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+\chapter{9}
+
+The nausea and pain let up for a moment,
+but in return Andrew felt like a newborn child.
+He visibly collapsed in on himself and had to fight to keep his eyes open.
+
+``Are you okay?'',
+asked Katt.
+
+``I don't know'',
+answered Andrew truthfully.
+Even speaking was hard for him now.
+The fever that was causing him increasing discomfort was probably the reason for this whole absurd story: He was laying in a hospital bed somewhere,
+had a twenty seven degree\footnote{Celsius} fever,
+and was hallucinating all of this nonsense.
+
+``I think they're gone'',
+said Katt.
+
+Andrew couldn't remember if any measurable time had passed since the last time she had spoken,
+but it must have been because when he --- with Katt's help --- stood up and looked over the edge of his cover the plaza was completely empty.
+The girl gave him another doubtful look,
+but didn't say anything else,
+instead continuing on at a pace that he could barely keep up with.
+After she had taken a couple of steps,
+it got remarkably better.
+The fresh air felt good and the careful movements brought his circulation back in swing.
+In addition whatever he had seemed to come in waves and apparently the time between them seemed to be decreasing.
+
+``How far do we still have?'',
+he asked.
+
+``Two blocks'',
+answered Katt.
+She corrected herself.
+``Three.
+But the gobblers moved in a different direction.
+I haven't ever seen them turn around.''
+
+``And other than that there aren't any people-eating monsters here?'',
+asked Andrew.
+
+He almost counted on a \textit{yeah} as the answer,
+but Katt just gave him a slanting glance and shook her head.
+``Nothing that the gobblers have overlooked.'',
+she explained.
+She didn't say anything for a moment,
+then: ``You're from outside,
+am I right?''
+
+Why should he still lie? In any case Andrew was sure that he wouldn't survive the next hour.
+Either some bizarre twelve-armed and three-headed beast that Katt had forgotten to mention would eat him,
+or he would collapse after a few steps --- or finally wake up from this insane nightmare.
+And he still hesitated to answer.
+
+``I'm not sure if we're talking about the same \textit{outside}'',
+he said.
+
+Katt looked at him unsettled.
+``Is there more than one?''
+
+``If you mean the world that \textit{Men in Black} with their flying kitchen mixers are from,
+I'll have to disappoint you'',
+he replied.
+``I haven't ever heard of these types before.
+And of their Science-Fiction-Helicopters and Star-Trek-Weapons definitely not.''
+
+``Aha'',
+said Katt.
+
+``We don't have any of that'',
+insisted Andrew.
+``Other than that \dots'' He shrugged and looked back at the sky,
+that was still completely black and starless.
+A crazy thought crossed his mind: Could it be,
+that he had jumped through time from some unknown phenomenon? Had he ended up in a bleak and fear-inducing future or in some kind of terrible parallel universe? He thought about that possibility in earnest for a moment,
+but arrived at the conclusion that the combination of accident victim/brain damage/nuthouse was much more realistic.
+
+``I think so.'',
+he said in the end.
+
+Again Katt looked at him for quite a while in a way that he didn't want to interpret --- even if it seemed to him that she wasn't especially happy about his answer.
+``And how is it \dots there?'',
+she asked with hesitation.
+
+``Its kinda like here'',
+answered Andrew.
+``But completely different.''
+
+Katt seemed to be somewhat insulted,
+but she didn't say anything but walked a little faster so that he had to use what little strength he had left to keep up with her.
+
+In some regards Andrew was right.
+He needed some time to clear his thoughts,
+and Katt would just ask him more questions that he wouldn't or couldn't really answer.
+There were enough questions bouncing around his head that he didn't have any answers to.
+He was stranded in a place that shouldn't exist,
+was followed by men that fired at him for no reason with weapons that have even less reasons to exist and flew in helicopters out of the next century,
+and had almost been eaten by monstrosities that looked like they had been created by Roland Emmerich.
+
+Oh yeah,
+and just as an aside: Nick was dead.
+
+A deep sorrow overcame Andrew as he thought of his friend --- Nick hadn't been anything else.
+His friend.
+Maybe the only real friend he had ever had.
+He felt as if he had betrayed him,
+yes,
+as if he was at fault for what had happened to Nick,
+and in a certain sense it was true.
+If he hadn't convinced Nick to let him drive,
+then maybe the kidnappers wouldn't have been able to outrun them and hide in the Cessna \dots
+
+Andrew stopped that thought short.
+What-if thoughts wouldn't help him further.
+He didn't have any choice other than to keep going and to wait and see what happened.
+
+While he was walking two steps next to and a step behind Katt,
+he stealthily looked at her probably for the first time since they had met with actual attention.
