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Chapter 3: The 'Wonder' of the Park

Almost immediately, David realized that they'd picked the wrong escape route. Not because of the direction it would lead them, but because it was too narrow. Wood and metal towered over them, with lights strung on wires between the buildings that formed the boundaries of the path lighting their way in the darkness of the park. The buildings hemmed them in, barely allowing them to run two at a time as they sped down the paved street as fast as their feet could carry them.

Even with their slight lead, he could hear the transformed chasing after their. Caws, shrieks, growls, barks, snaps, roars; the calls of an entire zoo chased after them with energy to spare, and he swore that the ground shook at their approach.

He didn't dare to look behind him; as it was, he was barely keeping up with the rest of the group, and if he looked back, he might fall...and if he fell...

No, no, he couldn't think like that. He would make it out of here, and he would be fine. He just had to run a little faster.

They all needed to run faster, but some of them were having more trouble with that than the others. Jeremiah definitely wasn't having any trouble, considering he was leading the pack, and surprisingly, Cari was almost right behind him, running nearly neck and neck with the oldest of the group. Not easily, but she was not falling behind by any rate.

Behind them were Adam and Ashley, the former supporting the latter as the half-transformed woman could barely keep up a walking pace, let alone something frenzied like their current run. The only way she was managing to make it this far was because Adam was running with her, tugging her along. Something about his new legs and feet seemed to have given him a much needed speed boost. Hell, he probably could have gotten ahead of the whole group, but he was staying back just enough to help Ashley keep up.

And finally, David, all the way in the back. Even just a scant minute into the run, he was panting sucking air in desperation to keep from having some sort of heart attack. Panting, he pumped his legs hard, his arms doing the same.

"We gotta lose 'em!" Adam shouted from up ahead.

"No kidding? I just thought...we could keep...running 'em around!" David shouted back up. "Any...idea....how?"

"Just...keep running!" he shouted back, his padded feet hitting the ground hard, pulling himself and the sweaty Ashley along.

David shook his head, barely able to keep breathing at this point. His heart hammered against his chest, as if trying to beat its way right out into the open. The only thing keeping him going was the thought of what the transformed would do to him if they caught him, and that wasn't going to be good for much longer; he could tell that it was getting harder to get enough air to keep going, and his throat burned in the way that it always did before he ran out of stamina. He was familiar with it from all the swimming he did up at college; he had another half a minute, maybe a full one if he was lucky, and then he'd collapse.

Well, if he couldn't get away, he'd sure as hell make sure that the things behind him had a heck of a run before they really caught him.

One by one, they rounded a sudden bend. Jeremiah first, followed by Cari. Adam had to yank hard on Ashley's arm to get her around the turn, and David winced at the sudden scream from his friend, imagining her arm getting almost pulled out of its socket by the sudden turn.

Then it was his turn. He winced as he had to stutter step, slowing down just a bit at the turn to keep from running into the building that formed the corner, and whipped around -

CRA-CRACK!

The horde of the transformed hit the buildings as they didn't make the turn quite so well. A brief feeling of relief went through David's mind before he was off again, shaking his head. They weren't going to be stuck there for long, and when they were able to get moving freely again, they were not going to be happy either.

He had about three seconds before he heard them at it again, rushing down the street after him. A roar of a lion, a hiss of some sort of snake; the sounds of the wild were chasing after him.

And it was everything that he could do to keep running.

Up ahead, he could just see Cari and the others. She'd grabbed hold of Jeremiah, keeping him from running any further ahead, and from what he could see, she had one hand pointed in his direction, maybe a bit above his head. Her lips moved as she whispered, her face screwing up. If it were possible, he'd say that she looked even more pale than before.

A sudden crack made him look up. One of the wires that went from one building to another had suddenly come loose. It hovered in the air for a second, just long enough for him to pass under it, and then dropped.

The sound of sizzling electricity made him run all the faster, but not fast enough to outrun the shrieking of whatever transformed creature had been hit by the wire. He shuddered, the high, echoing yelping of pain echoing through the narrow path.

With the creatures distracted behind them, Adam jerked Ashley into one of the alleys, calling for the others to get in too. David was all too happy to leap into the small opening, barely having the breath left to keep running; better to get caught somewhere small where only one creature could come at a time rather than all of them at once, he thought. If he was going to be caught, better this way than another.

