Spear in hand, backpack lost, I run once more. Free of the pack’s weight, I’m a little faster, but not nearly fast enough.
The creature’s ragged breathing grows louder, marking its approach, and warning me that I have just seconds. Out of options, I run in a straight line, making for a thick pine with rough bark. I slide to a stop, position myself in front of the sturdy tree and plant the spear’s base against it. Unlike the mountain lion, the Golyat doesn’t view the spear as a potential danger. It’s jaws open up, revealing a dull orange light from its gullet, and the creature consumes the spear tip.
As the bear jams the spear down its own throat, I leap down and to the side, rolling to my feet and spinning around to watch the creature die.
But that’s not what happens.
The bear groans and gags, acting as any wounded animal might. It staggers back, confused about the wooden pole extending from its mouth, and the pain caused by the metal tip in its gut.
The Golyat heaves, and for a moment, I think the blow might actually be fatal. But then its stomach glows brighter. Tendrils of luminous orange drool dangle from the creature’s mouth, coating the spear shaft, which is now steaming. The liquid dripping on the ground consumes the leaves, turning them to sludge.
Run, I think. Get away.
But I am rooted. Anything I can learn about the Golyat is more than I knew ten minutes ago.
The bear’s torso begins to bend and flex, like it’s about to vomit. Its inflexible skin cracks and grinds, puffing black bits of skin into the air, revealed by beams of sunlight filtering through the trees.
The foot-and-a-half of spear still protruding from the creature’s mouth tips toward the ground, as if the wood has become soft. Then it stretches and breaks. The wood that hits the ground is solid. The wood that remains dissolves into more of the steaming slurry, some of it oozing from the monster’s mouth, some of it sliding down the creature’s throat.
When the gray goo’s scent reaches my nose, I realize I’ve seen it before, back at the balloon’s crash sight. The dead weren’t just slaughtered and scattered, they were consumed and digested on the spot.
The orange in the creature’s gut flares brighter still, and for the first time since impaling itself, the beast turns its black-eyed attention back toward me.
“Vee!” Shua shouts. He’s a hundred feet back, my backpack clutched in his hand. “What are you doing?”
What am I doing? I take one step and am stopped by a retching sound. The Golyat’s gut convulses. I’ve seen a dog throw up enough times in my life to know what’s coming next.
Instead of running, I leap and climb, scurrying up the pine with all the dexterity of a squirrel. There’s a wet pop from below, and a splash of liquid. Ten feet above the ground, I look down. The tree, and the ground around it, are covered in a steaming gray sludge mixed with streaks of liquid orange. The tree’s base is steaming now, being digested, just as I would have been, had I not fled.
The Golyat turns its head upwards. A shudder shakes through its body, and then it violently shits a stream of gray, orange, and silver. The fluid splashes onto the ground, smoldering everything it touches. Once again, I’m locked in place by what I’m seeing. Streaks of silver, glistening in the sunlight, are all that’s left of the spear tip shoved down the beast’s throat and into its bowels. Rather than killing the creature, the weapon has been broken down and expelled in seconds.
That helps answer the how. A Golyat could eat an endless stream of people, digesting them and passing them just as quickly as it can swallow them down.
The insatiable bear leaps onto the tree, its claws raking the bark until they catch. Beneath it, the trunk slowly liquefies. With a heave, the beast leaps two feet closer, and that’s all I need to get moving.
Moving vertically, I outpace the bear, but I’m also running out of space. Fifteen feet from the top, I feel the trunk bending from my weight. If the trees here were closer, I might try to leap from one to the next. I don’t think the bear would make the leap. But I think it might survive the fall if it tried, leaving me in the same position in which I now find myself.
The tree bends again, but this time it has nothing to do with me, or the Golyat.
The tree isn’t bending, I realize. It’s tipping!
The tree’s trunk, covered in lava-like digestive juice, is giving way.
The entire tree is going to fall, I think.
And then it does.
23
When a tree falls, there is usually a groan as the fibers stretch, followed by a loud snap as the wood gives way. This tree falls in relative silence, as the liquefied base slides off the trunk. It’s not until the branches strike nearby trees, shushing and breaking, that the familiar sound of falling timber fills the forest.
Death reaches out for me, from below where my body will be broken, and from all around, where branches threaten to impale me. Both options are preferable to being devoured and shat out by the Golyat, so I consider letting myself fall.
Then I spot an opening, a break in the branches of a neighboring tree. Pushing off hard with my legs, reaching out with my arms, I leap into the air. Eighty-five feet above the ground, I arc through the air, descending ten feet before reaching salvation. My reception is harsh. The smaller tree’s rough bark scours layers of skin from my arms and forehead as I wrap around the trunk like a desperate baby. My legs slam down on thin limbs, halting my fall with painful suddenness. But if the branches were any thicker, and harder, my legs would have likely broken.
Despite being free from the falling tree, I have yet to reach safety. The thin pine trunk to which I’ve fled bends under my weight, threatening to fling me free, or break under my weight. Before it can bend far enough to dislodge me, I slide free of the branches and down the trunk with no regard to the gouges being worn into my hands.