+He had to think of the nightmarish face that he believed he had seen in the factory hall.
+So far he had automatically assumed that it was Katt,
+but now he realized how bitterly unjust that was to her.
+He corrected his estimate of her age down by at least one year,
+maybe two.
+And he noticed something else that so far he hadn't thought was possible,
+but also confused him a lot: He suddenly saw how pretty Katt was.
+Even hunger and lifelong hardships that emaciated her to the point of almost being a caricature,
+her natural elegance and grace hadn't been affected.
+
+``We're almost there.''
+
+Katt raised her hand,
+and as Andrew followed her gesture,
+he saw that they had passed the burning building a long time ago.
+In front of them was another block of ruins and behind that he recognized an unswerving line of darkness that divided the city in two halves.
+The river,
+that Katt had been talking about? He tried to discern what was on the other side,
+but he couldn't work it out.
+The ruined city seemed to continue there,
+but he couldn't really see anything other than more shadows.
+There were no signs of the \textit{day} that it seemed to be on the other side as far as he could see.
+
+A sharp pain shot through the back of his head.
+At the last moment Andrew suppressed a yelp of pain,
+breathed in deeply and held on to the mad hope that it was just happenstance and that it would go away soon.
+Instead of that it slowly spread out like a spiderweb of white-hot threads,
+and after a few seconds his old friends nausea and dizziness added themselves to the mix.
+He didn't have much time.
+
+Katt seemed to feel how he was doing because she quickened her pace,
+and Andrew trotted after her until they had reached the line of solid blackness that separated the city of ruins.
+By now he was in such a state that he would have stumbled right into the abyss had Katt not held him back at the last moment.
+
+``What\dots?'',
+he mumbled dazedly.
+He wasn't sure if his voice was still understandable.
+Or if he was speaking at all or if he had just imagined it.
+
+Katt just considered him with a pitiful glance.
+Her voice suddenly took on the tone that you only use with very young children (or very old people) and still weren't sure that they understood.
+``Just stay right here and don't move,
+okay?''
+
+Andrew nodded obediently --- he probably would have also nodded if she had told him the lottery numbers from last week ---,
+and Katt made a funnel in front of her mouth with her hands and expelled an especially warbling scream;
+it wasn't especially loud,
+but it was so piercing that it must have been audible\footnote{\href{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHMjD0Lp5DY}{this book sponsored by Audible\texttrademark,
+use code ANDERS or text ANDERS to 500 500 to learn more} \textsuperscript{/s}} throughout the whole city.
+
+``My sister is waiting on the other side'',
+she said.
+``She'll let the bridge down,
+don't worry.''
+
+Andrew wasn't worried.
+He also couldn't remember if he had asked a corresponding question,
+but just in case he nodded anyway;
+Very carefully,
+as even that small movement made the headache he had explode.
+
+Katt raised her hands again and repeated the warbling sound,
+then stomped the ground madly and yelled.
+``Ratt god damn it! Where are you?''
+
+``Ratt?'',
+asked Andrew.
+Did she have to yell like that? His head would explode if she kept yelling around like that.
+
+``My sister'',
+explained Katt.
+
+``Katt and Ratt'',
+giggled Andrew.
+``How peculiar.''
+
+``Does something about that bother you?'',
+asked Katt sharply.
+She glared at him defiantly for a moment and roared for her sister louder than before.
+
+Andrew distorted his face demonstratively and took a step away from her;
+however not a very big one and not without getting within two steps of the \textit{river}.
+
+It wasn't a river.
+Apparently they were speaking the same language that used the same words,
+but meant different things.
+What lay in front of him had no similarities with a body of water.
+It was a good five meter wide canal of weather-beaten gray concrete that went down an indeterminate distance.
+Andrew precariously bent over and immediately righted himself.
+He had only had a short glimpse into the depths,
+but he didn't see anything that reminded him of water.
+
+``What's down there?'',
+he asked.
+
+Katt shrugged.
+``The gobblers don't cross'',
+she said.
+``Isn't that enough?'' She didn't wait for Andrews answer,
+instead regarding him with an almost hostile look and roared as loud as she possibly could for her sister.
+This time she used a whole litany of insults and curses that would have made Andrew blush in any other circumstance.
+
+It worked.
+This time it was just a moment before he heard a bright squeaking voice and a long spindly shadow appeared from the silhouette of the city ruins on the other side of the river.
+Andrew tried focusing on it with wide eyes for a few seconds,
+but he couldn't concentrate on one thing that long.
+His thoughts were increasingly revolving around himself.
+It was impossible to focus his thoughts on a single thing for more than a moment.
+He was more nauseous than he had ever been before in his whole life.
