I don't like waking up.  I mean, I like it right before I
wake up when I'm all relaxed and asleep and such.  And I like
it after I wake up when I'm all rested and refreshed and I'm
planning what I'm going to do that day and eat breakfast and
stuff.  I just don't like waking up.

  The physical and mental process of tearing yourself away
from the wonderfully relaxing state of sleep, into the high-
gear state of wakefulness is just unpleasant.  To me, at
least.

  You're laying there, in the warm lap of slumber, dreaming
of nice, relaxing, pleasant things like gunfights and
combustion accelerants and such.  Next thing you know, the
cold, harsh arms of the waking process brusquely rip you
from that marvelous state, and force and push and shove
their way into your subconscious, demanding all your bodily
functions to rev up to the waking state.  It's kinda like
standing in the midst of a hundred racing vehicles while
they're all starting up their engines and revving them up
for the first time.

  Once I'm awake it's alright.  But I just don't like the
bit when I wake up.  I know, it's weird.  That's what my
therapist says.

  This particular departure from my sleeping state was
incited by an indistinct rumbling noise somewhere in the
land of the awake.  It slowly seeped into my dimly aware
subconscious, stirring up sleepy brain cells one by one
until they were all aware that something amiss was going on
outside.  Then they all got together and dinged that little
bell that lets the rest of you know that it's time to get up
and look around to see what's going on.  So I awoke.


  And it was loud.

  First thing that I noticed when I opened my eyes was that
I, the cooler formerly full of food, the leaves on the trees,
the trees themselves, and the ground under all of us was
rumbling like a rocket engine.  Next thing I noticed was that
Naline wasn't by my side anymore.

  "Kitten!"  I quickly looked around, fearing the worst.

  I soon spotted her.  She was in the far side of the
clearing, her little head stuck between two trees, looking
out into the savanna grasslands.  Whatever she was staring
at had to be causing this commotion.  It was impossible to
stand up, so I kind of trudged over on my hands and knees.
I sidled up alongside her and took a peek out between the
trees.  It was enough to make you soil your trousers.  It was
a gigantic stampede!

  Zebras.  Thousands of them.  Millions of them.  Who knew
how many?  Way too many!  And they were all racing down the
savanna hills, kicking up dust and grass and whatnot like
nobody's business.  They filled the horizon from end to end,
appearing at one end, almost flowing over the distant hills,
and disappearing at the other end, vanishing into the dusty
distance.  And kicking up an uproar like you've never heard
before.

  "Naliiine!"  I shouted over the racket.


  "Whaaat?"  I could barely hear her.

  "What's going on?"

  She couldn't understand me over the deafening roar, so I
signaled towards the living flood of black and white and made
an inquisitive gesture.  She understood the question and
shouted out the answer.

  "Migration!"

  "What?"

  She drew a great big breath and yelled in my ear as loud as
she could.  This time I got it.


  Holy cheese!  In my line of work, I'd seen things whose
mere printed images alone could cause persons of average
build and valor to faint like fragile maidens and unhinge the
steadiest of individuals.  This qualified as one of them.

  Imagine millions upon millions of living creatures,
rushing, thrashing and crashing over everything in their
path.  Millions of striped, black and white dynamos, armed
with steely hooves, tearing up sod and grass and rock,
running unstoppably over the savanna.  They rose over the
hills and disappeared under the valleys like living white
water rivers, thundering as they moved.

  All of the sudden, the din got louder.  The herd was coming
closer.  First it was a few individuals.  Then a few hundred.
Then a few thousand.  Next thing you know, the entire
universe's supply of zebras was bearing down on us.

  You know the old problem of the irresistible force versus
the immovable object?  I learned long ago that there's no
such thing as an immovable object.  And I strongly doubted
that the patch of trees where Naline and I had picnicked made
enough of an immovable object to keep us safe.  We were in
deep trouble of the worst kind.

  The herd flowed around the small woods like river water
around a rock.  They charged towards us in a maddening
stream, splitting in half at the last second, rushing past
us on both sides, filling the clearing with choking dust as
they disappeared behind us.  I hoped it would stay that way.


  But it didn't.

  Here and there a zebra or two would crash past a tree as it
rushed along.  Then a few more.  Soon three or four hundred
would hit the same tree.  It was only a few seconds before it
fell and perished under the grinding hooves.  A second tree
fell.  And then a third.  I got that bad disagreeable feeling
that I get when I'm sorta sure that something injurious is
going to happen to my delicate person.  Big-bucks suit or no
big-bucks suit, if I fell beneath the pulverizing mass of
striped quadrupeds, I would certainly become a former living
being.  And I like being a present living being.

