Chapter Twelve

Another World

"You said they wouldn't hurt her," I muttered. A mile away and I could still see the smoke filling the air. I wasn't sad, or angry. To be honest, I wasn't feeling much of anything, but that's nothing new. My house had just been smashed to smithereens, I wasn't certain about mom's life expectancy and I couldn't even find it in me to be emotional about it. Maybe it was because part of me didn't fully register what had just happened.

"They usually don't," said Sarah's stalker and now my… kidnapper? Hmm. "Don't worry, I'm sure the ambulance are on their way to your house now." She didn't sound very sympathetic.

The girl reached into her pocket, one hand on the steering wheel. Now, I know next to nothing about driving, but I'm pretty certain driving one handed at fifty miles per hour in a residential area wasn't something to be advised. She held down one number on her cell and brought the phone to her ear.

"Damn it!" she yelled and threw it in the back seat. A moment later she took a deep breath and asked. "Could you go back there at get that?"

I glanced over my shoulder, but it was too dark to find the phone. I reached up and flicked the light switch overhead.

"Turn that the fuck off," the girl snapped and without waiting for a response from me, switched the light off herself. I stared at her, and for a while nothing but the sounds of the cameri's speeding engine disturbed the silence, at least not until the girl took another long breath and spoke in very controlled tones. "Sorry, I didn't mean to curse at you. Please, don't turn on the light. I'd rather not make it easier for Myotismon to find us. "

The silence continued to stretch. She must have been expecting some reply from me, but I, quite honestly, didn't know what to say. When things started to get too uncomfortable I unbuckled my seatbelt and crawled into the back. In the dark, I groped for her cell phone.

The girl slammed on the brakes and I fell off the seat, hitting my head hard on the door. Maybe I was under shock or something, but the blow really didn't hurt as bad as it should have.

Under the light of the streetlamps, I found the bad mouthed girl's cell phone. The car was still skidding down the road. I braced myself as best I could until we came to a complete stop. Before anything else could happen, I grabbed the phone and climbed back into the front seat.

The girl had rolled the window down. "Get in here," she yelled into the night, apparently to nobody, I didn't see anyone on the road.

I reached for my seat belt, but hesitated. Maybe it would be better if I got out of the car and ran. Then I remembered Phantomon and the vampire and thought best to take my chances with the angsty girl instead.

"I saw you hide in those bushes! Will you get in here I'm trying to help you!" The girl turned to me and asked in a much quieter tone. "What's your friend's name?"

"Sarah."

"Sarah! I got your friend with me in the car. She's okay." She turned to me again. "Tell her to come.

"Sarah, I think we better listen to her," I called, narrowing my eyes towards the bushes the girl had been yelling at.

After a few seconds, Sarah emerged, pink hair all frayed. She'd torn a hole and dirtied my pajama pants. Looking like the living dead, she stumbled over to the driver's backdoor, but she didn't open it. She bit her lip, gazing to the neighborhood houses.

"I'm your best shot of getting through this," the girl said. "Now get in the car."

Still, Sarah hesitated.

"Sarah," I spoke up. "I think she's trying to help us."

"I-" Sarah began, but her eyes jerked upwards and she let out a scream. And without further encouragement, opened the backseat car-door and jumped inside. "Drive! Drive! Drive!"

"Shit," the girl whispered and slammed on the gas, once again we were racing through the night at dangerous, illegal speeds. "Come on, Lillymon, where are you?" she muttered, half her attention scanning the skies.

What happened next, I couldn't quite discern. All I could see through the front windshield was the tops of the lamp posts and night sky. My weight was thrown into my back, and I gripped the car seat, feeling off balance. The Cameri had been push into a vertical position with its rear pressing on the pavement. It held that impossible stance for seconds, before crashing down on the pavement, miraculously, on its wheels.

The vampire towered over the car. He placed both, ridiculously huge, hands on the hood and leaned forward.

The girl slammed on the gas, and the engine roared, the mile per hour meter spun to seventy, yet still the car did not move. After a few seconds, realizing this tactic was not working, she switched gears, pulling the car into reverse. And for one euphoric second I thought it had worked.

