would appreciate having a primate as a friend."
Eliza knew that Debbie was right about that. She looked towards the comvee, and could almost see inside, but the windows seemed too dark. 'That doesn't feel right.' If this was the same comvee....wait it wasn't. So it shouldn't be any surprise if there's anything different. She just hoped that there wasn't anything majorly different.
Meanwhile, in another part of Africa, someone was tapping their finger impatiently. "Come on, where is that report? We don't have time for games!" The man shouted. He was tall, and did have a deep voice. He was in the shadow. More than half his office area was covered in darkness. He had papers almost neatly stacked in two piles, but there was a paper here or there that was out of place. There was two windows behind him, and both had their shades closed. Two gray filing cabinets were placed next to his light gray desk. He held a pen in his finger, and then slammed it down.
"Where is the report?!" He shouted again, and bolted straight up. His face came into the light, and it was clear that this man was Sloan Blackburn. He wore the exact some outfit that the other Sloan had, only this time he wore an orange scarf around his neck. The reason was uncertain.
A woman walked in. She was more then likely to be Bree Blackburn's alternate. She didn't wear the same thing as her alternate, though. This Bree wore a short-sleeved shirt, colored dark blue. She had a jewel necklace around her neck, and her hair was down. She had sweatpants on, even though they were in Africa, that was colored light red. "Sorry, Sloan, but we've lost contact." She said solemnly.
Sloan's eyes widened in shock. "Lost contact? That can't be!" He slammed his fist into the table, nearly breaking it, and growled in frustration. "It can't be...we've been tracking those people for months, and all you can say is that we've lost contact with our crew?"
Bree stepped back in surprise. She had seen Sloan like this before, but never this long. 'He does seem upset...' Bree said to herself. 'I shouldn't be surprised....the last time we faced them, we almost lost a thousand elephants.' Sadness started to enter her mind. 'Alas, we couldn't save them all.' She turned her attention back to the angry Sloan, who was settling back down in his chair.
"Did Biederman and Kip say anything before we lost contact?" He asked quietly as to not scare his wife again.
"All I know that they've said was that they spotted the Thornberry family somewhere in an African jungle."
This got Sloan's attention all right. He coughed in disbelief. "Africa jungle? That's close to here!"
Bree slowly shook her head. "Not necessarily. You see, Africa's a large continent...They could be anywhere. How will we find them?"
The man got up from his chair and pushed in his chair. "You're forgetting what happened before. When that family went after those innocent elephants, we thought we wouldn't be able to track them in time, but we did." Bree looked at her husband with a look of understanding.
She nodded. "Yes we did get there on time, but not on time enough to save all the elephants."
Sloan Blackburn sighed. He knew she was right. They may have saved the elephants, but some had already been killed by Eliza Thornberry in a desperate attempt to kill Sloan himself off. About five were shot and killed. The other elephants managed to escape. When Kip and Biederman were sent to arrest the family, the Thornberrys had escaped! 'We have to find some way to get them.' He scratched his chin thoughtfully. 'Kip and Biederman may still be alive. I'll have to try and contact them.'
He turned to the woman. "I'll try and contact Kip and Biederman myself. If I am able to get through, I'll inform them of where the family of poachers was last seen."
Bree nodded, but a look of concern etched on her face. It wasn't the entire family she was worried about. She had heard that Elizabeth was a great sharpshooter. A spear is intimidating enough, but a gun can kill instantly. "But what if they run into Eliza?"
"That is a risk we have to take....for the animals' sake." Sloan picked up his cell phone, and quickly dialed Kip's number. Biederman was too much of an idiot to know what to do in the situation that they were in. Sloan groaned when the operator came on that said that the area code could not be reached. "This piece of junk." He muttered, and then tried to dial again. The silence that gone on just after he dialed the last number seem to last an eternity. Sloan stared at the phone with anticipation, then sighed in relief when he could hear ringing noises being produced by the cell phone. "It's ringing." He said happily.
Bree Blackburn also sighed with relief. Sloan couldn't help but smile, then heard the click of a pick-up. He placed his ear next to the phone, and spoke into it. "Hello?" He asked, and waited for an answer. After a few moments went by, a hoarse voice finally answered.
