The Divide

by Jeremy Robinson

  When Shua looks up at me, confused, I point back and forth between the two of us. “This. You. What do you want?”

  “What do you want?” he asks, and I can’t tell if the question is meant to be earnest or playful.

  A vibration tickles my feet, and as I ponder the answer to Shua’s question, I almost miss it. “Did you feel that?”

  Shua blinks. Looks down. “Feel what? Did you touch me?”

  “The floor shook.” I stand, pluck my torch from its makeshift stand and hurry for the door.

  In the large, arched space we run into Shoba, who looks relieved at our arrival, and Holland, who looks like he wants to slit my throat.

  “What was that?” Shoba asks.

  Before I can reply, the floor shakes again. This time the vibration is coupled with a distant gong from the hallway we have yet to explore.

  “Plistim went down there,” Holland says. “With Salem and Del.”

  I’m moving at the mention of Salem’s name. Shoba and Shua, too. Holland remains behind. I’m not sure what his relationship with the others is like, but his affection for Dyer is unquestionable. Whatever is happening down here, his concern is with her, exposed to the Golyats.

  The hallway is long, straight, and featureless. Our rapid footsteps echo around us. Then the floor slopes up, headed toward the surface.

  Did they go outside? Was the shaking a Golyat?

  A door that fills the hallway’s end intimidates me into a full stop, not because it looks dangerous, but because I’m afraid of what I’ll find on the other side.

  Shua steps around me and tests the door’s lock. When the handle turns with a clunk, he swings the door open. The large slab of metal swivels without a sound, moving faster than Shua is ready for. He steps back as the door slams into the concrete wall with a resounding gong that shakes the floor.

  When we pull our hands from our ears, Shoba says, “Well, now we know what shook the floor.”

  Shua steps toward the opening. “The second shake must have come when the door was closed.”

  The revelation relieves me, but my positive emotions are held in check by darkness beyond the open door.

  “Hello?” Shua shouts into the open space, as I lean in with the torch.

  “Hey!” Salem’s sudden appearance in the circle of firelight startles Shua, Shoba, and me, all three of us stumbling back, hands going for weapons. Salem doesn’t notice. He’s lost in the excitement of discovery. “Come see this!”

  We step into the space beyond and find a chamber even larger than the one behind us. A vaulted ceiling is thirty feet above us, the chamber’s walls beyond the torch’s reach. There also appear to be several large, solid objects between us and the far wall, along with rows of shelves, like those in the rooms behind us, but holding larger cases.

  “Ugh,” Shoba says, putting a hand to her nose.

  The room is full of offensive scents, like nothing I’ve ever smelled before. Shua looks equally displeased. “You know what that is?”

  “No,” he says, and he follows Salem without another word. I hurry to keep up, being the group’s only source of illumination. After working our way through a maze of I-don’t-know-what, we reach a clearing of sorts, where Plistim is revealed, down on one knee, inspecting a length of what I think is rope.

  “This could work,” Plistim says.

  “Why are you in the dark?” Shua asks.

  “The door closed on its own,” Salem says. “It startled me, and…” He bends down, picking up his extinguished torch. “Dropped it.” He holds the torch against Shua’s, lighting it anew.

  “You’re lucky we came,” Shua says, sounding a bit disappointed in both Salem and Plistim. “It could have taken hours for you to find the door in the dark.”

  “I memorized the path back,” Salem says, and when his father’s look of disapproval does not waver, he adds, “but we should have been more careful.”

  The father-son moment catches me off guard, but I don’t disapprove. Shua is the kind of influence Salem grew up without. After the past few days with Shua, I have no doubt he was a strong and steady guiding hand for my son during the past two years.

  The father my son deserved.

  Shoba loses interest in Salem’s mishap, crouching down beside Plistim. “What is all this? She tugs the rope revealing what seems to be a never-ending, bright orange line.

  “Rope,” Plistim says. “Enough to reach the Divide’s bottom.” He looks up, his earlier defeat now missing. “And back up again.”