He leaped into the alley, landing on his stomach before rolling onto his back. Jeremiah and Cari pressed against one wall of the alley, Ashley and Adam on the other. They panted softly, otherwise silent as they waited for the crackling of electricity down the street to die down.

David started to pull himself to his feet, but before he could get more than his torso off of the ground, Adam pushed him back down. Big, thick paw toes pushed against his chest as the partially transformed guy hushed him, pressing him down flat again. "Quiet," Adam hissed softly, his toes curling for a second before going relaxed again, his foot keeping pressure on top of David's chest.

Not willing to make an argument, and seeing the merit of the argument, David stayed where he was. He sucked in a few deep breaths, slowing his rapid panting to try and be quieter.

Eventually, the transformed started walking by, and when they did, David could only stare at the things that went by.

They were the most...exotic things...that he had ever seen. A bizarre, yet somehow eye-catching crossing between animal and man. Most walked on two legs, though there were some few that walked on four. The latter were almost like centaurs, save that they had paws instead of hooves, and they walked with their chests bare...and big. He blushed, looking away from them as they walked with swaying breasts, unconcerned with how they might be seen, and tried looking at the other creatures that walked by.

They were nearly as bad. Both male and female creatures walked around, and both were...exposed. In all of his life, David had never seen such raw exposure of living beings, such bare expressions of...well, sex. Not a one of the transformed had a stitch of real clothing on them, and those that did just carried around the ripped rags of what they had carried while they were human. Ripped shoes where toes stuck out, shredded shirts that did nothing to hide new muscle or enlarged breasts, pants that maybe had a piece of the waistband still together but did nothing to hide the bulky sheaths and heavy sacs or dripping slits...It was as though all humans had been dropped into a realm of total debauchery.

Creatures of all sorts passed by his hiding place. Bulls, mice, cats and otters; raccoons, snakes, moose, and orcas; almost every animal that David could think of was represented in some way in their ranks. They were physically imposing and awe-inspiring, near-perfect specimens of their respective species mixed with humans.

Near-perfect; of all that he could see, of all that he marveled at, there was something that was very wrong about their eyes. There was a...a glow to them, a glint to them that was completely unnatural, and not just in the way that combining man and animal was. He would have said it was almost like a hunting glare, but even the herbivore species had it in their eyes. It...it was almost a hunger, a desperate need that he had only seen in some other students that had serious drug problems, when they were hurting with their addiction, driven by some desperate need to satisfy a craving that only they understood.

That was the look in the eyes of the transformed, a look of complete and utter obsession, an obsession that David imagined could only be filled in one way: by transforming him and everyone else in their little group.

He held his breath as they passed, one by one sliding by the front of the alley. Any one of them could have exposed the group; all it would have taken was a single look down their way, just one sniff of the air that lasted too long could have revealed their scent. By all rights, by ALL rights, they should have been seen.

But they weren't. Maybe it was the musk that the animals carried around that blocked their scent, or maybe it was that they were so desperate to find them that they ignored higher thoughts to keeping running down the street Jeremiah had led them down. Maybe they just couldn't think clearly anymore; David didn't know how much thought that they had left.

In any case, however, they did not look. They did not turn, just walking down the street, ambling down it two by two towards whatever destination that they thought their targets were headed to. And for almost ten minutes, David was treated to a front row seat to who knew how many different bare cocks and balls, how many feminine slits dripping with juices. He shivered at the sight, wanting to look away, but always drawn back.

He wasn't the only one, either; while Jeremiah was able to keep from looking, as was Cari, both Adam and Ashley were unable to keep their eyes off of the passing group. Adam didn't do much more than look - though David thought he might have seen something starting to...show...in his ragged jeans - but Ashley actually licked her lips at the passing creatures. She even went so far as to stroke her thighs with her feathers before she stopped herself, but David caught the day-dreaming look on her face before she snapped out of it.

She was changing, he realized, and not just physically. Something about the transformation had done something to her mind, too. And to Adam, too, unless he missed his guess. It explained why they were looking but Jeremiah and Cari weren't.

But...it didn't explain why he was so fascinated, when he hadn't been transformed at all.

Eventually the swarm of the transformed walked past the alley, their shadows fading away from the alley entrance, and only the sound of their footsteps gave any evidence that they were still nearby. All five of them slumped down in relief, David just going limp on the ground, the other four sliding down until they were sitting down with their backs against the wall.