When the bending stops and I find myself safely stowed on a thick bough, I pause to inspect the scene, which has gone prematurely quiet. The falling tree has yet to hit the ground, which means…
It’s stuck.
The branches are intertwined with those of the surrounding trees.
“Vee!” Shua shouts from below. When I spot him, he points toward the falling tree. I follow his finger and spot the Golyat, still huffing and clawing its way upward. It doesn’t look built for leaping, but it will eventually reach a point where it can move from one tree to the other.
A sudden, jarring shift quakes through the conflagration of limbs. The steaming, melted base is sliding downhill, exerting more force on the branches. They’ll give way eventually, and I don’t want to be here when they do.
“Get out of there!” Shua says.
I shake my head. “It will follow!”
He stabs his spear into the ground and takes my second from the backpack. Then he aims the tip upward, nearly at me, and hurls it. The spear passes beneath me. A dry tearing sound and a hard thump punctuates the spear striking both Golyat and tree, pinning the creature in place.
The bear tugs itself up with its forelimbs, but its hind legs hang useless now. Shua managed to pin the creature and sever its spine. But will such a wound kill the beast?
I don’t know, and I don’t want to be here to find out.
Hands and feet move without thought, whisking me toward the forest floor.
When I’m halfway down, gravity wins the battle, propelling the tree to the ground, shaving branches as it goes.
Pummeled by broken limbs and a cloud of falling pine needles, I work my way around and down the maze of branches until I reach the clear trunk. I slide the rest of the way down, further abusing my skin, but reaching the ground with just enough time to leap away from the falling tree. The ground shakes with a thunderous boom that makes me cringe. As bad as the Golyat bear might be, there is far worse stalking these woods, and the sound might draw it—or them—straight toward us.
I take two steps away from the scene as Shua waves me on, and then I stop upon hearing a groan.
The
Golyat bear is pinned beneath the fallen tree, its head and arms extending almost comically. Despite the groan, I see no pain reflected in its black eyes. It turns toward me and chatters, desperate to consume me, even while pinned.
“Vee, what the hell?” Shua takes me by the arm, pulling me back. “Let’s go!”
When the tree atop the Golyat, and the ground around it, begin to steam, I turn and flee.
It takes just a minute to find Salem’s symbols again, and we’re back on track. The Golyat bear isn’t dead, and I think it will eventually be freed from its prison. But maybe its hind legs will remain useless?
Then again, maybe not. For all we know, the beast is already freed, healed, and hunting us down.
The image of it spurs me on faster and keeps me numb to the wounds covering my body. It’s not until ten minutes later, when Shua says, “Hold up,” that I slow down just long enough to shake my head.
When he catches my arm and tugs me to a stop, I reel around on him. I want to shout, but I haven’t forgotten there are things in the forest that can hear us. As a result, my, “What is it?” comes out sounding feral.
“You’re cut,” he says, looking me over.
“I’m fine.” Even as I say it, the sting starts to set in.
“You’re covered in blood.”
“I said. I’m. Fine.” Along with the sting, I now feel the stiffening tackiness of drying blood, all over my body.
His patience leaves with the speed of a lightning bolt. He leans in close, speaking just a few inches from my face, his voice matching my own near-growl. “You. Smell. Like. Blood.”
Those four words undo my anger, and in addition to the stinging and sticky sensations, I can now smell myself.
“If that thing is tracking us again, there is nowhere we will be able to go that it can’t follow. And if there’re any more Golyats wandering around, they’re going to smell you next time a stiff breeze rolls past. Now, listen.” He stands still, holding his breath.
I do the same and have no trouble hearing the sound of water flowing over rocks.
“We need to wash and bandage your wounds,” he says. “Get rid of anything covered in blood. Until we do that, we can’t follow my father and Shoba, and we can’t go find Salem.”
He’s right. We’d lead every monster tracking us, now or several days from now, straight to them. The scent of my blood will likely linger until the next rain.
I respond by striking out again, this time leaving the marked trail and heading toward the sound of rushing water.
“We need to do this fast,” Shua says, spear in hand, eyes scanning the woods.
“You’re just trying to get my clothes off again.”
“In my experience, it’s not difficult.”
His sense of humor’s return gets a smile out of me. It’s short-lived, but only because the flexing skin pulls open a gash on my chin. Cool air rushes into the wound, and I wince at the sting. But it’s nothing compared to what I’m going to feel in the water.
The stream is just two feet across, but deep enough to lie down in.
Shua motions to my clothing, as I shed my backpack. “Everything with blood on it stays here.”
“I know,” I grumble, shedding clothing until I’m standing in just leather undergarments. During the summer months, many women in Essex dress like this, myself included, but not while trekking through the forest and fighting wild things.
Leaving a pile of bloodied clothing behind, I step into the cold stream. Goosebumps rise over my body. I make a slow circle expecting to find Shua watching me, but his eyes are on the trees around us.
“Fast,” he says. “Once your blood is in the water…”
He doesn’t need to finish the thought. My scent will be carried downstream. Anything lurking near the water will pick it up, and if it’s a Golyat, I have little doubt it will come running.
