Odd Numbers
by Syren Callista
The girl ran through the forest as fast as she could manage, slowed occasionally by low-hanging branches of the trees and thick bushes grabbing at her jacket and her bag, now and then one sturdy enough to scratch her as she tried to race through them. Somewhere behind her she could hear the shouting of angry men. Their voices weren't close, but they were also not far enough away for comfort. She wrapped a hand around the single strap of olive-drab satchel bag she wore over her shoulder to ensure that she wouldn't lose it and she ran faster. Each step she took the edges of the boxes inside of the satchel bounced against the backs of her legs, uncomfortable reminders to shift its position to keep it more at her side.
She stopped running and dropped into a crouch behind a fallen tree. She needed to catch her breath and her lungs burned inside of her chest. As she recovered she looked around quickly, her dark brown eyes searching for any sign of her pursuers. Her closely cropped brown hair helped her to blend in a little as she peeked up and over the fallen trunk, and she ducked back down when she was sure they weren't right behind her. The girl's small size helped her to navigate the wild terrain swiftly and allowed her to pass through tight spaces easy enough. But there was something different about those pursuing her, and that difference worried her. Tucked behind the cover of the tree she looked down at her body. Her thick, navy blue jacket had protected her arms and upper body and made sure that the top of her light pink dress hadn't been ripped. The bag was sturdy enough to have survived damage and its precious cargo was in no danger from her swift flight. But her lower legs had no protection, her tube socks did nothing to prevent the sharp edges of dead foliage from scoring and leaving scratches on her skin, a few deep enough to bleed.
The sudden roar of vehicles approaching froze her in place. Had they found her? The sound was loud and grew more so by the second. She laid herself down flat parallel to the fallen tree and held her breath as the sounds grew loud enough to be deafening. And then they were going past her, one engine, then another, and another. As they passed her one by one it emboldened her to sit up and carefully peek up and over the tree once more. Another strange four-wheeled vehicle raced past her, two of the bad men atop it. It reminded her of a bicycle only larger, louder, and faster. The bad men atop it were dressed differently now, gone were the suits, replaced by all black gear that made her think of soldiers. She didn't count them, but there must have been five of the vehicles that had passed her.
As she watched them pass, a sound much closer to her startled her into standing. It was the sound of someone racing through the undergrowth just as she had been, only much closer now, and coming towards her. She balled her hands into fists and waited… before whoever was racing towards her changed directions and veered away. The girl caught a glimpse of a figure running, roughly her size, a flash of denim and a wisp of long hair before, from behind her:
"There!"
An angry voice, loud enough to be heard over the roar of the ATV's engine. The girl didn't turn around, she didn't have to see, all she had to do was run. And she ran hard, trying to ignore the shouts, the roars, everything getting louder. She had no idea which direction she was going, which direction was safe, all she knew was she couldn't let them catch her. The forest seemed to grow brighter ahead of her and she found out why once she broke free of the coverage of the trees and burst out into a small clearing. A denser part of the woods awaited her across it, but even as she ran for it she knew that she wouldn't make it. They were too close.
They found her in the middle of the clearing, and the ATVs poured out of a break between the trees one after another. With nothing left to do now, the girl spun around and faced then, her face angry, eyes dangerous, furious for what they were making her do.
She gathered her power and didn't take time to make sense of the confusion that the bad men had. This was what they wanted, wasn't it?
As one of the vehicles bore down on her the girl set her eyes on it and jerked her head to the side. The vehicle flipped away as if it had been swatted to the side by something giant and invisible, soaring through the air like an unwanted toy. The men riding it were flung off of it with nothing to hold onto, the sick impact of their bodies hitting the ground covered by the roar of more of the vehicles. The girl did it again, this time jerking her head the other way, more surprised cries and screams as vehicle and man were launched into the sky.
Her onslaught was furious and her would-be captors were not prepared for it. Again and again she reached out with her power and defended herself. She grabbed two at once and flung them straight up in the air where they flipped and crashed down atop others, the crushing press of weight and gravity weaponized against them. The roars of the engines died down, one upended vehicle left with its wheels spinning helplessly with its driver now crushed beneath it. There were groans of agony from those who barely managed to survive, and with the danger lessened, the girl stumbled back. Her world began to spin as she turned to walk away, and only made it a few steps before she lost the strength to stand and crumbled onto the ground.
As she stared up at the sky she watched the sky as the clouds blew past, allowing the sun to peek out and fight back against the dreary day. She felt the blood trickling out of her nose, still hot as it was pulled down the curve of her lips. The sun began to shine, even as her vision went black, but not before the shadow of someone standing over her blotted out the sky. Then her eyes closed as consciousness left her.
