8 Gone is the Witch (19 page)

“Like a land mine?”

“Exactly. Natures land mine.”

T
he others immediately began searching the ground around us, like they might spot one of the infernal plants just by looking at it.

“How do we know if we’re near one of them?” Carlos asked.

“Look for Snitch tree,” Jerome answered. “Kumoru always grow by Snitch, but Snitch not always grow by kumoru.”

“Great. So what’s a Snitch tree look like?”

Jerome reached up and gave Carlos a pat on the arm. “Friend no worry.” He pointed to himself with his tail. “I let for you to know.”

I could see Carlos was uncomfortable with that. I was just about to make light of it with a joke, when something
crawled out of the dark, into our campsite. It propelled itself forward like a spider, only it was much larger, say like a cat, a really big cat. It scurried in short spurts and stopped quickly with one multi-jointed leg frozen in mid-step.

Ursula screamed, which startle
d it. It jaunted sideways and then held still again, its bloated, cuticle body seemingly tethered to the ground by eight segmented stick legs like some grotesque parade float.

Its tiny arrow-shaped head
turned and looked at us. On the end where its nose might be, a split-horned appendage snapped open and closed like a lobster claw. I realized then, that was the sound we all heard in the woods, the sound of twigs snapping. Only it wasn’t twigs. It was this steroid-pumped arthropod. Worse still, he brought company. Lots of company.

Chapter Ten

“
Jumpin` Jehovah!” Carlos cried. “What is that?”

We all slowly back
ed away. Through the corner of my eye, I saw Jerome scurry over to a large rock that lay at the perimeter of the clearing. He scrambled up onto it and screeched.

“Treklapod! Very dangerous! Veeery dangerous!”

“Spread out,” I said. “Give me room.”

I whipped up a
zip ball and launched it at the porky little invertebrate. Instead of blowing the fucker to smithereens, however, the super-charged sphere of energy merely struck the creature’s back and ricocheted off into the woods.

“What the hell,” said Tony. “I
t’s armored!”

“It’s his exoskeleton
. It must be negatively charged to resist a zip ball’s impact.”

Carlos pulled his
gun and drew a bead on it. “Yeah, let’s see him bounce this.”

“Wait!”
said Tony. “How many bullets do you have left?”

“Not sure. I
know it’s my last clip. I emptied the first on those bastard zombies that stole our clothes.”

“
Then save your ammo.” Tony pulled his bayonet and lowered it at the creature. “I’ll hold it off. You guys head on out. I’ll catch up.”

Carlos holstered his gun and unsheathed his bolo. “I got a better idea. You head out. I’ll catch up.”

“Guys?” I said.

Tony inched closer to the
thing. “Carlos, I’m not going to tell you again.”

“GUYS?”

Carlos sidestepped the giant bug. “We’ll do it together.”

“GUYS!”

The two looked at me. I pointed out beyond the tree line where a thousand beady eyes glowed like red hot embers. “You may want to take a look at this.”

Carlos
squinted into the darkness. “What the….”

“I think
it’s his family.”

“
Fuck. What the hell do we do now?”

“New plan,” said Tony.

“Is it a good one?”

“It’s
a simple one.”

“
I like simple. Let’s hear it.”

“RUN!”

The five of us turned tail and ran as fast as we could. Jerome, only because he was fastest, led the way. Ursula, who suddenly was not so dead on her feet, fell in behind him. Carlos and I followed a close third and fourth, while Tony pulled up the rear.

With every step, we hear
d the menacing tromp of hundreds, maybe thousands of the bony-plated fuckers scurrying behind us, snapping their horns, chinking their armor; and of course their legs, their hairy, segmented, needle-tipped legs pattering the ground like heavy rain.

I looked
back at Tony. He had stopped to spear one of the bastards with his bayonet. He’d turn and run, stop again when another nipped at his heels and the
n
shish-kebab that one, too. I slowed down to help him, but he waved me on, told me to keep moving. I did, though it didn’t matter. We didn’t have far to run. We all piled into one another after dead-ending on a small ledge jetting out over a slow-moving river.

“Hell, not again!” Carlos
yelled. “Another damn river? What is it with this place?”

Jerome said,
“Is way out. Treklapod no swim. You jump now.”

Carlos looked over the edge.
“Are you crazy?” “It’s a four-story drop. I’m not––”

I
pushed him over the edge before he could back away. I looked at Ursula. “You ready, hon?”

She didn’t hesitate. She held her nose and stepped out into thi
n air. I watched her hit the water feet first. Seconds later, she bobbed to the surface, floated on her back and let the current sweep her downstream.

Tony took my hand. “Your turn.
”

The words barely left his lips, when
the horde of hungry treklapods broke from the tree line and blitzed the jetty.

“You mean our turn.
” I grabbed Jerome, and the three of us leapt off the edge holding hands, running in air the entire way down. Before hitting the water, I remember counting no less than six of the furry faced fuckers spilling over the ledge behind us. I only hoped Jerome was right about them not being able to swim.

The water was cold and deep,
and though it moved faster than I judged from up on the ledge, it posed no significant danger of undertow. If anything, it came as a welcomed relief. We were all so thirsty and dehydrated; we would likely have jumped in even if mutant killer treklapods weren’t chasing us.

My only concern
was if someone drank so much while swimming that cramps and spasms might cause him to drown. Of course, I thought about Carlos.

