And then, with a hard chop from Dyer’s sword, the creature’s horrible life comes to an end. Shua and I withdraw our weapons from the corpse. Shua’s spear comes out without a blade, the wood dripping. When I see the machete’s blade starting to drip, I throw the weapon beside the now-still body.
“Shitty cupcakes,” Dyer says, staring at her long sword as the blade bends in the middle, where she cut through the Golyat’s neck. Then she tosses the weapon to the ground and we hurry back toward the bunker door, where Del waits for us.
“What’s a…cupcake?” I ask.
“A sweet baked bread of a sort,” Dyer says. “Sweeter than anything we’ve tasted. Holland read a book about them to me.”
“They had time to write books about sweet bread?” I ask.
“They even wrote books about nothing at all. Stories they imagined.”
“The more I learn about our ancestors, the less impressed I am.”
She gives a nod. “But cupcakes? C’mon. I’ve been working on a recipe to make them now.”
With that, she enters the tunnel followed by Shua.
I pause to put a hand on Del’s shoulder. “You did well. I’m proud to have you as a daughter.” While she beams at the compliment, I motion for her to go ahead. I linger by the door, listening for a shift in the wind, a distant rumble, or a chatter. I hear nothing, and then the forest sounds return.
Safe for the moment, but not for long, and certainly not forever.
I close the door behind me and head down the dark slope. I navigate the darkness, hand on a wall, until I see an orange light ahead. It flares brighter and then separates as one torch is used to light a second. While one continues down the other hurries back toward me.
As the light grows brighter, I see the torchbearer is Salem.
“Holland told us a Golyat was attacking.” My son looks me over. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” I say, and I’m caught off guard when my son wraps me in a tight, one-armed hug, his free hand holding the torch away from us. Despite being larger than me, he feels small in my arms again.
“I was worried,” he says. “I have been worried. You were a shepherd for so long.”
I want to tell him he could have visited, but that’s not true. Back then, guided by the Prime Law, I would have likely tracked him and alerted the counties to the Modernist’s hiding spot.
“It was good for me,” I tell him.
“To be alone, in the forest, for years? I heard about your lion bites. And your scars.”
I don’t remember telling anyone about my vast collection of scars, but then I remember standing naked in front of Shua, back on Suffolk island. I’m going to have to talk to him about telling his son when he sees me naked.
If he sees me naked. At the time, I was unburdened by caring what Shua thought, but now…
I give my son a pat and move back. “My father taught me an old saying once. He said that when a person survives tragedies and trials, it gives them a thick skin.”
“That’s the definition of a scar,” Salem says.
“The saying is a metaphor, stupid.”
I’m happy to see my son smile. “Then we’ll all have thick skin soon.”
“Probably,” I say, but think, I hope not. No mother wants her children’s lives to be surrounded by death and pain. Life in New Inglan is hard, sometimes violent, and often life threatening, but I have never witnessed death more crude and pointless as those who fell to the Golyats.
“Your wife fought well,” I say, hoping to change the subject.
“She fought?” He sounds appropriately mortified. Del must have kept that detail from him when they met below.
“From a distance. Blinded the Golyat in one eye.” I put an arm around his waist and guide him down the hall. “Try not to make her angry.”
I’m expecting a laugh, but he grows serious instead. “Mother…”
I wait in silence. He’s working toward something.
“Do you think…” Salem twists his lips for a moment. “I was wondering if you and…my father—”
“Did he put you up to this?” I blurt.
Salem squints at me. “You sound nervous.”
“Angry.”
“I was going to ask if you thought you would be friends again,” he says, “like when you were children.”
Shit.
“But now I’m thinking I should have asked—”
“Don’t say it.” I squeeze his side, making him flinch. “Don’t even think it.”
His smile broadens with each step downward.
Seeing his happiness at even the potential of a future between his father and me, I lower my defenses. This might be the last chance in a long time, perhaps ever, to bond with my son. “You know I’m married, right?”
