Jerry Oltion - Anywhere but Here

He made it to the other bank before the cupid came around with another arrow. He wasn’t carrying the rifle, but he had the pistol strapped to his hip; he drew that and fired in one fluid motion, but didn’t hit anything, so he steadied the gun in both hands and took careful aim, and his second shot hit a wing. Silver scales flew and the cupid dropped the arrow, banking away to glide awkwardly into the tree over the pickup.

Donna came running with the rifle. “Are you okay?” she yelled.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he called back over the rush of water. “But the motor isn’t.” Then he realized she wasn’t wearing her helmet. “Hey, get back under cover! There’s cupids out here.”

She didn’t listen to him, but she kept her eyes on the sky while he climbed up on the rocks above the waterfall and kicked the burning arrow off the motor. It snapped at the edge of the case, and the flaming part sizzled out in the water. The tip was still embedded in the case, and now he was close enough to see what had happened: the cupid had managed to hit a vent hole that led straight to the motor’s windings.

A rifle shot made him flinch and nearly fall off the rocks, but he caught himself on the motor and looked up to see Donna just lowering the gun from her shoulder. He looked up in the sky and saw a cupid veering away, a little puff of scales fluttering down below it.

“Got him!” Donna yelled.

“Good shootin’!” Trent yelled back.

He holstered his pistol so he could use both hands, then unplugged the battery and tossed it as gently as he could across the stream to land on the far bank. No way was he going to carry that across. If he slipped and lost it in the stream, they could kiss their escape from here goodbye, even if Donna did figure out the math.

The wheel was still turning. Trent heard the tip of the arrow grinding away at the windings inside the motor. The motor was already ruined beyond repair, but he couldn’t bear to let it tear itself apart any worse than it already was, so he started to untie it, intending to swivel it around until the shells tied to the tire no longer caught the falling water, but the rifle cracked again and Donna screamed, “Look out, I missed!” Then it cracked again and Trent looked up just in time to see an explosion of scales and the cupid itself tumbling out of the sky, the arrow beating it to the ground by only a second or two.

There were four or five more cupids coming, all carrying arrows in their claws. Trent abandoned the motor and scrambled across the stream as fast as he could go, picked up the battery, and fled with Donna to safety under the tree closest to the waterwheel.

He heard a metallic clank behind him, then another. The new guys were peppering the motor with arrows. One hit the tire and Trent winced as he imagined it puncturing that, too, but it bounced off and clattered onto the rocks.

“Let’s see that,” he said, reaching for the rifle. Donna handed it over and he walked to the edge of the tree’s canopy, sighted on one of the birds, and fired, but he missed and the cupid kept coming, dropping its arrow onto the motor along with the others. It took two more shots to hit another cupid, and two more to get another. That seemed to convince the others that this wasn’t a good place to be; they flapped away without dropping their arrows, and disappeared up the valley.

“Valentine, my ass,” Trent said. “We ought to call a flock of those bastards a vandalize.”

“Did they ruin the motor?” Donna asked.

“Yeah.” He handed her the rifle and headed back toward the stream.

“Where are you going?”

“They’ll be back. Or other ones will spot the motion. I’m going to stop the wheel while I’ve got the chance.”

He waded across the stream again, climbed up on the rocks, and finished untying the motor, then swiveled it around. The tire came to a fast stop; there was a lot of friction on that axle. Trent wanted to take it back under cover even though it wasn’t moving now, but there was no way he could get it across the stream with the water running as high as it was, so he just rotated the motor so its control box was as protected as possible and tied it down again with the wheel out of the waterfall, then he crossed the stream again and carried the battery back to the camper.

He checked the charge level: a shade over fifty percent. That was only one of two batteries, so it was just a quarter of the pickup’s full charge, but they could get home on that if they didn’t have to make too many jumps.

Right. Considering the trouble Donna was having with the calculations, they were going to need all the power they could get and then some.

Well, there were three more motors. One had a messed-up control box, but the box on the motor that the cupids had just ruined was still good. Trent looked at the pickup, already missing a wheel, then out at the stopped water-wheel. Then with a sigh he got out his tools and set to work unhooking the next motor.

While he was doing that, Donna walked out to the edge of the tree’s cover and looked across the stream for a while, then went into the camper and came back out with the parachute and began unfolding it on the ground under the tree.

“What are you doing there?” he asked.

“Looking for a section big enough to hang over the waterwheel and cover it so cupids can’t see it,” she replied.

He slid out from under the pickup. That was an excellent idea, except they’d cut down the closest trees on that side of the stream. “What can we tie it to?” he asked.

“That tree right across from it, on this side. If we go high enough, we can just stake it to the ground over there. It’ll hang at a slant, but there’s plenty of parachute. We can cover the whole stretch between the tree and the opposite bank, and that way you don’t have to worry about getting bombed when you go out there to check the battery, either.”

Trent looked at the parachute, then at the stream, then at Donna. “You’re a genius.”

She blushed. “Hah. Tell me that when I figure out where the hell we are.”

“I don’t care if you ever do that,” he said, pulling her into a hug. “You just keep figurin’ out stuff like this, and you’re genius enough for me.”

“I don’t—”

He stopped her protest with a kiss.

“I just—”

He kissed her again.

When he was sure she felt good and appreciated, he crawled hack under the truck, and he found himself actually whistling as he finished unbolting the motor. There were worse things in life than being stranded somewhere exotic with someone like Donna.

While he worked on the motor, she folded the parachute in thirds and stitched it together with one of the shroud lines so the rips wouldn’t leave any openings for cupids to shoot through, then she carried the parachute and an arrow up to the tree beside the waterfall, tied a shroud line to the back of the arrow, and tossed it over a branch. It took a few tries to get it looped over the right crook in the branch, but she eventually got it and tied the line to the tree trunk, then she did another line closer to the middle of the tree, and another one on the other side.

“Okay,” she said to Trent, who was done with the motor by then and was just watching her with open admiration. “I think it’s ready to stretch across the creek.”

The only cupids in the sky were a long ways off, but even so, Trent and Donna wore their armor and carried their guns while they unraveled the parachute behind them. When they got to the stream, Trent holstered his pistol and waded across, then Donna tossed him the coiled shroud lines and held the parachute out of the water while he pulled it across and tightened it up. It rose into the air, a glowing white roof leading upward at a gentle slope, clearing the waterwheel by three or four feet while hiding it completely from overhead.