  30

  “We’ve waited long enough.” I feel horrible saying it, but someone has to. After three days of waiting for new arrivals, not one more member of Plistim’s family has followed Salem’s path to our doorstep. Shua, Dyer, and I have kept watch topside, from the trees. There have been no signs of life. No rising smoke, no shouts…or screams…no lingering scents, and no Golyats. The large beast moved on, perhaps sensing easier prey nearby, or just waiting patiently for the moles to leave their den as a group.

  “I don’t think I can say that to him.” Shua sits across from me, hands clasped on the branch he’s straddling. We’re fifty feet up in a pine tree, wrapped in a blanket that’s been coated in sap and covered with pine needles. According to Salem, we look and smell more like a pine tree than a pine tree does. If a Golyat shows up, we’ll find out just how astute they are.

  “We’ve been ready to leave since yesterday,” I say. “Every day we wait brings winter closer. There is no way to guess how long the journey, the crossing, or the search for Mount Fletcher will take.”

  “It could be days,” he says, feigning hope. “Weeks at the most.”

  “Years at the most,” I correct. “Months if we’re lucky. Weeks if a Golyat decides to toss us across.”

  “Have I told you how pessimistic you are?” His question nearly triggers an aggressive response, but then I see his smile and know he’s teasing.

  “Better to be a successful pessimist, than a shat-out, steaming pile of positive thinking.”

  I’m expecting a broader smile, so I’m caught off guard when he frowns. It doesn’t take long for me to figure out why. I’ve just callously described the fate of several family members, people we witnessed being slain in the most horrible way, people whose slippery, gray remains have been slowly drying out in the summer sun. I glance down at the field where the dead Golyat remains, laying in a dried out pool of its insides. “Sorry.”

  “You meant no disrespect,” he says. I find his forgiving nature unfamiliar, unexpected, and at times, unwelcome. He should hate me. Not long ago I would have killed him for his beliefs.

  A part of me doubts that. I try to put myself back in time, imagine what I would have done if I’d known what Shua had planned. I would have tried to kill him. I doubt I would have succeeded. But if I’d known who he really was, if I had known he was Bear?

  I replay the story in my head. I can’t even imagine killing him now.

  I would have betrayed the Prime Law to spare Bear’s life. And now that he’s a good father to my son… I think, for the first time, I understand Plistim. Growing up as the youngest in a large family, in a culture that didn’t value me, I was never very close to anyone aside from my father. But Plistim feels that way toward everyone in his family, and they return that affection.

  In some ways, I envy the man. Despite the hardship he’s endured, when he dies, he will have given and received more love in a single year of his life than I will have during the past twenty.

  What I do not envy is the pain that comes with such deep attachments. With every passing day, Plistim has fallen into a deeper depression. As our plan to reach Mount Fletcher progressed to the point where even I thought it might be possible, he has been more focused on his family’s fate. With each day it seems more and more likely that the rest of the people he led across the Divide are dead. Or will be before they can find us.

  “And you’re right,” Shua says. “I need to tell him. He will hear it from no one el
se.” He slides toward the trunk, freeing himself of the protective blanket.

  I grasp his hand, squeezing.

  When he turns to face me, I sense hope in his eyes.

  Then I crush it, by raising my hand and giving him a stern look. For a moment he’s confused, maybe even hurt, but then he understands. He goes still, unmoving, not breathing.

  The sound is faint. A gentle shushing of leaves. I close my eyes, giving image to the repetitive sound. The cadence suggests walking. Two feet. Not large. Despite the noise, I feel no vibrations.

  I flinch when a second, louder noise rings out below. It’s Holland, leaving the bunker. He’s flung the door open. The small man, who lacks even a hint of Shua’s forgiving nature, looks around and up, but never spots us. Then he heads for the Golyat’s remains.

  “What’s he doing?” I ask, irritated enough that I’ve already determined to give the man a slap when I see him next. Dyer might not like it, but he’s putting everyone at risk. We’ve all been a little more relaxed after not detecting even a trace of a living Golyat for days, but this…

  Shua shakes his head and puts a finger to his mouth.

