“Yeah,” I agree, as I start to understand what she’s saying.
“Your mom. Sarge. I trust them,” Leela says. “But they both let the admiral and Shelby take command. They had to. And I don’t know about the commander, but Sarge knew Shelby was bad news. But what could he do? Quit? Leave the squad at her mercy?” She shakes her head.
“Mom could have said no,” I say. “We’d have backed her up, if she refused to give up command.” The words are like a key unlocking a well of self-loathing I didn’t want to know was there. “I should have—”
“You shouldn’t have had to,” Leela says sharply. “I shouldn’t have had to, either. To choose between following orders from someone so full of hate and mutiny . . . I won’t do that again.”
I don’t argue with her this time. The rules matter to Leela. And knowing the rules are wrong . . . that must feel intolerable.
“So what will you do?” I say.
“I don’t know,” she says. “All I ever wanted was to be a marine. Protect people. And now—”
“What is that?” Chris interrupts us, pointing straight ahead.
I look out into the water. At first, I don’t see anything. Just dappled light gleaming over the murky water.
Then I realize one of the shimmering patches is moving.
As the wavering glow approaches, I can see that what I thought was light is actually a writhing mass of opalescent creatures rolling over each other as they surge across the surface of the water. They’re small. No bigger than my thumb. Their segmented bodies bristle with long stick-like legs and . . .
“Do they actually have feathers?” Jay asks. “Or am I losing it?”
“Both, probably,” Leela says.
“Do you recognize them?” I ask Tarn and Nor.
“No,” Nor says. She rumbles something in Sorrow to Tarn.
He waves his free hand in front of his face, palm in to indicate the negative. Then he raises his voice, intensifying the stinging song so much that it makes me wince.
It doesn’t affect the insect bird things at all.
A flash of dark blue between the writhing creatures snatches my attention. There it is again. Too bright to be water. Or anything that grows on Tau.
“Is that a Prairie uniform?” Chris asks.
It is.
Without thinking, I reach for the floating marine.
“Joanna!” Beth’s sharp voice freezes the insane impulse. “You can’t help whoever that is. We should avoid disturbing the swarm.”
She’s right. I know she’s right. But it’s still physically painful to pull our boat away from the floating body and leave them behind.
“Shit,” Leela breathes as I accelerate away. I throw a look back to see what she’s looking at. The shimmering ant-bird things are streaming off the body, splashing and tumbling over each other to follow our boat.
“Go faster,” Beth says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think you’re right.”
I pour on the speed, but it doesn’t help. A glassy clacking sound bites through the air seconds before half a dozen little opal-feathered ant things skitter over the rails of our raft.
I smack at the side of the boat, shouting, hoping to scare them off. Instead, an ant-bird leaps straight up in the air and lands on my hand.
The creature’s legs drive through my skin and into the back of my hand. Blood wells around its barbed feet and wicks up its opalescent legs, staining its pearly white body a deep pink.
I stare at it, frozen in shock until pain rings through the haze of horror and I scream, flailing to get it off.
“Stop!” Beth shouts, grabbing my arm. “Leela, take the throttle! Jay, hold Joanna still.”
Jay folds his arms around me as Leela grabs the controls and Chris, Nor, and Tarn scramble to smash the other ant-birds with their boots.
“Beth!” I shriek. “Get it off! Get it off! Please . . .”
“I don’t want to leave any barbs behind,” she says, still outrageously calm as she watches the creature, which is slowly turning red as it drinks my blood. “I don’t know what sorts of toxins it might release if we kill it.”
At the moment, I don’t care. I’ve never felt pain like this, and I’ve been boiled alive in the vacuum of space.
“Do something,” I moan, beyond stoicism. “Please.”
Beth pulls a pair of pruning shears from her harness and runs the edge over her forearm. Blood wells from the cut and Beth flings it at the creature’s feathered back.
It flips, pulling its barbed legs free of my skin in its lust for fresh blood. I hurl the creature away from me, off the boat. It spins, unfolding its arms, and skitters away over the surface of the water.
