Read Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan Online

Authors: Steven Novak

Tags: #Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian

Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan (6 page)

BOOK: Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan
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I’d never seen anyone die. I’d seen an awful lot in my years, but I’d never seen someone die, not like that, not murdered, not so close. My body reacted independent of my brain. It did exactly what I didn’t want it to do, exactly what
Blueeyes
was hoping to avoid. I bit down on my traveling companion’s hand, tasted blood. Suddenly I was standing. Suddenly I was screaming. It was stupid. It was childish. Mother would have been disappointed; father would have shaken his head.
Blueeyes
tried to pull me back down, tried to minimize the damage. It was too little. It was too late.
Scarface
turned, looked right at me. Our eyes met.

So stupid.

Before I knew what was happening,
Blueeyes
scooped me up, pulled me to his side, and ran. I was like baggage in his arms, useless baggage, dead weight bobbing wildly, limbs flailing as we hurried into the forest.
Scarface
screamed something; someone responded with a louder scream. A bullet whizzed past my head, hit the bark of a tree beside me, shot splinters into my hair. Another pelted the dirt at
Blueeyes’
feet, threw it back in my face. Within seconds they were all around us, hitting everything, a violent rain of steel laying waste to the forest. One of them tore through
Blueeyes’
shoulder. He jerked forward, nearly losing his grip on me. Despite the injury, he never stopped moving, or ducking, or jumping.
Blueeyes
moved with incredible precision, as if he’d lived in the forest his entire life, knew every fallen tree or oversized rock. Yet, no matter how fast he ran, I still heard the voices, heard
Scarface
. He was following us. He wasn’t giving up.  When we came upon an old brick wall,
Blueeyes
hopped over it. He ducked into an abandoned cabin, hustled through a living room and a kitchen, and out the back door. We passed a shed, then returned to the thick of the forest. The gunshots began to disappear. The voices faded away.
Blueeyes
kept moving, over a small hill and down the other side, sliding, struggling to remain on his feet, to keep from letting me slip from his arms. It wasn’t until we reached a cliff that he stopped. There was nowhere left to run. 

Still dangling from his side, I gazed over the edge of the gargantuan ravine impeding our progress. It was massive, at least two hundred feet of jagged rock leading nowhere but down, a barely noticeable river at the bottom. Climbing was impossible, heading back into the forest even more so.

Blueeyes
lowered me to the ground. “Shit.” We were trapped.

“Dead end, asshole.”
Scarface
stepped from the trees, massive chest heaving, struggling to catch his breath, gun in hand.

The sound of his voice stabbed me in the chest, sent a chill across my body and into my legs.
Blueeyes
turned to face him. He placed his hand on my shoulder, slowly maneuvered me behind him, transforming himself into a human shield. His fingers coiled into fists, cold knuckles cracked. 

Again
Scarface
smiled. “Heh.” 

His eyes moved from me to
Blueeyes
and his smile disappeared. He readjusted the grip on his gun. “Travis has been looking for you two since the
howler
incident…sort of obsessed. He wants you alive. Personally, I don’t give a shit. Either way, you’re coming with me.”

When
Blueeyes
spoke, he growled. “Not going anywhere.”

Scarface
lifted his gun and pointed it in our direction. Steel clicked. “Wasn’t giving you an option, Hoss.”

In a single movement,
Blueeyes
retrieved his knife, dropped his shoulders, and barreled forward. The gun fired. A bullet tore through his arm, sent his knife flying. I dropped to the grass, covered my head. Before
Scarface
could get off another round their bodies collided, meshed into a grunting, snarling heap of violence. They hit the ground, bounced off a rock and rolled.
Scarface
yelled.
Blueeyes
snarled. A cloud of dirt engulfed them.
Blueeyes
punched and Scarface punched back. The moment
Blueeyes
was on top, he dropped his elbow to
Scarface’s
nose. Bone shattered, cartilage turned to dust. A fountain of blood spewed forward. When Scarface was on top, he kneed
Blueeyes
in the groin, butted him with his bloody forehead, tried to stick his thumb in his eye. His fingers went to
Blueeyes’
mouth, ripping at his cheek, pinning his head to the dirt. In the distance I heard voices, lots of voices getting closer.
Blueeyes
heard them too. Somehow he reversed position, ended up on
Scarface’s
chest. He had the advantage. There wasn’t much time. He didn’t hesitate. 

He never hesitated.

