Chapter 7
I’ll remember forever that I rose up and I stepped between Tara and the god because there wasn’t a chance both of us would escape this.
I don’t remember thinking that I was doing it or what I was going to do, I just did it and pushed her and even if it killed me, it might give her a second or two more to get away–
And I see the burning hand come right for me–
And this is it–
This is the moment–
I tense, trying to ready myself for whatever horror is about to happen–
And I can’t help but try to swerve away from it–
But it passes over me.
It reaches to where Tara’s trying to run–
And it grabs her.
I still don’t think, not even about what that might mean.
As it lifts her in the air, I jump after her, grabbing onto her legs.
The god is so surprised–as is Tara from the sound of her–it opens its hand, dropping us both.
I get the wind knocked out of me as we hit the ground on the other side of it, and I hear her give a sharp “oof.”
But there’s no time. She’s already rising, taking my arm, because the god is still over us, watching us like mice who’ve gotten away from a cat.
“It’s coming!” Tara screams.
And it is. We run. The ground is clear. Most people have gotten out of the way in the time we were hiding under the cart, but that means the god can see wherever we go.
Tara dodges under the awning of a lumberyard.
I follow her, but the god is right behind us, already burning through the front walls.
Tara makes a quick swerve to not go inside, I guess hoping to trick the god, and it works, because we’re zigzagging back across the street, and the god is still trying to turn around.
“Where?” Tara yells.
I point to the river, now getting closer to us again as it circles the city.
“But that’s where they go!” she yells.
I make a face like, I know.
“You think it’ll disappear in the water?”
I nod frantically.
“Then come on!”
We run to the river like our lives depend on it.
The god screams louder and starts running after us. We try to weave as we run, going around carts and kiosks and screaming people, trying to slow the god down any way we can while we pound down the hill. It just plows through them all, like they’re so much paper.
“We’re not going to make it,” Tara says.
I put on an extra burst of speed. She does, too.
The river is ahead of us. I can even see a bridge. If we try to cross it, the god will burn it up and fall in the river.
Right?
I glance back. The god is closer, nearly on us, screaming that insane-making scream, its hand reaching out–
“No!” Tara yells, and her voice is breaking, but it makes her go even faster.
We’re fifty feet from the bridge–
Thirty–
I can feel the ground shaking now with the running footsteps of the god–
Ten–
The hand reaches for Tara–
She hits the bridge before the hand closes, leaping out of its grasp onto the planks. I’m a second after her, ducking under the god’s hand–
Though again, it doesn’t reach for me–
And we’re pounding across the wood, the god coming after us, the bridge exploding in flames behind it–
Below it–
And it falls, along with half the bridge, into the roaring water below. It sinks almost instantly, the scream vanishing, and Tara and I are on the other side of the river, gasping our lungs out.
We can’t run anymore. I can’t even breathe with how hard my chest is aching. I fall onto the riverbank. Tara collapses to her hands. We look back.
The god is gone.
“We did it,” Tara gasps. “I can’t believe we did it.”
I nod through my raking breaths.
I take a moment to smile.
She smiles back at me.
And a god we didn’t see steps out of the woods behind us and grabs Tara from the ground.