“
Oh, Cramp! Cramp!” he cried. “Stiff legs. Can’t move. Can’t move my legs!”

Jerome
was with Tony and me, employing a unique style of swimming resembling a mix of dog paddle and frog kicking. “I save you!” he shouted.

He took a deep breath and disappeared under water
, surfacing moments later beside Carlos. He then did something I would never have imagined. He came up behind Carlos, grabbed him under the arms and inflated his body like a blowfish, puffing up to three times his normal size.

“
Hey!” Carlos yelled. “What’s going on?”

“You
keep still,” Jerome ordered. He rolled onto his back and raised Carlos from the water. “I float. You ride.”

“
How... how are you doing that?”

I heard
Jerome say something about air cells, but they were too far ahead of us by then to make it out.

Tony was still treading water. He called to me. When I looked at him, he spread his arms out
, kicked his feet up and began to back float downstream. I understood that he wanted me to do the same, so I did.

I suppose we floated like that for five
or ten minutes, or so it seemed. It could have been one or one hundred. I couldn’t say for sure, as my brain began experiencing bouts of static skips. I felt as though my recollection of the immediate consisted only of broken memories, as though segments were cut out and the rest spliced together. Fearing it was a prelude to passing out, I figured we’d better find dry land quickly.

“I’m not feeling right,” I said to Tony
, who was staring up into the starless sky, unblinking. “Tony?” I could see him breathing and kicking slowly, his toes barely breaking water. “Tony, can you hear me?” When he didn’t answer, I plowed a wave of water over his face.

“Tony!”

“Lilith! What the hell?”

“Something’s not right.
We should get to shore.”

He treaded upright and took in our surroundings.
Trees and rocks lined the banks, but nothing so formidable we couldn’t make landfall.

“Yeah, okay
, but we should...”

I
waited for him to finish his thought, but when I saw that strange look wash over his face, I realized he probably had.

“
We should what, Tony?”

“
Are we moving faster?”

“Huh?”

“We’re moving faster. The current’s picked up.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means...” He looked ahead for the others. They had put a considerable distance between us in a very short time. “Means we’re heading for a––” Before he could finish, the three of them vanished from the horizon.

“Waterfall?” I
asked.

“Yes.” He pointed
to shore. “Swim!”

We both leveled
out and began swimming for our lives. By then, the water’s flow had graduated from swift to unbelievably quick. For every foot we traveled towards the shore, the water pulled us back another two. It wasn’t long before we both realized we weren’t going to make it.

“Don’t fight it!”
Tony yelled. “Save your strength for after!”

“After what?”

“After we go over.”

He rocked his head back and splayed his arms. I did the same.
We held hands and let the water take us. Up ahead, the rush of water grew louder. We found ourselves needing to kick our feet just to maintain a forward position. I didn’t know if the fall would kill us, and of course neither did Tony, but we wanted to see it coming just the same.

I felt Tony squeeze my hand as we neared the
event horizon. There, the river boiled in a froth of angry whitewater, thrashing and spraying against a line of jagged rocks protruding like shark fins in staggered formation.

He
shouted something to me, but I couldn’t hear his words above the roar.

“W
HAT?”

“I LOVE YOU!”
he hollered.

“I LOVE YOU TOO!” I screamed back, wishing
then I had told him that more often.

Looking back, it’s
funny how I don’t remember the actual plunge over the falls. I guess my brain experienced another static skip in the old memory bank. What I do recall is my head popping out in the torrent of a hydrokinetic minefield. I remember gasping for breath, reaching for Tony’s hand again and finding it. His robe had mushroomed around him, making him look like a soggy Mister Potato Head.

“Tony!” I wrapped my arms around his neck
to kiss him and accidentally dunked him under. I felt him struggle against the weight of his robe to pry my arms off. I let go. He came up coughing and choking, bitching that I nearly killed him.

“Lilith
! What the hell?”

“The hell,” I said, “is that I’m happy to see you. Pardon me if we’re both alive.”

“Tony! Lilith!”

It was Carlos, standing on the shore with Ursula and
Jerome, flagging us in.

We swam through the swirling mist towards their voices and crawled up onto the sand like primordial life form
s oozing from the sea. Carlos came to me and helped me up. He then went to Tony, who was already on his knees and halfway to his feet.

“I got it,” he said
, waving Carlos off.

We hugged an
d laughed, and gave each other high-fives for making it over the falls alive. When I turned to see just how high the drop was, I nearly shit. I walked to the river’s edge and toed the line where the sand and water met. I rocked my head back all the way and gazed up at the falls.

“
Where is it?” I said, blinking up into the darkness. As far as I could see, it was just a ribbon of water falling from an ink black sky. “Where’s the top of the fall?” I turned to Carlos. “I can’t see where we went over.”

“It’s up there somewhere.”

“But... how high up is up?”

“I’m embarrassed to say
, I don’t know. I think I passed out. I don’t remember the fall at all.”

“Nor I,” said Ursula
, joining us at the shore line. “Methinks I too hath slipped a moment into the unknown.”

I looked
to Tony. “Do you remember anything?”

He shook his head. “I remember slipping past the rocks at the edge of the fall, but then nothing until you nearly drowned me back there.”

“Jerome?” I walked up to the half-pint piñata and nudged him on the shoulder. “Do you know what’s going on here?”