8 Gone is the Witch (36 page)

“
Look,” said Carlos, staring up at the streaks of orange light in the sky.

“
Yeah, what is that?”

“A new dawn,
” I said. “And a new day of perils. There’s going to be more of those types of explosions. We should get a move on.” I turned to Jerome. “You lead, Kermit. Keep those gyroscopic peepers of yours on the lookout for the kumoru. We’ve only another mile or so before we reach the fortress. I want us all to get there in one piece. Capish?”

Jerome looked up at me and smiled.
“Fish.”

“Close enough.”

As we walked by, I pointed to a peculiar-looking tree standing next to the exploded kumoru. It was small and oddly bent, grayish in color and lacking leaves of any kind. “Is that a Snitch tree?”

“
Snitch tree,” Jerome said, confirming my suspicions.

“Okay everyone
, remember that. The Snitch tree is your friend. It’ll let you know where not to step.”

W
e headed out.

As I mentioned, I believed the fortress was only a mile or so from our position on the riverbank.
Although the woods were thick, I felt we were making exceptional time in our travels. So why, I asked myself after hours of walking, had we not yet emerged into the clearing surrounding the fortress?

“Lilith?” Apparently, I was not the only one wondering.

“Yes, Tony.”

“Are we going in circles?”

“I don’t know. Don’t think so.” I pointed up. “Those cracks in the sky give us some reference of direction now. I think we’re going in a straight line.”

“What if the sky
’s rotating?”

“Good point.” I held my hand up to stop the procession and called for Jerome to wait
up. “Let’s take a break here,” I said, as the others gathered around.

Carlos
, who appeared more than ready for a rest, seconded the motion. Only when he took a seat on a nearby log did I realize how extraordinary haggard and out of breath he appeared.

He looked
visibly shaken, and obviously weaker than when we first started out from the river. In my haste to get to the fortress, I had forgotten how much quicker the ES had aged Carlos compared to the rest of us.

Tony sat down on the log beside him. “You okay, buddy?”

He waved him off. “Fine as frog hair. You know me. I get a little weak when I’m hungry.” He patted his stomach. “I’ve been meaning to go on a diet anyway.”

“You know
...” I reached into my burlap sack and fished around the bottom. “I think I still have a piece of fruit in here. You’re welcome to it.” I pulled it out and handed it to him.

“Oh, no
,” he murmured, turning it over in his hands. “I couldn’t. If anything, you girls ought to share it.” He tried to hand it back to me. I pulled away, leaving his arm outstretched and trembling.

“Uh-uh. Not hungry
, go for it.”

Ursula said, “Aye, `tis strange, but I want for naught
thy food or drink.” She palmed her stomach and orbited her hand. “What last we did feast on, doth fill me still.”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “This is not an equal opportunity experience. I know
the ES is harder on some of us than on others. You need your strength.”

Carlos
lowered his arm and held the fruit close to his chest. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

Jerome padded up to
him.

“Amigo
.” He cupped his hand under Carlos’ and lifted the brobble to his lips. “Amigo eat.”

Carlos is a
humble soul, really, modest and unpretentious, though in a look-at-me playful way sometimes. He’s unselfish, if not frugal to the point of stingy when it concerns himself.

But most of all, Carlos is proud. He’s proud of who he is, where he came from and how he got
where he is, on his own with no one’s help whatsoever.

To see him sitting on that log, deflated, nearly defeated
and holding the last piece of food we owned... well. I turned my back to afford him the dignity he deserved. The others, sensing my reason, also turned.

“
See there,” I said to Tony. I pointed to one of the treetops. “It aligns with the tip of the longest fracture there in the atmosphere. We’ll give it a few minutes; see if the sky is rotating or drifting lineally.”

“Already on it,” said Tony. “It hasn’t moved since we stopped here.”

“It doesn’t make sense then. Why haven’t we reached the clearing yet?”

“What
’s there to make sense? This is the Eighth Sphere.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I turned around to see Carlos wiping his mouth with his sleeve. He had devoured the brobble fruit seeds and all.

“Hark!” Ursula pitched her ear towards the woods behind her. “Methinks I heard something.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said. “What was it?”

“Be it a twig, mayhaps, under heavy foot?”

A
nother twig snapped among the trees some thirty degrees from the first.

“I heard it that time,” said Tony.

Carlos stood and un-holstered his weapon, drawing a bead out in the darkness, but not knowing exactly where to aim.

I came around Ursula, eased her back a step and then spun up a
compact little zip ball. “Tony?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you give me a hand?”

Ursula quickly inserted herself between us. “Three
art better than two, is it not?”

They held their hands out and produced perfect specimens complete with wiry strands of static energy
arcing from one zip ball to the other.

“Nice touch,” I said.
“Now give it a spin counterclockwise. That will increase the light output.”

We gave our respective
zip balls a gentle poke, coaxing them into a spin as they hovered on a paper-thin cushion of air in our palms. Off to my right, another twig snapped. I pointed in that direction.

“There! Let`e
m rip!”

In perfect unison, we
wound back and fired the zips into the woods. Ursula’s and mine went about twenty feet, Tony’s about thirty. They exploded in quick succession, illuminating the night in lightning-bright flashes lasting several seconds each. Buried among the trees, dozens of beady red eyes reflected back at us through the flash.