Water flows around me as I sit. The cold and stinging water steals my breath for a moment. Then I lie back and let the water envelop me. The frigid stream numbs me to much of the sting, allowing me to run my hands over the wounds on each arm, my hands themselves, and my face. After thirty seconds of rapid scrubbing, I sit up and then stand.
Shua steps into the stream with me, his shirt removed. He tears a strip off the loose, brown fabric and balls it up, dabbing it on my wounds. “Looked worse than they are, but some are still bleeding.”
He leans to his pack and digs inside, returning with a small container. He twists off the cap to reveal beeswax. After dabbing away the blood again, he dips his finger inside and then smooths the wax over my still-open wounds. It stings just for a moment, but then fades. After repeating the process with three more wounds, he tears what was his shirt into several more strips, which he ties around the sealed cuts. When he’s done, he leans back, and says, “It’s not pretty, but it will keep you from filling the forest with your stink.”
“You’ve always been a charmer,” I say.
Shua turns back to his pack, returning the beeswax, but then stops moving. For a moment, I worry he’s heard or smelled something, but then he says, “Always?”
I climb out of the stream, picking up my pack. “Fast, remember.”
“There’s time,” he says.
I’m not sure why I’m dodging the truth. I suppose I’m not ready to have that conversation, half naked, wounded, tired, and maybe being pursued by a monster that will eat us, digest us, and pass us in the time it takes for me to say, “For what?”
“You know?”
“Yes,” I say, and when I see his slowly spreading smile, and what might be dampness in his eyes, I step back into the stream and face my old friend, turned momentary lover, turned father of my son, turned abductor, turned…what? Ally? Friend once more? “I know it’s you, Bear.”
The transformation in his face both breaks and warms my heart. Though we’ve been together in the past, and for many days now, this feels like a reunion. In that moment, I see Shua for the friend I once had. While his body has changed, his smile and eyes are the same, as is his kindness toward me and toward others…even if he did knock me unconscious and lie to me. He believed he was doing the right thing, and now that I’m here, I don’t disagree.
Moved by a flood of memories, I embrace him as the boy I knew, but then I feel him as the man he has become. He returns the hug, leans back, and says, “Okay, now we can run like hell.”
Then the ground shakes, and so do we.
24
With miles between us and the stream, it’s clear we’re not being pursued, at least not by whatever shook the ground. The bear could still be back there, dragging itself along after us, or perhaps back to full strength. Our run tapers to a jog, and when we can no longer sustain that pace, a walk.
And once again, everything seems normal. The birds have returned. The squirrels and chipmunks, too. A snake slithers past. Cicadas buzz in the summer heat. Warm leaf litter fills the air with the scent of earthy decay, and the promise of new life. This is summer in the forest as I’ve experienced it my entire life.
What’s missing are larger mammals: deer, rabbits, racoons, skunks, and porcupines. While these creatures avoid people the same way we might a Golyat, it’s not uncommon to cross paths with one or two during a day in the forest.
“This feels familiar,” Shua says, as though reading my mind.
“Like home.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he says, and he points a finger back and forth between us. “This. Us.”
“Us?”
“Walking together.”
I picture Shua two feet shorter, and a lot softer, walking beside me, talking about the weather, the tribal gossip, the things he’d seen and done while traveling. I would laugh at the stories, which seemed to have no end, tell far fewer of my own, and we would pass the days while our fathers focused on county issues. Looking back at my life, those days were some of the best.
I wish I could say the same right now.
But I can’t.
&n
bsp; “Familiar,” I agree. “But not the same.”
“Maybe someday.”
“I doubt it,” I say, and I sense his disappointment. “You’d have to gain a lot of weight.”
I smile at him as he chuckles, and then I tense when he stops and turns up his ear.
Voices. Male and female. They’re barely audible, but not far ahead.
I draw my machete and Shua assembles the four segments of his spear faster and quieter than I would have thought possible. We stalk forward side-by-side, no longer mimicking the casual walk of youth, but the dangerous creep of two killers.
A wall of pocked gray covered in moss and mushroom growth blocks our path. An ancient wall, still standing. We must be entering the fringes of what once was a city. I search the area for other foundations, or hints of previous construction, but I see nothing. Perhaps this one structure is all that remains.
We pause behind the wall, listening.
“I don’t think they’re safe,” the man says.
“How can we know if we never try it?” the younger woman asks.
“Our supplies are not sufficiently depleted enough to warrant taking the risk.”
Shua and I lock eyes, relieved. The arguing pair are Plistim and Shoba.
“Shoba,” Shua says, drawing a gasp from the girl on the wall’s far side. “Listen to your grandfather.”
The sound of running feet fades and then grows louder as Shoba rounds the wall’s far end and throws herself into her uncle’s arms. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”
“I would not let a Golyat keep me from my family.” Shua kisses her forehead.
When he releases her from the embrace, I’m surprised when Shoba redirects her affection toward me, squeezing me in an embrace. When I stiffen, she lets go, but misunderstands my discomfort. “Sorry. You’re wounded.” She looks me up and down. “Like, everywhere.”
The Divide Page 14