That night, it still took me a long time to get to sleep. For whatever reason, my mind wouldn't shut off. I turned to the book that I'd grabbed out of the penthouse apartment. Even with our time streams being different, I was pretty sure that Carl Zuulman was dead, so I didn’t feel too bad about reading his journal. Thanks to my survival suit, I had plenty of light to read.

  It was the daily thoughts of a man running a successful company, and it was his to-do list as well as a place for him to rant. Goldie in finance was going to be the death of him. She wouldn’t stop nagging him about receipts. That was fine because it helped him during tax prep time.

  Reading about taxes soon got me to sleep.

  The next day was all about packing for our trip. We had everything we needed to find the Foiros Waystation. We just needed to throw it all together in a way we could carry it. The previous day we'd started boiling seawater to get the salt. It was a day of constant fires with a pot bubbling over it as the water burned off and only the salt was left.

  I wasn’t sure of the process. I thought you salted meat that was already cooked, but according to both Khanna and Holly that wasn’t the case.

  My back deck wasn’t built yet, but we did create a kind of outdoor kitchen with a firepit and a shelf of rocks where we could balance our various pans while the water bubbled. We also had the Formica table. Luckily, I was strong enough to move it around with ease, so we had a work bench out there, balanced on the rocks.

  We still had the sheep carcass we’d kept for ourselves, and Khanna used one of our new knives to cut off the meat.

  She was thrilled. “Sid Marshall! This knife is miracle! What is the metal you call it?”

  “Steel,” I said, as I lifted the cooler and set it down.

  “Steel,” Khanna whispered. I knew she wouldn’t forget it. Now that she and Billie were getting closer, Khanna was learning English vocabulary left and right. I thought about what she’d said, how she was taught not to feel special, which is why she wasn’t jumping into the world of pronouns. She was trying though. “You” and “your” were easier for her than “me” and “mine.” Having her use the word “I” was going to be the real challenge.

  Billie came out of our house and yelled to us. “Should I bring my new coat? How cold do you think it’s going to be?”

  It had been like that all morning. Billie had a million questions about what she might need for our trip to Sector X.

  Holly, Khanna, and I were out back, working on preparing the meat.

  I wiped some sweat from my forehead. It was a nice, warm day, and the sun was out. “Well, Billie, you’ve seen as much of New Ireland as I have. We don’t know how cold it’s going to be.”

  “Okay!” Billie then was back inside, going through our stuff. Before our trip to San Submerged, packing would’ve been a lot easier. Now, we had so much more stuff.

  Holly lifted a pot off the fire and used a stick to attack the crusty residue at the bottom of the pan. She poured the salt into our bowl. “You knew about metal, Khanna. Why didn’t you have metal knives?”

  Khanna sighed. “Metal for Eternal Sultana not for Iron Descendant’s brides. Stone good enough for them. Steel knife is very fine. Can Khanna keep?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  The Huntress let out a squeal and came over to me and kissed me on the cheek.

  Holly threw us a glance from her pots. “And I’m sure you now know how to make a very nice leather sheath for it. You are very talented.”

  Khanna didn’t respond but she did smile.

  Billie came out. “Uh, so, we have four canteens, but should we bring more water? Do you think it’s going to rain? I’m not sure my new coat will do so well in the rain. And I’m worried about my lungs from Fry City. I breathed in that air. Could I have gotten lung cancer? It feels funny when I breathe. It doesn’t hurt or anything. It just feels funny. Should I be worried?”

  She went on and on

  Khanna put her knife down and went over to the cheerleader. The Huntress’s hands were bloody from butchering the sheep. “Bil-lie. You…came to K’Shaul naked. Khanna come to K’Shaul naked. Khanna and Bil-lie…we…survive. This journey easy. No worry. No worry.”

  Billie’s cheeks flushed. She was clearly embarrassed. “You’re right. You’re right. It’s not like I have a ton of stuff to go through. I guess I’m like my mom. She used to freak out before a trip. I can’t believe we’re leaving our little home, and for what? Sleeping on the ground, and we have a tent, right? Just the one tent, but it’s a two-person tent. It’s going to be tight fit.”