The girl awoke with a gasp and found herself staring up at the sky again, only this time it was through gaps in the tree canopy. She sat upright with great difficulty and had to use her elbows to support herself. As she looked around she knew she was still in the forest, but not where she had been. There were no roars, no shouts, no bad men. As she looked in a slow circle she could see the edge of the forest and a rough paved road that led out of it. She continued to look around and that was when she realized she wasn't alone.
There was another girl standing, watching her. This girl was younger by maybe a year, her eyes were green with a quiet, simmering intensity to them, and as she watched the older girl attempt to recover a few strands of her long, dark hair blew in the breeze. The younger girl wore jeans, a denim jacket, and a t-shirt beneath it adorned with a unicorn prancing in front of a rainbow. She stood so still that she almost seemed unreal were it not for the subtle rise and fall of her chest and a blink here and there. The older girl managed so sit up fully and as she watched this other girl she carefully brought a hand to her face and felt the crusted blood that had caked to her skin above her lips and around her nose.
The younger girl finally moved then: she unslung her own backpack, unzipped it, dipped a hand inside and reemerges with a scrap of cloth that she offered out. The older girl was cautious but still reached out to accept it and brought it to her nose, very aware that the other girl was now looking closely at her short-cropped hair. This made her look down, and when she did she saw that a small piece of her faded pink dress had been cut off, and had been refashioned into a bandage on her leg. Was she dreaming this? As she looked up again, she found her new companion looking away from her, towards the clearing, but there was something different about her now, a different sort of energy.
The older girl turned and her eyes followed the other's gaze and in that moment saw what was wrong. She knew that if she had been dreaming, it had now turned into a nightmare. Two large sedans kicked up clouds of dirt as they quickly drove up the old road. The moment they stopped all four doors opened on each and the men in suits got out. There was no hiding from them now, she barely had the energy yet to sit up much less run or fight. They had guns in hand and it seemed to her that they could sense her weakness, even as she started to crawl backwards. She bumped into something, looked down and found it was her own satchel, and claimed it in a death grip.
Two loud gunshots jolted her and she looked back up in time to see the younger girl fall, blood blossoming on her rainbow shirt. If she made a sound it was lost to the reverberation caused by the gunshots and the older girl's scream of shock and anger as her boogeymen came to claim her. Hands grabbing her, ripped at her bag, yanked her effortlessly from the ground, too many to focus on, too drained to fight. All she could do was scream until even that was stolen from her with a hand clamped over her mouth.
Then she heard a sound that she'd never heard before, a sound like metal scraping against metal, as sharp as the report of the earlier gunshots. She stopped screaming. The shouts and screams of the men filled the air. From where she was in the center of their circle she couldn't see what was happening until she was abruptly dropped to the ground. Fear gave her the brief burst of energy to try and scramble away, to climb over the uneven ground. When she was far enough away to see, it took her longer to understand just what it was that she was witnessing. The other girl, armed with some sort of knives, attacked the men in suits. The nightmare that she was in turned grisly with the sound of gunshots, stabbing, and brief cries of agony. It was over so fast that she was left blinking as the young, long-haired girl pulled her knives out of the last bad man. She stood impossibly tall in the center of the dead men, and her knives were revealed to be wicked claws that had emerged from between her knuckles, and which now disappeared back into her hands with another sharp, metallic scrape.
As the older girl stared at her, the young girl walked back to her. Her shirt had two small holes in the center of her chest and the edges of those holes were dark with blood, and yet whole, healthy skin was visible through it. The older girl continued to stare at the younger girl as she came and sat beside her, and the younger one seemed wary but much calmer, now.
There was nothing to be said. The two looked at each other for a few moments in an oddly comfortable silence. The older girl was the first to move as she pulled her satchel onto her lap and unzipped it. She reached inside and pulled out one of the many bent and crushed yellow boxes that had been stuffed into it and tore it open with shaky hands. With delicate precision, she extracted from the sad looking box a pristine waffle and raised it to her mouth to take a small bite. She looked up to other girl was watching her with mild interest.
Then, in the shared silence, the younger girl unshouldered her backpack, unzipped it, reached inside and pulled out a long, slender can of chips. She wiped her messy hands on her jeans before she popped the lid off, tipped a perfectly intact Pringle into her hand, and devoured it in a crunch that threatened to disrupt the newly won tranquility.
The two girls ate their preferred snacks in a silence that was only occasionally punctuated by a loud crunch or two. Eleven made the first move, inquisitively offering the box of Eggo's to the younger girl. Laura took it and eagerly tore into the box, through the plastic wrap, and had a bite in her mouth within seconds. As she enjoyed it she paused and noticed the wide-eyed look the other girl had fixed on her. With just a bit of reluctance, Laura reached into her bag, closed her hand around an unopened can, and offered it to Eleven in return. She had seen what the girl had done in the forest with her pursuers after all. By the time reinforcements came upon the site, all they found were empty waffle boxes and chip cans. They didn't appreciate yet what an ominous sign that would come to be.