by Taylor Kole
With its great speed. Josh wasn’t sure he’d make it, so he just ran.
His weapon lay on the ground covered in mucousy oil. Bending in stride, he anticipated the clamp of pincers as he lifted the sword. Instead, pivoting blade-first, he found himself alone.
Artemis screamed and Josh understood: the raging beast hadn’t targeted Josh.
The ant clutched Artemis above the waist. Artemis’ feet dangled a foot off the ground, kicking uselessly. His hands struggled against the immovable clamp holding him, vainly attempting to pry free. With an effortless surge, the mandible closed, one overlapping a fraction higher than the other, snapping his spine and ending the currents of writhing as effectively as pulling a plug from its socket.
The previously-cautious man hung slack. Josh’s only solace came in knowing he had been swiftly hurled into the next life.
Combat memory compelled Josh. Rather than grieve, he raced to take advantage of the distracted creature. With an arcing swing, he cleaved the mesosoma in two. The beast screamed in its chittery alien voice and a pool of snot-like vileness flooded out of it. Its six legs turned to face Josh. Dropping Artemis, its jaws pinched as if eager to drag its tormentor along on its purchased trip to the underworld. Before it fully rotated, Josh hacked again, severing the head at a forty-degree angle.
To avoid the exploding spray he backed out of range.
The urgent crashes around him removed any sense of accomplishment.
Rumbling ground to his left turned him in time to meet a pair of widening pincers intent on snatching him in their fatal hold.
The surprising closeness of the creature rendered the blade useless. It slipped from Josh’s hand as he stuck out his arms and grasped each pincer.
The beast drove him back. His dense weight allowed him to maintain balance. With a strain like arm wrestling, Josh shoved both arms out. One high and out, the other low and away, as if he was a bodybuilding disco dancer. To Josh’s shock and immense gratitude, the mandible in his right hand snapped and the left mandible continued past a normal position, dislocating it.
The ant stepped back, shaking its head and sneezing as if he had sniffed black pepper. Its broken pincers rattled uselessly. Before making its fifth retreating step, Josh lifted his scimitar and split its head down the middle.
The ant rattled. Josh stepped away. Judging from the sounds around him, dozens more ants were incoming.
Spinning toward the greatest threat, he found an ant had already arrived, but playful whims had distracted the beast, and possibly saved Josh.
It had plucked Artemis’ broken body from the ground, tossed it into the air, and waited with open jaws for it to drop.
Josh heard the cloud of stench release from the second dead ant. Even this far away, the smell blanched the air and made Josh woozy. As he stepped farther away from the fog, he noticed two more beasts charging in from behind the playful one, bumping into one another in their haste to eviscerate.
He heard branches breaking behind him, chittering coming from his left, a disruption of jungle to his right.
The trickle of blood running down his calf and the tenderness of his left arm reminded him he was mortal.
Considering his options were battling endless hordes until victory or being broken and tossed in the air like a chew toy, he decided to run and hide.
Before he could, however, he heard glee in the clicks of the ant playing with Artemis. Hatred flared inside Josh and raced through his limbs.
Blurring across the distance, he sliced through the thin petiole and split head from abdomen.
Then, without taking a breath, he angled away from the pair of rushing soldiers and sprinted as fast as possible.
Wind tossed his hair as he dashed through the jungle, blindly crashing through branches, bounding six feet with each viper-quick stride. Before regaining his senses, he crossed over the trail that delineated the border. Instead of continuing toward the outer wall of Reysona, he turned and ran along the trail, away from where his team camped. His steps were graceful and so much faster than the ants.
As the distance grew and the danger lessened, he marveled at his pace: only combustion engines mixed with advanced technologies were this fast.
Them, and the gods of Betaloome.
VIII
Winding down from a light jog, Josh picked his way alongside the ants’ exterior border, perking up at every sound, ducking at the occasional bird flying overhead, and flinching at every distant crack.
