Chapter 2 I Stab an Old Lady, but It’s Fine, Really
I Stab an Old Lady, but It’s Fine, Really
Grant’s motivational speech was exactly what we newbies needed to stick together.
Unfortunately, the effect only lasted about three seconds, until the first arrow whizzed past and sliced off a lock of Harper’s hair.
“Scatter!” Harper shouted.
And so we did, as Clarisse and her cronies laughed and cheered behind us.
“Wait!” Grant darted one way, then another, trying to corral everyone at once. But it was no use.
Harper sprinted east. Benny went southeast. Zuri headed south, yanking off the necklace she was wearing as she ran. When she snapped the chain, the pendant glowed, lengthening and curving into a full-size longbow. Nice trick.
I touched my necklace, a silver pendant with my name in hangul characters. It didn’t glow or transform, but it had once broken our washing machine that time I left it in my jeans pocket, so I guess it had magic properties too.
“It’s all right, KK, I’ve got you.” Grant pushed me ahead of him. “Let’s follow Benny!”
I dashed forward as arrows zipped past. One struck the ground in front of me and I scooped it up (hey, it was better than no weapon at all) and then kept running.
When we reached a creek bed, I skidded to a halt.
“What are you doing? Jump!” Grant nudged me, but I stepped to one side.
“This is part of C9!”
Grant blinked at me. “What?”
“The creek that empties into Long Island Sound.”
He shook his head. “There’s a creek named Cee Nine?”
I clucked my tongue in irritation. “No! It’s part of my gridding system. Look, just trust me. I’ll bet this creek is the same one that flows into camp. We can follow it the whole way!”
Voices shouted behind us. Grant rapid-chewed his gum. Then he pulled at my hand. “Let’s do it.”
We stumbled and splashed along the creekbank, using the moon’s reflection on the water for extra light.
There were no signs of Benny or the other newbies.
My only comfort was that the voices of Clarisse and her cronies sounded fainter behind us.
I squinted through the trees, trying to spot any kind of landmark.
The camp had some pretty big buildings—the arena, the dining pavilion—but we were still too far away to spot them, and the foliage was just too thick.
“Thank the gods for your grid,” Grant huffed as we ran. “All I’ve got are fun facts about ancient Greece.” He glanced at me. “Did you know one of Hercules’s labors was to steal man-eating horses?”
“Wait, those are a real thing?!”
“So are man-eating giants, man-eating gods, man-eating birds…”
“Good thing I still consider myself a child,” I mused.
“Oh, there are child-eating monsters, too.”
I groaned and peered into the darkness ahead. “Come on, come on,” I muttered, willing the underbrush to start thinning, the Wild Zone to end, but the foliage just got denser and thornier. “We should be near E19 now, so—” I yelped as Grant pulled me sideways behind the nearest tree.
He pressed a finger to his lips and pointed farther downstream.
About fifty yards ahead, a wolflike creature lapped water at the edge of the creek.
I say “wolflike” because it hunched like one and had a shaggy gray pelt, but it was the size of a full-grown man.
It stood on spindly goat legs, and its massive donkey ears made it look comical, but when it drank, it bared sharp fangs bigger than my forearms.
“What the heck is that?” I whispered.
“A kalamodonta,” Grant whispered back. “Its teeth—donti—are as big as reeds—kalami.”
“Fun language lesson,” I said. “But I kalamo-don’t-a want to be its bedtime snack. Come on.” I stepped to the right, cleverly managing to break the loudest twig in the forest under my foot.
Instantly, the kalamodonta reared up on its hind legs. It turned in our direction, sniffing the air.
Oh, shoot. Oh, fudge. Oh, why couldn’t I think of better curse words?
With a ferocious bark, the kalamodonta bounded toward us. Grant pulled a jackknife from his belt. I tightened my grip on my scavenged arrow, which promptly snapped in half.
“Dang it!”
Why had I left my dagger at home, lodged in that photo of my sister on the cover of Fencer’s World?
I dropped the back half of the arrow shaft and raised my newer, much punier weapon.
It was like defending myself with a mini-golf pencil.
As the kalamodonta charged, I looked for weak spots—any fang-free, claw-free, soft openings I might be able to stab. I’d been in fencing competitions, same as Olivia. Something had to have rubbed off, right?
The kalamodonta was thirty feet away, twenty feet, and then—
CRASH!
A truck-size, bright red lizard barreled out of the undergrowth and snatched the kalamodonta between its jaws.
Grant and I screamed even louder than the kalamodonta.
Our dad would have been so proud.
The giant reptile shook its head from side to side as it gobbled up the now limp body of the kalamodonta.
“A drakon!” Grant yelled, which seemed kind of unnecessary.