“The Modernists don’t recognize county marriages,” Salem says. “Dyer was married to an ogre of a man before joining us.”
“How about this…when this is all over, the Golyats are dead, we are free, and my husband is not trying to kill us, ask me again. Until then, let’s focus on trying to stay alive.”
We keep walking, and Salem keeps smiling, but the air between us grows heavy.
“We need to leave,” he says. The admission pains him.
“We do,” I agree. “No one else is coming.”
“Do you think they’re all dead?” Shoba asks, suddenly crouching between Salem and me. The girl, who generally walks through the forest with all the grace and silence of a rutting moose, has managed to sneak up on us. Hiding my surprise at her silent arrival takes more effort than I’d care to admit.
“If they are, they died pursuing freedom.” I try to inject a little feeling into the words, but I don’t entirely agree with the sentiment. I’m not sure any cause is worth a death in a Golyat’s fiery gut. “Live free or die.”
“Well put,” says a voice from the darkness ahead. It’s Plistim. “And reason enough for me to relent. We have stayed here long enough. All that’s left is to determine a time for our departure.”
Armed with the suspicion that the large Golyat has yet to give up the hunt, I consider the question of timing. We need to put as much distance between us and the beast as possible. If it locks onto our trail, there will be no outrunning it. “Tonight. Under the cover of darkness. And we’re not resting until the sun sets again.”
To my surprise, Plistim nods his agreement and then raises a finger. “But first…a surprise.”
“I don’t like surprises,” I tell him.
“I think you will like this one,” he says. “I heard you lost your weapons.”
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“Weapons,” I say, looking down at an assortment of weapons laid out on the ground. There are machetes, hatchets, knives, a strange looking bow, and a set of arrows. Despite the haul, I’m disappointed.
“A lot of weapons,” Dyer says, helping herself to a replacement sword. It’s smaller than her previous blade, but its curved, shiny surface looks new, and deadly.
“But nothing…powerful,” I complain, picking up a machete. It looks and feels a lot like my father’s, before it melted inside a Golyat’s head. “Nothing unique.”
“Actually,” Plistim says, “there are many such weapons here.”
Dyer’s head snaps up, a look of excitement in her eyes. “Then let’s use ’em.”
“While the machinery is intact, the elements used to power the devices are long since fouled. They would be less useful against the Golyat than these blades.”
Dyer nudges me with her elbow. “This would be an appropriate time to use ‘shitty cupcakes.’ As an expression, I mean. Not to eat. Because we’re disappointed, but…” She motions to the spread of weapons. “Could be worse.”
“Thanks for the lesson,” I say, only half paying attention, while I inspect the blades, looking for a symbol that matches the one on my KA-BAR. While there are several of the big knives on the floor, none of them bear the marking.
“Wow,” Del says, pickin
g up the bow.
“Thought you would like that,” Salem says. “Took a long time to find the string, which is actually more of a wire, and get it strung.”
“Have you tried it?” Del asks.
“You’ll be the first.”
Del takes her time, replacing the arrows in her quiver with the longer, harder and sharper collection laid out before her. When she’s done, she nocks an arrow and pulls on the string. It bends just a little.
“This is really…hard.” Del grits her teeth and pulls harder. The bow bends more and then the several small wheels turn. The string comes back and Del’s eyes go wide in time with her smile. “I can feel how strong this thing is.”
She turns the bow toward the wall.
“Wait,” I say. “It could—”
The bow releases. There’s a quick hiss of air, and then a single ping of metal on stone. Shua holds his torch higher, lighting the concrete wall, where the arrow is embedded.
“Well, damn,” Dyer says.
“Everyone take what you want, and then what you can carry along with the rest of your gear, and not be slowed down.” When everyone helps themselves to the assortment of weapons—even Shoba, Plistim, and Salem—Shua points at Holland. “You, too.”