Each fright sparked flashes of Artemis dangling in alien jaws. Josh’s arrogance had killed a man. He didn’t know how to process that? It felt like rocks were grafting to his heart, making it heave, and painful. Needing to avoid the crushing shame, he focused on his immediate situation. He navigated by keeping the ants’ border trail to his right. Traveling cautiously, he wandered, unsure of his destination. He only knew he wanted to continue, that he couldn’t face the other men, no, and that he needed to wash himself.
The death scent, which he now realized was the ant’s alarm system, left an ever-drying crud on his skin. Though growing accustomed to the odor, when Josh sniffed, the smell was strong. The one time an ant moseyed around a bend about seventy yards away, Josh locked up. A moment later, he pivoted perpendicular to the trail and ran.
After running for what seemed a mile, he crouched, listened, and prayed the woods around him stayed silent. He needed to avoid an ant smelling him, but he also couldn’t run blindly through this alien jungle. That would eventually land him on the fangs of a trapper or behind the territory of another colony. How could he have thought it possible to fight an entire ant army? He was still human. Physically superior, but a man nonetheless. Artemis had been much wiser than him.
But what to do now?
Finding the outer wall and returning to Reysona was the safest option. The shame of it also tightened his stomach and throat. He couldn’t retreat. Not yet. That would mean he didn’t respect Artemis’ death, that he was willing to concede that loss and call it a day.
On the walk back to the visible border, his resolve hardened. He would honor Artemis by heeding his advice, and by pressing on.
He unhooked his blade, and using a half dozen leaves, cleaned it as best he could. The cleaning only pushed the oil around. He needed a proper wash.
Reaching the queen unmolested would be impossible while marked with their warning smell.
If he took off his tunic and traveled in the buff, he’d still smell. The substance coated his skin as much as his clothing.
Finding the ants’ border, he looked to his left toward unknown territory and to the right where the camp lay. Heading back to the village, bathing and returning with a new guide made the most sense. Instead, he stepped left toward the unknown.
He needed to stop running.
Minutes into his stroll away from camp, he heard the murmur of a running stream and quickened his pace. With each step, the sound grew louder.
Soon, he reached a river as wide as a four-lane road. Its flowing water appeared as clean as if it came from a tap, which he imagined it did. Fighting the urge to pick up speed to leap in, he thought of Artemis; cautiously, he scanned his area. He had watched enough Animal Planet to know that sources of water provided the greatest peril when sharing a predator’s environment.
Looking right, he noticed the ant trail ended at a corner, fifty feet from the river’s edge.
Padding past the trail and along the bank, he searched the ground for ant tracks.
Again, the eviscerators’ ingenuity surprised him. Two hundred feet beyond the turn, he found a quaint bay dug out of the stream, bringing the water flush with their border. Tracks marred its rim, marking it as a heavily trafficked drinking cove.
Seeing no tracks outside their border, Josh figured that as long as he stayed a safe distance off, he would be safe.
He put more space between himself and their watering hole before he disrobed, piled his clothes and sword on the bank, and waded in.
The
water was surprisingly warm. Its heat soothed his aching body. He watched the oily residue flow off of him, downstream, and couldn’t help thinking it took an innocence with it. His dexterity and courage had saved people when he killed the first trapper. His selfish arrogance had done the opposite for Artemis.
Dunking underwater, scrubbing his hair from grungy brown back to blond, and emerging, made him realize this was the first time he had swam in a river. As a full-grown adult, supposedly living a ‘good life,’ he had never been in a river. Never even laid eyes on an ocean. Hell, he hadn’t swam for the pure joy of it more than twice since reaching puberty.
Taking in a mouthful of water and spitting it out in a stream, he wondered why he had neglected such a primal pleasure.
He took a deep breath and dunked back under.
Examining his life as he swam, the total lack of time dedicated to pleasure stunned him. All of human existence boiled down to the avoidance of pain and the seeking of pleasure. All but Josh Ridley. His was work, eat, banal conversations about what ran at the bottom of CNN or ESPN that morning, and a series of forced smiles.
