Chapter 16 #2
Off to the side, I suddenly spot a glint of blue. The ocean! I turn towards it with a sudden move, hoping the krolts are still far enough away to not catch me immediately.
I can’t hear them behind me, and there’s a chance they didn’t follow me.
But I’m not slowing down. The soft ground of rotting leaves gives way to even softer sand under my feet, and then I’m out of the woods and running on the beach, straight towards the water.
Now I hear the soft sounds from the krolts behind me, and to the side, I spot a corner of a dark shadow behind my own.
“Kenz’ox!” I yell as I run. “Krooolts!”
I can’t turn to see if he’s still here on the beach. I can’t be that far from the saucer. “Kenz’ooox!”
The sand turns wet and firm, and then I’m splashing through the warm waves. There are splashes behind me too, but when the water is up to my waist, they stop. I wade on, desperately fighting the resistance from the deepening water, before I turn, spear lifted.
The two krolts have stopped and are lazily trotting in a circle right at the edge of the water. Their eyes swivel to follow me.
I breathe hard, still fighting each wave to not be knocked off my feet, and being washed towards the beach and the predators.
I consider yelling again, but I decide not to.
I’m not being actively killed right now, and if Kenz’ox comes running, he’ll be in deadly danger.
And a tiny part of me doesn’t want to call for him, see him approaching, and then stopping and turning back again, leaving me to my fate.
Because he may have to do that. His main responsibility is toward Aker’iz, not me.
I slowly make my way to the side, along the beachline, hoping the krolts won’t follow. Maybe they’ll get bored, maybe they’ll get tired. Maybe their eyesight isn’t the best. I can theoretically stay in the water for hours, days even.
Unless…
I turn and scan the horizon for dark blobs. Nothing yet, but from this low point, they would be hard to see anyway.
The krolts easily keep up with me. The beach stretches to infinity in both directions. There’s no obvious point where I might hope that I can sneak past the krolts and into the jungle again.
“I wonder how well you guys can see in the dark,” I mutter, before a wave washes over my head and pushes me closer to the surf.
The krolts keep circling, and now they’re splashing through inch-deep water, as if they’re getting braver.
Panic rises in me. I may have to swim out to where the water is too deep for them to go. As thin as they are, I can’t imagine them floating that well.
But swimming while holding the spear is not easy. Finally, I have to do a weird, one-sided backstroke to get anywhere, waves washing over my face once every two seconds.
The krolts come closer and splash in circles where the water is a foot deep. I think they’re falling for it. They don’t seem to have any problem running through the water due to their thinness.
Then they change their minds and quickly make their way back to the wet sand.
I splutter as I tread water in the deep waves. That nearly worked—
“Shit!”
Something snakes around my ankle.
I yelp and thrust my spear down into the water on instinct, trying not to hit my own leg.
But the grip tightens.
I kick and writhe and knock my other heel against the soft tentacle down there.
Now I see the monster too, a shapeless blob, splotched brown and black, and full of green seaweed and barnacle-like growths. It’s pretty far away, so the tentacle must be long.
I stab the spear into the depths, unable to aim.
The tightness loosens momentarily, and I kick the tip of the tentacle off my leg. I throw myself frantically towards the beach and try to swim with the spear clutched in one hand.
Another tentacle grips me softly around the waist.
There’s a chaos of water and air as I stab and kick and go crazy trying to shake the tentacle off me.
Another tentacle grabs my wrist, and in desperation, I bite down on it.
“Aaagh!” comes the immediate response from very close.
I try to open my eyes and see what that is, but there’s a lot of hair in my face, and I can only get a glimpse of blue stripes and a wet beard.
“It got me!” I scream.
I see a big sword and Kenz’ox’s determined face as he grabs my arm again and pulls me to him. “Where?”
“My hips!” I gurgle, as another wave washes over me and the grip around my waist tightens.
He yanks me closer to him, then stabs his sword down into the water between me and the blob.
Immediately the tentacle is off me, and I swim frantically towards the shore.
I don’t stop until I feel sand under my feet. Kenz’ox is struggling, splashing and coughing. It crosses my mind that he probably doesn’t know how to swim if this is the first ocean he sees. But at eight feet tall, he might not need to.
“You can stand!” I tell him.
Then I realize he’s trying to, but the monster’s got him. It’s pulling his legs out from the beach, and despite his strength, he can’t stop it.
Standing on tiptoes and barely having my face above water, I furiously stab the spear into the water, again and again. I hit something, and I hope it’s not Kenz’ox.
The caveman grabs my arm and drags me towards the beach. “Thanks.”
I can’t see the krolts until we’re crawling up on the sand, both of us breathing hard and wheezing. One of them is dead, barely visible from this angle as it lies flat on the sand. The other one is also down, but still kicking viciously with two legs.
