His presence stills beside me.
Even in the dark, I feel him frost over, and I swear the whole unit falters.
All the noise, the bootsteps, soles slipping over ice, muttered curses and ragged breaths—it all cuts off so suddenly that I fear, just for a second, that I’ve spontaneously gone deaf.
I roll my jaw.
My ears don’t pop.
But something beneath my boots does.
Though the dark is thick, I drop my gaze to the earth—as though I’ll see what’s popping… what’sfestering.
That’s what it sounds like.
Festering. Like bubbles coming up a throat, or the slow start of a boil in a pot.
Ropes of ice unfurl in my chest.
I turn a slack look on Samick—who I’m sure sees me and my terror just fine.
But maybe he doesn’t look at me.
Not now that the festering is spreading all over the forest floor. And a stink comes with it.
The whole unit is quiet—silent, waiting—as the stench of charred acid churns around us, like stomach bile and scorched earth.
The quake rattles me again.
Another shiver beneath my boots.
This one doesn’t stop. Doesn’t come and go.
Itdeepens, a low, rising growl from the earth.
A shout splinters the silence—
Then the earth cracks.
It’s a fucking earthquake.
I can’t see shit. But I hear it all.
The shouts, the cries, the stumbles—the cracks that splinter all over the earth, jagged and hungry.
Earth is collapsing into pits, and I only know it because of the sound of raining soil.
The crack of a tree rises up behind me—
And the unit scatters into chaos.
I’m yanked aside, my body bowing at the hip.
The roar of a tree comes crashing down.
Samick pulls me out of the way—and into a run.
Heruns.
