Chapter 19: Fast Food

"Since we started late, we likely won't make the next village before sundown tomorrow. I worry about us having enough supplies for the trip since we're so behind. What we had should have been enough for three people for a week, but there are four of us now and this is the third day of our trip. We should be much farther along than we are," Rifa said as she drove the cart.

"We'll figure something out," Rebecka replied. She sat on the back of the wagon, just past the supplies, next to Mokie who slept in a fluffy little ball. He was adorable as hel. She desperately wanted to pet him, but also didn't want to wake him up.

Even now, hours after the storms had passed and sun had risen, the road and shadows of every tree were still littered with millions small hailstones and downed branches slowing their progress. Sigyn had taken to walking ahead of the cart some distance and moving the larger limbs out of the way. She even used her tail to clear a path for Baby to walk that didn't have him stepping on a carpet of icy marbles. Rebecka had helped for a while but needed a break.

Dyr dipped his head as he walked. "What can we can do if another storm like that strikes? I've never experienced anything like it before."

Rebecka turned around, surprised. "Y'all don't normally have hail storms?"

"No," he replied.

Rebecka glanced over to Rifa.

"Storms, yes, and heavy ones at that. But never any that rained solid ice. Are they common where you're from?"

She nodded. "Yeah, in the summer when the weather gets super hot. Some storms make hailstones the size of baseballs."

"The size of what?" Rifa asked.

Rebecka held up her hands about three inches apart. "A baseball is a ball used for the game of, uh, well baseball. They're about this big."

"That doesn't answer anything but the size," Rifa replied with a laugh.

"How is it played?" Dyr asked.

"Baseball? I honestly don't know. I never really watched a game," Rebecka admitted. "One guy throws a ball at another who hits it with a stick then they all run around the bases."

Sigyn snorted.

"You know how to play baseball?" Rebecka asked.

"Sure, but that about sums it up," Sigyn called back.

"You said hail storms happen when the weather is hot? How hot? And how would heat make ice?" Rifa asked.

"Something about updrafts and huge clouds. I don't know how you measure temperature here, but in Texas it can get hot enough to cook an egg on a rock outside in the summer," Rebecka explained.

"Is it a special rock?"

Rebecka shrugged. "Just one that's in the sun. Our sidewalks are basically reconstituted rock, so they're very flat. I wouldn't eat an egg someone cooked on one of those, but it's not uncommon to cook one on the sidewalk for fun."

"You cook food you don't eat for fun?" Dyr asked, appalled.

Sigyn snorted again.

"I don't, but some people do, to show how hot it gets," Rebecka said a little more defensively than she planned.

Sigyn laughed. "Rebecka comes from a place of plenty. Many people there wouldn't be used to wanton waste being a problem. I've been to several worlds like it. Sometimes the greedy run the whole thing into the ground then wonder why the poor stopped spending money they don't have. But, before that happens, people cook eggs on the sidewalk for fun."

"How many worlds have you been to? I figure you've been to some form of Texas because of how much you use 'y'all,'" Rebecka asked before hopping off the wagon.

"The world you come from is called 'Texas?'" Rifa asked as Rebecka hurried around the cart to begin moving a few sticks out of the way that the dragon woman had missed.

Sigyn snorted out a laugh.

"Was that question funny?" Rifa asked.

Rebecka looked back at her on the wagon. "Texas was the state I'm from, not the world. The world was called 'Earth' and Texas was a one of fifty portions of the United States of America."

Sigyn tilted her head back and added. "Texas used to be its own country."

"So, you have been to Texas? I figured that or Alabama or something," Rebecka said.

"My wife was from Texas," Sigyn said before pausing to sniff the air. "I smell cooking oil."

"What?"

She turned around and pointed one of her claws off the road into the woods. "That way."

Rebecka followed Sigyn through the woods several yards until the dragon woman held her arm up to stop her. Ahead of them, in the woods, stood a box shaped fast food restaurant clipped through by trees and shrubs. An abandoned car sat in the partially visible drive-thru area with all the doors open, its tires fused with rocks and dirt.

"WacDonald's? That a Canadian chain?" Rebecka asked.

Sigyn glared at her sharply. "You're joking."

"No. Should I know what that is? I mean, obviously it's a burger place but I've never heard of it. Is it like Burger Hat?"

Sigyn rolled her eyes and snorted before advancing on the building. "Many worlds have some variation of WacDonald's, either as a real business or in fiction. The fact that your's doesn't have either means you come from a place even more distant from the places I've visited than I thought. Which is interesting."

"Good interesting or bad?" Rebecka asked as they reached the open front door of the building.

"Oh, bad. Very bad," Sigyn replied. She poked her head inside and sniffed around. "The amount of magic needed to pull you and me here when we were in reality subsets so far from one another would be close to unthinkable. Not to mention all the other worlds that have been affected."

"And what if it wasn't magic?"

Sigyn huffed at her then shoved the door open, pushing dirt out of the way, and went inside without a word. Rebecka followed, careful to keep on her toes. She couldn't afford to get distracted. It wasn't like Aettartangi would warn her if it was an ambush.

The WacDonald's was level, unlike Havamal's had been. The inside reminded her of the fast food places she was used to. An assortment of booths with red and gold plastic tables and seats lined the large windows full of signs advertising different meals. Shrubs and downed tree limbs cut through a cluster of tables and pressed metal chairs that took up the central dining area. Sigyn ignored it all, pausing only to sniff the air, before turning her attention to the back of the restaurant.

