Chapter 7
Nobody says much as I leave the outpost with James, but I can feel their eyes on us as we go. Bugbug drifts behind, seemingly happy to stay quiet when I’m not alone.
“Why were they looking at us like that?” I ask once we’re outside the gates.
“Before we showed up with marks and powers, it was apparently pretty common for hunting parties to go out and never come back. From the sound of it, there used to be over a hundred in this group.”
Without us and our powers, people clearly weren’t meant to survive this place. So why the hell did they get put here and made to wait months before we arrived? Even if I didn’t feel driven to experiment with this new power and grow stronger, I’d owe it to these people to try anyway.
“Why do you help them?” I ask when we’ve been walking in silence a few minutes.
James thinks for a moment before answering. “Self-interest. Obligation. I don’t know, really. When those… things took me from the war, it was going south for us. Pinned behind enemy lines. Nightly raids were thinning us out, and we were pretty sure they were lining up artillery and going to blow us to pieces the next morning. Maybe I feel guilty. I still don’t know if they took my men, too, or if they’re still back there. Back then,” he adds, shaking his head at the absurdity of it. “Feels like I was the lucky one getting put here. Like I guess I owe it to the others to help if I can. Fuck if I know,” he says with a sigh. “What about you?”
I give the question some thought. “Honestly? I might have been the world’s loneliest man before this. My best friend was… well, a statement on how lonely I was,” I say, deciding not to admit I had been talking to the skeleton of a man I had to kill for several months. “So, yeah. I may not know Lana and the others well, yet, but they can count on me. I know that. I’m not going to waste this.”
“Well, you’re better company than Halfdan and Kato. I think we should stick together here.”
“Agreed,” I say, trying not to smile and look as desperately happy as I feel at the idea of making a friend—even if he didn’t use that exact word. I’ll kill him if he betrays me, of course, but still. A friend.
“How will we know we’ve found the monster’s tracks, by the way?” I ask.
“We’ll know. You could lay down in one of the footprints and not touch either end.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah. Whatever it is, it’s big. Probably why it just leaves bloodstains in the snow behind when it catches people. Don’t know if it eats them, takes them, or what. All we know is it leaves nothing behind. Except that sphere back at camp, that is.”
“And you’re sure it only comes out at night?”
“Reasonably sure.”
For the next half hour, I find my eyes searching the snow-covered trees for any signs of movement. Eventually, James stops and holds up his hand. “Here,” he says.
I come up to his side and look down, jaw falling open when I see it. There’s a massive print in the snow that looks…
“Human,” he whispers, echoing my thoughts.
“People don’t get that big,” I say stupidly. James wasn’t exaggerating. Even the big-toe alone is larger than my whole head. If a person made this, they’d be several stories tall. Bigger than the trees, easily.
“This one did,” he says with a kind of nonchalance I wish I had.
“Come on,” he says. “We need to follow it for a bit and see how close it came to our camp last night.”
Reluctantly, I follow behind James. Bugbug drifts back, and once we’re out of earshot, I whisper to him. “What the fuck made these, Bugbug?”
“Big human,” Bugbug says.
“That thing would be the size of a building.”
“Yes. Bugbug suggests avoiding big human until stronger.”
“No shit,” I whisper to myself. “Why did you guys put us in here with this stuff?”
Bugbug’s mouth moves, but no sound comes out.
I’m about to press him for more when I see movement in the trees to our right. I freeze, chest constricting. “James,” I hiss, waving frantically.
He notices, draws his gun, and slips toward a nearby tree in one smooth motion. He’s already aiming down his sights and gesturing for me to take cover beside him. I grab cover behind a frozen rock, peeking out from behind.
In the distance, three humanoid shapes move jerkily through the snow. But they’re not exactly human. At a glance, they could be mistaken for people, but that only makes it worse. Each is wrong in its own, increasingly horrible way.
They have gray skin and dark, rotted out eye sockets with black holes in the center of their chests. Holes where their eggs should be, I realize. Their clothes fall off them in rotting clumps and their bodies are misshapen.
One has long fingers tipped with claws that dangle from its right hand while its left arm looks as if it has melted into its own torso.
Another’s head has calcified into a horn-like protrusion, its facial features pushed off to one side and stretched nauseatingly. It has small, dangling arms and thick muscular legs.
The last has a neck that has stretched out like hot rubber, its bald head hanging upside down, mouth stuck open as if in a permanent, silent scream.
“Oh…” I whisper.
“Empties,” James replies. “They’re too close for me to drop them all. Here.”
