Chapter 57
Penny froze; I nearly bumped into her before coming to a halt myself. "What's wrong?" I asked.
She shushed me and offered no more information. Her gaze was set on a spot ahead of us and to the right. I focused my eyes, trying to perhaps see something that she had.
The sky was pitch-black, not a single star broke up the incessant darkness. The trees with the blue particles were less dense here and therefore provided less light with which to see. I could barely make out Penny's face, but I could tell she was frightened. She reached back and grabbed my arm.
The silence was broken by Jack's scream. Penny immediately pulled me down to the ground. Her grip on my arm tightened.
"I'm hit!" Jack hissed through clenched teeth. "Oh God it hurts. Penny they got me."
With Penny still holding fast to my left arm I reached out to Jack with my right. In the darkness, he was a gray blur writhing on the ground next to me. I managed to find Jack's arm and pull him along the ground next to me.
Penny whispered, "Where are you hit?"
"In the shoulder. Penny, it hurts!"
"I know Jack. We need to get somewhere safe. They'll be here any second. Can you crawl?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Ok, this way," Penny said commandingly as she started shuffling along on the ground, like a soldier avoiding low-hanging barb wire.
Jack followed her and I crawled behind him. He made it a few feet before he collapsed face first into the ground, a painful "umph" sound forced from him lungs. I helped him up and carefully wrapped his injured arm around my neck. We crawled together for another twenty feet or so until Penny pulled us both into a small ditch, with sides high enough to provide cover. I propped Jack up against the wall and took my place between him and Penny.
I could hear Jack breathing next to me, hissing in pain every few seconds. I didn't know with what Jack was hit nor how painful it was, but he was taking it like a trooper. The ground in the ditch underneath us was damp and hard. Small multi-colored glowing rocks littered the ground.
As I was contemplating the strangeness of this place, Penny leaned in close to me as whispered, "It's got to be more chaerilagas. I bet they hit him with one of their spikes. They're poisonous. If we don't get him back to the camp soon he's not going to make it."
"What do we do," I asked, listening for any approaching creatures. Strangely, I heard no movement above us.
"They're out there, waiting for us to move. Thankfully, they aren't very patient. They'll move first. When they do, we need to hit them. We have weapon caches all over these woods, usually under bushes, but that's not going to help us in this ditch."
It hit me that I must have taken cover in one of those caches when I eluded the chaerilagas earlier. I needed another serendipitous discovery now. I felt around along the base of the wall, searching for anything that could be used as a weapon. A few feet away from us I found several large stones, ranging from the size of baseballs to basketballs. An idea hit me and I quickly relayed my plan to Penny.
I slowly ascended the far side of the ditch, hoping the darkness provided me enough cover to put my plan into motion without becoming a chaerilaga pin cushion. I found the nearest tree and, as quietly as I could, climbed up and out onto a branch perched about 10 feet off the ground. With my legs wrapped firmly around the branch, I unshouldered the heavy backpack and placed it in front of me. I slowly unzipped it, hoping the noise didn't travel far. I heard, instead of saw, Penny accomplishing her part of the plan. Noises like scared, shuffling humans, came up to me from the base of the tree. I didn't specify to Penny how to attract the chaerilagas to my position, but whatever she came up with worked perfectly because, from a direction near where Jack still hid, two of them creeped slowly towards the tree, tails raised up ready to shoot their poisonous darts. When they were immediately below me I dropped a watermelon-sized rock directly on one of their heads. A nauseating crunching noise suggested my aim was impeccable. No sooner had the first chaerilaga's brains started leaking out when the second one started firing its darts at me. I fumbled for the next biggest rock in the backpack and heaved it at the disgusting creature. Expecting the air assault this time, it backed up and easily dodged my throw. I began hurling the remaining orange-sized rocks with reckless abandon, hoping less to hit it and more to scare it away. Distracted by my barrage of ill-aimed rubble, Penny was able to sneak up behind it and bash it in the head with a large, heavy branch. It let out a horrible ear-piercing screech and slumped unmoving to the ground.
I quickly climbed down the tree and joined Penny near the crumpled creatures. They were clearly dead. She looked at me and said, "We better get out of here. That cry is sure to attract more of them."
She didn't need to tell me twice. We ran back to the ditch and found Jack slumped over unconscious. I picked him up and threw him over my shoulder. Thankfully, he wasn't a big guy or else he'd have been screwed.
We continued our trek through the night, praying that we didn't run into any more surprises.