The Druid Gene

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  By her reckoning, she was halfway through her three-day head start, and so far she’d only been acting defensively. That had to change. She had to think in ways he couldn’t predict. It was her only advantage. She had to use the environment against him somehow.

  The problem was that she wasn’t sure what to do or how to do it. If she didn’t figure that out fast, she’d be dead in less than a week.

  Deep down she didn’t want to kill him. Her life goal was to heal people. But he wouldn’t let this go. He was a psychopath. Even if she could somehow outsmart him and find a way to escape this planet, he was going to hound her. He knew this galaxy far better than she did. Nowhere would ever be safe.

  If she’d been able to finish medical school, she would have vowed to do no harm. But doctors killed things all the time—they worked hard to kill germs, to cut out cancers, to stop the progression of disease. If she wanted to live, she’d have to kill the thing that plagued her.

  As soon as first light penetrated the tangled forest, she was up and out of her hidey-hole and on the move. At midday she found herself on a narrow trail with thickets on either side funneling her forward. She couldn’t know what kind of insect or animal had made it, so she stayed alert. It wasn’t a great place to hang out, but the only other option was to keep struggling through dense woods. That would slow her down too much. So she alternated jogging and running down the trail at a pace she hoped she could maintain for a long time. The druid gene gave her more energy and stamina. She would need every bit of it.

  She came to a low branch blocking the path at about chest height. She pushed it up and back as she went by. When she let go, it snapped into place with a vicious slap.

  She stopped and turned around.

  She pulled on the branch again, farther this time, then released it. It violently crashed back into its natural position.

  This was something she could work with.

  She began to scavenge for stout sticks, cracking them down until she had eight of them, all about eighteen inches long. Then she kneeled and scraped the tips with her knife until she’d made a sharp point on each one. She also gouged a thick notch in each of them so she could anchor them to the branch. She carefully gathered up the whittled chips and disposed of them in the thickets so they wouldn’t be visible.

  She sat down and stared at the tree, working through the problem, mapping out a potential diagram of a contraption in her head. She had watched Adam occasionally set traps for game when they were camping—mostly snare traps, but the concept she had in mind was very similar. She needed two lengths of rope, string, or vine and to build a trigger mechanism out of wood—that could be made with the knife and sticks lying around on the forest floor.

  First she had to find something she could use to tie the stakes to the tree and to pull the branch back and hold it taut. She also had to make a trip line that would blend into the background on the trail. She’d seen vines clinging to some trees the day before, but now of course none were in the immediate area. It took some time to find one. She pulled a long piece down from a tree and hoped it wouldn’t give her something like poison ivy.

  The vine was woody and inflexible. It wouldn’t work as rope. She sat down with it and tried scraping it with her knife to see if she could peel away a long, thin section that would be flexible but strong enough to use. Once she got through the tough outer layer, she was able to pull the vine apart, but only in short sections. Wherever it branched, it invariably broke.

  She sighed and sat with her hands buried in her hair, trying to think of other solutions. She tried tying the short pieces together into a longer strand, but she didn’t know how to tie any knots aside from a shoestring knot or a surgical knot. The surgical knots made the pieces splinter and break. When she tried overhand knots the pieces slipped apart. She tried braiding the sections together, but that went nowhere. She briefly tried twisting them and that didn’t work either. She threw the pieces down in disgust and walked away. Someone might be able to turn this vine into rope, but she couldn’t.

  She paced back and forth. Dammit. She didn’t know anything useful. How was she supposed to do this?

  Her gaze landed on the pack. She grabbed the knife. If she could just take off the top rim in a spiral… But the knife wouldn’t puncture the alien fabric no matter what she did to it. She pulled out the blanket Raub had given her, but it was the same.

  She started to shake with frustration, then put the knife down carefully and pushed it away from her. She fingered her jumpsuit thoughtfully. Maybe she could take it apart. She pressed the button on the edge of her sleeve that made the garment flexible. Then she stuck the knife through the fabric about an inch from the bottom of the leg portion and sawed at it. A small piece came off. She tugged on it. It elongated and grew thinner. She pulled again and again until it was as thin as a hair. If she tried to make it any thinner, it broke.

  She sat there puzzling. How could she make it strong again? She tried laying it over the jumpsuit and clicking the button. But then it was joined to the jumpsuit and couldn’t be separated, even by the knife. It was super strong and nearly transparent, perfect for this task. She clicked the button again to separate her new thread and this time held it close to the button when she activated the jumpsuit. That didn’t work. She was thwarted again.

  She rocked on her heels, forcing herself to be patient and think. Something crackled behind her and she whirled, jumping to her feet. She strained eyes and ears for what had made the sound. Suddenly a very spiderlike creature the size of a small dog burst from the underbrush and skittered away down the trail in the direction she’d been traveling.

  Her heart rate slowed as the creature disappeared from sight. It hadn’t come anywhere near her. Just as she was easing back down to think some more about the thread, another one ran out of the woods and down the trail. A few minutes later, three more popped out nearby and did the same. None of them gave her a second look.