  I didn't have the heart to tell her that a two-person tent really only slept one, so that having three people in there wasn't just going to be tight, but basically, they would have to sleep on each other. I was looking forward to that part.

  “We do have a quite a bit of stuff,” I said. “I’m going to bring the cooler filled with salt and meat. We have the tent and some other supplies as well as the guns. We won’t be traveling light, but we’ll be okay.”

  When Khanna went over to the table, Billie followed. I could see the two were getting far more comfortable with each other.

  Billie straightened her a little, her eyes on Khanna. “I’m sure the tent will be fine. It’ll be fun. I had a friend in elementary school, and we used to sleep in a tent in her backyard. But I kept thinking a bear would attack us. Crazy, I know, because we were in the middle of Grand Junction, but in my defense, there have been bear sightings there.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “No bears.” I was glancing around, doing some measuring for the deck I wanted to build. “Besides, Opal will be scanning constantly. I have plenty of crystals to keep her at 99%.”

  Holly picked up one of her waterproof baskets and filled another pot with seawater. She set it on the stones to get it boiling. “I am praying that once she gets to 100%, we’ll learn more about her primary mission.”

  I filled the bottom of the cooler with our salt. We’d then add a layer of meat before we added more. “And we can pair her to the Fodoron Obelisk. We better start getting some fucking answers.”

  Billie couldn’t take her eyes off Khanna. “Yeah, the tent is small, but I’m sure it will be okay.”

  That made me laugh. I knew what was on Billie’s mind. It was the K’Shaul Effect. All of us were thinking about sex all the time.

  The Huntress’s lips curled into a little smile. Billie’s obsession with the tent wasn’t lost on her.

  We spent the day packing, salting the meat, and then coming up with a way for me to carry most of the stuff. In the end, we had a little sled that I would pull across the grasses of New Ireland. That would get us to Fry City, but once there, we might be able to find a vehicle. When Billie and I had been there before, Opal had said something about cars, and we did see motorcycles. I could picture us all zooming over the hills on motorcycles.

  Part of me wanted to get the trip over, so I could come back and work on the deck.

  That evening, we ate dinner on the Point, next to the fire flickering in the pit. The fire had been going all day, and so there was a pile of coals there, gleaming red. We’d cooked up some tusked deer on the coals, seasoned with garlic salt and lemon pepper we’d taken from the Ameritronics breakroom.

  It was the best meal we’d had in weeks. We even had dessert—Twankinian Sugardrop Pies, which were like Hostess’s cherry pies, but a bit sweeter, if you could believe it. Sugardrops were the Twankinian form of cherries.

  Holly came out to join me. Billie and Khanna were in the house, talking, and laughing. Well, Khanna was laughing. Billie, on the other hand, was full of giggles, nervous, somewhat horny giggles. We could see them near the fire, since our house didn’t have walls. I still needed to add. Windows from the Twankinian strip mall. Or maybe not. I kind of like to having it open so we could smell the ocean and hear the surf. I’d considered turning it into a bunker, with thick walls, and no windows. But already, we had basically a fortress. However, I’d been thinking about wooden walls we could slam into place.

  Being outside felt so good. I realized I had spent way too much time indoors back in Grand Junction. It was a shame, since one of the joys of living in Colorado were all the outside activities.

  Holly pulled me out of my reverie. “Mr. Marshall, I need your help with something.”

  “What is it, Professor?”

  “Mr. Marshall, I need you to tell me to quit worrying. However, unlike our Billie Lynn Kidd, I'm not worried about our little journey. I worry about the ramifications of the sentient mold covering the dinosaurs. They did not tell us where Green Colony went.”

  “Are they dinosaurs or are they fungasaurs?”

  Holly sighed. “I suppose the name was inevitable. But seriously, Sid…”

  I tried to make her feel better. “I'm not sure they knew, Professor. I mean, Holly. Khanna will eventually learn English, and I’ll start calling you by your first name. You're not my teacher anymore.”

  Holly looked at me over the flames. “You’re right. I’m not. And with every day passing, the reality of that seems to carry more weight.”

  Khanna let out a laugh that was very close to a giggle.