"Hello? Sloan?" It was Kip, and he sounded hurt.
"Kip? What's wrong?"
The strained voice talking through the phone seemed to be weak, but not that weak. "We had a little run-in with that Thornberry family. A rock slide stopped Biederman and I from nabbing one of them."
The man growled mentally, and gritted his teeth. 'Man, that family is good.' "I've received word that the Thornberry family was last spotted in an African jungle. That may be close to where you are. Please investigate."
Sloan raised up the cell phone to click the OFF button, but not before he heard, "You can count on us, Sloan!"
He pressed the OFF button, folded up the cell phone, and placed it in his pant pocket. "Kip and Biederman will take things from here, I hope." He looked towards the sky with a worried look on his face. He hoped that Kip and Biederman will at least capture one of them. 'That way, we can force the others out of hiding.' Bree seemed to read his mind, and slowly nodded. They then both left the room and towards another, probably to get more information on the whereabouts of the Thornberry family, the most wanted poachers in the world.
Debbie had gotten bored fast, and went inside the comvee. Eliza had asked where she was going to sleep, and her counterpart eagerly brought out a sleeping bag.
"Here. It's not much, but it should keep you warm during the night." Elizabeth set the bag down on the floor next to Eliza. Smiling, she said goodnight, and went inside the comvee, and shut the door tight. Eliza looked at the bag, and then at the camp area around her. 'Guess this will have to do.' She laid herself on the floor, got into the sleeping back, curled up, and closed her eyes. 'Maybe they can help me get back home.' She smiled in her sleep. She believed that she was right, but there was this feeling that wouldn't go away. It was the same feeling she got when she spent the night at Sloan and Bree's campsite. She couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong with them, and she was right. "I hope I'm not right about this one." She told herself quietly, and found herself dozing off.
Eliza felt her mind fade into a dream. Night had fallen rather quickly. Faster than expected by Eliza. She took a glance at the sleeping bag given to her by Elizabeth. 'She seems so much like me.' The young girl thought as she pulled the bag closer and unzipped it. The night air seemed chilly, and she needed some sort of method of keeping warm. She got into the sleeping bag, but found it hard to get to sleep. 'Why can't I sleep?' She looked up at the stars, and felt a sense of fear. She blinked in confusion. 'Why am I afraid?' Eliza looked at the Commvee. In her mind, she knew the vehicle looked darker than normal, almost sinister. She shook the thought out of her mind. 'It must be just because it's night.' Eliza did need some sleep. She slowly closed her eyes.
But then, suddenly, the Commvee's engine roared to life, and the lights flashed bright white. She bolted straight up. Her eyes flashed with intense fear. The Commvee's lights faded to a darker, blood red. It suddenly looked more sinister than it had before. Eliza shivered and backed away. "W-What's going on?" She asked as the vehicle's wheels turned in her direction. Her heart pounded quickly and the Commvee's engine became louder, almost shaking the ground. The front of it moved, or felt as though it moved. Eliza watched as a tear along just under its headlights stretched out. With a sickening crack, the tear ripped open into a mouth-like structure. Eliza could see metallic teeth flashing in the moonlight.
Inside, wire hooked together and bundled so tightly wiggled and lifted itself up. 'A tongue.' The girl thought. The vehicle edged closer to the terrified girl. The gap curved upward in an ominous grin. A lighter shade of red, in the shape of slits, appeared in the red lights. It made the appearance that the van had pupils. They focused on the redhead.
Then the engine growled, but it sounded like words. "Go back. Go back to where you came. Do it, before it's too late."
Eliza fell to her knees, trembling. "You can talk?" The engine produced several loud yet short booming sounds. It was laughing at her.
"You foolish girl! Did you think that because Elizabeth acted nice towards you means that she's like you?" Eliza blinked with confusion. "Think again! This is a parallel dimension that you're in. Not all is what it seems. Remember, in your dimension, I hope you learned to keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. It will help you here, now go! Get out, while you still can!" The Commvee's engine roared loudly. The girl backed away again. The machine's eyes glowed an even more bright red.
"I-I don't u-u-understand what y-you're trying to tell me!" Her voice trembled with terror.