“We’re clear,” Chris shouts.
“No,” Nor hums, pointing behind us. The ant-birds are converging into a writhing mass of white feathers and legs. In seconds, they’re rolling across the water toward us like a floating beach ball of death, building up mass and momentum as they go.
“Should have kept one of those flamethrowers,” Leela mutters, pushing the throttle to the max. But the extra speed just makes the pursuing ant-birds faster—they’re riding our wake.
“I wonder if they leave the water,” Tarn says, thoughtfully watching the closing horde.
“Let’s hope not,” Chris says.
Nor gasps, then hums something urgent in Sorrow that conjures up the first time Mom ever let me sit in the pilot’s chair. Excitement/awe/fear.
I follow her gaze and see massive trees with stiff, dark green leaves looming over the swamp ahead of us. They look like solace trees, except they’re more root than tree. Their stout trunks rest on massive glowing root cones that climb meters above the water line.
As we zag through the neon-tinted shadows, the ball of ant-birds thins out into a stream behind us, slowing way down as they give the swamp solace roots a wide berth.
“They fear the trees!” Nor calls out.
Relief charges through me. “Leela—”
“Yeah,” she says. “I think so too.”
She’s already twisting the yoke to weave us closer to the huge glowing cones. Close enough that I can see the fine tendrils sprouting from the bioluminescent roots like clumps of hair.
The ant-birds don’t stop coming, but they’re definitely slowing down. It’s working.
“Over there!” I say, pointing ahead of us to a dome of blue roots that looms almost four meters above the water. There’s a gap in the roots big enough to fit the Zodiac through.
Leela twists the yoke, turning so hard that one of the pontoons dips down into the water as we hurtle toward the enormous, blue-rooted tree.
We slide into the hollow space under the shining cluster.
The ball of ant-birds turns around and rolls away without even a hint of hesitation.
That was easy.
That was too easy.
Chris huffs a relieved sigh. “Thanks, super solace trees.”
“Don’t get too excited,” I say, my stomach twisting into knots as I look up at the icy blue tangle of roots that surrounds us, thanks to my brilliant idea.
“Yeah . . . ,” Jay says, following my gaze. “If those ant-birds are scared of this thing, we shouldn’t get too cozy with it.”
A flash of movement catches at the edge of my vision. I twist, looking around us. There’s nothing there. No sign of the ant-birds.
There it is again.
Something moving, just out of sight. What’s going on?
“Not like we have time to camp out anyway,” Leela says, swerving the Zodiac back toward the Y-shaped opening we came in through.
That’s when I realize what I’ve been seeing.
“Wait!” I shout. But it’s too late.
Wham!
The edges of the Zodiac slam against the roots. The opening is smaller than it was seconds ago. The flashes of movement I kept seeing were the roots themselves, closing in around us.
We’re trapped.
Twenty-Five
> “Keep the motor revving!” Chris calls, reaching for one of the knotty loops of glowing blue root that have us pinned.
“Don’t!” Nor cries, but Chris’s fingers are already closing around the gnarled blue twist.
His arm drops to his side, instantly limp.
He gasps, yanking his other arm from its sling to clutch at it.
“It’s numb!” he cries. “I can’t feel anything all the way up to my elbow.”
“Our solace trees use their sap to stun their prey,” Nor hums as Jay yanks open the med kit and fumbles for the sanitizer spray.
“And these exposed roots are likely designed to attract much larger prey,” Beth says grimly. “Ergo, the paralytic substance they use to stun and then dissolve their prey is stronger.”
“Dissolve?” Chris shrieks.
“Just hold still!” Jay says, dousing Chris’s hand.
Nor lays her staff down in the bottom of the Zodiac and pulls a narrow black knife from under her robes. “Stay back,” she says, carefully pushing the tip of her blade into one of the thick twists that are blocking our path.
She pulls, expecting the knife to cut through the root.