  Suddenly a zebra crashed through the clearing, tore past us
and dashed out the other side.  I knew that in less than two
seconds, that one zebra was going to be followed by thousands
more, making things very uncomfortable for Naline and me.
Time to go.  I snatched Naline up and sprung aside, just as a
striped blur thundered by, breaking up the flora in a most
disturbing way.  Trouble was, there was nowhere to run.

  There is a last-ditch maneuver that they teach you in
combat school.  A desperate, frantic gamble that you only
take as a last resort.  This was an appropriate time, I
thought.  What you do is...

  Flash!  And we were in the air.

  A couple thousand feet up, actually.  The way the maneuver
works is that, when you absolutely positively have no place
to run, you flash up into the air, find a safe zone as you
free-fall, and flash down to it.  And that's what Naline and
I had done.


  Naline screamed in terror.  I couldn't blame her.  This was
possibly the first time she'd ever been up this high and
free-fallen.  I forced her plight out of my mind, I could not
afford to get distracted now.  I desperately surveyed the
ground below for any non-zebra-covered sections of real
estate.  Trouble was, I couldn't see any.  The entire savanna
was covered from end to end in zebras.

  If I had been smart, I would have found a designated safe
zone as soon as I'd arrived on the savanna.  Something like
a cave or a fortress that I could flash into in case of an
emergency.  But since I wasn't, I was caught with too many
pots and not enough burners, unfit and unprepared.  Well,
this was no time for self-recrimination.

  We neared the ground at a worrisome rate of speed, but I
still hadn't found anywhere suitable to flash down.  Just to
be safe, I flashed up high into the air again.  Naline didn't
like that at all, not even one little bit.

  She would have been a smidgen less worried if she had known
that it didn't matter how fast we got while skydiving.  The
geniuses that came up with flashing had made it so that you
always flashed in at a standstill with respect to your
destination's frame of reference.  You could flash from a
ship going at lightspeed to the surface of a planet going
considerably slower and you wouldn't go 'splat.'  Man, I do
love those scientists!

  There were zebras to the left, there zebras to the right.
There were zebras on the ground, there were... weren't any
zebras in the water!  Yes!  I'd find a body of water and
flash down into it!  I desperately surveyed the zebra-covered
ground below for any suitable bodies of water.  There was a
small water hole.  Nope.  The river.  Nope.  Ah.  A lake.
Should be deep enough in the middle.

  Flash!  For a sliver of a fraction of a second we hung
absolutely motionless, suspended in midair, inches above the
surface of the water.  I barely had time to mentally thank
whoever it had been that had invented flashing and roll into
a ball before we hit the surface.  My dive would have never
gotten us qualified to enter any diving competitions.  Most
certainly it was neither elegant nor graceful.  But I had a
lioness in my arms and a tenth of a second to prepare, so I
think we did rather well, considering.


  Did you know that cats in general and lions in particular
don't like water?  If you'd been in the water with me, you
would have found out plenty quick.  Naline kicked and clawed
and coughed and spattered as if she'd been dropped into a vat
of acid.  I let go of her as quickly as I could and followed
her to shore, trying my best to keep her undrowned while
keeping myself unclawed.  That's hard work, you know.

  Naline and I slowly swam to shore.  I wish I'd picked a
smaller lake; this one seemed like it was a thousand miles in
diameter.  Gasping, coughing and struggling, we made it
lakeside.  We dragged ourselves on shore and collapsed
exhausted on the muddy bank.  I hoped there weren't any
crocodiles around, because I definitely wouldn't have been
able to do anything to prevent them from eating us up for
brunch.

  We laid on the mud for a while, catching our breaths and
getting our minds down from the panicky, hysterical states
into which they had gotten.  I weakly turned my head and
examined Naline.  She was okay.  Or as okay as one can be
after one's been run down by a herd of zebras, fallen out of
the sky, and nearly drowned in a lake.  But she'd be alright.
None of us had any lasting damage.

  "Cruz?"  Naline coughed a couple of times, trying to catch
her breath.

  "Yeah?"  I didn't sound so aerated myself.

  "Let's never do that again."


  "Okay."  I had no objections to her most wise suggestion.

  You know, life sure is funny that way.  There you are one
second, happy as a lark, enjoying things along as if there
was nothing but you and life.  Next thing you know,
everything's turned to noise and chaos and fear, and you're
fighting for your very existence.  Life's that way.  You
never know what it's going to throw at you.

  You never know when your time is up.

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