From that hole came a gang of ghastly-white creatures with sunken eyes and skull-like faces shambling forward like primates, the creatures Trevor had long ago nicknamed "Ghouls."
Major Forest raised her assault rifle but Trevor pushed the barrel down.
"If you shoot it'll wake up everything else in this city. Run!"
He directed their escape along a small path between two round buildings featuring gigantic but smashed video boards.
With heavy packs and bulky bedrolls on their backs, it only took a few seconds for their sprint to deteriorate into a jog. Their half-empty canteens sloshed, utility belts jingled, and their heavy boots thumped with each step making it difficult to hide their movement. Behind them-closing fast-the pursuing Ghouls hooted and grunted.
The road ended at a tall stone wall but Trevor spotted an open door in one of the surrounding buildings. He could not guess what denizen nested inside, but with the Ghouls nearly upon them, they had no choice but to take a chance.
With bayonets fixed, Trevor and Nina charged into the darkness. Based on the echo of their footsteps, it felt like a very big but pitch black room with a low ceiling and filled with both a chill and a musty stink.
Nina lit a flare and tossed it ahead while Trevor searched for and found the exterior door. He swung it shut and, in the red glare of the flare, spotted a forked steel rod-perhaps a tool of some kind-and propped it against the door, jamming it shut at least temporarily. Claws and teeth gnashed the other side, attempting to scrape and bite through.
"We need to keep moving," Trevor spoke the obvious but the sparkling glow of the flare lit only more darkness, giving no clue to their surroundings.
Nina answered with a second flare, this time holding it aloft, creating an umbrella of light. He moved to her side and together they advanced, hoping to find another exit while the door held. When Trevor kicked something, he saw the floor littered with debris including scraps of paper, metal shards, and bone fragments.
Behind them across the black void, the Ghouls pushed against the door. Their thumps, thuds, and scratches reverberated all around yet…yet Trevor heard another sound, one with them in the dark. Something like…the sound of…breathing?
The sparkling red flare lit a bundle of junk in their path; a mound of branches, planks, piping, and shrubs. Mixed in with the junk, a carcass of some small animal.
Trevor barely had time to mutter, "Oh shit," before the master of the den roared out of the darkness into the intruders' balloon of light, stumbling toward them on two big legs standing seven feet. In a flash, a big furry paw sent Nina sprawling to the floor. Her flare rolled across the ground sending strobes of red light through the chamber.
The monster turned to Trevor, dropping to all fours yet still of intimidating size. It rammed him with a snapping snout, teeth tearing away his thigh rig, knocking him down, and sending his assault rifle to the floor beside him.
As the creature paused to roar, the rolling flare shined perfectly on the beast, illuminating white-tipped brown fur, a muscular body nearly a thousand pounds in weight, and massive paws.
Trevor yelled, "It’s a damn Grizzly Bear!"
At that same instant across the black chamber came the sound of the door crashing open, the metal tool clanging on the hard floor, and the shuffle of Ghouls' feet.
He had no time to consider the irony. As the animal lunged at him again, Trevor stretched for his bullpup rifle and wielded the gun like a club, momentarily warding off his attacker as the edge of the bayonet cut across its snout.
Trevor thought, an invading monster from Nina’s home world. A world where the animals are like what I know on my Earth. Yet here, they’re the monsters.
"Come on!" Nina helped him to his feet with one hand and threw the flare with the other. It landed in front of the ghastly mob, attracting the bear's attention.
As she led him away, Trevor dared a glance behind. The flare created a flickering sphere of illumination shining upon a battle between creatures from different worlds. One Ghoul flew through the air, possibly missing a limb. Others surrounded and clawed the Grizzly.
A rush of fresh air turned his attention forward again as they came to and opened an exit door, escaping to the outside with the Ghouls and the Grizzly too occupied to follow.
– The building could easily have been an office complex from Trevor’s Earth, filled with a variety of chambers of various sizes devoid of furniture and most windows smashed or at least cracked. After a quick search of the six story complex, the fugitives decided the place seemed safe. Of course, in the post-Apocalyptic world — pick a world- ‘safe’ was a relative term.
In any case, Trevor and Nina found two windowless, adjoining offices on the fourth floor, perfect for hiding the glow of their chemical lantern, a small container that generated hours of both light and heat when the liquids inside mixed.
Dinner came first; dry crackers coated with a powdery vegetable spread and accompanied by a metal tin of packed fish that might have been mackerel. As he washed the rough meal down with a swig from his canteen, Trevor decided the time had come for questions.
"Tell me about your home, Nina."
The glow from the churning chemicals inside the lantern flickered like a watery candle and danced across her soft yet strong features as she leaned against a wall and told her story. She spoke in a voice that suggested a distant sadness, perhaps homesickness.
"I'm not sure where to start."
"At the beginning. If you're not from Earth, where are you from?"
"In this universe-actually, in all the universes-man comes from Sirius."
Some memory or another caused him to mumble, "The dog star."
"When I was over on your Earth, we listened to your Empire’s radio broadcasts and the house we stayed in had some history books. To be honest, my home is a lot like your world was before the invasion. I mean, we lived in City-States, pretty much like what you would think of as countries, just more of them and not as big. I think our technology level was pretty much on track with yours. Like, we have skyscrapers and big oceans and beach front condos. Different continents and such, plus two moons. But overall, same type of land and stuff but it’s arranged kind of different, you know? I mean, I’m guessing your Earth is exactly like this one, right?"
Trevor said, "I've been thinking about that. I studied your maps. The geography here is the same as on my Earth but here it's home to the Chaktaw and the monsters-animals, I guess-from their environment. You'd think things like the trees and rivers and all that would be different, but I was fooled, I really thought this world belonged to mankind, like mine does."
"Trevor, I didn't even know about the parallel universes until after our Trevor died. To us, this planet could have been anywhere, nothing special about it from our point of view."
"So wait, though, you found out about those parallel universes. In each of them, an Earth like this one. Except on mine, humanity lives there. Here, it's the Chaktaw. What about the others? Probably Duass on one, Hivvans on another, and so on. All identical to a certain point, the same trees, the same insects, the same weather. But not the same dominant species," he thought of the alien monsters on his world; the grizzly bear here. "And not the same animals."
She told him, "From what I can tell, Trevor, your universe is the only place where man started on Earth. Everywhere else, humanity evolved on Sirius."
He glanced to the cracked, drooping ceiling. "Maybe on my universe man did start on Sirius but got transplanted to Earth. Maybe before we were even people, back when we were just microbes in the primordial soup."