One after another, his fists pummeled
Scarface’s
head until they were soaked in blood, until his own skin began to peel away and flap in the breeze. I could hear the thuds, every one of them, hollow and deep, squishy. When his fists became useless,
Blueeyes
used elbows. It wasn’t long before
Scarface
stopped struggling. His hands fell to the dirt. His eyes rolled back into his head, blood seeping from meaty wounds, cascading down the sides of his face, soaking the soil. Instead of growling he gurgled crimson, limbs limp, neck wobbly. When a bullet pelted the ground beside him,
Blueeyes
looked up from his fallen foe. 

There was a man at the tree line, rifle in hand, nozzle still smoking. He was struggling to reload. He put his hand to his mouth and whistled for his companions. “Over here!”

Blueeyes
rushed to my side, lifted me up, and put me on his back. “Hold on! Do you hear me? Whatever you do, do not let go!”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, legs around his waist, mashed my cheek against his bloody shoulder. The rifle fired. 

We jumped.

 

7.

It’s a weird thing, weightlessness: unique. My stomach shot upward, lodged itself in my throat. I tried, tried to catch my breath and hold it. It was already gone. For a second I heard nothing, felt nothing. My hair whipped, clothes flapped. The collar of my jacket tugged against my neck. I held
Blueeyes
tighter than I’d ever held anything in my life. I locked my hands, crossed my feet, and chomped a handful of his coat with my teeth. The wind rattled my ears, worked its way inside and tickled my brain. My fingers went numb. Try as it might, the fall failed to shake me loose. The landing, however, succeeded marvelously. When we finally hit the water, it hurt. I felt it in my feet first, then my legs. The pain shot directly into my back, my arms, and my fingers. We might as well have landed on concrete. The liquid engulfed me, bitter cold.
Blueeyes
slipped from my grasp. 

Everything went black.

Once again I felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing. Up and down no longer had meaning. Out became in. Warmth seemed silly. The moving water grabbed hold, violently tossed me. It mashed me into something solid and then into something else. When I screamed, I inhaled my surroundings. It filled my lungs, choking me from the inside out. For a moment there was a tease of air. Frozen wind stabbed my face, liquid lungs spewed. I screamed, reaching for everything, anything. The icy water reached back, took hold and refused to let go, pulled me under once again. My arm smacked something stiff, instantly went numb. Again I tasted air, and again it was taken away. It was no use. I was going to die. The
nasties
weren’t going to kill me. The
nasties
wouldn’t have anything to do with it. I wasn’t going to be beaten, or eaten, or left in pieces somewhere along the road. I was going to drown. I was going to die in a river. I was going to die alone, just like Mother, just like Father.

Or not.

Something snagged my jacket, hoisted me from the swirling depths, and pulled me to solid ground. I couldn’t see, couldn’t open my eyes. Breathing was impossible. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need to see the face of my savior to know who it was.

“Come on! Come on!” So gravelly, that voice, so far away yet so recognizable.  
Blueeyes. 

There was a sharp pain in my chest and then another, palms hammering my ribs. The vaguest sensation of lips, foreign breath in my lungs. 

“God damn it! God damn it, come on!”

Everything inside rushed upward, coughed from my mouth before splashing onto my face. When I sat up, he rolled me to my side, patting me on the back. “You’re okay. Cough it out. Going to be fine. Get it all out.”

In between the hacking coughs, I apologized. I told him I was sorry, said I’d never do it again and begged for forgiveness. I meant every word of it. It was stupid, screaming. It nearly got us killed. I needed to stop being stupid. 

He told me to
shut up.

Though every part of me was sore, and bruised, and cold, and stiff, I forced myself to stand. My legs wanted the opposite, had other ideas, nearly went limp. I told them to
shut up.
Blueeyes
helped. He made sure I was capable of remaining upright before he let me go. When I was steady, he turned his attention to the surrounding forest. 

When he sighed, I could see his breath. He ran his hand through his hair, across his face, and down his beard. “We can’t be down here, not this late. This is
howler
territory.”

Through weary eyes, I gazed at the sky. It was dark, getting darker. Night was approaching. The familiar roar of a
howler
echoed throughout the canyon, bounced off the surrounding cliffs and back again. When I shivered, it had nothing to do with the temperature.

Blueeyes
grabbed my arm. “We need to move.”

To my surprise we moved further into the forest.
Blueeyes
claimed there wasn’t enough time to make our way out before nightfall, and wandering around in the dark wasn’t an option. We searched for at least fifteen minutes before he found what he was looking for. It was a tree, the largest and healthiest we’d come across, sturdy. 