"Follow me, bring an axe," Sigyn asked.

She didn't have to specify which one. Rebecka unclipped one of her throwing axes from its holster and followed once it was in hand. She had never been in the back of a Burger Hat, but the kitchen of this WacDonald's had everything she expected, including still vats of cooking oil in fryers next to a bin of cold French fries. Sigyn walked right past the stale food and kept going to the back of the kitchen where the truck of an oak tree emerged from the wall right in front of the partially open door of the walk-in freezer.

"Would anything in there still be safe to eat?" Rebecka asked.

Sigyn examined the tree, then the door. The hinge was near the wall farthest from them. Meaning, they couldn't remove it to gain access to the freezer's contents thanks to the tree in the way. It was then that Rebecka saw the pair of eyes peering out through the gap in the door, just before it shut.

"Shit, he shut it," Sigyn hissed. She knocked on the wall with her fist. "We're trying to help you, fool!"

Rebecka got closer, then re-holstered her axe. "You told me to get the axe before you saw the tree."

Sigyn pointed to her head. "I could hear the guy."

"Right, mind reading dragon."

She snorted then knocked again. "My friend and I are gonna get you out of there. Just sit tight!"

"No thanks!"

Sigyn took a deep breath than let it out slowly. "How long have you been stuck in there? Four days? Longer?"

"Just two days. I'm good. Really."

Rebecka stepped forward. "The kings said their experts thought my world was the last one to be zapped over, right? Two days means this guy was brought here after that."

"It does," Sigyn replied as she examined the door. She gestured with her snout. "Stand back there. I'm just gonna pull the door off sideways. Rifa can heal my hands if it fucks them up."

Rebecka moved.

"I'm fine, really!"

Sigyn ignored the trapped man's pleading as she dug her claws into the edge of the freezer door. The squeal of the metal joined the terrified man's own shouts. After a moment the door was gone and Sigyn's hands were bleeding heavily. Rebecka rushed forward with her own hands in the air before her to calm the scared man.

"It's okay, she's cool. You're safe now, dude."

The man was in his early forties, with a little gray in his otherwise blonde hair. He wore a red and gold WacDonald's polo shirt with a name tag that identified him as the assistant manager. The walk-in freezer was no longer frigid but retained some of the coolness it had before the building lost power. It also held the rank odor of human waste. An open bag of half eaten hamburger buns sat near a discarded red jacket on the floor.

"That thing was..."

"Sigyn is a dragon. I'm Rebecka, a human. What's your name?"

He looked at her warily. "Zeke."

***

They were able to move Baby and the cart a bit closer to the WacDonald's but still not very close to the building due to the rough hilly terrain. Surprisingly, Zeke wanted to help Rebecka and Sigyn unload as much of the food from the freezer as they could once the tree trunk had been cut into to make access easier. Rebecka wasn't sure how much was still edible but Sigyn assured her even the mostly thawed meat would keep. By the time they had taken everything worth getting, the sun had started to set.

"May as well camp here," Rebecka said.

"I'm so glad your girl got to me when she did. She's a little manly if you know what I'm sayin' but bright enough. When she had that monster pull the door off the freezer I thought I was doomed," Zeke told Dyr who looked at him in confused silence.

"I'm just happy Aettartangi didn't eat Zeke," Rifa said.

Rebecka laughed a little while unfolding her travel shovel. "At least he has no idea what you just said. I'll make a fire pit so we can cook some of this stuff."

"Did she just say you were going to eat me?" Zeke asked.

Rebecka turned slowly to look up at the older man where he stood near Dyr. The daylight was fading, but it was clear he was far more pale than before. There was no denying he had understood what Rifa had said. Which meant Rifa and Dyr had some form of translation magic like the priestess at the Temple.

"Shit. No, of course not," Rebecka said.

"She said you were going to eat me," Zeke repeated distantly.

"She said she was glad Aettartangi didn't eat you," Rebecka corrected.

He pointed at Sigyn. "That thing?"

"No, Aettartangi's my axe," she replied.

Zeke's eyes drifted down to the two throwing axes in their holsters at Rebecka's sides. Then, he looked to the shovel in her hands and let out a shriek.

"NO! NO! I'm not gonna let you eat me! Oh, God! No! You can't eat me and bury my corpse!"

"Calm down, man," Rebecka said.

The moment she stepped toward him with her shovel in hand was all it took for Zeke to slip from 'fight' into 'flight' mode. He spun on his heel and ran down hill toward the road, through brush and brier, screaming the whole time. His shouting grew more distant as everyone in the party remained where they had been before he ran off.

"Should we...go after him?" Rifa asked weakly.

Sigyn snorted with a shrug.

Dyr looked even more confused. "Did that man think you belonged to me or something?"

Rebecka shook her head. "I have no idea. He was weird. We should probably try to find him but it's getting dark and I'm exhausted."

"He survived two days on his own," Sigyn pointed out.

"Trapped in a freezer with food," Rebecka said.

She nodded. "Food I am determined to cook. I'm also not inclined to go after the man." She tapped the side of her skull. "His thoughts didn't make me very sympathetic to him, not merely his ones about myself. If you knew what had crossed his mind when he looked at you, Rebecka, you'd want to leave him to the wild as well."

She looked the direction Zeke had run, his screams so distant she could no longer hear them. Then, she turned back to Sigyn.

"How bad are we talking?"

"Supremely."