Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) (32 page)

T
he Flensing Tree shrieked its hate and outrage at us through grotesquely flexing openings that appeared all over its trunk like winking eyes. The whip-like branches lifted into the air and began to flail madly, adding whistling slashes to the already ear-splitting din.

Behind us the Scavengers went berserk, shaking on their stalks and snapping their mandibles together with sharp reports. A Scavenger brushed Leon’s back with one of its scrabbling legs, plucking at the fabric of his shirt.

He spun around and nearly lost his nose to the dangling half-formed creature. serrated jaws clacked shut inches from his face, making him step back. Right into the reach of the tree.

I dove for him even as a branch lashed him across the shoulder blades. He pitched forward, but I managed to haul him back before he could tumble into the living shredder of the Scavenger field. A row of oblong dots appeared on the back of his shirt in a line, showing where the skin had split underneath. Not much more than a scratch from the looks of it. He’d been damn lucky.

The trunk of the tree shivered and rocked back and forth as it tried to reach us at the edge of the clearing, but we were just out of reach. Anne took advantage of her relative safety to get off a few rounds. Black ooze ran out of the trunk where she hit, but the tree didn’t seem to notice.

She steadied her pistol with both hands and her face went blank. Branches whipped through the air in front of her, but she didn’t flinch. Or even blink. She was unreachable now. The P250 barked and the Heartwood spike jammed through the tree’s tacked-on face twitched, but remained stuck firmly in the trunk. More shots. It jerked again with the same result, then once more. It was stuck fast.

She lowered the P250 and shouted over the din of the tree. “Somebody is going to have to go in there and yank it out.”

“You think that’ll kill it?”

“No idea, but this whole place is threaded through with the scent of the Heart. It’s worth a try.”

Leon grabbed my shoulder and yelled into my ear, “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now.” He drew and fired at a Scavenger next to my feet. One of the mandibles snapped off and it veered away.

They were coming out of the field by the dozens. Most had dropped off the vine before being fully formed and were dragging themselves towards us on stunted legs while the grasping tentacles on their backs writhed and strained in our direction.

The crack of gunfire joined the noise from the tree as Anne and Leon attempted to disable the closest Scavengers, inching carefully away from the advancing carpet of the things. It only took a few seconds before they were forced to step back into the range of the tree.

Anne grunted as a branch snatched at her hair, jerking her head back. Another branch slipped under her armpit and wrapped around her shoulder. Leon went down as his feet were pulled out from under him.

We were out of options. I put one arm across my face and charged the tree. Branches slashed across my body, whipping me across the head and back. I kept going. The tree was fast, but nowhere near strong enough to hurt me. If I had been a normal man, I would have been flayed to the bone under the concentrated assault.To me it was barely a nuisance.

Realizing that a direct attack was useless, the tree snagged me with a half-dozen branches and yanked me into the air. Smart, but no more effective.

I grabbed the nearest branch and pulled it to my mouth. It was fleshy and no thicker than a garden hose. Easy to bite through. The tree shuddered and dropped me as if I were on fire.

The bitter, metallic taste of the black sap brought me to my senses. I barely managed to spit out the thumb-sized piece of branch instead of swallowing it. I was starving, but I still had that much control.

The tree recoiled from me, its branches held high overhead and trunk leaning away and twisting from side to side in panic as I crossed the last few feet. I took in the pile of severed limbs on the ground. The collection of jewelry stolen from the dead on its trunk. The wave of Scavengers crawling towards my friends, intent on cutting them into pieces.

And I bared my teeth, black sap running down my chin. The tree flinched. I savored its fear for a long heartbeat before reaching out and tearing the Heartwood spike free.

The tree collapsed backwards, its whistling cries falling away in pitch and intensity, until the branches and trunk were flaccid and limp, splayed across the ground like a dead octopus on a beach. The Scavenger plants fell outward, forming a ring of flattened stalks around the grove, and the Scavengers themselves scattered, fleeing into the forest.

The hushed silence of the woods that followed was a relief.

Anne and Leon threw off the now limp branches and stood up. Guided by years of habit, Anne swapped magazines and reloaded the used one by touch while her eyes moved restlessly around the silent grove. “I told you that would work.”

“Yes, you’re a genius. Here’s your prize.” I slapped the sticky Heartwood spike into her palm.

She made a face and turned it over in her hands, then lifted her face and inhaled deeply while turning in a circle.

“I can’t track it.This whole place smells like the Heart. Sorry.”

“I guess that makes sense. The Fox said that the Heart would be used to awaken the forest.” I kicked the spongy trunk. “Although I would bet it was never meant to be used to create something like this.”

She stuck the spike in her back pocket. “You don’t know that. I don’t really see Prime going after something pleasant. Just because it’s a force of nature doesn’t mean it’s friendly. Or that it doesn’t hate us.”

