Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan

by Steven Novak

  Blueeyes rushed to my side, lifted me up, and put me on his back. “Hold on! Do you hear me? Whatever you do, do not let go!”

  I wrapped my arms around his neck, legs around his waist, mashed my cheek against his bloody shoulder. The rifle fired.

  We jumped.

  7.

  It’s a weird thing, weightlessness: unique. My stomach shot upward, lodged itself in my throat. I tried, tried to catch my breath and hold it. It was already gone. For a second I heard nothing, felt nothing. My hair whipped, clothes flapped. The collar of my jacket tugged against my neck. I held Blueeyes tighter than I’d ever held anything in my life. I locked my hands, crossed my feet, and chomped a handful of his coat with my teeth. The wind rattled my ears, worked its way inside and tickled my brain. My fingers went numb. Try as it might, the fall failed to shake me loose. The landing, however, succeeded marvelously. When we finally hit the water, it hurt. I felt it in my feet first, then my legs. The pain shot directly into my back, my arms, and my fingers. We might as well have landed on concrete. The liquid engulfed me, bitter cold. Blueeyes slipped from my grasp.

  Everything went black.

  Once again I felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing. Up and down no longer had meaning. Out became in. Warmth seemed silly. The moving water grabbed hold, violently tossed me. It mashed me into something solid and then into something else. When I screamed, I inhaled my surroundings. It filled my lungs, choking me from the inside out. For a moment there was a tease of air. Frozen wind stabbed my face, liquid lungs spewed. I screamed, reaching for everything, anything. The icy water reached back, took hold and refused to let go, pulled me under once again. My arm smacked something stiff, instantly went numb. Again I tasted air, and again it was taken away. It was no use. I was going to die. The nasties weren’t going to kill me. The nasties wouldn’t have anything to do with it. I wasn’t going to be beaten, or eaten, or left in pieces somewhere along the road. I was going to drown. I was going to die in a river. I was going to die alone, just like Mother, just like Father.

  Or not.

  Something snagged my jacket, hoisted me from the swirling depths, and pulled me to solid ground. I couldn’t see, couldn’t open my eyes. Breathing was impossible. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need to see the face of my savior to know who it was.

  “Come on! Come on!” So gravelly, that voice, so far away yet so recognizable. Blueeyes.

  There was a sharp pain in my chest and then another, palms hammering my ribs. The vaguest sensation of lips, foreign breath in my lungs.

  “God damn it! God damn it, come on!”

  Everything inside rushed upward, coughed from my mouth before splashing onto my face. When I sat up, he rolled me to my side, patting me on the back. “You’re okay. Cough it out. Going to be fine. Get it all out.”

  In between the hacking coughs, I apologized. I told him I was sorry, said I’d never do it again and begged for forgiveness. I meant every word of it. It was stupid, screaming. It nearly got us killed. I needed to stop being stupid.

  He told me to shut up.

  Though every part of me was sore, and bruised, and cold, and stiff, I forced myself to stand. My legs wanted the opposite, had other ideas, nearly went limp. I told them to shut up. Blueeyes helped. He made sure I was capable of remaining upright before he let me go. When I was steady, he turned his attention to the surrounding forest.

  When he sighed, I could see his breath. He ran his hand through his hair, across his face, and down his beard. “We can’t be down here, not this late. This is howler territory.”

  Through weary eyes, I gazed at the sky. It was dark, getting darker. Night was approaching. The familiar roar of a howler echoed throughout the canyon, bounced off the surrounding cliffs and back again. When I shivered, it had nothing to do with the temperature.

  Blueeyes grabbed my arm. “We need to move.”

  To my surprise we moved further into the forest. Blueeyes claimed there wasn’t enough time to make our way out before nightfall, and wandering around in the dark wasn’t an option. We searched for at least fifteen minutes before he found what he was looking for. It was a tree, the largest and healthiest we’d come across, sturdy.

  He pointed to a branch thirty feet up. “There.”

  I was confused. “There what?”

  “That’s where were staying.” His hand landed between my shoulder blades, nudged me forward. “Climb up.”

  It seemed high, really high.

  When I didn’t move, he nudged me again. “Anything remotely resembling human in those things is gone. They’re big and fast. They’re also terrible climbers. The higher we are, the safer we are. Stay down here and we’re food.”

