Chapter 19 Apparently, I Hate Trees #2
“We’re on a roll!” I said. “You mentioned a tunnel entrance. We should check that next. Do you remember where it is?”
Harper winced. “If I say no, can we leave?”
“No,” Zuri and I said at the same time.
Harper turned to Benny, who smiled sympathetically. “They’re right. We’re making good progress, and we’re doing okay for time.”
Harper held up his hands in surrender. “Fine. I think it’s this way.”
We tramped through underbrush and between stands of trees, heading north into an area I hadn’t put on my mental grid yet. We kept our weapons ready, ever alert to any sound from the trees above us.
At first, I was grateful we weren’t tripping over monsters every two minutes, the way Grant and I had on our first trip. Then that same fact started to make me anxious. Where were all the wild things in the Wild Zone? It felt like we were heading into territory where even they didn’t dare trespass.
After about five minutes of walking, Harper halted, staring at the ground. “I…I didn’t notice this before.”
He pointed at another fissure zigzagging through the dirt. And this crack lined up perfectly between the tree we’d come from and the direction we were heading. I mapped this new information onto my mental grid.
“I don’t like this,” I murmured. “It’s as if…”
Benny gripped his sword tighter. “As if what?”
“As if that rune in the tree caused these cracks. They splinter out from it in two different directions. I bet if we looked, we’d find more radiating out from the trunk.”
“All in favor of not looking?” Harper raised his hand.
Zuri swatted him lightly on the arm. “Where’s that tunnel entrance you found?”
He sighed. “I was afraid you’d ask. Pretty sure it’s right through those bushes.”
“Along the same line as this fissure,” Benny said.
Harper made a sour face. “Exactly.”
Benny turned off his flashlight. As dark as it was, navigating by the moon seemed safer than advertising our presence.
We didn’t have to go far. Another few minutes pushing through briars, and we found ourselves crouching at the base of a large boulder. The fissure we’d been following snaked straight down into the clearing ahead.
“There,” Harper whispered.
I didn’t need to ask why he was keeping his voice down. I also didn’t need to ask why he hadn’t explored this area more when he’d seen it the night of the hazing. Just being here made me want to crawl inside Benny’s backpack and hide.
A low yellow mist clung to the ground. The air smelled as stale as a grandparent’s attic.
Even the surrounding trees seemed to lean away from the clearing, as if they couldn’t stand living in this neighborhood.
I remembered what the dryad had told Argus—that even nature spirits wouldn’t come into the Wild Zone.
In the center of the clearing, just as Harper had told us, was a gaping hole.
I was tempted to call it a cave entrance, because it was set in the side of a gently sloping stone ledge—an outcropping of rock like a frozen granite wave.
But the hole didn’t strike me as a natural feature.
It was almost perfectly round, the rim chipped and beveled as if fashioned with a hammer and chisel.
Our fissure ran right up to the entrance, snaking straight through the dirt and into the stone.
“Whoa,” Benny whispered.
That about summed it up. Every nerve in my body told me to run.
The whole place radiated wrongness. This was not supposed to be here. And whatever that hole was, my instincts told me it definitely was not supposed to be open.
“That’s big enough to fit a person,” Zuri said.
“If Grant got away from the monster,” I said, “maybe he hid in there?”
As soon as I said it, though, I knew it wasn’t right. Nobody would go into that hole willingly. Not Grant. Not Silas. Not me.
“Hold my sword,” Harper told me, which sounded like the last words of someone about to die in a particularly idiotic way.
He lowered himself to his belly. He elbowed his way forward, just beyond the shadow of our boulder.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
He kept crawling. What had happened to my skittish friend? He put a dark cap on and suddenly thought he was a ninja? He made it about ten feet, grabbed something out of the dirt, and scooted backward again.
In one hand, he held an old reed torch. Judging by the degree of decomposition, it hadn’t been lit in ages.
“Someone came through here before us,” Harper said. “But it was a long time ago.”
Zuri squinted. “What’s in your other hand?”
Harper smiled. “Treasure.”
He opened his hand, and the rest of the Wild Omada leaned in to see.
In Harper’s palm was a dark leather strap embedded with studs of polished ivory. It wasn’t as gaudy as my ring, and I’m not sure I would’ve called it treasure, but it was beautiful.
“Really?” I said. “I wouldn’t have pictured you as a leather-bracelet kind of guy.”
“I wasn’t before, but I think I am now. There’s just something about it….” Before I could stop him, Harper wrapped it around his wrist.
“Are you serious?” I hissed. “Remember cursed items?”
But nothing seemed to happen. Harper didn’t turn invisible, or try to kill us, or even spontaneously combust.