He pointed to a branch thirty feet up. “There.”

I was confused. “There what?”

“That’s where were staying.”  His hand landed between my shoulder blades, nudged me forward. “Climb up.”

It seemed high, really high.

When I didn’t move, he nudged me again. “Anything remotely resembling human in those things is gone. They’re big and fast. They’re also terrible climbers. The higher we are, the safer we are. Stay down here and we’re food.” 

Before I could object, he placed his hands under my armpits and lifted me to a branch just above his head. I pulled myself up. I slid along the tree’s limb, legs on either side, hugged the trunk, and managed to stand. I couldn’t let
Blueeyes
down, not again, not after the screaming incident. I wouldn’t let him down again. After taking a moment to gather myself, I climbed. The pain in my arm was unbearable. My fingers hurt. When I moved them, I thought I would scream. When I grabbed hold of the branch above me, they hurt more. When I pulled myself up to the next branch, I wanted to cry. I wanted to collapse, drop to my knees and sob until the pain went away. By the time I reached my destination, I wanted to die. 

Blueeyes
was right behind me. He moved to a similar branch to my right. As he settled in, the limb bent forward, bark chipped loose, aged wood cracked.

“Will that hold you?”

“It’ll be fine.”

He reached above him, pulled away a few longer, straighter branches from the trunk, and set them on his lap. After retrieving the knife from his belt he began sharpening the ends into points. I looked through the twisted treetop above at the darkening clouds. The moonlight had all but disappeared. Darkness was closing in. Soon I wouldn’t be able to see ten feet away. Soon the
howlers
would emerge, hungry, screaming at the sky. The pain in my forearm was getting worse. I bit my lower lip, winced and massaged it gently.

Blueeyes
noticed. “Are you alright?”

“M-my arm.” I didn’t want to tell him.

He grabbed my hand, pulled it to him. “Let me see.” 

For at least a minute his fingers poked my skin.

“Does it hurt here?” 

“How about here?”

“What if I do this?”

All of them hurt, everything he did, everywhere he poked. I tried my best to hide the pain, determined not to cry. I just wanted him to stop.

He let go of my arm. “Not broken…hairline fracture, maybe.” He removed his jacket, put it around my waist, and tied the arms around the trunk of the tree. “In case you fall asleep…in case the
howlers
find us and try shaking you loose.” It was tight, so tight I could barely breathe. I wasn’t going anywhere.

When he was done, he returned to his knife and his sticks and the task at hand. The clouds roared. A stiff breeze shook me to the core. I shivered—couldn’t stop shivering—and buried my face in the neck of my jacket.
Blueeyes
didn’t seem to notice the cold or the fact that he was soaking wet and no longer had a jacket. He never noticed. He never complained.

“Won’t you be cold?”

“I’ll be fine.”

The arm of his sweatshirt was soaked in blood, some dried, some fresh, black and red cascading from the bullet wound in his shoulder.

“Does it hurt?” 

It looked like it hurt.

“What?”

“Your shoulder, does it hurt?”

“It’s fine.”

His response was always the same. No matter how he was feeling or how much pain he was in, his response was the same. The weather was of no importance, the bullet barely a bother. The
howlers
were riled up, barking back and forth, moaning at the hidden moon, empty-bellied. I stopped asking questions. At some point during the night, somehow I fell asleep. 

It was the growling that woke me.

When I opened my eyes,
Blueeyes’
hand was over my mouth. His attention was on the ground below, on a shadow moving through the grass, massive, hunched, plodding on all fours. It was a
howler.
My heart sputtered, stopped. I couldn’t blink. Couldn’t breathe. The creature sniffed the dirt, lifted its head for a moment, scanning the forest. It was so big, so thick, yet it moved with such grace, so deliberate.  It was a weapon, muscles tensed, ready to strike. The corner of its lip quivered and raised, bent teeth exposed, drool slipping from its snout. When it found nothing, the
howler
returned its nose to the ground. It could sense our presence, the faintest hint of our after-scent in the dirt. It knew we were somewhere, it just didn’t know where. A paw the size of my head and claws the size of my nose kicked the dirt in frustration. I looked away, turned my eyes to the trees and the clouds, stared into the darkness and tried to pretend it was all that existed. I couldn’t bring myself to see the creature below, even to acknowledge its existence. I looked everywhere else, at everything else. When I couldn’t even handle that anymore, I closed my eyes. 

BOOK: Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan
13.1Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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