  Before I could object, he placed his hands under my armpits and lifted me to a branch just above his head. I pulled myself up. I slid along the tree’s limb, legs on either side, hugged the trunk, and managed to stand. I couldn’t let Blueeyes down, not again, not after the screaming incident. I wouldn’t let him down again. After taking a moment to gather myself, I climbed. The pain in my arm was unbearable. My fingers hurt. When I moved them, I thought I would scream. When I grabbed hold of the branch above me, they hurt more. When I pulled myself up to the next branch, I wanted to cry. I wanted to collapse, drop to my knees and sob until the pain went away. By the time I reached my destination, I wanted to die.

  Blueeyes was right behind me. He moved to a similar branch to my right. As he settled in, the limb bent forward, bark chipped loose, aged wood cracked.

  “Will that hold you?”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  He reached above him, pulled away a few longer, straighter branches from the trunk, and set them on his lap. After retrieving the knife from his belt he began sharpening the ends into points. I looked through the twisted treetop above at the darkening clouds. The moonlight had all but disappeared. Darkness was closing in. Soon I wouldn’t be able to see ten feet away. Soon the howlers would emerge, hungry, screaming at the sky. The pain in my forearm was getting worse. I bit my lower lip, winced and massaged it gently.

  Blueeyes noticed. “Are you alright?”

  “M-my arm.” I didn’t want to tell him.

  He grabbed my hand, pulled it to him. “Let me see.”

  For at least a minute his fingers poked my skin.

  “Does it hurt here?”

  “How about here?”

  “What if I do this?”

  All of them hurt, everything he did, everywhere he poked. I tried my best to hide the pain, determined not to cry. I just wanted him to stop.

  He let go of my arm. “Not broken…hairline fracture, maybe.” He removed his jacket, put it around my waist, and tied the arms around the trunk of the tree. “In case you fall asleep…in case the howlers find us and try shaking you loose.” It was tight, so tight I could barely breathe. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  When he was done, he returned to his knife and his sticks and the task at hand. The clouds roared. A stiff breeze shook me to the core. I shivered—couldn’t stop shivering—and buried my face in the neck of my jacket. Blueeyes didn’t seem to notice the cold or the fact that he was soaking wet and no longer had a jacket. He never noticed. He never complained.

  “Won’t you be cold?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  The arm of his sweatshirt was soaked in blood, some dried, some fresh, black and red cascading from the bullet wound in his shoulder.

  “Does it hurt?”

  It looked like it hurt.

  “What?”

  “Your shoulder, does it hurt?”

  “It’s fine.”

  His response was always the same. No matter how he was feeling or how much pain he was in, his response was the same. The weather was of no importance, the bullet barely a bother. The howlers were riled up, barking back and forth, moaning at the hidden moon, empty-bellied. I stopped asking questions. At some point during the night, somehow I fell asleep.

  It was the growling that woke me.

&n
bsp; When I opened my eyes, Blueeyes’ hand was over my mouth. His attention was on the ground below, on a shadow moving through the grass, massive, hunched, plodding on all fours. It was a howler. My heart sputtered, stopped. I couldn’t blink. Couldn’t breathe. The creature sniffed the dirt, lifted its head for a moment, scanning the forest. It was so big, so thick, yet it moved with such grace, so deliberate. It was a weapon, muscles tensed, ready to strike. The corner of its lip quivered and raised, bent teeth exposed, drool slipping from its snout. When it found nothing, the howler returned its nose to the ground. It could sense our presence, the faintest hint of our after-scent in the dirt. It knew we were somewhere, it just didn’t know where. A paw the size of my head and claws the size of my nose kicked the dirt in frustration. I looked away, turned my eyes to the trees and the clouds, stared into the darkness and tried to pretend it was all that existed. I couldn’t bring myself to see the creature below, even to acknowledge its existence. I looked everywhere else, at everything else. When I couldn’t even handle that anymore, I closed my eyes.

  When the growling, and sniffing, and panting began to fade away, I thought it was over. I figured we’d gotten lucky, that it somehow missed the obvious and went on its merry way. When Blueeyes’ hand slipped from my mouth, I assumed we were safe.

  Assumptions are stupid.

  The howler slammed the full weight of its body into the trunk of our tree and nearly tossed me from my perch. If Blueeyes hadn’t tied me to the trunk, I would have been dead. I would have been ripped in half, torn in two and left for the forest. I would have been dinner.