  We sit and listen. Following the gong of Holland’s exit, the forest has gone silent. The birds are quiet. The insects, too.

  The distant shushing has stopped. Who-, or whatever is out there heard Holland. If he’s quiet, maybe it won’t—

  A sneeze cuts through the forest. Holland wipes his nose as he nears the drying puddle of Golyat insides and digested meals.

  The repeating shush of leaves grows a little louder and a whole lot faster. But there is something about the sound that my imagination has yet to flesh out. I focus on the sound once more, seeing the feet sliding through leaves…

  No, over leaves. But nothing with feet moves like that, not unless, “It’s dragging something.”

  Holland is oblivious to the danger. I’m not sure what Dyer sees in the man. Perhaps she just needs someone to take care of. Whatever the reason, I can’t let him die because he’s an idiot.

  Shua’s eyes widen in time with mine. We know what’s coming.

  “The bear,” Shua whispers.

  I imagine the Golyat bear with limp hind legs, dragging itself through the leaf litter. The sound fits.

  “Go,” I say, and I follow him to the trunk, leaving the blanket behind.

  As we scrape our way down, trying to move fast and quiet, I keep track of Holland. If he wanders any further, I’m going to have to shout to him, which could inspire the Golyat to move faster, and help it home in on our location.

  Holland remains crouched by the remains.

  The hell is he doing?

  He reaches out a hand.

  I want to yell at him. Why would anyone touch that shit?

  Shua reaches the ground first, stepping aside as I land and spin around. Two steps into my sprint, Holland pokes a fingertip into the gray. Even from here, I can see a dry film bend under his finger. He lifts his hand, rubbing his fingers together.

  When we’re close enough that I think he should have heard us coming, he reaches for the puddle again, this time pushing his finger harder. The skin bends, and then, snaps. His finger punches through, dips inside and then is yanked back.

  Holland’s face morphs from surprise, to concern, to fear, and finally to abject pain over the course of a single second. Then he opens his mouth to scream.

  “Stop!” I hiss. “It will hear you.”

  Holland manages to contain the scream, but I can already see his effort won’t last long. It’s not just because of the pain; it’s because of the horror that his finger has become. Starting where the gray touched his finger, his flesh is all but melting away to reveal bone, which liquifies a moment later. In seconds, the effect will move to his hand, and his arm.

  His agonized face beseeches me for help, so I grant it.

  “Hold up your finger,” I tell him. “I know how to stop it!”

  He obeys, believing my lie. While I suspect there is a way to stop it, I’m not certain it will work. When he clutches his eyes shut in pain, struggling to contain that scream, I draw my knife and swing it through the air. Holland’s digesting digit falls away, shrinking to nothing as it hits the ground.

  Holland gasps, looking relieved for a moment before opening his eyes and seeing the stub that remains where his finger had been. The pain of having a finger removed by a sharp blade appears to be far less than having it melted, but the sight of it is more than the man can handle.

  Holland’s scream bursts from his lips faster than Shua can clamp a hand over the man’s mouth. It lasts several seconds and is loud enough that I worry more than just the bear-thing will hear it.

  Despite his mouth being covered and my, “Shut-up, you idiot,” Holland sucks a lung full of air through his nose, preparing to let out another cry. When a fervent chatter replies to his first scream, the second croaks to a stop in his throat.

  “What’s happening?” Dyer says, storming from the open tunnel, sword drawn. Del is with her, bow in hand, arrow nocked.

  “She cut off my finger,” Holland says, somehow already forgetting that he’s all but summoned a Golyat.

  I’m about to shove him toward Dyer when I see the very real menace in her eyes, directed toward me.

  Shua steps between us. “Holland put his finger in the Golyat’s remains. It was digesting him. Vee took his finger to save his hand, and perhaps his life.”

  “And…” I say, my voice a warning.