"That was too close," Jeremiah whispered, shaking his head. "Too close. Too close."

"Yeah, but we got away," Ashley pointed out. She looked over at Cari. "That's the second time. The second time that you did something."

"Please, can't we -"

Ashley shook her head at Cari's request. "No. You need to explain this. If we're going to get out of this, we need to know exactly what everyone can do. I know David, and I kind of know Jeremiah; I even can guess a bit of what Adam here can do," she said, nodding her head towards him. "But I don't know you, and I really don't know what you just did. Now tell me what the hell you did."

"I want to know what the hell's going on too," Adam added. He held up his free hand, the one not holding Ashley by the arm, revealing that he was still holding the scanner from earlier. "I was pointing this at you when you did that...thing. It had the same energy burst that this whole damn place has; you partners with the guy here or something? You're doing some pretty weird shit, lady."

She looked from one of them to another, each time pleading with her eyes to just let it go. But one by one, they shook their heads. Adam, Ashley, even Jeremiah shook their heads as she looked to them for understanding.

David wanted to give it to her, but Ashley was right; they were in a desperate situation here, and anyone that was holding onto secrets could get them all caught. So when she looked at him, he shook his head. "Tell us," he whispered softly. "It might be important."

Cari sighed, lowering her head. "Fine...Just let me make sure that we're safe first." She got up, walking to the edge of the alley, looking back and forth. She still moved slow, but now she was a little more wobbly than she had been, as though she'd just gone a half a day doing hard work without rest. Every time she took a step she had to lean against the side of the alley, using the building as a way to keep herself upright, struggling to keep from losing her balance.

It almost seemed worse as she walked back to them, panting softly still. She almost collapsed back on the ground, her legs buckling under her, only barely flinging her arms out in time to avoid landing on her face. Shaking a bit, she held up a hand when Jeremiah tried to help her, shaking her head. "I'll...I'll be alright," Cari muttered.

After a second, she pulled herself back, sitting on her ankles, laying her hands on her thighs as she looked around them. "David, Ashley; you two remember me from school. Just some goth girl, right? Someone that dressed up and was looking for attention with how they dressed?" she said in her soft voice. David winced, despite the lack of accusation in her tone.

"Well, that was right, at least for the first semester," she said. "After that...well, everything changed after some of the stuff I found in the library."

"The library?" David asked. "How does -"

"Let me finish, please; I've never really told anyone about this. But...considering the situation we're in, maybe I should have."

She looked down at her hands again, and sighed. "I always loved myths, legends, stories of things that were impossible. It...kind of was because of that that I started making myself look so different. Some sort of need to look for the weird, the different; find the fantastic, either in the light, or the darkness." She chuckled softly, shaking her head as she did. "Oh, boy, did I find the fantastic...

"I had to have read dozens of books, but I eventually found something different. Kind of lodged in the back of the shelves, where the books nobody checks out get shoved by the librarians to make room for the other, more popular stuff," she said. "It's weird, I can't even think of the title anymore. But that was the book that changed everything for me.

"It described something called Wonders, people and places that just...transcended the rest of the world and became something different. Not more - the book was very clear about that - but something different. It had a...a list of different things that had become wonders. Most of them made no sense, but there was one entry that had two names combined together. The first name didn't make any sense, but I guess that Rannoi Occi could have been some weird name in the past. But it was the name that it was connected to that interested me."

"And what name was that?" David asked.

"Mirari."

"Coincidence."

Everyone turned to look at Jeremiah after he spoke up. He adjusted his glasses, shaking his head. "It's coincidence, nothing more. Latin for wonder. Must have been lots of things in the book called Mirari."

"No, Jeremiah, there wasn't," Cari said, shaking her head. "I looked; I checked all of that. And I could not find anything else. Nothing else even had the word 'wonder' in their name, but this pairing DID." She stabbed her finger down at the ground below them. "This park is Mirari; it is one of the Wonders in that book. And I would bet that the other name, Rannoi Occi or whatever it might have originally been, is the name of the man in charge of this place. Those two were named in that book as Wonders. I have no idea of what that means, but I think we can all agree that we can't rule anything out as impossible where these two are concerned."