  The tree shook again. Blueeyes stood. “Hold on! Whatever you do, just hold on!”

  I spun around to face the trunk and wrapped my arms around it, mashed my face into the bark. The howler smacked against the base again, rose on its rear legs and scratched at the side, wrapped his mouth around it and bit down. Dead branches shook loose from above, bounced off my head. When I looked down, the howler looked back. Our eyes met. I swear I could see it smile.

  Growls changed to barks. It lowered its head, lunged forward, and wrapped its shoulders around the trunk. Blueeyes’ branch snapped beneath his feet just as he leapt to another. The moment he had his footing, he lifted a spear over his head, coiled back, and launched it at the monster below. The weapon sliced through the flesh of its hairy back, into the muscle underneath. It screamed. It leapt back, jaws snapping at the air, front paws flailing wildly, trying desperately to knock loose the weapon protruding from its back. While it spun and yelped, another spear pierced its leg. The howler snapped it loose immediately. It rammed its body into the base of the tree once more before charging into the darkness.

  He had done it. Blueeyes had scared it off. He fought one of them off. I wanted to scream. I wanted to clap my hands. I wanted to jump up and down. For the first time in a very long time I wanted to smile. And I did.

  When I turned to look at Blueeyes, he wasn’t where he should have been. The branch he’d been perched was gone as well. The howler’s lunge knocked it loose. He was on the ground. He was on his back. The darkness growled. A pair of deep red eyes emerged from the shadows. They were low to the ground, looking right at him.

  Blueeyes noticed them too, and was on his feet immediately. “The spears, Megan! Throw me the spears!” He was pointing at a branch beside me, spears caught in twisted limbs, dangling just out of his reach. The shadow’s growl transformed into a snarl. The howler wasn’t done with us, not by a long shot. It was going to attack. I leaned to my right, reached for the bundle of spears, fingers stretched. It wasn’t enough.

  Blueeyes pulled the knife from his pants. “Megan! The spears!”

  I reached again, extending my injured arm as far as I could, so far it hurt, so far my eyes began to water. It still wasn’t’ far enough. Shadows barked, huffed, claws digging into soil, muscles tensed.

  “Now, Megan!”

  I hugged the tree again and reached my arms around, frantically trying to undo Blueeyes’ knot. The bark scraped my face, sliced my lip, fingers working frantically. The howler barked. It’s jaws snapped. The echo of tooth against tooth reverberated in my ears. The moment I was free from the trunk, I jumped to my feet. I didn’t care about falling, didn’t even consider it. I did what I needed to do, what my friend needed me to do, without hesitation. My jump to the branch with the spears was awkward; I slipped, landed on my stomach, knocked the air from my lungs and nearly fell to the ground. My clumsiness also knocked the spears loose. They dropped to Blueeyes’ feet.

  The howler charged. Blueeyes charged back. From thirty feet up I watched the spectacle. It was incredible. He didn’t back down, Blueeyes. There were no second thoughts, no thoughts at all. He wasn’t reacting so much as acting. This was what he did, what he was made for. Four hundred pounds of lean muscle and teeth barreled down on him, mouth wide, teeth exposed. When the creature leapt, he leapt as well. They were monsters, the pair of them, airborne beasts, single-minded and focused. Blueeyes screamed. The howler screamed back. The tip of his spear pierced the creature’s belly. The forward motion and weight of the howler’s own body sank the weapon further in, through muscle and organs and out the other side. Even with a spear through its midsection, the monster refused to relent. It crashed into Blueeyes, bent him backward, the full weight of its bulk crushing his chest. He squirmed underneath, attempting to maneuver himself from striking distance as the creature snapped at his head, missed, and received a mouthful of dirt. Its paws swiped at him, coming up empty. A single arm emerged from under the howler, knife in hand. Blueeyes drove the blade into its neck, twisted, pulled, and stabbed again. When the creature rolled off him, he rolled with it, stabbing and turning, jaw clenched, eyes wide, teeth bared. He didn’t stop. His arms never stopped moving.

  So much blood; I’d never seen so much blood.