  She peered into the understory, but couldn’t see anything. She cautiously squeezed between a prickly shrub and a stout trunk. Her eyes adjusted to the lower light. A few more spiders fled down the trail. One of them had been heading straight for her but veered off at the last second to give her a wide berth. It looked like it was holding something white on its back.

  She knew she should probably run far, far away, but she was too intrigued. She took a few more steps. Then she waited, watching as more spiders headed for the trail. She made her way closer. It was brighter where the insects were coming from. Was there an open space? Maybe there was a stream or something. She might be able to find some water. She worked her way closer and squeezed between two trees.

  Darcy gasped and covered her mouth. These trees were completely defoliated and swarming with spiders. Thick, heavy webs draped like super-sized lace between every tree from top to bottom. If it weren’t so creepy, it would have been beautiful. She noticed some white lumps overhead in the webs. She wrinkled her brow and looked around more, trying to figure out what they were.

  Then she saw a wing sticking out of one. She recognized that wing from her first night in the woods. It probably belonged to one of the dragonfly-like insects that had freaked her out. The spiders must be omnivores.

  A spider scrambled down the trunk she was leaning against. She started to back away, but it was already turning around and going back up, then over a web and down another tree. They seemed to be avoiding her.

  She was about to turn back when she realized she was staring at exactly what she needed. She slid through the gap between the two trees and a spider politely waited for her to pass before darting through.

  She made her way to the nearest web. Spiders fled before her. They really were afraid of her or at least keeping their distance. She wondered why.

  The webbing felt sticky but heavy, like fishing line. She tried to break it. She couldn’t. It had excellent tensile strength. It was perfect. She sawed it from the tree it was attached to and began to collect it in loops, careful
not to let it get tangled. The whole time the spiders flipped out, trying to avoid her. Thankfully they didn’t seem to mind her taking a bit of their webbing. She made her way back to her project with care, so the sticky web wouldn’t get caught on anything.

  She worked slowly, knowing she was saving time by not rushing and turning the webbing into a big snarl. She took one end, attached it to the notch on the first sharpened stake with an overhand knot, and began wrapping the web in a crisscross fashion around the crotch of the branch so that the tip would be hidden by leaves. Then she laid the thread along the branch until she reached the next location where she would affix the next stake.

  She labored at a painstaking pace, thinking through every move. Wherever possible she anchored each stake at a second point to keep it horizontal and stable. She repeated this process until she had all eight of the stakes attached to the branch, all stuck at abdomen-to-chest height on Raub.

  Would this kill him? It was possible. It seemed more likely that he wouldn’t be tricked. He would smell or see something that would cue him to be more cautious. Or he might figure out where she was headed and take another route in order to head her off, bypassing this location entirely. Even if he was hot on her trail and it did deploy properly, she’d seen him heal every bit as fast as she did. Unless one of the stakes actually punctured his heart—and she wouldn’t put it past him to have two hearts for redundancy’s sake—it would just be a short-term inconvenience for him at most.

  But it might slow him down and give her more time to get to the mining compound. And it could kill him. That made it worth the effort.

  Now she had to fashion the trigger. She carved two stakes of similar size, with points on one end so she could hammer them into the ground with a heavy log. On the other end of each stake, she made horizontal notches on one side. Next she carved tapered ends and squared off edges into a short stick to wedge between those two notches. That little stick would hopefully hold the branch back until Raub walked along this path and triggered the trip wire, pulling one of the two vertical stakes loose and releasing the tension on the branch.

  Now that the trigger was ready, she could put it in place. First she pulled back the branch and tethered it temporarily to the brambles next to the tree so she’d be able to reach it. She walked a few feet ahead so the dirt wouldn’t be disturbed around the tree where Raub might see it, then crawled on her belly through the brambles and reached up to grab the branch.

  She tested it, pulling it back as far as seemed feasible and marking a place in the soil directly beneath that spot, then retethered the branch while she worked. She hammered one stake into the ground and then held her short stick in place between the two stakes so the spacing would be right as she pounded the second down. She measured out the web she needed and cut it at that point with the knife. Then she carefully pulled the branch back again and tied it tightly to the short stick. It held the branch in place. She breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Finally, she was getting somewhere.

  She tied the second length of web to the stake closest to the tree and tossed the remaining web back onto the path. It was coated in dust and dirt now, which served to camouflage it. That was good. She crawled back through the brambles and exited, limbs and face scraped by thorns, sticks, and dirt, leaves in her hair.

  She draped the web across the narrow path at about shin height. She didn’t want it to be too high because he might notice it. Too low and he might trip over it and fall—the branch might miss him in that case. She tied it to a tree on the opposite side of the path, taut.

  She had to test it. She took a long stick, stood back, and pushed on the trip wire. Instantly the branch let loose, slamming back into place just past the wire. It worked better than she’d anticipated.

  She took a handful of dirt and smoothed it over the webbing to dull it even more. She wanted it to fade into the shadows. Then she reset the trap, making sure everything was perfectly aligned again. She cut a leafy branch from an inconspicuous place on a tree and used it to smooth out the footprints she’d made in the dry soil—except for a single set she would create, right down the center, as she walked down the path, matching the original steps she’d made when she’d happened upon this spot.