He held up his new bracelet for our inspection. “How do I look?”
Zuri smirked. “Like part of a very snooty biker gang. Now maybe take that off before it turns into a snake or something.”
“Hmph,” Harper said, but he untied the strap and stuck it in his pocket. “There’s more stuff out there, by the way. Just kind of littered on the ground.”
Benny gazed across the clearing. “I don’t like this at all…but we’ve come this far. I think we have to check out that cave.”
“Not me” was Harper’s instant reply.
Zuri raised an eyebrow. “You just crawled out there on your own to retrieve a stick and a strap.”
“Yeah, but…” He swallowed. “No tunnels. Sorry.”
“Extreme claustrophobia,” I guessed. “Like what happened during the obstacle course?”
He hesitated. “Something like that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Maybe if…”
I was about to suggest doing something really brave, like heading into that tunnel myself with the invisibility ring. It was the only thing that made sense.
Before I could, a skin-peeling shriek filled the air. It hadn’t come from the tunnel. It had come from above—the same shriek Grant and I had heard right before he was taken.
Zuri gasped. “I know that sound….”
“Change of plans,” I said. “We need to leave.”
In my gut, I knew we were not ready for what was coming. As much as I wanted to save Grant and Silas, I wasn’t going to lose any more friends trying to do it. We could legit come back tomorrow. And if the Ares cabin actually did have large siege weapons, I would commandeer all of them.
But Benny, Harper, and Zuri didn’t move. They were all studying the trees, weapons at the ready.
“Do you see it?” Harper whispered.
The branches of a nearby tree rustled. About forty feet above our heads, a dark shape darted among the leaves, coming closer. Zuri nocked an arrow.
“Don’t!” I hissed.
But she fired into the treetops. Her arrow disappeared into the canopy and the creature shrieked in rage.
“Katie’s right,” Benny said. “Time to go!”
“No.” Zuri gritted her teeth as she nocked another arrow. “I think I wounded it. We’ve got it outnumbered. Let’s get it out in the open and take it down!”
Harper grabbed her arm and pulled. “You know the people of Tokyo outnumbered Godzilla, right?”
Zuri shook him off. “Come on!” Her eyes pleaded with me. “If we turn back now—”
“We’ll live long enough to come up with a plan,” Benny said. “If we stay, we might be the next victims. And then more people could get hurt looking for us.”
“You guys!” There was a desperate tone in Zuri’s voice I’d never heard before. “You don’t under—”
Crash! A branch the size of a helicopter blade spiraled out of the sky and smashed into the boulder where we were sheltering, showering us with leaves and twigs. I got the distinct impression it hadn’t just fallen. It had been thrown.
“Let’s go!” I yelled, tugging at Zuri’s arm.
She snarled in frustration, fired one more shot into the trees, and then raced after me.
The four of us sprinted east, the monster giving chase.
It was not subtle about it.
Shrieks filled the air. Tree limbs snapped and cracked.
Leaves rained down—at first far behind us and then close enough for me to hear the monster’s other sounds—angry hisses, barks, and rapid-fire clicks like a malfunctioning machine gun.
Whatever this thing was, Zuri had been right—it was way more than just a bird.
It moved through the tree canopy too easily. I still couldn’t see it, but I could hear it. In a matter of seconds, it would be on top of us.
I spotted a massive pine tree up ahead—its branches so thick and canopy so dense even the moonlight couldn’t pass through.
Maybe a monster couldn’t either.
“Keep going!” I shouted to the others. “I have a plan!”
I was painfully aware that Grant had told me pretty much the same thing three nights before. I just hoped my luck would be better than his.
Benny glanced over his shoulder and slowed his steps, but I waved him on. Harper and Zuri faltered too. Then Benny seemed to make a split-second decision: He trusted me. He put his hands on Harper’s and Zuri’s backs and urged them onward. “Go! Go!”
I skidded to a stop on the far side of the pine tree.
Taking a deep breath, I planted my feet firmly and pressed my shoulder against the trunk. I closed my eyes and thought about every horrible thing that had been happening—to me and my loved ones. My muscles tensed.
The creature was close now. I could hear it shriek, the branches rustling as it approached my pine.
“Come on, Dad,” I whispered. “I need a win.”
Clenching my teeth, I pushed with all my might. The ground beneath me trembled. My shoulder ached as the tree bark bit into my skin.
And then I heard the wonderful sound of tree roots snapping—like depth charges in the soil, so powerful they shook my bones. The pressure on my shoulder lightened. I leaped backward as the tree toppled away from me, taking the monster with it.