11 Sam
“Saleuk!” I shouted, patting his cheeks.
When he finally wasn’t even opening his eyes, I gave him a good slap that would wake the dead.
Nothing.
“Shit. Shit!”
Looking around, I tried to figure out how I would get us through the night. If another one of those big, spindly creatures showed up, I would lose my mind trying to kill it and I’d probably just mess it up and we’d both die.
“Ok,” I said, taking a deep breath.
I slid the pistol into my back pocket and then did the first thing I thought I should. That was pulling the little spines out of Saleuk’s side. It took some force. They were hooked on the ends and ripped his suit on the way out.
“Hey, now we’re matching,” I laughed humorlessly, tossing the spines into the water.
Next, I pressed the back of my hand to his forehead. He felt cool and damp, but like me, the mist had covered him in a thin layer of sweat.
“What the hell temperature are you supposed to even be?” I muttered, shaking my head. “I’m not a doctor.”
I went over a thousand different things in my head that I could do to help. His complexion, which was usually a light shade of purple or flushed, was now a bright, moon-white and I didn’t know if that was how they were when they slept or if it had something to do with the toxin.
Glancing at the river bank, I saw black mud where the water met the land. The same mud my foot got stuck in before the horrible creature lunged. Evil mud. But it was clay-like and maybe it would suck out the toxin.
I knew nothing, but I was going to try. First, I reached into my bag and pulled out the tiny pruning knife. I used it to slice open a larger seam in his suit. Or, that was the plan at least. My knife did nothing to the suit. It was like trying to cut rubber using a rolling pin.
“Ok?” I surrendered, tossing my knife back in the bag. “You guys have a release somewhere on these things. I know you do.”
I started searching his suit for one of those round little dials that controlled the material. They had several, if I remembered correctly, that controlled different portions. I found one in the middle of his chest where the light veins met and circled my finger around it. A little blue light followed my touch in a full rotation and in an instant, the entire top half of his suit receded into a thin harness that he wore across his chest and over his shoulders.
He was still wearing his captain’s jacket, but the front was open so all I had to do was move it aside to see the puncture wounds on his hip. I did just that and was dumbstruck at the sight of his bare, white chest.
Valerians had a strange, near-translucent quality about them. Blue veins were almost visible under the surface of his flesh, but it was beautiful in an otherworldly, fantastical sense. He was all chorded muscle and hard abs save for the bone-like plating all valerians had over their chest. Saleuk’s was subtle. It was a natural armor to protect the two hearts they had.
Distracted, I reached a hand out slowly and traced the lines of the plating with my fingers, thankful to see his chest rising and falling with breath.
God, he was beautiful.
Under his ribs were three shallow ridges that traced the contours of his body and the same ridges were on his neck and under his high cheekbones. And extending from his forehead was what valerians called their crown, three graceful points that followed the curve of their scalp partway over their hair. When they changed color, the tips of the crown were always more vivid.
“Shit,” I hissed, stealing my hand away. “Mud. I need mud.”
I ran over to the bank of the river and scooped some of the clay up in my palm. When I returned to Saleuk, I carefully spread a thick layer of mud over his wounds. Blood was weeping from the punctures in slow but continual streams and I hoped the mud would help that, too.
Shit, what if I was making it worse?
A rustling in the trees made me jump up and pull the pistol from my pocket. I waited, aiming the pistol in one direction and then the other. There was no movement, but there also wasn’t any cover. I was screwed.
I managed to drag Saleuk closer to the little cliffside so I could have my back against something and keep a lookout. Not that it would help much. Even with my dim torch, I couldn’t see anything worth noting. Something could be watching us and I’d have no clue.
After a while, I moved to put Saleuk’s head in my lap. There was a minuscule sense of comfort in touching him. It was easier to make sure he was breathing that way.
“You better wake up,” I said to him. “Because if I die out here, I will haunt you forever.”
I found myself absently stroking my thumbs down his cheeks as I stared warily into the speckled darkness. I wasn’t cut out for playing a nightwatchman. My heart was pounding and knowing my luck, I was going to shoot myself in the toe if anything snuck up on us.
“Do you guys believe in ghosts? Humans do. Some of us, anyway. You know, one of my foster homes was haunted. No one believed me, but I swear my bedroom door opened all on its own once. You want me to haunt you? I’d do a lot more than open doors, you asshole.”
