Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan (11 page)

“Can’t shoot at trees forever. Need a moving target.”

I’d never shot at anything, not intentionally. When the
howler
was attacking
Blueeyes,
I didn’t really do the shooting as much as the shooting did me. It just happened, independent of thought. The
gimps
below seemed so far away, tiny. I’d never shot anything so tiny. I grabbed my bow, hands slippery with sweat. My arms were shaking and wouldn’t stop. If
Blueeyes
noticed, he didn’t say anything. When I grabbed an arrow, it worsened. The jitters moved through my shoulder and into my chest, affecting my breathing. 

They were too far away. 

Way too far.

I stood, raised my bow, straightened my back, inhaled, and held my breath. For a moment, I closed my eyes. A part of me wished the
gimps
wouldn’t be there when I opened them, that I could go back to shooting trees and annoying
Blueeyes
about letting me shoot trees. It didn’t work. They were still there, foggy eyes staring at nothing in particular, torn flesh flapping in the breeze. They were like the dirt, like the rain or the wind. They were always going to be there. I scanned the group and settled on a particularly large one near the back. One of his legs was bent backward, dragging along the pavement, a trio of dusty bones protruding from an open chest. I named him
Oneleg
, repeated it in my head. I’m not sure why. Despite the distance I could hear him moaning in that soft-sad way all
gimps
moaned, like starved animals, lonely monsters waiting for
something.
I was putting him out of his misery. That’s what I told myself. 

It was mostly true.

When the wind died, I fired. The arrow bounced off the roof of a car, flipped, spun through an open window. Absolutely none of this happened in the vicinity of
Oneleg.
A few of the
gimps
heard the noise, saw the arrow sail into the building, moved in its direction. 

Blueeyes
handed me another arrow. “Try again.”

I loaded it, aimed, inhaled, and fired. I hit a brick wall. “I’m sorry.”

He handed me another. “Shut up. Try again.”

Fifteen arrows later and I hadn’t hit a thing. Thankfully the
gimps
hadn’t caught on. I’m not entirely sure what they thought of the random arrows bouncing off everything or if they were even capable of putting it together. Probably not. As long as they didn’t see us or smell us, we were safe.
Oneleg
continued to limp around without a care in the world, arrows breezing past his head, slamming off garbage cans and crashing through windows. He was mocking me and he didn’t even know it. I
swear,
I swear I could see a smile on his face.
Blueeyes
stood, dropped a bundle of arrows to the dirt, unsheathed his machete, and started down the hill. I wasn’t expecting that.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

He didn’t bother to look at me. “Down there.”

“No. Y-you can’t. There are too many.” There were too many. They were too close together. Even for
Blueeyes.

“Guess you better start hitting something.”

They noticed him when he was halfway down the hill. Thirty heads turned in unison, thirty eyes widened, and thirty mouths opened. All at once they snarled. My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe. I fumbled, slipped, and landed on my rear. By the time I grabbed an arrow,
Blueeyes
had engaged them. He never stopped moving forward, never paused or hesitated. After killing one he moved to the center of the group, chopping and slicing, kicking them in the chests to keep them at a manageable distance. With every second the mass of hungry monsters thickened. They surrounded him, plodding inward, rotted teeth chomping. My first arrow hit pavement, ricocheted off a wall and landed in the dirt. It was way off target. Even with them crowded together, I hit nothing. A
gimp
grabbed a handful of
Blueeyes’
jacket and pulled it taut against his neck, nearly knocking him off his feet. He removed the monster’s arm from its torso and put a blade through its skull. I reached for another arrow and dropped it. When I finally got it into place, the bowstring slipped through my fingers. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I could barely see
Blueeyes.
A sea of
gimps
had swarmed him, an ugly, panting mass of gangrenous limbs. If he was alive, he wouldn’t be for long. I needed to do something. 