  The professor glanced over at them. “Those two seem to be getting along. I'm glad. I think it's important for Billie to have friends.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  Holly tilted her head. “I fear that we have strayed from my original topic of conversation, namely, the existential meaning of sentient mold. If that fungus can be sentient, what else can be alive in this world? What if White Colony isn't as friendly as he seems?”

  “Jack? Jack is okay. And Reggie isn’t that bright, not when it comes to concealing the truth. Actually, Holly, talking to the fungi has made me feel better about the whole situation. We have obvious value, since we keep their World Beasts alive. And dealing with sentient fungal armor is probably a lot easier than talking to the T. rexes.”

  “Their reptilian brain is something I can understand.” Holly paused. “But with Jack and Reggie, we simply don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

  “It comes back to the Way of Molzo,” I said. “It seems to be their code, but I don’t know what it is, so I don’t an opinion yet. While we’re gone, I’m not too afraid of the shark men coming up and messing with our stuff. I mean, they have plenty of meat in the ocean. No, I think it’s power crystals they want. While we’re gone, there won’t be any Inferness energy up here to tempt them.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Again, Khanna laughed. This time, we heard her say, “Khanna. She no use pronoun!”

  Billie responded. “Your face is a pronoun!”

  That made Khanna giggle. “Bil-lie’s language is silly. Bil-lie is silly. Ha! That is sounding the same.”

  “It’s called a rhyme, Khanna.”

  “A rhyme? Can Khanna do it all the time?”

  “You can when you start using pronouns!”

  That made them both laugh.

  Holly looked past me and into the night. For a second, I could see how lonely she seemed. I wanted to make her feel better.

  “You know, Holly, you’re not alone. You’re a part of our Enclave.”

  Holly nodded and smiled a little. “Yes. The Sid Marshall Enclave.”

  “We are not calling it that. Just like Carl Zuulman didn’t name his company after himself, or his grandfather, we’re not naming the Enclave after me.”

  “But what if I insist?” Holly asked. “The Marshall Enclave has a certain ring to it. I worked for the Marshall Plan after World War II.”

  That made me roll my eyes. “Whatever.”

  “Are you enjoying Carl’s diary?” Holly asked.

  I shrugged. “Running a company certainly isn’t very sexy. I’m in the middle of the tax season right now, fiscal year 1971. He’s glad Nixon is in the White House. I don’t think Watergate happened on that world.”

  “No,” Holly said. “The fantasy of things is very different than the reality. Most of the time. Billie has been obsessed about how small the tent is. I think I know why.”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t know what else to say, so Holly and I sat in the quiet, the only sounds were the surf below, the crackle of the fire, and the soft chatter of Khanna and Billie talking. After that much girl talk, Khanna’s English was bound to improve.

  I had to say something, but I kept picturing the three women in the tent, naked, and me crawling on top of them. The image drained all of the blood out of my brain.

  Finally, I cleared my throat. “So, uh, how goes it reading the Ameritronics Employee Handbook?”

  Holly’s eyes sparkled. “It was from a different time, I’ll tell you that much. I’ve only read a little, but there is a guide to cigarette smoking in the workplace. An extensive guide. Like I said…different time.”

  We talked more, but we cut it short because tomorrow was going to be a long day of travel.

  My plan was to get a good night sleep but that wasn’t meant to be.

  This time, it was Billie woke me up. I was sound asleep, with Khanna lying on my chest, when Billie shook me awake.

  My eyes popped open, and I saw the glow of the coals. Then I focused on Billie, who put a finger to her lips.

  From the gleam in her eyes, I knew what she wanted…

  Careful not to wake Khanna, I again put a log in the fire before leaving the house with Billie.

  “Where do you want to go?” I asked.

  “To the bus. I have a blanket and pillows.”

  “Thank God for the bus,” I said, laughing a little.

  “Come on,” Billie said. “I’ve been so horny all day.”

  That wasn’t very surprising…just another day on K’Shaul.

  What was surprising is that Khanna joined us that night.

  Land of the Lust: Guns of K'Shaul), so if you can't wait, you can run on over there to keep on reading. And if you have some extra cash and like the story, I have a PayPal.