FSE

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Written by fugi88, commissions open

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Part 10 of Alexander's accounts, continuing from booking a taxi and leaving the house

And that was it from the stronghold. "I'm sure they'll do well", said Artemis.

And we continued down the many stairs. There were never any lifts in our building, just stairs. Werewolves did have more stamina, even in proportion of their size.

And we went downstairs, taking me to a little closet. Artemis would leave me here so he could go get a cab.

And i sat there and waited 15 minutes in the dark. Artemis came back. "They'll take us using either a cloak or bulletproof tunnel", he started. "Then you're in the car. Bullets don't usually pass through the windows, but they might."

"Once you're on the motorway out, your chance of death decreases to normal 'car on the motorway' levels", he said. “Well, normal to here, you'll see”

Artemis stopped to sit on a bench. "All we need do is wait."

And we sat there and stared at the bulletin board. The true vigilantes, with their classic "nail through V" monogram, had posted a poster mentioning how any found humans should be "returned for processing".

A vandal had used red marker to scribble out just enough words to remove the anti-human. I smiled a little. I guess i still had faith in werewolfkind, not just that inserted by the guy next to me.

It was actually kind of nice here, in the empty space between the flats and the outside. Quiet, no activity.

Well, save for the werewolf who had come down the stairs. An old lady. Artemis helped her onto the street.

Not even a single glare at me. What had she been through?

I wonder how Biblia and Cubit were doing. I wonder if we'd come back to see them alive.

A black thing pulled up outside. Artemis opened the door. A werewolf came out holding a frame supporting an arch of black fabric.It led to what must've been a hook in the car.

It was a big car, as large as some of the larger SUVs i saw in America. Werewolf-sized cars in a human country, i noted. But here, there was genuine need for such sizes.

We walked to the backseats through the tunnel. I touched the fabric.

It was a space that stank of cleanliness, the freshly vacuumed mats almost begging for our impure bodies.

"800 kilometres", said Artemis. "No motorway speed limit in the rural areas."

And i thought about what that meant. My thoughts drifted to Germany, where rural areas had no speed limit on the autobahn system. I'd heard of people going some 200 km/h at times. That was certainly fast.

But it meant something else. I once spent time with some map tool and measured countries. I measured from Gibraltar to Bilbao, roughly, and got 800 km.

A big country, and only a million?

A very large amount of space for so few.

"From what I've heard, northwards cruising speed is about 300 km/h for today", said the driver. "That means two and a half hours for 800 km, a bit slow today."

I reeled a little. The trains go 125 mph maximum in my country. That was only 200 km/h. And the train drivers were so highly trained to go such speeds. Here, we'd be going 100 km/h faster.

Ugh, i was scared! But my seatbelt was strapped and Artemis didn't seem worried.

So, i tried to relax, looked out at the window. The world was so interesting and new.

We passed streets I'd never been on and reached an arterial road. We followed sign after sign to the "m2". This was the central motorway.

From the maps I'd seen, there were three main motorways between the north and south, each connecting a splattering of smaller towns. But the m2 was the “main one”. Likely the fastest.

And i watched the urban landscape thin out as we reached a dual carriageway. We were still in South city but we wouldn't be for long. The road was as empty as the smaller ones I'd seen leading into Scotland. This was the m2 as it stood in South city.

And we left, slowly, passing the ">100" minimum speed limit signs. They used Vienna convention road signs?!

And there we were. Around us was wilderness. I only saw a small handful of cars, even including those the other carriageway.

And i looked at the speedometer, felt the ground shake beneath me. 120. 130. 150. 190. 200. 240.

And we stayed at that speed. It was quick, but it didn't feel that. We had good suspension, after all. The asphalt was kept in good condition.

Minimum speed, 200 km/h. A new-ish sign, stating “safety reasons”.

1. "Artemis, We're going a bit fast, aren't we?"

"It's nothing", he said. "Really, I've seen people go 400 here."

"How do they even go that fast?"

"Special north-south cars, can hold 450 in the best cases"

The taxicab driver cut in. "This baby can do 520! Did it once on the way south after a mass migration. Almost crashed but ehhh."

Did he really almost crash? Fuck. But then i looked outside, saw the fields passing at great speed. They were getting patchy now. Interspersed with true wilderness.

I looked at the driver. His eyes were staring at the road passing under us at ungodly speeds.

We wouldn't die. Not today.

“I thought cruising speed was 250?”, asked Artemis. “My… friend, here, he's a little scared.”

“Nah, i've got clients to meet, we're going as fast as possible”, said the Taxidriver. “Ain't that right, baby?”

1. 310 km/h, the fastest i'd ever been on land. Sure, there were high speed trains in Europe that might've been able to take me faster, but i hadn't been on them.