The Commvee, at first, didn't respond, only came closer, teeth bared. Then, it opened up to speak again, and Eliza felt her heart sink at the words the machine said next as she fell to her knees again. "The Thornberrys here are poachers! Elizabeth is the worst, her heart like ice. I am giving you a chance to save yourself. Normally I would kill you, but I've made an exception. Leave! Leave now before they find out you're against poachers! If you don't leave, they might realize the truth about you. And if they do, they will surely kill you! Go!"
The young girl slowly climbed to her feet. Her knees shook and her hands trembled. She refused to take her eyes off the Commvee. 'What if it's telling the truth? Then again, what if it's not?' She swallowed and took a step forward and asked the Commvee, "What makes you so sure?" The red lights seemed to narrow with curiosity. "I mean, how would I know for sure that they are…poachers?" The Commvee's lights glowed bright red again, and the pupils never left her eyes. It backed away a bit, and flashed it's teeth.
Something red poured out, and dripped to the ground. 'Blood.' Eliza's mind shuddered. The engine voice said, "Look inside me tomorrow. The poacher family won't be here on these grounds for a while. They'll be gone. But be careful, child…I can only let you go once." Before Eliza could ask anymore, the Commvee's lights flashed black, and she felt herself engulfed in the light. Intense pain flowed through her body, and she let out a scream. Then everything went dark, and her mind faded.
Eliza screamed and bolted straight up. She panted frantically and her heart swiftly pounded. She turned her head from left to right, observing her surroundings. The sky was still dark, and the Commvee was normal. "A dream," she breathed, "All a dream." She smiled with relief, and closed her eyes, and slept again.
Then, about an hour later, the door of the Commvee flew open. Nigel stepped out, and eyed Eliza eerily. "Looks like she slept well." He said sarcastically. He could see very well that, although the nightmare had passed, the girl still gave a couple of silent whimpers. Elizabeth walked out of the vehicle, a rifle in hand.
She walked over to her father, and asked, "Are we ready to go leopard hunting yet?" She asked eagerly.
Nigel closed his eyes, and sighed. "Almost. Your mom and sister still need to get ready."
The girl scoffed. "Why is Debbie coming? She hates the sight of bloodshed! She's no poacher!"
The man glared at his daughter, then glanced at the hatchet holding the Mini-Comm in place. "She just wants to see how it's done." He walked over to the hatchet, and pulled it swiftly. The Mini-Comm slowly rolled out, and stopped an inch in front of Elizabeth. "Get in," Nigel ordered, pointed at the small car. "I'll get your mom and Deborah." The man poacher then walked inside the Commvee and shut the door.
Elizabeth grumbled quietly and turned to walk towards the vehicle. She glanced at her counterpart, rolled up in a sleeping bag. "Such incredible likeness! It would be a shame if you were on…their side." She pointed the rifle at Eliza's forehead and reached for the trigger, but never pulled it. A dark smile made its way up Elizabeth's mouth. "A dear shame…" She chuckled darkly.
Just then, the door flung open again. The poacher girl swiftly pulled the gun away, stood up, and ran towards the Mini-Comm. Just as her family had gotten out, she had hopped in the back seat of the Mini-Comm. Marianne had her pistol out, ready to kill. "Let's go." She said with an evil smile. Debbie groaned, and rolled her eyes.
"I still can't believe I actually agreed to go. I don't know how you convinced me, mom. I just don't know."
The woman looked at her oldest daughter, and smiled. "You'll love it, Deborah." She placed a hand on the teen's shoulder. "Trust me." Debbie still looked reluctant, but if she didn't go, Elizabeth would be teasing her for a long time.
She growled mentally, and nodded, "Okay, I'll go." She got into the Mini-Comm next to her sister.
The redhead glanced over and sneered, "So you have finally got a backbone."
"Oh shut up!" Debbie noticed that her sister was still wearing the red medallion. Elizabeth refused to tell why she never took it off, and Debbie didn't really care anymore. She just brushed it aside as her sister's way of behind weird.
Marianne got into the driver's seat, and Nigel got into the passenger's seat. "Let's roll." Marianne said as she turned the keys in the ignition, and drove off, kicking dust up in the air. Eliza turned slightly in her sleep, but didn't wake up. The poachers had forgotten one thing before they left: They forgot to lock the Commvee door.