It doesn’t.
“That knife cuts through Beast skin,” Nor gasps, her voice humming with something that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
A strange, sweet smell fills my nostrils. Sharp and tangy. Like the solace trees back in the Diamond Range, but thicker. Sickly sweet. I sniff, my eyes following the scent up to see a long gob of liquid oozing down from the tree’s core, which isn’t as far over our heads as it used to be.
Tarn grabs me, pulling me out of the way as the gob of sap falls. It hits the Zodiac and begins to sizzle.
That stuff is melting our boat!
“Get rid of it!” Leela shouts.
Chris is already yanking his parka off with his good arm. Jay grabs it from him and uses it to sweep the acidic goo overboard.
“There’s another one building up there,” Beth says, pointing.
“I am not going to get eaten by a tree today,” Jay growls, yanking his stun gun from its holster. He presses it to the nearest root and fires. The blue glow sparks brighter for a moment, and an ugly crackling shriek tears through the air. The strand of root withers.
“I’ll second that,” Leela says, yanking her stun gun from her harness. She plants it against another twist of root and fires. Then another. And another. There’s a sound so high, I’m not sure I really hear it so much as feel it. The hypersonic shriek is followed by a snap as a whole tangle of roots gives way.
“Careful!” Beth shouts, pointing to the other side of the cluster. “The root cone is tightening faster every time you damage it.”
“Got a better idea?” Leela says, frying another root.
“Yeah,” I shout over the tree’s nerve-wrenching cries of pain.
I grab Leela’s stun gun, aim it straight down at the water on the other side of the pontoon, and fire a sustained burst.
Blue light flares and the tree screams. The cage of roots around us convulses, pressing in on the sides of the Zodiac even as its roots start to wither.
“So this is what you call a better idea?” Leela shouts.
“Do it again!” Tarn cries.
“What?” I stammer, staring up at the disaster I just literally brought down on our heads.
“Do it!” Nor shouts, dropping into a crouch in the bottom of the boat and pulling Chris and Beth with her.
I fire into the water again, holding my finger down on the trigger as long as I can. I can see the roots around us going dark, dying, but the tree doesn’t collapse.
I look up and see Tarn standing above me, holding his staff over his head with both hands to keep the withering roots off us. He groans with effort. The urgency of the sound has me moving before I have the chance to think. I reach up and grab the other end of the staff, gasping at the incredible amount of weight Tarn is withstanding.
“Help!” I try to shout, but it comes out in a whisper. Thankfully, Jay and Nor are already bracing Tarn’s legs. Then Chris is there, leaning his back against mine, his feet pushing into the side of the Zodiac to brace me.
Leela scrambles for the helm.
“Punch it,” I shout. “As hard as you can.”
“I was gonna take my time,” she snarks, “but if you insist . . .”
She throws the yoke forward, hard.
The tree screams again, its cry fading into a booming groan as Leela slams the Zodiac forward against the dying roots. Once. Twice. Again.
Tingling numbness sweeps over my fingers, which are still clutching Tarn’s staff, as we burst through the shrieking, fading roots and shoot into open water.
“Woo-hoo!” Leela shouts.
Then her victorious cry is consumed by a massive BOOM as the towering tree crashes into the water, tossing huge waves after us as we tear away through the lurking glow of the solace swamp. The silence that follows is so complete, I can hear each of my friends breathing even as we roar away through the trees.
I check the time on my flex. We were in the tree for less than four minutes. There’s still a chance we can make it to Dr. Brown.
“Uh-oh,” Chris says.
“No,” Leela snaps. “No more ‘uh-oh.’”
“Tell that to the boat,” Chris fires back.
I look down. Water is welling up through the melted spot in the middle of the Zodiac.
We’ve sprung a leak.
“We can make it,” Jay says, checking the nav app. “We’re less than a klick from Dr. Brown’s coordinates.”
“That’s gotta be on solid ground, right?” Leela says, already pushing the engine to its limit as she dodges the deadly glowing webs of tree root.