He tosses the long knife to me again. I fumble it twice in the air, then manage to get a hold of it without cutting myself open. I shoot him a look. “What kind of person throws a knife at someone?” I whisper yell.
“I threw it to you.”
I wave him off, already straining to sense my left arm. I can’t be certain, but I think I can feel the hunger again. I just wish I knew if that meant my blocking power was ready. “I’m pretty sure my power’s ready.”
James eyes me. “Pretty sure?”
“We’re good,” I say, feeling a little sick to my stomach. I can handle this. I’ve got whatever I absorbed from the fire in the cabin. James has a gun. We’ll be fine.
He watches me a few more seconds, then nods, as if satisfied. “Alright… buy me time and I’ll drop them. If they get you… Try to throw me that knife before you’re too dead to do it.”
I can’t help grinning. I don’t know if James is actually so carefree about the idea of risking our lives, but there’s something infectious about it. “Fire aw—”
A gunshot explodes to my left before I can finish my sentence. The empty with the drooping neck takes a hit in the forehead that sends its head whipping around its body like a tetherball on a string.
The other two are charging before it even hits the ground.
I step forward, trying to urge the stored charges in my chest to my right hand. Orange light glows and three of my fingers ripple with flame. I don’t feel the heat, but I do feel an instinctive understanding of what I can do with this. I can shoot the fire outward.
I raise my shaking hand and point one finger toward the charging empty and push.
A jet of fire like napalm squirts from my finger, landing well short of the charging enemy but igniting the snow and a nearby tree. To my left, James pauses as he reloads for his second shot, attention fixed on my flaming fingers. His expression is a mixture of horror and awe. “Since when do you have fire fingers?”
“Don’t worry about it!” I shout, my attention on the still-charging empties. Only two of my fingers are still wrapped in flame. I aim my middle finger and push the energy out again. More flames arc out, and this time they catch the long-fingered empty in a diagonal slash from shoulder to hip. It ignites like it’s made of kindling, body making a sudden woosh sound, arms swaying as an inhuman screech fills the air.
I dive to the side just as the charging one rumbles past, horn aimed for the place where my chest just was. As soon as I’m down, James fires his gun.
I roll over, spitting out snow. The horned empty is bleeding from one leg, but it’s already turning to run for me again. I’m scrambling to my feet, but I'm not fast enough. The empty moves with supernatural speed, legs a blur as it charges. I fall back, left arm raised to block.
It slams against my arm and the glow of my power flashes like lightning. I’m thrown backward from the force of the impact, spinning through the air like a ragdoll until I crash stomach-first into a tree.
There’s another crack and James is yelling something.
I’m on my hands and knees, head spinning. The empty is getting ready to sprint again, but it’s looking at James now. It’s too fast for me to hit when it’s moving, so I’ve got one shot.
I aim my last flaming finger at the empty and push. Liquid sprays, arcing lower than I’d planned but catching it across the calves.
It starts sprinting as the fire spreads up its body. James sees it coming, eyes going wide as he puts his back to the tree, bracing for impact. There’s no time for him to dodge. But the empty veers left at the last moment, its momentum sending it slamming into a thick tree. Its body sprays in every direction on impact, flaming chunks of gray flesh raining down or sticking to trees and dangling from branches. The boom of impact is so loud my ears ring.
I flop on my back, neck burning as I feel my level change again. I reach up to touch it, smiling as I read it with my fingertips. “Level 5!” I call out.
James emerges from behind his tree, surveying the carnage with a look of mild indifference. “Fire fingers?” he asks, walking up to me and loading a bullet in his gun. The number on his neck is an “8” now.
“Yeah,” I say, already feeling the strange energy of whatever I absorbed from the horned empty in my chest. I’m itching to get back to camp and test more. Can I hold more than three attacks now that I’m level 5?
“What?” James asks, not looking up from the check he’s doing of his rifle. He’s pulling on things, twisting the stock, and looking it over as if he expects to find something has broken. “Why do you have that look on your face?”
“There’s no look on my face,” I say.
Bugbug floats near the dead empty, lights emerging from his ship and scanning body parts. I watch him, wondering what he thinks he’s going to find.
And then there’s a loud thump.
James and I both look up.
“What was that?” I ask.
“We made a lot of noise. Might’ve woken something out here.”
The thumping is getting closer. I look down at my feet when I feel the ground tremble through my boots.
In the distance, the trees sway and a dark shape moves between them. A shape that looks too large to be right. James lifts his gun, squinting down the scope. He lowers it, stares for a moment, and then jerks his head back in the direction of camp. “I think it's time to run."