The silence that followed that was broken only by soft nodding and Jeremiah's muttering to himself, too quiet to be distinguished but enough to keep it from being total silence. David was sure that it was more muttering about how it was nonsense, but it didn't matter if he didn't believe; it just mattered whether he would take it seriously even if he didn't believe.

"Now...that's all well and good-" Ashley started to say.

"But what the hell does that have to do with the tricks earlier?" Adam finished. He held up his scanner again. "I saw something; what did I see?"

"Magic."

"Bullshit."

"No, I'm serious," Cari said, shaking her head. "It's really magic. Just like what that guy was doing in the square; that was the same thing."

"I'm siding with Adam on this one," Jeremiah said. "I mean, there's no such thing as magic."

"Seriously? You guys are going to say that after the over-sexed zoo we just saw walk by?" David asked, an eyebrow raised.

"Well..." Jeremiah looked down. "You can't really believe that it's magic?"

"I can't say that it's technology at this point." He looked past the padded foot on his chest. "No offense Adam, but I don't think that ANYONE could make gadgets good enough to do what we've seen here."

"Yeah...I guess not..." He shook his head. "But magic?"

Adam looked at Ashley for some support, but she was just looking down. Everyone else followed where she looked, staring down at her feathers, at her talons. There was nothing human there, nothing that could have been done even by the most careful surgery.

She fluttered her feathers, shaking her head. "I don't know if it's really magic," Ashley said. "But I'm willing to believe that until we get a better explanation."

Cari sighed softly, bowing her head in relief. "Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you for believing me."

"So what is it that you can do?" David asked. "I mean, I saw you wake Jeremiah up from his fit, and saw you move the wire; can you do anything else?"

"Not much," she admitted. "I can move things from far away, and I can make a little light, and kind of help people...but that's all. And right now, I am doing my best to keep from collapsing and falling asleep." She yawned, reaching up and rubbing her eyes gently. "Just those two spells took the same effort as one of you doing half a day's work with no break."

"But how do you do it? And why does it look exactly the same as this fucking park on my scanner?!" Adam said, waving it back and forth in front of her face.

She looked up with a glare. "Look, I'm doing my best," Cari said, her voice wispy, but somehow sharp. "I don't know all the answers; I just know that this place is big, and that...that I learned magic from that book, to try and find out more about this place. It's the only thing..." She broke down, lowering her head. "It's the only thing left in the world that is fantastic. I thought...I thought it could be a fantasy paradise. And instead, I've just walked into hell."

She shook, hugging herself gently as she hiccuped in suppressed tears. She rocked, bobbed back and forth slightly, shaking her head.

Glaring at Adam, Jeremiah put an arm around her, gently pulling her in a little closer. "Don't worry," he said, shaking his head at Adam over her shoulder. "All we have to do is find the six clovers, then this...Rannoi?" She nodded. "Rannoi will let us out. And Adam's scanner can get us there. Right, Adam?"

Adam hesitated, clenching his teeth as he looked at them, and Jeremiah leaned forward. "Right, Adam?" he asked again, this time with a little more bite to his voice.

"Right," he said, nodding slowly. He looked down at the scanner. "From what I can see, it's not too far. Up the road, other way from where the transformed went, from what I can see."

"Wait, you can see them too?" David asked.

"Yeah...they went the other way, thank God," Adam muttered, putting the scanner away. He shook his head lightly. "So...do we go now?"

"No sense wasting time." Jeremiah got to his feet before pulling Cari along with him, shaking his head. "Hopefully find out something more...we just don't know enough."

"And maybe we'll find Bailey over there too," David pointed out.

"Yeah...Bailey," Ashley whispered. "I want to have him back, too."

"Then let's go," Jeremiah said, leading the way out of the alley. The rest of them followed, one by one. Cari, Adam, Ashley, and then him.

David shook his head lightly, hardly believing how this day was going. He'd just wanted to go to the park, have a little fun, ride some rides....and he'd been shoved into something out of a horror story, except instead of zombies it was transformed people, and they were a hell of a lot faster than zombies, and they didn't have anything in the form of weapons. The only thing that they had going for them was the scanner that Adam had, Cari's little bit of magic, and whatever else they could find along the way.

It was so little that he thought he should have felt hopeless, like they were doomed. Instead, he felt a little hope.

Not much, but enough to keep him walking.