“Help!” Chris calls from behind me. I turn around just as he dumps the med kit, emptying the rectangular, reinforced case of its contents.
“What are you—” I cut my own question off as he sweeps water into the now empty kit and dumps it out over the side. He’s bailing.
Beth rips off her jacket and plunges it into the rising water. She grabs the corners, pulling them together to transform the waterproof fabric into a pouch to scoop up water and hurl it overboard. I yank my own jacket off to do the same, but Nor shouts, “There!”
The boggy black mud rising out of the water ahead of us is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Leela turns the yoke and aims the boat at the squishy shoreline. I grab Beth and Chris, steadying them as the abrupt turn tosses the boat sideways.
WHAM!
The impact hurls me almost over the side. I throw my hands out, desperately grasping for something, anything to check my momentum, but my fingers slide over wet neoprene. I’m going over. Then Jay’s arms close around my waist, yanking me against his chest, inches away from the deadly water.
Our eyes meet. I can feel his heart racing, matching pace with my own.
All around us, our friends are talking at the same time.
“What was that?”
“We hit something.”
“Damn it. I can’t get the engine started.”
“There’s more water coming in!”
The look on Jay’s face is strangely calm. Like all the things that have been tearing him up inside over the last few days are suddenly gone.
“Jay—”
“It’s okay, Hotshot,” he says, quietly.
Then he vaults into the water.
“JAY!” I scream, but he’s already dragging the Zodiac away from the rock that smashed the outboard. In seconds, we’re free and Jay is pulling us toward the shore.
Nor shrieks something in Sorrow. I tear my eyes away from Jay to see Tarn leap into the water beside him and grab the boat, lending his strength to haul us forward.
My heart hammers in my ears once. Twice. Three times.
Then there’s a thunk, and a shrieking rasp as the bottom of the Zodiac scrapes over solid ground.
I throw myself out to help them dr
ag the boat out of the water.
“I got it!” Leela shouts, pulling the handle from my fingers. “Go! Help Jay!”
I scramble to Jay’s side. He’s sagged to his knees in the swampy grass. I can hear Nor behind me, humming anxiety at Tarn.
“I’m good, Hotshot,” Jay pants, trying to wave me off.
“You just waded through a death bubble–infested swamp,” I say. “Humor me.”
I run my hands down his legs. There are huge rents in his cargo pants left behind by the fleshy predators, but no death bubbles. I’m starting to get relieved when I find it. A huge swollen lump on his left hip, just below the arc of his braces. And another. And another.
“Jay.” I gasp, my hands flying to my utility harness for my knife. “Don’t move, okay?”
He looks down. Swears.
“I can’t feel them,” he whispers, his face going unnaturally pale. He must be losing so much blood. “I can’t . . . I can’t feel them.”
“I’ll get them,” I chant, digging my knife under one and trying to pry the gnawing teeth away. “I’ll get them. I’ll—”
Then Nor shoves past me to crouch over Jay, her doubled knees protruding above her as she lunges down at him and screams something far beyond the range of human hearing. My whole body clenches; then the water and ration bars I’ve eaten in the past day hurl themselves from my stomach. I dry heave. Again. Again. My body feels like it’s turning itself inside out.
Is this what Hart felt, right before she killed him?
The awful sound drops away.
I lie in the mud, weeping in relief at the quiet.
“Thank you,” Jay whispers.
Startled, I struggle to my knees and see that Nor is crouched beside him in the beaten-down swamp grass. Her blindfold has fallen down around her neck, and her glowing blood is pumping furiously through her veins, flushing dark green as she catches her breath.
Four death bubbles lie dead on the grass between them.
Nor just saved Jay’s life.
We sit for a moment. Staring at each other. Maybe seeing each other for the first time. Then I hear something above the liquid music of the swamp.
A human voice. Quiet. Desperate.
“Help! Help!”
Twenty-Six
The Survivor Page 22
