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She moved through the dusk at a crawl, the squelching summer mud dragging her back with every step she took. It caked her boots up to the calves and made the journey towards the hill grueling and perilous; especially with all the BOWs lurking in the vicinity, courtesy of SEVANT Inc. One got the jump on her at the bottom of the hill; however, the thing only looked at her with its clouded, fish-like eyes before lumbering on. Later she spied another creature galloping up a rocky slope before disappearing behind a ridge. She saw no other signs of life in the past two hours, not even birds or insects. Only shy chirping betrayed their presence.
BANG!
The echo of the shot rolled down the valley before disappearing in the distance. Was it a hunter? Or security from the underground facility she was looking for, gunning down a runaway BOW?
Claire pulled the collar of her jacket up, a meager protection against the wind assaulting her neck; at least it also drove away the hordes of mosquitoes. God knows she didn’t want to take her chances with the tiny bastards and what they carried inside them. Normal viruses were bad enough, but anything human-created? No, thank you, once was quite enough.
Her phone buzzed against her chest. She cursed wordlessly when she read the name flashing on the screen, her thumb hovering over the ‘reject’ button; she did, however, dodge the last three calls. Keeping it up ran the risk of Leon getting suspicious. She looked around, eyes straining to see any sign of movement, but nothing; even the bugs at last began their concert, as if the gunshot had driven away some sort of monster. Possibly a BOW.
A shiver ran up her spine as the wind licked her sweaty back.
She pressed accept, focusing on keeping the cold-induced stutter to a minimum. “Hey, you.”
“Hey, you.” Well, he sounded jolly. “How are you doing?”
“I’m doing just fine, thanks for asking, but I thought you were on an assignment.”
“Well, my fiancée didn’t pick up her phone and I was missing her voice. So how is your girls’ trip going?”
Claire bit her lip. This was not going to be a short call like she had hoped. “It’s beautiful. I’m really sorry I couldn’t bring you. We went to see the palace today. Did you know they had plumbing?”
The tiniess pang of guilt constricted her throat; omitting details was one thing, but lying to him never felt right. Perhaps it was her parents’ effect on her, but she believed honesty to be one of the pillars supporting a relationship. If only the men in her life didn’t hound her about taking too many risks… Then again, the same could be said about her as well.
“In Crete?”
“I’ll show you pictures. It’s amazing.”
“U-hu.”
Was it just her, or was Leon not really listening to her fake story?
Half-fake. She did go to Crete with a friend of hers, but not even three days in her supervisor called her about an urgent investigation into just what SEVANT was doing in Scotland…
“We are going out to dinner in an hour, but the cicadas are already singing. Can you hear them?”
“No.”
“That’s too bad.” She stopped for a moment then added, almost truthfully, “I wish you were here.”
“Well, the way you describe it I can almost see it.” His voice was low, as if concentrating on something other than Claire.
Odd. Wasn’t he the one who wanted to talk to her?
“You flatter me, good sir,” she said nonchalantly, only her voice breaking the silence. An ominous weight settled over her shoulders; weren’t the hills alive with the sound of insect-music just a moment ago?
“Claire?”
“Yeah?”
“Get down.”
She looked at her phone bamboozled then saw it; a shadow on the ground, moving swiftly towards her.
A fucking flying BOW.
She dropped just as the shot rang out. The BOW crashed in a tangle of intestines and feathers just a couple feet from her, the chicken-like feet armed with vicious claws still flexing and unclenching; then, the thing flapped its wings one last time and lay still.
The brown muck now covered her up to her elbows.
“I see a shack just a bit further up,” Leon said, as if nothing of not happened. “Can you get there?”
“Yeah,” she said, not bothering to hide the sourness in her voice. “How long have you been watching me?”
“The past hour or so. You do know you are going the wrong way?”
“Nice of you to tell me.”
Leon only laughed. “I know. See you there.”
The line disconnected and she was alone again, struggling to get her foot unstuck from the mud without sacrificing her boot. It hit something hard. The thing looked like a rock at first glance; a second one revealed it to be the caricature of a man, his face flushed red behind his white beard. In his hand he held a lamp.
A garden gnome, in the middle of nowhere. Not at all suspicious.
The small shack stood at the edge of a precipice, providing perfect view of the road and the side of the mountain. It had beaten earth for a floor beaten, but at least it was dry. There was wood stocked in the back and a fireplace in the middle. She thought about getting a fire going to ease the chill in her bones, but decided against it; she was lucky so far, but the light of the flames might draw something much worse in than what she already encountered. And with the sun going down, the light would be visible from much farther…
She froze as the clammy hands of fear reached up to squeeze her stomach. Sundown was in half an hour, but here they had probably only ten more minutes of daylight. Leon wasn’t going to make it. He was going to have to make his way through a world in which nothing was what they seemed to be; but the monsters’ teeth might turn out to be very real.
Stop that, the logical part of her said. He is trained for that. More so than you are.
Sure. He was. But accidents happen and they did just recently get engaged; surely, she was allowed to worry a little?
The way changes creeped up on them still freaked her out a little, though. Before they were ‘them’, she had no issue throwing herself into danger; now she found herself thinking twice about taking certain risks, and when work forced them apart, she had to force herself not to check her phone every ten minutes when he missed a check-in. Domesticity was getting to her. The same was true for him. She had caught him making long term plans, such as buying a house, adopting pets, looking up patches of land for sale on which they could build a cabin for weekend getaways…
The shadows outside grew and stretched until they at last engulfed the land, revealing the first twinkling stars above the horizon. Not far from them, the moon was rising, its pallid face blocked out for a moment by an owl gliding westward. Half an hour later, the inky-black night gobbled up the last traces of indigo in the sky.
Something scraped at the back wall of the shack.