Holland holds up his wrapped hand. “Can’t hold a sword.”
“You can carry one,” Shua says, tossing a sheathed machete to Holland, who catches it in his left hand.
“It’s burning like a bastard,” Holland says, as he slips the weapon over his left arm.
“That’s what happens when you cauterize a wound, dear,” Dyer says. She did the job herself, thirty minutes ago, while Plistim, Shoba, and Salem laid out the cache of weapons. His bleeding had stopped. He will live. But he has yet to stop complaining or blaming me for his woes. Dyer keeps him in line, though, so I feel no need to engage.
Our new weapons serve as a nice distraction, holding our interest throughout the remainder of the day. By the time Shua returns from the bunker entrance and announces the sun is setting, we’re all anxious to leave. The journey ahead will mark our collective end, or the beginning of a new life. No one has discussed the odds of the latter coming to fruition, likely because we all know the numbers would be discouraging.
We set out when the sky is still purple, aiming to head northeast as fast and as quiet as we can manage until nightfall. During that time, there will be no talking, no breaks, and no slowing down. We carry the bundles of rope on two stretchers—there will be no running to the Divide—everyone taking a turn. The bright orange ropes are covered by blankets coated in sap, leaves, and pine needles. It looks like we’re carrying two mounds of earth. As we travel, we repeat Salem’s path of carved symbols, this time including arrows to help guide any stragglers. By the time night falls completely, we’ve covered a good five miles without incident or even a hint of danger. In the darkness, we slow to watch our step and check the stars, but we continue on through the night without cease.
Seven hours into our trek, we hear the distant chatter of a hungry Golyat, but when it repeats, it’s further away.
Two hours later, with the sun just thirty minutes away, a stink.
Shua holds up his hand and everyone stops moving, and we lower the two stretchers of ropes to the ground.
A dry huffing sound, deep and resonant, filters through the trees to our right.
It repeats and is then followed by a dull, orange glow, ten feet off the ground. The orange light reflects off the nearby tree and reveals a dry-skinned man with dead, black eyes. The Golyat is only twenty feet tall, but that’s still too big to handle with our weapons, and still plenty big enough to eat us.
It can’t see us, but it can smell us, and now that it’s waking up, it will hear us if we make a run for it. And running would mean abandoning the rope, which would mean abandoning our mission.
I tense when Del crouches, drawing an arrow back, aiming it toward the Golyat. I wave my hands and shake my head. She sees the gestures. Looks right at me. And then takes aim again.
Shit.
The bow string snaps tight.
The Golyat grunts, turning its eyes toward us, as Del ducks back behind a tree. Then there is a loud thunk far beyond the monster.
Del wasn’t aiming for the Golyat, she was aiming at a tree.
Despite the distance, the thunk of the arrow finding its mark is far louder than the shush of her bow string.
The Golyat spins around. Its chattering teeth cut through the night. Then it’s up and running toward the sound, moving away from us.
I’m hopeful for a moment, but then a second set of chattering sounds out to our left.
“Around the trees!” I whisper, and follow my own command, exposing myself to the first Golyat, which is still running away.
The ground shakes with the rhythm generated by two sets of large, running feet. I curl up behind the tree, as do the others, one to a tree. The bundles of rope are exposed, but they look like two lumps in the ground. Orange light fills the forest. The long, straight shadows of trees bend back and forth as the creature runs toward, and then past us. In the glow of its digestive system, we would have been easy to spot, but the forty foot tall, feminine form doesn’t look down, or back.
When both monsters chatter again, I stand and motion for the others to recover the ropes and move out. We haul ass as a group, chased by the sounds of two hungry, and angry Golyats. I can’t tell if they’re fighting, or just tearing the forest apart looking for us, but the sound fades away as we awkwardly walk-run with the stretchers until the light of day.