We were, as i noticed, staying in the overtaking lane. The cars we were passing by were around 40 km/h slower, i think. Not quite sure.

And then i realised. It's not that bad. They way they built their motorways, it made it so it felt like we were only going 120 km/h on a normal motorway; fast, but not beyond design speed. I peeked out of the window to look at the asphalt. There was a wide margin between our edge and the dashed line, the dashed line actually visible from the side window. And then i looked out.

The hard shoulder was wide, covered in sand, ready to brace any speeding vehicle. A lot of sand, a lot of space, plenty for one to corkscrew into.

“Is it just me or has the motorway become easier?”, i asked.

“Nah, close to the cities, they're tight and came from those designed for 140, tops. Doesn't stop the government removing the limit. Out here in the true wilderness? They're fine!”, said the taxicab driver.

And there it was, where the werewolves had developed past humans. Not in technology nor science, but in transport. High-speed cars.

I had a little think and realised none of the normal car-problems applied here, in the wilderness. Pollution? Taken out by the forests, mostly. Urban space? nobody really needed a car in south city, and the streets reflected that. Fatalities? Of whom? The trespasser in wild forest?

The motorway's impact was negligible in so much wilderness. What importance was the wilderness here when there was plenty, way more than plenty, on either side?

“Hey, look, an information board”, said Artemis.

And i looked. Two boards, over both lanes. One of the many we must've'd passed. The first was the one in our lane, the “superfast lane”. It clocked an average speed of 300 km/h, and showed it as a table. 5 minutes, 25 km; 310 km/h. 10 minutes, 50 km, 320 km/h. 15 minutes, 75 km, 330 km/h. 30 minutes, 150 km… 400 km/h.

The other side showed them differently, an average speed of 250, thusly making the 10 minutes marker show 41 km instead. 30 minutes? 125 km.

The difference was small. It made such large speeds feel slightly useless. Yet still, we covered the asphalt at our speed.

It was a massive board. So large 3 werewolves could stand on-shoulder and still not be tall enough to quite reach the top.

Fuck this, the air is stagnant. “I want to feel the speed”, i said. “Could we open a window?”

“Try”, said the driver.

I looked down to my door controls. The window button looked normal. I pushed on it. A click, and a small red pictogram. We were faster then 150 km/h, couldn't open the windows.

The driver chuckled. “When we get to the north, we can stop at a service station and your… friend could guide you to the fence.”

Interesting idea. I expressed agreement.

The climate was changing. We were leaving a forest of olive greens and orange-ish soil. Things were becoming more northern in colour, slightly blacker, slightly more… UK.

We flashed past a sign. I didn't have the time to read it

“We're quarter the way north”, said the driver.

My heart dropped a little. Of course the country is this large, of course it has to take so long to navigate, of course i have to live here.

I sat back, then, to look around me. True wilderness, after all, is all that surrounded us.

---

“WELCOME TO THE NORTH”, said a sign, English kind of almost scratched off. It was below “FALVE AL FEPENTRIO” and “BIENVENIDO A NORTE”.

Artemis lit up. “Look, northern Spanish! ‘Falve' is from Latin ‘salve’ and ‘fepentrio’ from Latin ‘sepentrio’!"

“Eurgh, Northern Spanish”, said our driver. “I gave up on learning Spanish because of the modern people and their fake words.”

Artemis chuckled. “You'd love it if you knew what it meant”. He leaned back “I worked as a translator and it's so beautiful to see the shades of nuance the language allows. New words coined every day :)”.

And i smiled back. Northern Spanish, i thought, could be quire beautiful. Latin-flavoured, Arabic-flavoured, a hyperbole of the other Spanish etymologies.

And we passed through.

“Next service station, a kilometre of sliproad to get in”, said the driver. “Great place for car-watching.”

Finally, my opportunity.

And sure enough, we moved into the cruising lane, slowed a good amount. “Hualto-afema a 2.5 km”

Artemis lit up again. “'hualto-afema' is from Finnish ‘hualtoasema’! So beautiful!”

So, the time passed and the sliproad arrived. We moved in.

Paint-lines on the road, loud bangs. Became quieter as we slowed down.

And we parked, into the service area. Fairly basic, a fast-food place, a toilet, a gift shop.

But we parked. the door opened, and i let out my first unprotected steps onto the raw ground in a while now. “Earth!” i shouted out. “Ground! What pleasure!”

“Werewolf realm", Artemis corrected. “Regnumo verfipelluf, in Northern Spanish”

Hey, that was just broken Latin!

“And Reino hombre lobo in regular Spanish”, i said.

Artemis shrugged. “I guess.”