  “A Golyat is coming,” Shua says.

  That takes Dyer’s full attention away from me and puts it squarely on the forest around us. The shushing leaves are loud enough to hear without focusing now.

  “Was it you?” she asks Holland.

  The man is too busy wrapping his bloodied hand to answer, but I have no qualms about assigning blame. “His scream drew it faster, but his sneeze caught its attention.”

  “Idiot,” Dyer mumbles, and then to me. “Sorry for my misdirected anger. Husbands are…” She shakes her head with an eyes-closed sigh. Then she turns to Holland. “Inside. Now.”

  “W-what are you going to do?” he asks, already retreating toward the door.

  Dyer looks toward me, asking the question without saying a word.

  I nod.

  She bares her teeth like an angry wolf. “We’re going to kill it.”

  31

  The Golyat bear drags itself into the clearing, a hundred feet away. For not having hind limbs, it’s still moving at a good clip. Despite that, and the fact that it could still devour all of us, I don’t feel afraid. The monster looks more pitiful than horrifying.

  Dyer chuckles. “This is the Golyat you spoke of? The one that nearly killed you?”

  “It had four legs when we faced it,” Shua says in my defense, but it’s not necessary. Dyer’s smile fades the moment the beast chatters at us, its manic jaws spraying froth into the air. The creature’s dried out and stretched hide, shattered in the middle, sheds black flakes with each surge of its two operable legs.

  The closer it gets, the less comical it becomes.

  “Del,” I say, “stand closer to the door. Be ready to open and close it should we need to retrea—”

  “I will not stand down from a fight simply because I’m younger than—”

  “Do it!” I snap. “And show me how good your aim is. Take out its eyes.”

  Del hesitates, no doubt trying to figure out if I’m keeping her away from the fight, or trying to put her in the best position for it. The truth is both. While I would opt to protect my son’s young bride, her skill with a bow could help us not die. Putting her at a safe distance, but still within arrow-range is the best of both worlds.

  “Go!” I shout, drawing my machete.

  Del backs away, drawstring pulled back, already tracking the Golyat.

  “Wait for it to stop,” I tell her, “and then—”

  The bow twangs.

  An arrow flies. There’s a dry chop, like a small ax
e against wood, and then an angry roar.

  Despite having an arrow embedded in one eye, the Golyat doesn’t lose stride, heading straight for me. While it’s probably chance that out of the three of us, the monster has decided to pursue me, I’m not certain. What if it remembers me? What if the Golyats lock in on a prey until they’ve caught it?

  My stomach churns. That would mean the big one is still nearby, too.

  “How are we going to handle this?” Dyer asks.

  The Golyat bear is just fifty feet away. The arrow falls away, melted from inside the creature’s head.

  “Move back,” I say, waving Dyer back, and then Shua.

  “Like hell.” Dyer digs in her heels.

  “Flank it, damn it!” Either my anger or the strategy puts the pair in motion. As the one-eyed Golyat closes in, they move away and then out to either side. The monster turns its head toward each of them, but doesn’t alter its trajectory.

  I hear the bow string twang behind me, and then an arrow whistles past. I don’t see it until it’s buried in the creature’s forehead. Any other animal would have dropped from the shot, but the Golyat isn’t guided by a mind. It’s driven by instinct and hunger.

  “Shit,” Del whispers behind me. She’d been aiming for the other eye. Had she hit it, I’d already be moving.

  Though Del and Shoba are close in age, they are night and day in a fight—Shoba the kindhearted soul, Del the arrow-tipped fighter. And yet, I find myself growing equally fond of them both.

  As the arrow melts away, I aim my father’s machete and stand my ground.

  When the Golyat is five feet away, I shout, “Now!”

  Shua lunges, stabbing his long spear into the Golyat’s back. The blade punches through the creature, and then the soil beneath it, locking it in place. The monster begins to thrash, so I stab with the machete, putting the broad blade through its dried-out forehead. It tries to twist, but between Shua’s spear and my machete, it’s stuck.