I knew drakon was Greek for dragon, and that the thing in front of us was one of the large, cherry-flavored variety.
“Go, go!” Grant told me—also unnecessary. I was already sprinting into the briars.
I ran—maybe a quarter mile? I was so rattled, I lost my bearings on my mental grid.
The thornbushes clawed at my jeans and slashed my arms, and the tree branches seemed determined to whack me in the face as many times as possible.
But I kept running. I only stopped when I heard Grant grunt and crash to the ground behind me.
“Whoa!” I backtracked and knelt beside him. “Are you okay?”
“Yep.” He struggled into a sitting position, wincing as he massaged his right ankle. “Just wasn’t expecting a massive crack in the forest floor.”
A massive what?
I’m not sure how I’d missed it. I must’ve jumped right over it.
Even at nighttime, the crack was big enough to be noticed by anyone who wasn’t running for their lives.
It was actually more like an earthquake fissure, zigzagging across the ground as far as I could see in either direction.
Did Long Island even have earthquakes? I peered into the crevice, but I couldn’t tell how deep it went.
All I knew was that I wanted to get away from it.
“Can you put weight on your ankle?” I asked Grant. “We have to move.”
“Yeah, I…Wait a minute.” He brought his face closer to the fissure. “There’s something down there.”
“Oh, geez, Grant, no. That’s how ninety percent of killer-worm movies start!”
Grant smirked and dropped onto his stomach.
Then he reached into the fissure with his (for the moment) perfectly attached arm.
I waited for something terrible to happen. My chili-cheese-dog dinner felt like it was trying to claw its way out of my throat. “Grant, please—”
“I think…I’ve got…” His tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth, and he narrowed his eyes. “Almost…”
I pressed my hands to my cheeks. “If it wriggles, just let go,” I whispered.
“AHH!” Grant tumbled backward, clutching his hand. I screeched and jabbed at the fissure with my broken arrow to fend off whatever had attacked him.
To my surprise, Grant rolled over and laughed. “Sorry, sorry. I’m fine. Just messing with you.”
I huffed with eyes narrowed. “Not funny. There is nothing funny happening in this forest. Why did you stick your hand in that death hole?”
Grant sat up and held out a gorgeous silver ring studded with sapphires. “Got something for you.”
“No. Way.” I snatched the ring from him and gawked at it. It glistened in the moonlight, the sapphires glowing like ice-blue comets.
This ring was clearly special. The gems were flawless. The settings all looked slightly different, like they’d been handcrafted. The hammered silver band felt heavy, cold, and strangely satisfying to rub between my fingers.
It was probably ancient. Just holding it made me feel special. So what was a treasure like this doing in a fissure in the Wild Zone? And more importantly…
I cleared my throat. “What else is in the death hole?”
Grant grinned. He knelt beside the fissure, but before he could plunge his arm in for a second fishing expedition, a high-pitched shriek shattered the night. It came from somewhere behind us, but it didn’t sound like a kalamodonta or a drakon. It sounded angry, vengeful. And it sounded close.
My mouth went dry. “Um…any monster-repellent in there?” I whispered.
Grant straightened. “You know, maybe we should keep moving.”
I helped him to his feet. I hefted his arm around my shoulder, but he only managed to hobble a few steps before his ankle gave way. He pitched forward and I barely managed to keep him from face-planting.
CRRAAACK!
About twenty feet behind us, a broken branch as thick as my leg hit the ground, sending up plumes of dried leaves and dirt. I glanced overhead, looking for the source.
Something shadowy and swift darted from tree to tree, disappearing in the foliage before I could get a good look.
“Grant?” My voice sounded small. “It’s above us.”
Grant’s jaw worked overtime on his gum. I could tell from his expression that his mind was working overtime too. He ducked out from under my arm, steadying himself against the tree trunk. “Katie, I want you to run. I’ll catch up.”
I gave him a baffled look. “What? No way!”
“It’s fine!” Grant picked up a dead branch—this one just about the right size for a spear.
He went to work with his jackknife, whittling one end into a crude point at incredible speed.
“I’ll be no good running, but I can fight.
I can’t do that if I’m trying to protect both of us. You don’t have a weapon. Run!”
I realized he was right about the weapon. At some point, I’d dropped my broken arrow/mini-golf pencil. “But…”
The branches rustled overhead. Something snarled—a sound that made my hair stand on end.
“Go on!” Grant shooed me away and hefted his makeshift spear. “Once I deal with this thing, I’ll follow. I’ll see you at the edge of the woods.”
I wavered. I wanted to believe Grant knew what he was doing. He always seemed so confident. But my instincts told me he was being foolish, putting himself at risk to save me.