The blob is slowly pulling back. Checking my ankle, I find it full of red circles from the suckers. My jumpsuit probably saved me from being pulled down and out by my waist—the suckers couldn’t get a good hold on the fabric.
Kenz’ox is in worse shape. There are red circles all over his torso, as well as bleeding wounds. In the spot where I bit him, there are only teeth marks and, thankfully, no bleeding.
“You all right?”
“Soon,” he wheezes. “One krolt got me, and I can feel the venom.”
I get up on my knees and look him over. Yep, something sharp grazed his thigh, and his other thigh, and his lower back. “What can I do?”
“It won’t kill me,” he assures me. “I will be fine. Are you all right?”
“Yes.” I have a couple of scrapes and bruises, but I’m not bleeding much. “You killed the krolts.”
“I didn’t want to have to fight them after the sea Big,” he tells me between breaths. “I had to get them first. Why were you in the jungle?”
“To find fruits,” I tell him, pushing wet hair out of my face. “I not go far. But the krolts… they found me.”
“There must be a nest nearby. Were there many krolts before?”
“None.” I tell him. “Never.”
“Everything is changing in the jungle. Even the Bigs feel it.”
I help him slowly get to his feet.
He stands still for a moment, flexing his knees. “I think I can walk. The venom isn’t as strong as I thought. And we can’t leave him like that.”
I support the caveman towards the still-kicking krolt. While I stay back, he slashes the predator’s wide head completely off the body. The legs stop their movement, and the whole dino sags to the side.
I grab his hand. “You came to help me. Did you hear scream?”
“I didn’t hear anything. But I didn’t like that you weren’t by the ship. I was hoping you had gone to the beach, and we had simply crossed paths without seeing each other. Then I saw the krolts.”
We walk slowly towards the saucer, not saying much. We survived, but what about the next time? I can’t even go twenty feet from the clearing before disaster strikes. It’s like a prison.
And how many of these attacks can Kenz’ox take? His skin heals incredibly fast, but he must have a limit, too.
My hands are still shaking. Shit. I have to get away from here.
Kenz’ox gets Aker’ix from the saucer, and we sit down by the fire ring. Aker’iz immediately protests, so he puts her in the playpen. I notice it now has a little canopy against rain and dripping sap.
Kenz’ox mechanically tends to his wounds with the paste Cora gave me. The venom seems to have made him tired.
How many more attacks can we handle? I ask myself as I check my spearhead. How many more lucky breaks do we get?
I sit down next to him. “I’ll help.” I apply the paste to his wounds and the worst of the sucker rings, noting that there’s not a lot of the paste left.
“Can you stand?” I ask when I finish up, worried about the venom.
He gets up with no problem. “So it seems. Thank you.”
I glance at the saucer. “I go inside,” I state. “Yell if sick.”
He just looks as I enter the Plood craft.
The light is its usual blue, and there’s no hum. I check the water dispenser, which works, and the slop dispenser, which must be running out of whatever material it uses. It produces much less now than before. But at least it kept us girls alive for several years.
I sit down by the biggest console. Last night, I had a dream where I could shape the crystals with my fingers, like a silky-feeling plasticine, soft and supple.
But when I try it, of course it doesn’t work. The crystal shapes are as cold and hard as always.
“Maybe they just need some heat,” I mutter and hold onto a crystal with my whole hand, trying to warm it up.
It doesn’t work.
I take a deep breath to calm myself. “It’s fine. It’s fine. We’re almost there. Any moment now I’ll get it. The Plood aren’t that smart. I can do this.”
That tentacle around my ankle. I never want to experience that again. And those fucking krolts are pure nightmare fuel.
“This has to work,” I mumble. “This has to work. I have to leave.”
I try several ideas. But all I accomplish is to change some of the colors of the crystals, which is nothing new.
Then it hits me: I have only looked inside these consoles.
I haven’t actually looked at their tops, where there are some lights flashing.
The girls and I did try some things back then, in the first terrible, emotionally paralyzed months after we first came here.
We decided it wasn’t possible for us to understand, and we never looked at it since.
I stand up and look at the top of this console.
It is the largest one, and it also has more lights than the others.
The lights are dim and mostly steady, shining up through some kind of smooth surface.
There are weird, alien levers too, but I see no reason to bother with those while the saucer is this inactive.
“Have to start the car before you need the steering wheel,” I mutter while I prod the various parts of the top panel with my fingertips. I focus on the lights and press on them, but nothing changes.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing…
A dim red light responds. A hum rises from the walls.
I freeze, heart hammering.
“Please… please…”
Nothing.
“Okay…”
I try again. Nothing.
“Long press.”
I hold it down.
A yellow light starts flashing.
I press that one.
The blue ambient glow dies.
The hum stops, and every light goes out.
Instant, suffocating black.
I swear I can feel that tentacle around my ankle again.
Despair overwhelms me. “No!”