We instinctively
whipped up another couple of zip balls and hurled them off into the woods again. Those landed a dozen yards further to the left and right of the first two, revealing still more glowing, red eyes.

Jerome
recognized the threat immediately. “Malodytes!” he yelled, pointing in every direction throughout the woods. “Malodytes!”

At once, my brain conjured up images of those
hairy, muscled-bound, gorilla-like monsters with saber-tooth fangs, hooked claws and beady Cyclops eye. I remembered how the creature tore Jessie James’ head off his shoulders just as easily as picking fruit off a tree. I imagined one of those creatures would be hard enough to kill, but an entire army? I just wasn’t feeling the love.

“You
all up for a run?” I said to the others.

They were already backing away.

“Maybe they’re friendly,” said Carlos.

“Y
eah, you want to go introduce yourself?”

“No.”

The first wave broke loose from the pack. Carlos took aim at the largest one and drilled six rounds into its chest. The ugly bastard staggered a bit, but then regained its footing.

“I think you pissed him off,” I said.

He shook his head, disappointed. “See, that’s the trouble with the ES. No one here has a sense of humor.”

“Come!
” said Jerome. “I go. You follow!”

He
turned and ran back into the woods in the direction we came from.

“Anybody have a better idea?
” I asked.

“Hell no!” cried Carlos, and
we took off running.

We caught up with
Jerome and followed him step-for-step through zigzagged trails that only he could decipher. We all knew what he was doing. We only hoped it would work.

Thankfully,
it did.

Along w
ith the sounds of heavy footfalls closing fast behind us, came the sweet boom, boom, boom of exploding kumoru plants, vaporizing one malodyte after the other and turning them into cosmic chalk dust.

The plan seemed flawless, except for one thing. No matter how ma
ny of the drooling, horn-headed beasts we blew up, the damn things just kept on coming. I feared Jerome would run out of kumoru plants before we ran out of malodytes.

But
the little fucker was smarter than the average frog. After zigzagging through the minefield and taking out thirty or forty of the beasts, he still had one ace up his sleeve.

He changed course, retreading old steps and even overlapping once forbidden ones that were now clear.

The malodytes followed, but it turns out, as muscular as they are, malodytes are not so fast and they’re not especially smart either.

Jerome
directed us in circles, working from an outside perimeter of a hundred feet, down to a patch of ground barely ten feet across. In the process, nearly all the malodytes had taken the bait and met their fate on the pad of a broad-leaf kumoru.

Nearly all.

Six remained.

In a stroke of pure genius, Jerome had effectively herded us onto an island of safety. In the absolute heart of kumoru country, he had worked us to the center of the thickest patch. All around, in every direction, lay a minefield of unexploded kumoru pads. For the malodytes to step foot towards us meant certain death for the lot of them.

Ah, but what am I always saying about the ES? Nothing is what it seems. Okay, I don’t always say that, but I think I’ll start.

We had come to know
malodytes as incredibly stupid animals––wild and vicious though they are, still, incredibly stupid.

Enter the a
lpha malodyte, a breed above the rest. Alpha malodytes, or alphadytes, are enigmas of sorts. Although smaller than their cousins, they are leaner and more agile and possess exceptional IQs.

The six remaining
creatures surrounding our circle were those alphadytes.

I reached down and gave Jerome a pat on the back. “Nice going, kid
do. We got them right where we want them.”

“No we don’t,”
said Carlos. “I think it’s the other way around.”

Tony backhanded him.
“She’s being facetious. Do you have any bullets left?”

He pulled his gun and dropped
its clip. “No, it’s empty. You?”

“I’m out, too. Lilith, can we hit
`em with zips?”

“We could try
. Might take out one or two. It’s likely the others will simply hide and wait us out after that.”

“I don’t see as we have a choice.”

“Aye, methinks there be another,” said Ursula.

“
Oh? Let’s hear it.”

Chapter Twenty

Ursula’s plan for solving our
alphadyte problem was simple, yet brilliant. It involved two of my favorite things: zip balls and explosions.

“Doth thou remember this noon of late when the sky opened and thunder boomed?” she asked.

“The start of Decussate Day,” I said, “of course.”

“Did we not hear the bursts of many for what followed
once the ground shook?”

“The s
eismic reaction shaking the trees,” said Tony. “All the bark and branches that rained down from them hit the kumoru pads and triggered multiple explosions.”

“Aye, and have we not the means and way for such
a rain?”

“
Yes!” I said. “Ursula, you’re a peach, a beautiful, smart, sexy peach. What would we do without you?” I turned to Tony. “So we whip up a couple of zip balls, pitch them into the trees and––”

“Four,” said Ursula.

“What’s that?”

She gestured a sweep
of her hand around us. The alphadytes had spread themselves out equally about the circle. “Bring hard thy rain and not the least or fall a few and spare the beasts.”

“You’re right
.”

“
About what?” asked Carlos. “I don’t understand her.”

“We need to launch four
zips simultaneously over their heads for this to work. If we don’t bring down enough debris to set off all the pads with the first shot, we won’t kill them all. I’m afraid we’ll only get one chance.”

“
You can’t do four zips. You only have three witches.”