But something came to mind, a memory from Artemis's sold flat. “Wait, didn't you tell me that ‘lycanthroporum’ was Northern Spanish?"

He shrugged again. “They just make lots of words sometimes. Common concept. Anyways, verfipelluf is quite a bit more common.”

I heard a loud noise. A loud car on the motorway. I looked wistfully at the other side of the service station. “Let's go”

Artemis guided the way, and we crossed the tarmac. We crossed a green lawn, quite green. And we reached the fence.

As i expected the lanes were wide. But they were wider then i had expected. Two cars could fit comfortably into each lane, and i'm talking werewolf-sized cars. Possibly a human car could squeeze in.

I saw in the distance two specks. They slowly grew before zipping past at almost inhuman speeds. Possibly non-werewolvian speeds either. Unnatural. The wind pulled me into the fence.

I laughed. It was nice here, having a taste of the raw power of these cars. They roared past like trains did at my station, only more substantial, dripping with raw power which sprayed out from them at their speed.

Average speed of this section? 400 km/h, right now. The massive display said it, the display that i'd misjudged at my speed. It was much larger then three werewolves. It really had to be legible from great distance.

The cars, suprisingly, didn't have loud engines. I remember those short smooth cars that'd drive on our congested roads, barely even pulling 50 MPH. Here, there were these large SUV units of cars pulling such high speeds with what almost felt like apathy. They went fast and knew it.

Suddenly, i felt a strange lightheadedness. What was i even doing here, in the middle of nowhere? Wild, untamed forest on each side, barely held back behind a fence. Why was the service station here and not, say, a kilometre north, or maybe a kilometre south?

This area was empty and that emptiness made me feel uncomfortable. I could imagine somehow teleporting into this world where the motorway was 20 km east, alongside the service station, and i was stuck in forest.

It was unsettling. I reached out to touch Artemis. He seemed better-adapted to the forest, so if we somehow teleported there…

His hair was soft, gentle, slightly warm. He was a good person.

And i held onto him as cars passed by. The real world, the real place, here, a service station.

“Let's get back onto the road”, i said.

Artemis nodded. He spent a few more seconds staring at the motorway, and we made our way to the cab.

Whoops, turns out the driver had left, probably to use the loo.

Eh, we sat here. I fiddled with Artemis's hair. He did the same with mine. It was less satisfying for him as i had much less. It felt good though.

And then the driver arrived, unlocked the car, let us clamber in.

And we strapped our seatbelts and began moving.

Onto the sliproad, eating the kilometre with our acceleration to 200. And we met the motorway, merged, sped up, and entered the middle lane. 300, 350, 400.

We were at mostly-full-speed and it felt brilliant. It felt brilliant to be approaching the north and finally visiting the place that'd take me for who i am.

So, the forest that surrounded us flashed into glimpses of fields, into fields of wheat and vegetables. Less animals, i noted.

And the forest struggled to remain. Eventually, i saw only fields. On the horizon, a town. Not north city.

“What's that town?”, i asked the driver.

“Look at the sign.”

And i looked out. An exit marker, one of few exits on the motorways. “l'admill", said a sign. English transliteration below, “luh'addme”. Wait, an inconsistency. “Why does it start with ‘l’ '?", i asked.

“Town names use an even weirder dialect of Northern Spanish”, said Artemis. “I think that name means ‘the human’, but it's a very rare word nowadays. They use ‘chovesk’ now, i think.”

And we zipped past the slipway. I mentally counted. 30 seconds to go from the line-break to the nose of the junction. We were going 400 km/h but i assumed 300 to make the maths easier. 300 divided by 60 would be 5, right? Yeah. So then we took the 5 kilometers per minute, 60 seconds, and split it.

That sliproad was at least 2.5 kilometers long. Probably a bunch more.

And then beyond it, i saw a digital sign. “Police checkpoint: maintain 100 km/h.”

So, we slowed down.

And we reached a parade of police cars. “This is new”, said the driver. “Fuck…”

And we stopped, in a queue. They'd taken over a service station. Two uniformed officers walked down the road and directed the cars. Some got sent down their merry way.

Others went down the sliproad.

And a uniformed officer tapped on our window. The driver rolled it down.

And a policeman looked into my eyes. He had amber-ish eyes, i noticed. “You… hail from the south?"

“Yeah”, said Artemis. “He's from earth”

“Name?”, asked the policeman. “Any… affiliations old, no, old affiliations?”

“Artemis”, said my friend. “Worked as a translator, left due to poor work environment.”

Should i mention that he was in the true vigilantes? Not sure. Probably not. I wanted to go north.

“He's my… partner”, i said. “A rather good one at that, saved me from an acid attack!”