I didn’t know if he could hear me. I wasn’t sure I should have even been talking, but it made me feel better. Marginally.
I wanted to say it had been a couple of hours, but I had no way of knowing. With the fog rolling in, I couldn’t see the sky. If I could, I’d be able to see Sylos and it might give me a sense of how long we’d been sitting there in the dark. But Phesah was impossible and harsh.
Another sound in the trees startled my droopy eyes open and I palmed the pistol, waiting for some monster to pop out of the foliage. When nothing did, I let out a ragged breath and bent forward, pressing my forehead to Saleuk’s.
“Ugh, you suck,” I whimpered. “I need you to wake up.”
One little tear fell on his cheek and I quickly swiped it away. I was so pathetic. He trekked through the woods to find me and killed a big beast. I could look after him for a couple of hours. I had to.
Suddenly, the cracking branches grew louder, followed by a solid thud on the forest floor across the stream from us. I scooted out from under Saleuk’s head and stood, pistol raised shakily in front of me. The sound of something trudging through the woods grew closer and I dreaded seeing another giant spider beast. I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t breathe. I waited for something to show itself, my finger trained on the trigger.
Finally, something did. A great massive shadow loomed in the thick fog, tall and giraffe-like. I backed up against the cliffside and pinned myself there, staring at the huge creature as it slowly emerged from the haze. Lines of faintly glowing dots ran down the length of its dramatically angled body. Its front legs, which were two powerful limbs supported on its knuckles, were twice as long as its back legs. On the top of a long neck was a slender, long head that was tapered at the nose with whiskers that were tipped with tiny glowing specks.
I watched the thing enter the clearing, frozen in place as it sluggishly moved toward the corpse of the creature a few steps from us. It bent to sniff it, then raised its head. Two big, slanted eyes spotted me and it froze for a moment before snorting and turning to lumber away. Trembling, I watched it disappear into the fog a bit before it stretched up onto a thick tree trunk and started to climb like a great big, hairless sloth.
I let out a breath and slumped down the cliff wall onto the ground, nearly shaking out of my boots.
Ok, so not everything on Phesah wanted to eat me. Noted.
I took a moment to breathe and gather myself when I heard the faint sound of skittering up above me. Looking up, I saw nothing.
But then something fell on my head. I jumped and quickly started ruffling my hair to get it off of me when I saw a fist-sized scorpion-like creature fall at my feet. It quickly rushed me, two sharp spines on its front trying to pierce the toe of my shoe. I stomped on it only to see it still wriggling under my foot. I stomped again with a yelp until dark liquid spurted out around it.
Spinning, I saw more barely distinguishable shapes moving down the cliffside. In a fit of fear and anger, I picked up a rock and rushed to start crushing them before they reached the ground. One of them jabbed my hand with its little needle-like appendage and I screamed, hoping to the heavens that I wasn’t going to end up like Saleuk.
The puncture stung like a bitch, but otherwise didn’t make me feel lightheaded or dizzy. So I continued crushing the vermin under the rock until I was too disgusted and disturbed to continue.
“No,” I chanted. “No, no, no!”
I quickly gathered up my bag and tightened it over my shoulders. Then I fastened Saleuk’s bag to his back with a lot of tedious maneuvering. With the gun in my back pocket, I had two free hands to loop around the straps of Saleuk’s pack. I gave him a good yank. He barely moved. I pulled again and when I gained the tiniest amount of speed, I did my best to keep that momentum.
Fucking hell, he weighed a ton. I got five steps before I was winded and that wasn’t much distance at all.
“Down the stream. That’s where I was heading,” I said to myself. “You said that’s the right direction and so that’s where we’re going.”
I pulled again, making it a few more steps. My hand was burning and my only hope was that it was just pain and there were no other effects.
“Come on,” I grunted, heaving again. “You big, fat. Alien.”
That’s when I glimpsed the water. It was knee deep last I checked and water certainly made things lighter.
“Ok, we’re getting wet.”
I dragged Saleuk into the stream where some of his weight was taken off my hands and was proud to find that I could drag him along with much more ease that way. As the water got deeper, I got more afraid of what was in it, but Saleuk just got easer to move around.
“We’ve got this. This is fine,” I said, finding that the sound of my own voice was a comfort.
I made sure Saleuk’s head never dipped beneath the surface, I stayed close to the bank, and I slogged onward, getting the hell away from the critters swarming the cliffside.