Tabitha pulled off her hiking
boots and rolled up her jeans. David was already halfway across the ford, and
she could see the water was still below his knees. The long-abandoned road they
had followed for the past few days went straight across the river and continued
on the other side into the dim forest.
David called something to her, but
despite the shallow water, it made enough noise she couldn’t understand. He
stood, looking over his shoulder at her, waiting for a reply, she guessed. She
raised her hands up in an exaggerated shrug and called out, “I didn’t hear
you!”
“It’s slippery! But come see what
I found!” he shouted back.
She took a step into the water and
gasped at the cold. She stood for a moment, letting it stream over her feet and
ankles. It actually felt pretty heavenly after more than a week of hiking. She
looked up and down stream wondering if there was a pool deep enough to bathe
in.
David waved at he, encouraging her
to join him. “Okay! Okay”! she said, but not really loud enough for him to
hear. Adjusting to the cold, she took a careful step. The water was crystal
clear, running just a few inches over the old road. Its brown concrete was
broken into huge slabs, big enough for her to lie on, with a black speckling
spread evenly across the light brown.
She took another step and winced,
feeling sharp points under her feet. She bent down to examine the roadbed more
carefully, and her eyes focused on the black speckles. They were raised, and
she reached her hand into the water to touch one. It felt like a stone, but
when she tried to pull it up, it felt stuck, then released with a pop.
“It’s a snail!” she exclaimed,
then called to David, pointing into the water, “they’re snails!” He grinned and
waved. It was like they were having two different conversations at the same
time. She felt like that a lot, actually.
She gently dropped the snail back
in the water, then considered how to cross. There was no way to avoid stepping
on them. She walked to the side of the road, which had an unusually defined
edge, with no dirt packed up against it. There were rocks all over the river
bed, mostly looking flat enough for her to stand on. She saw no snails on the
rocks, so she stepped onto one. And promptly slipped, almost falling into the
water. The dark rocks were covered in a fine algae or moss that made her foot
slide right off. She gingerly stepped back onto the road.
“Well, sorry, guys. I’ll try to
step lightly,” she muttered, making her way out into the river. David was
standing on the downstream side of the road, bent over to look into the water.
“Hey, what’s so interesting there?” she called to him.
A long white tentacle whipped out
of the water, almost faster than she could see, wrapped around David’s legs,
and yanked him off the road into the river. It must be deeper than she
realized, because he was pulled completely under and disappeared. He hadn’t
even shouted or struggled.
She stood frozen in horror for a
moment, torn between her instinct to run away and her desire to save David. She
waited for turbulence, thrashing in the water, another tentacle coming after
her. Nothing.
“The hell with that!” she cried
out. Reaching to her back, she pulled out the taser he insisted she carry since
they had been attacked in an old town several weeks earlier. She ran across the
snail-covered road to the middle and looked over the edge. “Come and get me,
then!” she screamed.
|
Dogs in house
|
Houdini
|
|
|
|
|
Time writing:
|
20 minutes
|
|
|
|
|
August word
count:
|
8,366
|
No comments:
Post a Comment