America Stranded in a Fantasy World

Chapter 39 Hold On, Brother

CHAPTER 39

"Hold On, Brother"

September 15th, 2040: Unknown Position, Foreign Forest

Feeling the effects of something akin to a flashbang being set off inside their vehicle Moskvin fumbled around blind for the door handle, and once finding it, threw open the door and collapsed onto the thick lush grassy ground.

"Chto, chert voz'mi, proiskhodit?" Cursing in his mother tongue, Moskvin rubbed his eyes in a desperate attempt to 'fix', whatever was wrong with them. All the while he could hear distant yelling from the Canadians as they fell victim to the same experience.

"Commander! I'm blind!" As panic set in, Karol's heavy, erratic breathing was the only close sound, other than the moaning from Vadium, Matvei, and Kolzak, that allowed Moskvin to locate their vehicle.

"So am I. What about everyone else?" Slowly fumbling back towards the vehicle on his hands and knees he stopped once his right hand bumped the front wheel.

"I can barely see, I believe my sight is returning." Being the only one with flash-resistant goggles on his kit, Matvei pulled them to his helmet and rubbed his eyes. "Looks like we all... what the hell?" Interrupting himself as he opened the passenger door he stepped outside and, through hazy but functional vision, stood in awe of their surroundings.

"What? What is it Matvei?" Still not able to see, Moskvin pulled himself up by the front wheel and steadied himself on the vehicle's fender.

"We... are not in the glade anymore, commander. We are in... some, dense forest."

With the Russians quieting down, leaving only the yelling Canadians, they managed to open the Coyote's rear doors and fumbled out one by one. Eventually, Moskvin broke the Russian silence with a hearty chuckle, followed by Vadium and Kolzak also starting to laugh.

"Matvei, I think your vision is more fucked than ours." Finding it increasingly hard to keep himself together in such a serious situation he banged on the hood of their vehicle a few times to redirect his thoughts.

"That one of you, Russians?" Came the familiar voice of Sergeant Keen. The Canadian struggled to support his weight against the Coyote.

"Yeah, it's Moskvin! Along with the rest of us. Can't see a damn thing!" Forcibly blinking, Moskvin could make out the faint outline of the Coyote and moving blobs that he guessed were soldiers.

As everyone's vision slowly returned the Russians realized that Matvei hadn't gone completely insane. All around them, the open grassy glade had completely transformed into a lush, dense forest. Trees towered above; the leafy canopy blocking any direct sunlight from reaching them.

"Did we time travel to the future or some shit?" One Canadian, Benjamin, questioned as he strained his neck to look up at one of the massive trees.

"Not to the future... nor any past we could survive in comfortably. These look like... some subspecies of Sequoioideae--Redwood trees. These only exist on the Western Seaboard, not where we were." Standing at the base of one of these supposed subspecies Jessica placed her right hand on the rough bark.

"So, what then?" Keen asked. "We got sucked through some... portal, now we're in some parallel dimension?" His mind conjuring the most obvious answer he could think of, he watched as Jessica looked back at the mix of soldiers with a ghostly look.

"I... I don't know. No one who has ever gone near these anomalies has ever returned. So we just assumed them to be some sort of blackhole, not a portal."