The hood ripped from the vampire's hands, car shooting backwards. But just as suddenly as we started moving, we stopped. I jerked in my seat and heard a groan from Sarah in the back. The vampire still stood several feet away, yet his hand jabbed into the car, fingers and nails like claws. He dragged the whole car towards him.

The cameri's engine roared in protest as the girl continued to try and reverse away, but she might as well have done nothing. The car continued to move towards the vampire. She switched gears again, but the vampire was ready for her. The moment we sped forward, he caught the hood again, and we were back where we started.

A stalemate.

The vampire's eyes darted to me, to Sarah, still groaning in the back, and came to rest on the red headed girl. He pulled one hand from the hood, and crossed it over his chest.

"Nightmare-"

"FLOWER CANNON!"

A missile shot out of the night, heading straight for the vampire. But the creature jerked its free hand, and just before the missile made contact it erupted into bits of ash. At least, I thought it was ash. It became all pixilated and then disappeared completely.

Not wasting a moment, eyes still locked on the red headed girl, the vampire crossed his hand over his chest again.

The fairy let out a scream of fury and threw herself at the vampire. They tumbled to the side, and the girl having not taken her foot off the gas, the cameri bolted forward. I thought we might have run both the vampire and fairy over, but there was no distinct bump when we passed them.

Sarah pulled herself off the floor of the car to look out the back window.

"He's coming He's coming! Hurry up!"

"Get out my laptop!" the girl shouted over her shoulder. "It's in the pocket behind my seat." She turned hard, and Sarah, not being buckled up, fell sideways and onto the floor again. I just barely managed to keep my seat.

"Get it!" the girl shouted again.

"Oh, god, I'm going to die. I'm going to die," Sarah blubbered, now starting to cry.

Seeing as Sarah was in no position to help, I took it upon myself to retrieve the laptop. I didn't really know what good it would do us in this situation.

"Alright, open it up!"

I glance out the review window and saw the vampire was flying towards us. The fairy charged him, but he merely shoved her hard into the pavement. It was shocking that the vampire could keep speed with us. I mean, we were going over sixty miles an hour.

"Open it!"

I didn't bother asking why. I opened the laptop, some program was already up.

"Where is the location?" The girl asked, making another hard turn.

"There's a GPS on here?" I asked. "I don't think-"

"Never mind. Just throw it out the window!"

"What," I asked, not sure I heard her right.

"Throw the laptop out the window!"

Okay. I rolled down the window and glanced at the girl, but her attention was focused on the road. Wind blew my hair out of my face as I lifted her laptop, holding it outside the car window. With the pressure of the wind, it became difficult to hold onto. I listened for any protest from the girl, but she gave none.

Well, it's not my laptop. I threw it into the air.

The moment it left my hands, the fairy caught it and flew in front of the car. She buzzed ahead of the car, keeping the screen open and facing us. The red headed girl pulled the device she had used to fight off Phantomon out of her pocket and held it before her. The computer screen let out a flash of light, blowing out all other images on the screen. I narrowed my eyes against the intensity of the glow.

The world exploded in light. It wasn't as if I could see nothing but white. I could see every detail of the car. It was the world outside that suddenly gone blank, a complete white background. We weren't moving ether, simply hovering suspended in empty space. For seconds this lasted, and then, the world sped up again, detail exploded around me. We were moving too fast to make out anything but a blur of dark colors.

The car was bumping, shacking. We were no longer driving on paved road. With the window still open, bits of dirt flew into the car, and I realized the night air smelt different. Then again, that could have been the dirt.

The girl slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded to a halt.

For a few minutes no one said anything. We just simply sat, breathing heavily in the car. Sarah continued to whimper in the back. The red headed girl held the steering wheel in a white knuckled grip. She closed her eyes and let her head rest against the seat. She took a deep breath and let it out.

As if the girl's release of tension had woken me from a stupor, I remembered the vampire. I twisted around to look out the rearview window, but it was covered in dirt. Instead, I poked my head out the open window. The engine was still running, but it wasn't making noises befitting of a well-conditioned car. After all it had been through tonight, I suppose we were lucky it didn't blow up on us.