With the sun’s arrival, we slow our pace. Had we come across the pair of Golyats now, both monsters would have spotted us. We’ll need to find any more of them first. But since their legs resemble the hard, dry surface of tree bark, that’s not a simple task. So we let caution guide us forward, and through each task performed on the way.
There’s a debate the first time we stop for a true meal. Should we eat on the move, dissipating the scent of our food over a large distance? Or should we stop and risk attracting immediate attention? Fearing a long trail of jerky scent could put a predator, Golyat or not, on our path, we opt for stopping. When we’re done eating, Shua digs a three foot deep pit, which we take turns squatting over. When everyone is done, Shua fills in the hole, sealing the odor in the soil. If anything with a nose comes through here in the next few days, it will smell us, but it won’t be drawn from far away, and it won’t have a path to follow.
Before setting out, we roll in the dirt, decaying leaves, and drying pine needles, letting the earth’s scents mask our own. Then we set out again, northeast, over rolling hills of endless trees. We’re joined by bird song and buzzing bugs irate at the day’s heat.
When the sun starts to set again, I make a proposal. “We could go through the night again. Sleep a few hours in the morning and then make another full day’s walk.”
Following deer through the woods of New Inglan, this would not be an unusual schedule to keep. The group’s reaction reminds me that I’m the only shepherd in the group. All but Del, who looks tired, but eager to please her mother-in-law, collapse at the suggestion, as if the words actually added to their burden.
“I can’t,” Holland says. He’s panting and saturated in sweat. All of us are, but his face is red. He looks sunburned, but the hue is common in men with weak hearts. Not everyone is built for a life on the run.
Dyer sits beside her husband, leaning back against a tree. “For once…I agree…with my cupcake of a husband.” She gives Holland a nudge. “I’m serious, there is no end to that word’s versatility.”
Holland starts to unwrap his jerky.
“If you open that,” I say, making no effort to hide my irritation, “we’re going to get up and move five more miles before stopping.”
“I’m so hungry.”
“You’ll be hungry in the morning, too,” I tell him. “You can eat before we set out.”
Holland grunts, lies in the tree’s shade, clo
ses his eyes, and falls asleep. I’ve never seen anyone nod off that fast, but then, I haven’t seen many people as weak. In some ways I’m amazed he survived into adulthood. Perhaps his first wife was also a warrior, protecting him when others would have fallen prey to my father’s ‘survival of the fittest’ theory. While he didn’t originate the theory—an ancestor did—he was a proponent of it.
Protected by a ring of boulders, trees, and raised terrain, the group actually managed to collapse in a decent area to spend the night. I sit upon a rock, take a drag of water from a skin, and say, “No food until morning. No talking louder than a whisper, or not at all if you can avoid it. I’ll take first watch. Shua, you’re second. Dyer, you’re third.”
The group looks to Plistim, who nods his agreement.
“How about this,” I say, annoyed by their reaction. “When we’re in the forest, trying to survive while predators might be hunting us down, I’m in charge. When making decisions about the big picture…” I motion to Plistim. “There won’t always be time to get approval.”
“Sounds like you’re one of us now,” Plistim says.
The words I utter next redefine my entire life. “You know I am.”
He smiles and nods. “It’s a good idea. As is sleep.” He lies back, head on backpack and closes his eyes.
While the others settle in for the night, I head up into the trees. I keep watch until it’s been dark for two hours. A gentle bird call summons me to the ground. It’s Shua, waiting for his shift.
“Anything?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
We share a smile in the dark and part ways. While he scales the tree, I take his spot on the ground, conscious of his lingering smell and how I fall asleep with a smile on my face. When I wake, it’s not because the sun has come up. The night is still dark, but it’s not quiet.
It takes a moment to get my bearings in the unfamiliar, star-lit surroundings. It’s Holland, I think, crouch-walking toward the sound. He’s twitching around in the leaves, his body rigid.
While the sound sleepers around us are oblivious to the noise, the gentle scrape of feet on tree announces Shua’s approach. We arrive beside Holland at the same time.
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