The policeman's face lit up. Something had connected. “He is a doctor?”

“No". Artemis slapped his hand to his lips. He'd said something he shouldn't've.

“Ah, so experience with the true vigilante's acid attacks, right?”, asked the policeman. “Very bad. Blink twice if you need help, human, said the policeman.”

I tried my hardest not to blink. My vision got blurry. His eyes were relentless in staring at me.

I glanced at Artemis. He had gotten tense.

“We should take precautions”, said the policeman. “Down to the service station, conductor, no, driver.”

And the policeman walked away. “They'll be tracking us”, said the driver. “They added a red sticker to the side. I'll have to scrape that off, later.”

And we moved, down the hard shoulder, into the service station's sliproad.

“Why was his English broken?”, i asked, to break silence.

“They don't practice it much when in the city”, said Artemis. “It's just not as useful for them. Northern Spanish is easier on the mouth, after all.”

He lit up. “Hey, want to know why he made these mistakes?”

I shrugged, then nodded. It'd be nice to let him waffle. I liked his voice, and it'd likely help him de-stress.

“So, the adjective placement switch like in ‘affiliations old’ comes from Spanish grammar and how they form their descriptors, and then we have the lack of interrogatives in how he goes on and just uses a rising tone, that's from how Spanish questions are formed, too… it's passable, so it works and he still gets to communicate. And then they have, like, the word ‘conductor’ coming from Standard Spanish for ‘driver’, which is a cognate but with a different meaning, a false friend, like ‘carpet’ and ‘carpeta’, right?”

I glanced at the headrest. It had a rather plain weave.

Artemis was still going on. He seemed less tense. I smiled and nodded in agreement. He might have some long interview to do. I'd happily vouch for him.

“Important shit”, interrupted the Driver. “They did this once before, after some thug was put in a wheelchair. They might lie to you, inflame you. Do not get angry. Humans are, for all intents and purposes, your best friends and biggest allies.”

Artemis chuckled.“Don't worry, i'm with one right now”

“Tell me about the wheelchair thug incident”, i said. “I'd be interested in it.”

The driver stopped to think. Was i going to invite yet more anxious waffle? Was i spoiling the air.

“It was big news. A thug was stabbed and crippled for trying to make his own little money. Lover to a human, too!”, started the driver. “And it made him contact the true vigilantes, i think, to try to raid the bookshop it happened near. A common haunt for humans, after all.”

“One group went north. The police, of course, killed them. Right thing to do and all.”

They were reflecting the newspaper's lies. I changed my seating position to turn diagonally to the driver. “And you don't think the victim was scared for his life? Werewolves are quite strong, after all, so it's best to defend oneself.”

“Ok, yeah, maybe you have a point, but you do need common sense and understand that killing leads to mess, ugh.”

Is this seriously the argument he turns to? Complaints about the mess of killing? Complaints against self-defense because of just a little gore?

“Doesn't stop the True Vigilantes.”, i noted. Grimly.

“Let's not talk about death”, said Artemis.

And we spent a few minutes in anxious silence, as we parked and waited for a police officer to come meet us.

No, we'd meet them. I opened the door and left, pulling Artemis and the driver with me.

And a police officer made eye contact with us. The bold, confident us.

“Hi.”, i said. "We're here, as you may have expected.”

*Stay tuned for part 11, in which we have a “gentle talk” with the police. *

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Some notes:

• GCSEs, as it turns out, are useful in everyday life. The only reason i could do all these speed-calculations are because i learnt about the speed formula in physics :)

• I wonder at what point i'll include a-level maths here.

• I once went to this service station, off junction 482, the A-2 near Lleida, just near of this town called Gomés and i got a similar feeling to Alexander. I was in the middle of nowhere, massive fields all around me, a motorway with fast cars passing near me. And then we continued westwards, to Zaragoza. It's an odd feeling, realising so much space is available yet unused, abandoned for the fact that the cities provide more opportunity.

• My life in Spain as compared to the slightly-overcrowded UK has been a central theme of this novel, i've just realised.

• Oh also on that drive we went to this place called Collbató and it was interesting. I like mountains more then the sea, it turns out. If it wasn't for the overcrowded Bonpreu, it'd've been quite nice.

• Ok final Holiday reminsicing; on this visit to Besalú i found this little neighbourhood on the west and it kind of reminded me of the Welsh towns i'd grown up in, so that was a cool piece of nostalgia. Maybe Alexander could go experience it.

• Yes, Artemis mistranslated. The town name is significantly more meaningful.

• Remember that i don't usually write about eye colour. So when you see the policeman's eye colour, that's because Alexander is a bit surprised and is trying to read this guy.