  Every time Blueeyes stabbed, the mauled flesh sprayed blood, soaking his arm, drenching his face in warm crimson. Eventually the howler’s limbs stopped twitching. It stopped fighting. With a knife in its head, its eyes went blank. Its snout fell limp. It had lost. When it was done, Blueeyes rolled from the corpse and dropped to his knees, chest heaving, trying desperately to catch his breath. He looked up at me, howler blood dripping from his chin as if he’d bathed in it, saturated. I was terrified. I was in awe.

  He wiped the blood from his eyes and nodded.

  I nodded back.

  8.

  It was amazing we weren’t attacked again that night with all the noise we’d made. The howler Blueeyes killed hadn’t gone silently. It had roared, fought, and clawed. It shrieked to its last breath, squealed for its life. That alone should have attracted more of them. We should have been surrounded, outnumbered, and alone. We sat in that tree for hours, back-to-back, wide awake, spears in hand. Nothing happened.

  We were lucky.

  In the morning we climbed down, collected our things, and headed east. Blueeyes said it was the quickest route to the road. I believed him. Early into the trip, we came across a haphazardly constructed campsite—what remained of it, anyway. There were bodies everywhere: pieces. Blueeyes suggested it could have been the reason the howlers hadn’t come for us. They were busy, bellies full.

  We scavenged what we could; dug through backpacks, peeled bloody clothes from dismembered limbs, and picked through the pockets. I was getting good at knowing what to look for, realizing what we could use and what we couldn’t. I suppose I felt bad rummaging through their remains, stealing. I felt worse having to leave the bodies the way they were, strewn about, destroyed, mismatched dinner scraps. I wanted to bury them like Father had buried Mother, like I should have been able to bury him. They were people, after all. They might have saved our lives.

  Blueeyes said no, said we didn’t have time, it would be messy, that the scent of their blood on our hands would only alert the howlers.

  I lowered my head. “Breadcrumbs for the nasties.”

  I barely whispered it. I didn’t think he’d hear m
e.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  When Blueeyes turned his back, I removed a necklace from something vaguely resembling a spine. It was small and silver, with delicate etchings carved into the top. The chain was snapped, links crinkly with frozen blood. I pushed a little tab on the side and it popped open. Inside there was a picture, a girl, a little older than I was. Her hair was long, blonde, and straight, neatly combed. It glimmered white like her eyes. I’d never seen hair so beautiful, so clean and healthy. I wondered how she got it to look like that, to stay that way. She was sitting straight, chin up, eyes wide, smiling proudly. She looked like she didn’t care, like nothing mattered but that moment and that picture. She looked like she’d never been hungry, or scared, or felt alone. She’d never hurt, really hurt. She never would. I closed the heart, put it back where it belonged. It wasn’t mine, never would be.

  She wasn’t real anyway, not anymore.

  By midday we found a road. By night we found shelter. I offered to stay awake with Blueeyes, keep watch. He insisted it was safe, told me to get some sleep. I woke in the middle of the night. It was the whine of the howlers that did it, like always. I noticed Blueeyes across the room at the window, unmoving. He was just watching the way he always did, always would. I knew I wasn’t in danger, even from the howlers. I went back to sleep and slept until morning.

  I’d never slept so soundly.

  Blueeyes woke me at daybreak. We snacked on the food we scavenged from the camp in the forest. I didn’t care that it was terrible, didn’t care about the taste at all. I was hungry. It was food. Nothing else mattered. When we were done, Blueeyes checked my arm and poked it with his thumb and forefinger, watching me wince, gauging my ability to work through the pain.

  “How does it feel?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He didn’t smile. Blueeyes never smiled. “Good.” He didn’t need to. I knew what he meant.

  We made good time that day, kept a steady pace. I stayed close to Blueeyes, no less than a few feet away at any given time. When he moved too fast for me to keep up, I moved faster. I didn’t complain, didn’t question, over think, or complain about my feet hurting. I just walked. When I felt like I couldn’t walk anymore, I did it anyway. I made sure to keep an eye on my surroundings, watched for unexpected movements, for anything unusual. I tried to remember where we were and where we’d been, constructing mental images in my head and repeating them until I couldn’t forget. I listened closely to everything. I wanted to be better for Blueeyes. I had to be better. After four or five hours of walking, we stopped and took shelter in the half-crumpled remains of a building with a faded sign on the roof. I told Blueeyes I was fine, that I didn’t need to rest, that I could keep going.