Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) (20 page)

“Stay here.” I made sure that Hunger was secure in its holster and approached the tree, keeping one eye on Prime as I walked. He was only halfway up, which surprised me considering what I’d seen of his strength and agility so far.

He reached out his right hand and placed it gingerly on the tree, watching carefully as his hand made contact. Then his head swiveled downward to look at his left foot as he guided it slowly into the crook between two branches. Once settled, he pushed with his foot and pulled with his hand, raising his body smoothly and watching intently to make sure he didn’t bump into any of the surrounding branches.

I didn’t understand why until I reached the tree. The black skin of the trunk was studded with hundreds of roughly chewed holes. Glossy black bodies drifted in and out of them, swirling lazily from one to the other. The entire tree emitted a hollow, droning buzz.

Crunching noises caught my attention. A few feet to my left was a shimmering clump of the insects on a pile of wood chips and vine fragments. Only the edge of a mask-like face identified it as the remains of a wooden man.

Insects drifted in and out of the mass, lumbering ponderously through the air like fat bumblebees, light glinting off of their slick, obsidian bodies. Even ten yards away I could smell the sharp, vinegary odor coming off of them.

They had serrated mandibles that looked too big for their heads and pinched wasp-waists which grew into long, segmented abdomens. Their fat legs hung limply from their bodies as they drifted between the buzzing pile and the trunk of the tree.

The thought of being consumed by a swarm of flying wood-chippers was terrifying. The Trickster had said that the forest would test us, not murder us. I briefly considered throwing something at the tree to try and catch Prime in a swarm of the things, but I wasn’t sure what would happen if I disturbed a hive the size of a small building. Best to stick to the original plan and get to the Heart first.

The lower half of the limbs had no insect holes in them, likely because they were too thin to tunnel through. My legs dangled free as I pulled myself up using only my hands, barely feeling my own body weight.

I reached the thicker section of the branch quickly, slowing down to keep it from swaying as I moved. Once the limb got to be about six-inches thick, it began to show evidence of burrowing.

As the branch thickened, it also became more horizontal and rose into a long, flattened arch that ended at the trunk. Instead of trying to balance on top of it, I simply hung underneath and moved hand-over-hand.

That was my first mistake. From underneath you can’t see the holes. As soon as my left hand came down I could feel a rough splintery circle beneath my fingers. My middle finger was instantly jerked against the hole and I felt the skin tear. I yanked my hand back and clenched it into a fist against the pain.

That left me hanging from one hand, twenty feet off the ground, with blood running out of my fist and dripping off my elbow. I hoped the smell wouldn’t excite the hive. That would be bad.

I forced my injured hand open against the sticky pull of the rapidly congealing blood and examined the wound. Using my thumb to pull back on one of the edges, I saw bone and what looked like the end of a tendon. When I flexed my hand and all my fingers but the middle one curled in. Well, at least the thing hadn’t managed to get those jaws around the whole finger. I had no doubt that that it would have sheared clean through with little effort.

I held the wound closed with my thumb, hoping that if I gave it a minute, my body would seal up the skin enough to keep me from leaving a bloody trail across the hive.

Looking up, I could see that Prime was now two-thirds of the way to the top. I counted to sixty and checked the wound. A ragged black seam marked edges of the cut, and it clearly hadn’t knitted closed yet, but I couldn’t give it any more time.

I managed a one-armed chin up to get my face even with the branch so I could see where the holes where, then grabbed a spot with my injured hand. I felt the skin tear open as I put weight on it, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Watching for holes required pulling up to the branch with every handhold, which was slow and difficult. As I moved higher, the branch got thicker and increasingly hollow. I could feel the vibrations of the heavy insects scuttling along the inside and began to wonder if my hands were going to plunge through the bark into the hive itself. Occasionally an insect would be walking on the branch around a hole and I would have to wait for it to duck inside or fly off before continuing.

Every inch forward was slow and tedious, but that extra caution got me to the trunk alive. It radiated a moist warmth and the droning buzz was much louder here.

Insects heaved themselves out of the trunk only to walk a foot and duck back down inside while others launched into the air to loop around and enter again on the other side. Lots of nervous motion, but peaceful. I hoped they stayed that way. It wouldn’t take much for them to boil out and reduce me to a scattered pile of gnawed bones on the ground below.

Once I had my balance I stretched up for the branch above me. It wasn’t directly overhead, so I leaned forward until my fingers grazed the rough bark. And there I stood, suspended by tiptoes and fingertips in the tree. Try as I might, I couldn’t make up those last few inches that would let me close my hand around the branch. I was going to have to jump.

I pulled back and crouched, just a little, and steadied myself with my right hand on the trunk, feeling it vibrate under my fingers and touching it as lightly as I could.

I was going to have to make this. Prime was nearly at the top. I fixed my gaze on the branch above me and held my hands up like a basketball player about to make a free throw. My left hand grip wasn’t reliable, since one of my fingers wasn’t working, so the grab I made with my right hand needed to count.

I jumped, pushing off with my toes as smoothly as I could and only snapping my legs straight at the last moment, hoping to keep the movement from jarring the tree too badly.

I failed. The branch shuddered and let out a sharp crack as the wood split. I grabbed the branch above me just as the hum of the hive notched up in pitch. Insects began to tumble out of the damaged limb, looping and circling around it in fast, tight turns.

I pulled my legs up and got to my feet. The next branch was close enough to grip, so I wrapped my hands around it. One of my fingers plunged into a hole. I yanked it back out like I had touched a hot stove and nearly fell, but fortunately there hadn’t been anything waiting for me.

