He looked up at her. “Babe, we’ve got no choice.” The man pulled down his pants and Norah’s fear ratcheted up a degree. Her eyes remained glued to him but it was with disbelief. She didn’t want him to leave her, especially to risk his life for her, again.
“We can go back to the research lab. We can hole up.” She was willing to say anything to get him to stay. “We can go back to the terra vehicle and drive out of the storm. Don’t leave me. Please,” whispering into the wind. He hooked their packs on a branch by her side before catching her face within his hands.
“I’m not going anywhere.” His dark eyes looked down at hers, holding her fear, her worry, her soul in place. Her hair whipped between them. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Do. Not. Move from this spot. I’ll be right back.”
He left her before she could react, his body sinking next to the ship he was going to risk his life retrieving. The veil of rain muddied her sight but she caught him pulling off his metal mask and putting it around his neck. Norah couldn’t see his face.
“Crazy. You’re crazy,” she said to herself.
But she could have sworn his body shifted, moved and changed into something inhuman before he dropped himself into the water, before he needled his way into the thick mud.
And then he was gone. And so was most of the flyer.
Norah became aware of her surroundings then, as the Cyborg faded from her mind, and the shock of the last week settled in.
Her eyes flew across the small glen, searching for any signs of the dangerous creatures that lived in the jungle: the coilers, the giant birds, a tree nest of bloodsuckers, or any of the numerous poisonous bugs that lurked in the swamps.
Norah leveraged herself higher up the trunk of the tree.
Her thick hair flew around her head like a tornado, heavy and moist, and altogether chaotic, distorting her view. Another shriek, a guttural scream just beyond her sight, rose up behind trees that she had just run past with Stryker. It pricked her ears with needles.
Her eyes flew around, looking for the howler, never having encountered such a subject within the last six months, but her gaze landed on the ship that had only sunk more.
A mist gathered around her. And then she saw it.
Saw something that splintered her mind.
Grey fingers, long and numerous, stretched out from the water reaching for her leg. Horrible and familiar, sharpened claws covered in a thin layer of black skin. More lifted from the waters around her, until the hands of dozens of monsters just below the rising waters came into view.
Norah lifted her feet and began to hoist herself up the tree.
Her heart beat like a gong, ready to burst. The wet bark caught under her heels just enough for her to grasp the branch above her.
Something slithered across her boot.
Don’t look down. Don’t you fucking look down Norah.
She clenched her teeth and, with a cry of pain, mustered enough adrenaline to monkey her way to the first branch, hanging off it as things that she wouldn’t look at began to rise from the water.
DON’T LOOK DOWN.She screamed in her head as her feet climbed up the tree until all of her limbs were wrapped around the first branch. Norah hooked her leg over and with the fear of death running through her veins lifted herself up and began to climb the numerous branches above her.
Sorry, Stryker.
Norah couldn’t think of anything but getting away from the things below her. Her climbing faltered as the shrieks picked up again.
She pressed her back into the tree and buried her head between her knees, lifting her legs up to balance on the branch. Another bolt struck a tree nearby as the hazy light flashed behind her eyelids.
When the light faded into the murk and the shrieks died away, minutes after her quick scramble up the tree, she opened her eyes and braved a look at the water.
The fingers were gone, but a dark figure stood directly below her, staring up at her. The ground popped and the last bit of the flyer disappeared below the mud.
Norah reached for her gun and screamed. She let several bullets loose at the dark figure under her before another rush of fear gripped her. She continued scrambling up the tree.
The leaves thickened until the ground got lost in the foliage. They were so large, like swaying lily-pads that grew out by feet and not by inches; they offered her cover.
She kept going until her breaths grew shorter and her exhausted muscles gave out. The leaves draped around her, now even longer.
It was an Agusto tree; the jungle was full of them. They were one of the species of behemoth saplings, like an Earthian Umbrella tree on steroids. She was protected from the rain but not from the growing cold of nightfall.