I didn’t drop the next arrow. My bowstring didn’t slip. My hands didn’t shake. Again, I squared my shoulders. Again, I inhaled and held. When I felt the wind on the back of my neck I listened, really listened, afforded myself the fraction of a second necessary. It tussled my hair, tossed it across my eyes and back again. It moved over the tips of my fingers, into my hands and along my arms, and steadied my muscles. My eyes narrowed, gaze settling on a single head among the masses, wispy dark hair moving the same as mine. When
Oneleg
moved, so did my arms, anticipating. Suddenly they didn’t seem so far away. They were close, so close I could touch them. It was
Oneleg’s
hair on my face, not my own. 

When I exhaled, I fired.

The arrow pierced his skull, passed through cleanly, exploded from the other side. No time for celebration. I grabbed another, fired again, and hit. The next shot was the same. The one after that hit a shoulder. The following attempt corrected the mistake. I didn’t stop. I didn’t notice the pain in my shoulder. My broken finger didn’t exist. With every shot the herd thinned. With every pull of my bowstring, another body fell. Seven headshots later I could see
Blueeyes.
He was still alive, still swinging, soaked in blood, with chunks of decomposing meat bouncing off his jacket, mucus and blood dripping from his face. When only two
gimps
remained, we each killed one. Just like that, it was over. I lowered my bow. My arms dropped to my sides, my shoulders slumped. I felt heavy, so wonderfully heavy, all over. When I allowed myself to inhale, the air smelled different. It burned my nostrils, left an aftertaste in my throat: pungent copper, liquefied steel. It was awful, wonderfully awful. For the first time in my life

I was alive. 

When I finally looked up,
Blueeyes
looked back.

Five minutes later, we were on the road again. My traveling companion didn’t bother to congratulate me. He never said
good job
or threw a
thanks
my way. I was fine with it. He didn’t need to. Nothing was different between us. Nothing had changed. The road was still there and we still needed to walk it. While I didn’t fully realize it at the time, he was giving me exactly what I needed. There wasn’t room for a
good job,
not in our world.
Good jobs
were silly, even for a ten year old. They were outdated.
Good jobs
were pointless and
good jobs
would only get us killed. We were too smart for
good jobs.
We had to be.

That night I slept with my bow at my side. Even gave it a name:
Pointycrunch.
When I told
Blueeyes,
he shook his head. When he turned away, I thought I heard him chuckle, couldn’t be sure. Blueeyes rarely chuckled. He might have burped.

The next morning I made
Pointycrunch
some arrows and tightened his string. He deserved it. While I ate, I kept him on my lap. When we hit the road, I threw him over my shoulder. When we rested, I practiced. When we walked, I practiced as well. I was aiming at things much smaller than before, further away. I was getting better. It was beginning to feel natural.
Pointycrunch
was becoming an extension of my arm. Where I pointed, he crunched. What I needed him to do, he did, always, without question. I was aiming at the doorknob of an abandoned house at the end of the block when
Blueeyes’
hand smacked me in the chest and knocked the air from my lungs. 

“Wha—”

The very same hand moved to my mouth. The other reached for his machete. Suddenly, he had me by the arm, dragging me to the trees. When I couldn’t keep up, he lifted me into the air. The moment we reached the tree line, he threw me to the dirt. I was spitting sand from my mouth when I heard it: a truck, a lot of trucks actually. They seemed far away, old engines popping, tired brakes grinding. I couldn’t tell where the noise was coming from, but it was getting closer. When I tried to stand,
Blueeyes
shoved me down. When I attempted to wiggle from his grasp, he shoved me harder. From behind the grayed branches of a dying bush, I watched the road. A massive jeep rolled into view, camouflaged in gray and white, reinforced with bits of scavenged steel, an obscenely large gun mounted to the rear. There were two men standing beside the weapon, bobbing as the truck moved, torsos thickened with body armor, gas masks obscuring their faces. A second jeep followed the first and a pair of trucks after that. Two cars, equally armored, brought up the rear. I’d never seen so many vehicles in one place, at least not ones that worked. 

When I spoke I whispered, not that they could have heard me over the noise. “Who are they?”

It took
Blueeyes
a moment to respond. His attention was on the road, on the small army passing by. “Don’t know.” 