The cloud of insects below was getting thicker and throwing off smaller groups who circled in a larger arc. One landed on my arm as I hauled myself up to the next branch. Its hooked feet gripped my thin jacket with surprising strength as it waved its open jaws back and forth in the air. It came to a decision and the jaws flashed down, snipping a piece out of the nylon shell before flying off.

Another insect buzzed past my head, so close that its feet tugged at my hair as it passed. I flinched, but resisted the urge to slap at my own head as it passed.

The buzzing inside the trunk got louder as the alarm started to spread. Below me the knot of furious insects was thickening to the point where I could no longer see through it. In a few minutes, this entire fifty-foot-tall nest to which I was clinging was going to be covered in a seething mass of pissed off bugs.

So I leapt again, hard. The branch beneath me didn’t break, but it did bounce violently up and down, which was just as bad as far as the bugs were concerned. I shot upwards a good twenty feet and slammed into the underside of a branch near the top.

I clutched at it and managed not to either break it or fall to my death. It was close enough to the top of the tree to be too narrow to contain part of the hive, but the impact could clearly be felt where it grew out of the trunk. Fat, glossy bodies began tumbling out of the few holes that existed this high up.

On the plus side, Prime was just over my head on the opposite side of the trunk and the Heart’s cage was just above that.

Prime looked down when I made the tree tremble under the impact of my leap. His wooden face registered nothing when he saw me. He turned back skyward and inched up another foot.

I scrambled up onto the thin branch. An insect lumbered past my face, so I swatted it backhand. Directly at Prime.

It hit him on the thigh, and outraged, began chewing into his leg. Prime jerked and nearly lost his balance. I pulled myself upwards one more branch. I was nearly close enough to touch either Prime or the cage.

Prime reached down and crushed the insect in his fist, then tossed away the pulped remains. Then he gripped the bottom of the cage and used it to pull himself up.

I did the same and found myself staring into his wooden face through the smooth, clean roots that made up the cage bars.

Between us was the Heart.

It was a dark brown, rich in color and texture, and shaped like the tip of a spear: flat, oblong, and pointed, bulging in the center and tapering down to thin edges. Sticky resin coated the outside, smelling strongly of earth and sap. It was about twice the size of a football and grew out of the top of the cage, attached by a thick stem.

Prime and I reached in at the same time, our fingers nearly touching as we grasped the Heart from opposite sides. It was fever-hot and as sticky as it looked, but also greasy in the way that your finger will slide slowly through a drop of tacky syrup.

The stalk holding it was tough, and with only one hand, there was no way to get enough purchase to tear it free. Prime was having the same problem, his thorn tipped fingers slipping across the hard surface as he tried to snatch it out of the cage.

Realizing that the prize was going to take time to work free, he let go. The back of his wooden hand scraped loudly on the cage as he withdrew it.

Then he leaned out to one side, supported by his other hand. His face turned to me, and with the index and middle fingers of his free hand, he pointed to his eyes. Then he turned that hand and pointed just his index finger at the ground below.

I looked.

I had no idea how Prime communicated with his stick creations, but he was clearly doing so now. Two stick men bounded out of the shadows where they had been hiding, concealed at the edges of the cavern.

Gunshots began to pop far below, like corks bursting from champagne bottles, mixed with another sound, the crack and whine of bullets ricocheting off of metal.

The stick men ran at my friends, sparks flying from the cast iron skillets that Prime had used to cover the knots in their chests.

Prime turned back to the cage and, ignoring me, began to twist the Heart back and forth with both hands.

I clung to the cage tightly with one hand and turned around, facing out into open space. Far below, Chuck and Anne were being herded backwards.

Chuck was trying to circle around his attacker, aiming for a shot at its back.

Anne was no longer firing, but instead stumbling backwards and jerking aside when the raking claws got too close. She was hunched forward against the swarm behind her, and visibly flinching each time one of the insects ripped at her back, but unable to take her eyes away from the stick man in front of her.

The slide of her pistol was locked back, showing that the weapon was empty, but she hadn’t reloaded, even though I could see the outline of a fresh clip in her back pocket.

I wanted the Heart. Each atrocity that Prime had committed up to this moment was indirectly my fault, and the guilt was a hot spark that I could barely stand to look at directly. But as horrible as those deaths were, blood and soul being violently drained by Prime’s thorns, they would pale in comparison to what was coming if Prime was allowed to finish his work.

I had to choose. Chuck was far enough from the swarm to retreat if he needed to, but Anne would die if I spent another moment up here. And the Heart was only part of what Prime needed. There was still a slim chance to stop him later, but if I didn’t move, there wasn’t going to be a later for Anne. The wooden man bearing down on her would either tear her to pieces or push her back into the swarm.

I leapt out into thin air.

Eyes locked on the top of the stick man’s head, I raced towards the ground with clenched fists, frustration and fury twisting inside of me. The world blurred and I still couldn’t fall fast enough, hard enough, to satisfy me.

I clamped my feet together just before my heels struck. The impact drove the creature’s head down into its chest and split it in half, throwing fractured bits of wood in all directions.

I slammed into the ground as though the creature hadn’t even been there, the soles of my boots sinking inches into the hard-packed clay. Unable to keep my feet, I tumbled and rolled and skidded before coming to a stop.

I scrambled upright on numb feet and aching knees in time to see the remains of the creature fall to the ground. The side with the knot and skillet hunched towards me, pushing against the ground with one leg and pulling with one hand while dragging its crushed head behind it on a few strands of vine.