  She hoped this undertaking was worth the half day she’d spent on it. She hoped it would take him by surprise.

  She hoped it would stop him.

  Darcy jogged for a while, doubts plaguing her. Some part of her wanted to go back and undo what she’d done. She’d just set up a murder attempt. It was for self-preservation, true, but it still felt wrong.

  She forced herself to remember the boarding party on the Vermachten whom she’d seen Raub kill, all the prisoners on the ship he bought and sold like commodities, and the look on his face when he’d kicked her out of the tern and declared the commencement of this deadly game.

  She also remembered the moment he’d come close to raping her. She’d done what was necessary then to stop him. She’d do what was necessary to bring this to an end as well.

  No matter what it took. No matter what it turned her into.

  She sped up and didn’t look back.

  39

  Darcy woke at first light on the fourth day with a leaden feeling in the pit of her stomach. Raub had either started after her last night when the three full days had technically passed, or he’d given her an additional grace period and was under way this morning. She couldn’t know for sure.

  What she did know was that he had more stamina, a longer stride, and more muscle mass than she did. He always caught up with her quickly during their VR scenarios. She knew from sparring with him in the dark that his senses were more extensive, and he might have traveled all night without stopping for sleep. He could easily be halfway to her location by now. He might catch up to her at any point today or tomorrow, and she’d be forced to fight him wherever she was.

  She worried her chapped upper lip with her teeth. It might be wisest to seek a better place to have that confrontation, rather than to push on fruitlessly toward the mining colony. It could be advantageous to learn the lay of the land and leave some things in place to give her a tactical advantage, since he had the upper hand, physically, between the two of them.

  Except that she couldn’t stand the thought of biding her time and waiting for him. It felt like giving up hope that she’d possibly find sanctuary with the belastoise. If he stopped to rest she might have time to reach the mining colony.

  At any rate, hiding, even with her camouflaging ability, wouldn’t help her. Not with him. His sense of smell was far more acute than a human’s. She didn’t know how to get around that fundamental fact.

  She decided to move on and keep on the lookout for someplace that would be more advantageous for a fight. Here on the narrow trail it was too closed in. He could trap her too easily. She wanted to face him in a place where she had somewhere to go if she needed to run, but close enough to the forest that she could melt away and regroup using her camouflage if necessary.

  She crawled out from the nest she’d made under a dense, thorny bush with the impervious blanket wrapped around her, the same way she’d crawled into the tight space the night before. It hadn’t kept the thorns from poking her, but it had kept them from making direct contact. The night had been long and uncomfortable. She hadn’t slept nearly as much as she’d wanted to. Worry had a tendency to do that to her.

  She sat down on the trail to quickly devour an entire nutrition bar, following it with a swig of water. She was so hungry it seemed to taste much better this time. She had to remember to eat more.

  Her failure to eat enough might have slowed her down some and led to some loss of muscle mass. That was going to change, starting now. If she felt the slightest hunger pang, she would eat an entire bar. When he caught up to her, she needed to be in the best shape possible.

  The pack wasn’t appreciably lighter because she hadn’t eaten much during the first three days. She shoved the blanket into it along with a sharp-edged flat rock
she’d found that she was planning to use today if she found a good place.

  She couldn’t see much of the sky but it must have been cloudy. The forest seemed darker, more sinister, and the light filtering in cast long, bluish shadows. She felt very alone.

  Several hours later she came upon a rotting log lying across the trail. The middle was worn down to bare, shiny wood, probably from the spiders crawling over it. She decided to stop and make a second trap.

  She’d gathered an armful of straight, stout sticks as she trotted along. Now she sat down on the far side of the log and carved both ends of every one of them down to sharp points with her knife. She laid them in a pile nearby and took the rock that she’d found the day before out of her pack. It was rounded and had one thin, curved end with a hint of concavity. The other end was a bit thicker. She hoped it would work well as a shovel.

  She experimented with stepping over the log to see where her foot would naturally hit on the far side. She decided on the most likely spot, got down on her knees with the stone, and began to pound, scrape, and scoop. It took longer than she’d hoped. The topmost layers of soil were dry and friable, but underneath they were hard packed and dense like clay. Soon she was coated in dirt from head to toe but had managed to create a hole roughly ten inches in diameter and well over a foot deep.

  Some of the soil she pushed up underneath the log, where it wouldn’t be visible. The rest she scooped onto her blanket and carried away to dump farther down the trail, where Raub wouldn’t see it until after he’d gone past this spot. The hardest part was shoving the sharpened sticks firmly into the walls of the pit in two concentric circles so that they angled slightly down, leaving only a small opening in the center. The soil was hard and each stick was a struggle. She finished up with bloody hands.

  She took her sharp stone and carefully scraped sheets of fuzzy orange moss off of trees nearby, layered them over the hole, then covered them with loose dirt to camouflage the trap further. She walked back down the path the way she’d come, smoothing out all of the footprints and other disturbances she’d made. She put her feet in two steps left in the dust from her approach and took off.