+
+``We've almost made it'',
+said Katt.
+``I knew that I could rely on Ratt.
+Just one more moment.
+Can you keep it up that long?''
+
+Of course not.
+He nodded.
+``Yes.''
+
+Katt's facial expression explained very clearly what she thought of that answer.
+But she was diplomatic enough to not say anything,
+instead concentrating on the delicate shadow hat was slowly lowering over the river with a shrill screeching.
+Andrew followed her lead --- at least he tried.
+
+His thoughts were getting more and more confused.
+He was unimaginably nauseous.
+He had the worst headache on this side of the Andromeda galaxy and his fever had a good chance to break the Guinness world record;
+actually his blood had surpassed the boiling point and must have been steaming out of his ears like an overheated pressure cooker.
+
+For some reason he thought the whole thing exceptionally strange.
+
+Squeaking and aching the spider-web-like outline lowered itself more before it impacted their side of the \textit{river} with a long echoing bang and Katt was suddenly very lively.
+``Can you keep on going?'',
+she asked.
+
+``Sure'',
+answered Andrew and sunk to his knees.
+Katt caught him and did the most embarrassing thing to him that had ever happened: She bounced a bit in her knees and threw him over her shoulders with no hesitation.
+He could feel her sway under his weight for a moment,
+then found her balance again with a quick motion.
+She turned around and ran off with almost provocatively light steps.
+
+Andrew was almost glad that he wasn't currently understanding all that was going on around and especially \textit{to} him.
+If what he could recognize of the \textit{bridge} that Katt was prancing over with mischievous ease was real,
+then it was definitely a pure nightmare: a breakable structure of \textit{tied (!)} together rungs and struts that was aching under each of her steps,
+as if it wanted to collapse at any moment.
+
+Andrew looked into the deep,
+but he regretted that almost immediately.
+There was \textit{something} below them,
+but he couldn't say what.
+Whatever it was,
+it scared him to imagine what it was based on what he had seen so far.
+
+After what seemed like an eternity they arrived at the other bank.
+Katt stumbled two more steps on terra firma before she collapsed to her knees with an exhausted groan and let Andrew glide off her shoulders like a wet sack.
+He fell,
+which hurt less than he expected and rolled two,
+three times across the ground before he stopped,
+laying on his back.
+Underneath him was soft grass and earth,
+not hard stone.
+Through his closed eyelids he saw bright sunlight.
+But Katt had told him that the day wasn't over on that side of the river --- whatever that meant.
+
+He wanted to open his eyes,
+but he was only successful after his third try.
+Something really was wrong with him.
+Something was incredibly wrong with him.
+
+It looked like the effort was worth it.
+Above him a cloudless and almost obscenely radiant blue midsummer sky stretched out over the facades.
+Their slightly shifted to the left lines weren't any different than the ones on the other side.
+They were the same burnt-out soot-stained ruins like on the other side.
+It seemed that the destroyed city continued on this side of the river as well.
+
+As if from a great distance he heard Katt's voice,
+but it wasn't talking to him;
+even though he was too dazed to comprehend any of the words that were being spoken,
+he could feel it.
+A different,
+more bright and somehow hissing sounding voice answered,
+then light steps that were hardly audible on the grass approached.
+
+Katt appeared above him.
+She looked sweaty and so exhausted as if she had just done such extreme bodily exertion that hadn't just pushed her to her limit of what she was capable of,
+but possibly a little over it.
+And the concern in her gaze had grown so much that Andrew,
+in spite of his dazed state,
+asked himself if it weren't advisable for him to seriously worry as well.
+
+``This is Ratt,
+my sister.'' She made a hand movement towards a shadow that was just outside of Andrew's field of view,
+making him use quite a bit of what energy he had left to turn his head and blink up at the figure that was approaching him from the other side.
+Katt's sister seemed to be somewhat smaller than her,
+and he had the crazy feeling that she had a type of shaggy fur coat,
+even though the sun on this side of the river was burning down so hot that it was almost uncomfortable.
+He couldn't really identify Ratt as the sun was directly above her,
+so that the glaring light actually drove tears into his eyes.
+
+``This is Andrew,
+who I was talking to you about'',
+Katt continued,
+obviously turned toward her sister.
+
+Ratt came closer and bent over curiously.
+Andrew still couldn't really identify her,
+but something wasn't right about her head either.
+In spite of the head she seemed to be wearing not just a fur coat,
+but also a fur hat.
+
+``He says he's from outside'',
+Katt continued.
+``I don't know if that's true,
+but he has the sickness\footnote{he got down with it}.''
+
+Ratt bent down even further,
+and Andrew,
+who had just wanted to start to be frightened about Katt's last remark thought better of it and fainted.
+