The vampire was nowhere in sight, and neither were any of the neighborhood houses. The air did smell different. In fact, nothing looked familiar at all.

We were in a garden. Nothing was growing but the earth was tilted. I finally recognized the strange smell, manure. And it was all over my clothes. Lovely. I opened the car door and stepped out.

The field of tilted earth stretched for a few yards and then came in contact with a dense wall of trees. In the direction we had come, the car had left thick tire marks in the mud. They led right to a television set, or maybe a microwave. It was difficult to tell at such a distance. In any case, neither appliance belonged in the middle of a farmer's field.

Still farther out, I could make out a farm house. Something was moving, in which direction, it was too far to tell. Finally, my eyes landed on a figure laying in the earth, at least fifty feet from the car. I recognized the wings and thick, thorned, green hair. It was the fairy that had fought the vampire.

"Lillymon," the girl muttered from inside the car. She gripped something at her throat and practically jumped out of the car. She ran for the fairy, Lillymon. I watched the girl's progress, but decided I didn't want to know whether the fairy was dead or alive.

I peeked back into the car and found Sarah curled up on the floor of the back seat. She had her knees drawn up to her face.

"He's gone," I said.

Sarah peeped from behind her knees. "Are you sure?"

I shrugged. "Don't see him anywhere."

She blinked and finally came out of the car. Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened. She continued to walk about the field, but didn't seem to be aware she was doing it.

"Did I get knocked out or something?" she whispered.

"I don't think so," I said, following after her.

"Where are we?"

I shrugged.

"How did we get here?" Finally, she stopped, but took to circling, eyes taking in every detail of our surroundings.

That, I had a little better answer to. "A TV… I think."

"What?" Sarah asked, coming to a complete stop. "A TV?"

"Through a laptop,"

Sarah was quite for a moment. "That's insane."

"Well, so has everything else been this evening."

"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!" A rather stupid sounding voice shouted.

I turned but didn't see anyone.

"The garden it's ruined!"

I looked down and saw the voice was coming from a green slime monster with eyes popping out of its head.

Sarah let out a scream at the sight of it. "Get away from us!" she kicked it and it tumbled across the earth.

"Hey! What's your deal?" said another one.

Sarah looked from the one she had kicked to the other. More were coming from the farm house.

"I can't take this anymore!" Sarah screamed and ran for the woods.

"Caroline."

I turned and saw the red headed girl walking towards me. Lillymon fluttered behind her.

"Uh, no, my name's Tonia," I said. She could have been referring to the green slime things, but I doubted it. Her eyes were on me.

"It's my name," she said and looked after Sarah, still running for the woods. She made no move to stop her. "It might take a bit for her to calm down. One of you, Numemon, go find someone cuter to talk to her."

"Why can't I?" one of the creatures asked.

"Don't, she's crazy!" the one Sarah had kicked warned.

"She's not crazy," Lillymon said, speaking normally for the first time. She seemed quite pleasant when she wasn't trying to blow anyone up. "She's just scared."

"I'll go find someone." One of the Numemon slugged back to the farm house.

"Do you know of anyone else who were seeing the digimon?" Caroline asked.

I blinked. "Digimon?"

"The creatures that attacked you."

"Why?"

"Because that's who Myotismon will be after next."

"The guy that was trying to kill us?" I asked, though I figured what the answer would be.

"Yes, him. Now do you know anyone else who's seen them?"

"No…" Wait. There had been that ghost. "Uh, maybe."

"Maybe is good enough," She walked back towards her car. "Come on."

"What?"

"We need to go back and get them, and seeing as your friend has lost it, you'll have to come with me," Caroline said, slipping back into her car. I really didn't trust the thing to take us anywhere.

"You did this to our garden?" One of the slime monsters gawked at Caroline. "How could you?" Its eyes started to water, not a pretty sight. It scared me enough to join Caroline in the car.

"I'll make it up to you guys," Caroline sighed. "But you really shouldn't have left that TV in the middle of your garden. Anyone could come through."

"Well that's the point!" another piped in. "Just think, when this garden is grown they'll take a step and behold all the pretty plants. They'd love to stay here then!"

Caroline shut the door to the car. "That's actually kinda sweet."