“Maybe it didn’t have a choice in what it turned into.”

She shrugged. “Who cares? Evil is evil, right? It needed to die.”

I stared at her and her cheeks reddened as she realized why it mattered to me.

Leon called us over to where he was squatting by the pile of discarded bones. “Come take a look at these.”

The bones were clotted with more of the tree’s disgusting black sludge. Leon rubbed a thumb over one, revealing the sigils that had been carved across every inch of its surface. They seemed to twist in my peripheral vision each time my eyes moved, but were completely inert wherever I was actually looking. It was the same pattern as the bones from the cave.

The ends had been carved into crude hooks. Not particularly sharp, more like the kind of hook that you would use to hang your coat, and less like the kind you’d use to hang meat.

Leon passed the bone to Anne. She took the greasy body part without hesitation and closed her eyes. We watched in silence as her knuckles turned white around the grisly human remains. She turned her face to the left and opened her eyes. Then she turned to the right and a tear streaked down her cheek. She scrubbed the track away angrily with her free hand.

“They didn’t bring all of her. The Scavengers took the parts they wanted and left the rest back in town, and some they abandoned on the way here. She’s scattered for miles. Her family will never find all the pieces.”

She hissed between her teeth. “It wasn’t enough that Prime created these things to kill her. He had them defile the body, cutting it up and throwing the parts away like garbage. I don’t know how, but we’re going to make him suffer for this, Abe. He has to pay.”

“He will,” I said gently, “but we have to find him first.”

She stood up and let the bone fall out of her hand. “That way. There are so many more of these bones in the forest and they’re all together. That’s where we’ll find him.”

Leon wiped his hands on his jeans. “You sure you don’t want to bring these with us? You know, just to make sure you don’t lose the scent?”

She shook her head. “It’s not just a bone anymore. They turned it into something else, something so vile that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get it out of my head. I promise you, I won’t lose the scent. It’ll be with me for the rest of my life.”

She walked away from us, into to the wood.

53

W
e navigated by moonlight, strong and clear in the strange woods. The sky overhead was thick with stars the way I remembered from my childhood on the farm, before the sky was washed out by the encroaching city lights. The primordial forest was striped with razor sharp shadows that sprang from the bases of the giant trees and flowed over the uneven ground like black rivers.

As we walked, the crackle of dried leaves and snapping twigs under our feet was echoed in the surrounding forest by unseen things pacing alongside us.

Leon looked over his shoulder for the twentieth time. “How much further?”

Anne shrugged. “Hard to say. If it’s a small pile of bones, then we’re pretty close. If it’s a big pile, and I think it is, then a few more miles.”

“In that case, maybe we should pick up the—”

The forest lurched around us. Wood cracked and twisted as the trees grew once more. Branches thickened and stretched in the canopy a hundred feet overhead, blocking out the sky and separating us from the moon and stars. It became dark and still.

My inhuman eyes could still pick out the towering trees around us, but even I couldn’t see farther than a dozen yards in any direction. Both Anne and Leon had their hands out and were staring blindly ahead.

“The Heart,” said Anne in a whisper. “That was another beat.”

Leon’s voice was loud, as if to prove something to the dark. “Why did the trees block out the light? That’s never happened before.”

“My guess,” I said, “is that the forest is trying to stop us from interfering with whatever deal it has with Prime.”

I could see Leon tilt his head back, searching the canopy above for any glimmer of light that might leak through. “Well, it’s working. I can’t see shit.”

The pop of a twig breaking sounded to our left. Closer than before.

“We need to keep moving.”

I reached out and took hold of one of Leon’s outstretched hands. He jumped and tried to pull away. “Jesus. You scared the hell out me.” I took Anne’s hand as well. “You can seriously still see in here?”

“A little. Enough to keep us from bumping into anything.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“One, and if you don’t put it down, I’m going to leave your ass here.”

“Just checking.”

I led them forward at a walk. “Anne, let me know if I need to change course.”

“Really? That never would have occurred to me. I was just going to let you lead us around in a big ol’ circle until we died.”

“I hear sarcasm, but no directions.”

“Just keep walking.”

It was slow going. Every few feet either Anne or Leon would stumble over a root or piece of uneven ground and several times I had to move around brush or branches blocking our way that I hadn’t seen until we were only a few feet away.

“This is bullshit,” said Leon after nearly falling for the tenth time. “Even if I don’t break a leg, at this rate it’ll we’ll die of old age before we get there.”

“Let me try something,” said Anne. She dug her phone out of her pocket and pushed a key. The tiny postage-stamp-sized screen lit up, but the light was too weak to even reach the ground at her feet. “Worth a shot.”

“You seriously need a better phone,” said Leon.