“
Bloodboots?
”

“Maybe.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I’d nearly forgotten about
Bloodboots,
believed we had put enough distance between us, hoped I’d never see him again.

We watched the vehicles until they vanished into the fog. The moment we couldn’t hear them anymore,
Blueeyes
stood. He dug into his beard and scratched his chin, never relaxing the grip on his machete. “We can’t go that way.” His eyes moved from the road to the forest behind us. “Have to find another way around.”

I didn’t like the sound of that either. 

Blueeyes
sensed my unease and strangely tried to reassure me. “It’ll be fine. Still early. We have time.”

I wasn’t particularly crazy about him trying to calm me; it wasn’t like him. Even at ten, I knew he wasn’t telling me everything. Something was up. 

We spent the next hour trudging through the forest. I tried my best to get information from him. He wasn’t having it. When he actually responded, his answers were brief, cryptic. Sometimes he changed the subject. Other times he just told me to
shut up.
Whatever he knew he was keeping to himself.

The sunlight was waning when we found the road again. The fog had thickened, moist against my face. We were in an industrial area, massive structures for as far as I could see, cracked concrete and rusted steel, ghostly towers swallowed by the mist. 

Blueeyes
pointed to one of the larger buildings a bit further down, surrounded by a mostly collapsed fence, its four walls basically intact. “There…we’ll stay there tonight.”

I wasn’t sure why he chose it; it didn’t seem particularly inviting. Then again, not much did. It had to be better than a tree in the forest, than another night with the
howlers.
When
Blueeyes
began walking in its direction, I followed. We entered through a crack in the exterior where the walls had shifted. While it easily large enough for me,
Blueeyes
had to contort himself a bit. Once he was through, he helped me inside. The odor hit me immediately. It smelled terrible, old and crusty, rotted. It stank of dead. There was something artificial about the air, unlike anything I’d ever smelled, difficult to describe. Instead of investigating further, I squeezed my nose. The interior of the building was massive, packed with rows of oversized metal drums. Partially collapsed stairs were spread across the hanger and led to the upper levels, crisscrossed with the shadows of a decimated glass roof. 

Blueeyes motioned to a stairwell on the opposite end of the room, barely visible in the darkness. It seemed sturdy, at least more so than the others. “Up there. The higher we are the better. Should be saf—”

The shadows hissed.

We weren’t alone.

Blueeyes
raised his machete and pulled me close. “Shit.”

Before we could retreat, the eyes began to appear, so white they seemed to glow, so many of them. They emerged all at once, flashing lights from the shadows, formless orbs erupting from the void. Something screeched, a high-pitched wail sharp as glass echoing throughout the structure. My heart jumped, muscles stiffened. Instinctively, I reached for
Pointycrunch.

“Your weapons are unnecessary.” The voice that originated from the darkness shook me. I jumped and dropped
Pointycrunch.
There was something about the inflection, the tone unlike anything I’d ever heard. Every word was stretched, every syllable desperately clinging to the one before. I could almost hear a flickering tongue.

I moved behind
Blueeyes,
hiding myself behind his leg. The white eyes stared, blinked, more of them popping into existence. Twenty pairs transformed to thirty in seconds. Thirty became forty. One of them was moving toward us, strangely brighter than the rest and growing larger.
Blueeyes
reached for the shotgun strapped to his back and pointed the muzzle in their direction.

Even with a shotgun pointed at it, the voice from the shadows remained steady. “Despite what you may have heard, we have no interest in devouring children. We are not
animals
.”

The darkness parted and something vaguely resembling a man stepped into the light. His skin was grayish-white, flaky like chalk, bloated veins like the fissures in pavement running along his skull. He was dressed in filthy rags, hanging loosely from wiry shoulders. When he looked at me, he smiled—at least, I think it was a smile. His lips curled upward, dry skin cracked. There were rows of yellow teeth extending deep into his mouth and down his throat, at least fifteen teeth, each tooth sharper than the last. His arms were gangly things, disproportionate to the rest of his body, fingers reaching his knees. His entire body was a bony mess of awkward angles. Every time he moved new lumps appeared, new bones threatening to break the surface.