The absurdity of that routine brought him to the brink of laughter. He didn’t even agree with many of the things he argued in support of. Or maybe he did. He had never actually thought about any grand topics in earnest. He was just a yes man through and through.
Popping up for air, he had to consider the possibility that he harbored deep self-hatred or masochistic tendencies. Unless everyone he associated with had been duped into ignoring what they wanted in lieu of what they were told they wanted.
With his current insight, even the two vacations he and Karen had taken felt fake. Structured. Choreographed by some invisible hand. Laughing, he accepted he hated sushi, despite eating it twice a week!
He submerged and dolphin-kicked downstream. Basically without thought, he processed his entire life. As his air reserves ran low he reversed and made it halfway back before breaking the surface and paddling back to his starting point.
This was life. Him, right now. Having experiences. Contemplating deeper meaning. Risking general safety. Having a purpose. Dodging comfort zones.
He startled himself with a raucous laugh, wondering if he had just committed to quitting his job. Or were these feelings a whimsical life-altering blip? Here in the manic, gone when the buzz wore off, like a drug addict pledging sobriety after One. More. Fix.
Seeing his oversized blade jutting from the shore brought him back to the moment, to the wonderful dangers around him and the mission he had embarked upon.
He waded out and dashed to a nearby tree where he snatched a few leaves from a low branch. He picked up the sword and returned to the river to wash it, to polish every inch of it until the blade and scabbard shone brighter than they had on the day he had chosen them.
To make sure his weapon stayed easily accessible, he stabbed the tip into the bank near him, leaving the hilt angled over the stream, and then dragged his toga into the river to soak it completely. With his god-like torque he only needed one twist to wring out enough water to make the clothing near dry. Ending each cleansing with a good sniff, he eventually determined his toga was free from funk and laid it out.
After cleaning his sandals, he used leaves to scrub his body. Refreshed and floating in a stream of clear water in the middle of a luminescent jungle straight out of a fantasy, Josh decided to grant himself more joy and dove to the bottom of the river, rooting around the riverbed, relishing the sensation of moving water sluicing around his remarkable body. Once thoroughly relaxed, with the suns marking the time at a little past noon, he exited.
The nick in his calf pulsed with a soreness and his upper arm hummed, but these distractions did nothing in the way of lowering his drive or sidelining him. If anything, their presence highlighted the life coursing through him, one he seemed to have never noticed before.
Once back to Chicago, he planned to locate the nearest gym that taught boxing or mixed martial arts, sign up, and make getting punched in the face a top priority.
Slipping his clean fingers around the ivory hilt brought to mind the day’s battle. Remembering how scared he had been when running sobered Josh. He recalled Artemis being cracked in half, and closed his eyes in disbelief.
Embracing his guide’s teachings, he slinked out and surveyed the tree line.
Detecting no movement, and unable to see the watering hole, he stabbed the blade into the ground, retrieved the harness, and dressed.
As he pulled the material over his head and situated it to his body, internal alarms sounded. He felt like he was being watched. He squeezed the handle, and shifted his weight to the balls of his feet.
Something was watching him, sizing him up. He thought of the spider he had killed in Reysona and his blood ran cold. How many varieties of spiders existed? A thousand? Were their methods of attack as diverse as their breeds?
He searched the ground for signs of a trapdoor.
He spun to make sure eight legs were not gliding across the water.
Slowly rotating, he found only stillness.
After checking the canopy for the reflective filament of a web and finding none, he crept forward toward the base of a thick tree overgrown with shrubbery.
No signs of spider webs, no eviscerator tracks, no vermin clinging to an overhead perch.
He remained on guard, creeping closer, holding the sword like a torch. He was twenty feet away, well within his or a nimble killer’s striking distance, when the pile of branches rumbled.
The instant before he lunged, intending to split the pile of dry wood with a swift chop, a voice rang out. “JoshRidley, wait. It is your servant.”
