…the pig in the Garden, my knife slicing, blood spraying…
I yank the spear free. Something wet comes with it, squirts against my chest.
The Springer’s club falls to the jungle floor.
A two-fingered hand grabs my shoulder, firm at first, then weaker until it can’t hold on anymore.
The fish-mouth opens, lets out a deep-throated rasping sound no human mouth could ever make.
The three eyes blink. I have never seen a creature like this before, yet I know the look in those eyes, I understand the emotion on that face.
Fear.
The Springer sags back, rests on its tail for a moment, then slumps to its side.
Toad-mouth opening, closing. Opening, closing.
Thick blue fluid spreads across its stomach, staining the rags. Smells like licorice.
Open. Close.
Dark-yellow eyes blink once more, slowly, dreamily—I see the life in them fade, then vanish forever.
A big body skids to a stop next to me.
“Em, you’re hit!”
My rage blinks out as if it was never there at all. An alien body lies dead on the jungle floor.
What have I done?
I shudder. My stomach convulses—I vomit bitter bile down the front of my black coveralls.
A low, droning howl from the direction of the clearing: a horn, echoing through the jungle. Another horn answers.
Bang!
To my left, chunks of bark scatter, exposing pale white splinters beneath. Four Springers leap over the crater’s edge. Another is already standing still, reloading.
As one, Bishop and I turn and sprint down the narrow trail.
I hear bodies crashing through the jungle on our right. A glance—Springers, maybe six of them, moving fast through the underbrush, stopping, aiming…
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Balls whiz through the air, tear through leaves, smack against tree trunks.
My legs pump on their own, driving me forward, keeping me close to the moving, silent shadow that is Bishop.
He suddenly turns left, off the trail. I follow him, unthinking. Two shots from my right—I hear a ball crack against wood, see a branch fall. More Springers had cut off the trail: Bishop saw it just in time.
Another horn rings out from somewhere ahead of us.
I smell smoke. Not the kind that made me hungry, something else, something heavier, thicker.
Bishop skids to a halt behind a tree, yanks me in with him. Coyotl appears as if out of nowhere, pulling along a terrified Borjigin. Kalle is right behind them.
Bishop drops his axe, draws his knife. His hands grab my coveralls, slice and rip: my shoulder is exposed to the air.
A long gouge, oozing blood, like a single huge fingernail scraped away skin and muscle. My flesh smells cooked, like the meat over the fire.
“Didn’t hit bone,” Bishop says. He holds my face, makes me look at him. “No time to dress your wound. Be strong until I get you back to the shuttle. Strong and silent. Be the wind.”
A frozen moment caught up in his stare. I see the real him, he sees the real me. I’m not his friend, his girlfriend, his leader or his follower—we are both soldiers, fighting to keep each other alive.
Bang! A chunk of tree trunk explodes right next to me, driving splinters into my cheek and neck. Bishop snatches up his axe, plunges deeper into the jungle. Borjigin, Kalle and I follow. Coyotl comes last.
The smoke smell grows stronger.
A flash of orange, a sudden heat—in front of us, a wall of fire that makes the jungle crackle and hiss in agony.
Bishop banks right, and so do we.
From all over the jungle, I hear the horns calling to each other.
I feel the heat before I smell the smoke or see the light: another wall of fire rages up in front of us.
The Springers are herding us, making us go where they want, but the fire will boil the flesh from our bones and we have no choice but to run from it.
We race through thick underbrush.
My legs scream at me to stop. My stomach heaves. I’m going to throw up again even though there’s nothing left inside.
We burst into a wide clearing. A plaza of some kind. Building remnants and tall vine-draped trees rise on all sides. In the middle of the clearing is what looks like a fountain, long since run dry.
My boots thud on stone tiles, chipped and cracked by age…no vines, no moss, no mud.
At the plaza’s edges, at least a dozen Springers.
They level their clubs at us.
Bishop stops. I stop. My stomach roils, my lungs burn, my legs shudder. Borjigin stumbles, falls hard. He rolls to his back, stomach and chest heaving—he can run no more. Coyotl stands next to me, bone club at the ready. Kalle points her little knife, defiant to the last.
The Springers that were giving chase tear out of the jungle behind us, cutting off any escape.
We are surrounded.
“Borjigin,” Bishop barks, “get on your godsdamned feet or die on your back like a worm.”