A mouse, she told herself, her right hand sliding to her right, the left switching on her flashlight. Perhaps a rat.
Perfect carriers. Very efficient BOWs. And the scientists of SEVANT, per TerraSave’s sources, were more interested in utilizing animals than humans. Was species-hopping possible? No one knew.
A shot disrupted her train of thought. Two, three. Four. Silence. Her heartbeat pumped in her throat.
Then, slowly, a human-looking figure emerged from the darkness. Average height, but lean, walking with an odd hitch.
She hesitated before the door.
Could be anything. Anyone.
The figure fell.
It could be a BOW.
She grabbed the handle.
I have a gun. But what if a gun is no good? It wouldn’t be the first time.
A luminescent shape was coming up the slope now, its gait leisurely.
It could be Leon.
Caution be damned, she tore the door open and dashed for the place where she saw the first figure fall.
It was Leon. He lay on a patch of grass, his breathing coming in sharp and quick gasps, his skin bleached a stark white by the moon. His eye fluttered open when she crouched.
“Hey,” she said softly, ignoring the way the sinking feeling in her stomach, “We need to go.”
“You are really pretty but I got a fiean… Fine…” A stupid smile pulled his lips upward. “Almost-wife.”
Was he really playing around or did he truly not recognize her?
It doesn’t matter, she decided. They had to be gone before the thing tracking Leon arrived. Which meant getting him to stand.
“I know. I’m taking you to her. But I need you to stand up.”
“Five more minutes...” he slurred, turning his face away.
He gasped when she jabbed her finger into his left shoulder, into the old wound, his eyes clearing up. “Claire?”
“Back with me? We need to go.”
“Can’t feel my leg.”
“So use the other one.”
“Right,” he said, his expression relaxing as if he just had a revelation. His face scrunched with the effort of pulling himself up.
Sixty steps. That’s how far they had to go, but Leon’s useless left leg slowed their progress considerably.
After thirty-five steps, Claire’s muscles began to complain about the added weight. She grit her teeth, adjusted the arm around her neck, and they hobbled on.
Something crunched not far behind them. They had five more steps to take when they heard the excited, low chitter.
Leon fell through the door and she slammed it shut, then leaned against it, gasping.
“Here. This will keep you safe.”
It took her a moment to realize that Leon was holding something up in his trembling hands; garden gnome. Twin to the one her foot caught on. She took it gingerly, and his arms dropped like lead weights. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“The eyes,” he whispered. Whatever strength he mustered up for the final stretch was seeping away. “They are scared of the eyes.”
Claws clattered on the glass pane. She held the gnome in front of herself as she made her way over to the window, the BOW backing away as she advanced. The large glassy eyes followed the gnome as if mesmerized by the lamp in its hands. Its mandibles clicked as it bobbed its head like an agitated horse. After what seemed like a lifetime it turned slowly and disappeared into the night.
She lowered the gnome onto the windowsill, praying that Leon was right about the odd little watchman, and it was not a one-off, then dropped down next to the man’s still form. She pulled her first aid kit from her bag.
Assess, then treat.
She didn’t like the excessive veil of sweat coating her face, but it was his left side that put a knot into her stomach. The trousers were torn and stuck to the skin where the mud mixed with blood, the two puncture wounds—shallow, but wide, their edges tattered—almost disappearing under the grime. Leon’s hands twitched uselessly when she began to peel away the ruined fabric to be able to better clean the wounds. The skin around them was already swelling. At least there was no smell coming from them, other than iron.
Soon, Leon began to shiver.
He might be infected, a small voice said in her mind as she dabbed some antiseptic onto cotton swabs. He might turn. What then?
Shut up.
Claire bit her lips and set to fastening the gauze around his thigh. The flow of blood was slowing down, which was good, but he was still trembling, his skin almost shimmering with heat, and it seemed to be getting worse. She had to get a fire going, consequences be damned.
He might die.
SHUT UP.
It took a couple of tries, but a tiny flame sparked into life, dancing around in its bed with vigor as it grew, chasing away the chill and the shadows into the crevices of the shack. Leon’s face contorted as she pulled his head into her lap. She ran her fingers through his hair, thinking about how she had to…
She must have fallen asleep, because when she came to, the fire was almost down to embers, the red-hot glow lending an otherworldly sheen to the blue eyes staring at her.
“Claire? What are you doing here?”
So, he wasn’t pretending outside. She touched his forehead–it was still too hot.
She took a couple of sticks and threw them onto the starving flames.
“You told me to go to the shack.”
“But you are supposed to be in Crete,” he said incredulously with chattering teeth.
“I lied. Do you have something for fever in those pockets of yours? I forgot to restock.”
“I’m fine. I don’t need it.”
“Leon, there are holes in your leg that weren’t there yesterday,” she said. “You are feverish and lost time. Yes, you do need it.”
“Green pouch, inner pocket.” A shiver rocked his body. “Y’know, I changed my mind. I don’t wanna honeymoon in Scotland. We should go to Crete. See some ancient plumbing…”
“Noted.” She pressed the small pill into his mouth. He swallowed with way too much practice, then turned to look at her with too-bright eyes.
“Can we get married sooner?”
“And lose all the deposits? I think not. Besides, you should get better first.”
The excitement drained from his face. “Damn. Okay.”
“It’s only six more months.”
“I don’t think I can wait that long,” he said, inching his head closer to her belly, one hand fastened around her waist. She laughed, kissing his head.
“Well, you gotta. We still have to plan the floral arrangements.”
Leon didn’t answer. Sleep had claimed him once more and evened out his breathing. Something small and black glinted in his ear; his comm. He didn’t even stir when she pried it out.
It was time to arrange for an extraction.
They had a dance to practice, after all.