The presence and familiarity of the voice stayed his hand.
“I am going to stand. Please do not smite me.” Twigs flew off the top of the pile as Flavius emerged and backed out of his cubby-hole, picking sticks from his person. “Apologies, great one.” He dusted himself off. “Only, I was tasked as your acolyte. Being the best tracker, how could I leave you to risk yourself without my aid?”
Josh lowered his guard and searched for a witty reply. Something clichéd about being a foolish lad or following orders or being able to take care of himself, but truthfully, he swelled with relief. So he only laced his sandals and hid his smirk.
In an upbeat tone, the young man prattled on, “JoshRidley, I found the carnage that you left. The eviscerators were still clearing their dead but you showered the land with demon blood. A splendid victory.” He shook his head. “But with the vile creatures in clean-up, I could not count the slain. How many did you tear asunder? A dozen? Twenty?”
Josh stared at the kid as he sheathed his sword to its scabbard. Killing three had been hard enough—and cost a man’s life.
As Flavius asked, Josh found himself growing eager to tell the story of battle and how he barely escaped the stampeding charge of reinforcements, how he ripped one’s jaw off its hinges with his bare hands. But, with his ego deflated by the higher expectation of twenty kills, he only said: “Did you forget to ask about Artemis?”
Flavius nodded with an expression of mournful pride. “Ah, yes. Tatters of his clothing were left behind. What a great way to leave this life. In a struggle beside a god.”
Josh thought of the look of torment on Artemis’ face moments before he died. He didn’t see anything great, but said nothing. Saying one word could invite questions that led to realities he wasn’t ready to own up to.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Then, finding Flavius staring at him expectantly, he said, “What?”
“Is it your will to continue to the queen’s lair?”
The hole in his calf seemed to chirp with pain. The bruising along his ribs and arms throbbed.
These symptoms proved, though a badass, he was mortal and far from invincible.
Looking into Flavius’ expectant eyes brought back the heat coursing through him after splitting that spider; the satisfaction of beheading a gleeful ant; the e
ngulfing calm of swimming effortlessly underwater.
Considering a retreat to Reysona brought forth visions of a future raid: Flavius dangling from the mandibles of an eviscerator; Junea tumbling over the hem of her dress as she ran with abject horror; her terror as the pincer chomped into her skin; the town screaming in chaos as dozens of ants scaled their walls; the villagers collecting body parts and sweeping up pools of blood the following day.
And still more abstract thoughts: families sitting around a meal, praying for salvation. Praying to JoshRidley to give them a better life. He thought about all the prayers he had prayed in his life. The helplessness that preceded the prayers and the wonder that would have enriched him had one of those prayers been answered with undeniable proof.
Knowing he had the ability to grant wishes to a mass of people inspired awe. It infused him with a sense of responsibility. On some level, these were his children. When a kid you loved was scared of the boogieman living in their closet, you didn’t scoff and tell them to get over their childish imaginations. You rushed to the nearest closet and flung open the door. You chased away the demon, and showed the child there’s nothing to fear when you face adversity.
Here, in Betaloome, the dangers were tangible. Josh could lessen them, and as reckless as continuing might be, he intended to do what he could. “We shall continue our investigation.”
“In-vest-im-pation... A godly word. I would like to help you with that,” Flavius said. He then glanced back toward the border. “You seem to have wandered further than needed.”
“I considered moving inward,” Josh replied swiftly, “but I didn’t want to enter their lands smelling so awful.”
“Very wise, JoshRidley. Every demon within a thousand paces would come for you, leaving a growing scent in their wake to call more to arms. If our warriors earn a kill, become marked and make it back to Reysona, they will not wash until the scent, or their flesh, has eroded.” He smiled. “It is like a love-maker for the ladies.” He enunciated the final clause with a lurid drawl and roll of his shoulders.
Josh chuckled as he passed him, heading toward the border’s edge. “What do you know about attracting ladies?”
