17 – 3
I scramble on hand-and-knee to the Bend's back door, the key to its lock held tight. Stone grinds and wood crunches as the serpent pulls its sightless head from the hole its missed strike made. The pale, slime-slick rope of its body curves down, forcing Clarke to avoid its touch by crawling on her belly beneath it. A shower of small debris falls on her as the serpent's head comes free, the flesh-petal curls of its mouth closing into a blunt, narrow point; streamers of pink-stained saliva seeping between the scar-like seams.
My hands are shaking so badly that I fumble with the key, scraping its teeth across the lock before finally catching it in the opening. It slides home with a clack and gives another after I turn it. With a cry of triumph I shove the door open, looking back to pull Clarke through it with me to freedom. She takes my hand and we do just that, spilling out into an empty town with a serpent hot on our heels.
It's a pell-mell sprint through the streets. I choose directions at random: first left, then a right, and then down a narrow alley between houses. We emerge across from a park grown over and it is here, with my head spinning and heart a-thunder in my chest, that we stop.
“Is it –” Clarke gasps, hand on her chest, wheezing for any scrap of air her illness would deign grant, “Did we lose it?”
I look carefully up and down this new street, then back the way we've come; nothing. “I...” I shake my head, breathing hard, “I don't see anything,” Palm the sweat from my brow. “I think so.”
There's a hitch in her voice when she says, “Good,” one that I've come to know well. I turn in time to see her catch her balance on a stretch of wrought-iron fence and convulse with the strength of the coughing fit that strikes her.
It's the worst one yet, each harsh rasp tearing a red path up her raw throat. She turns red and claws at her chest; purple, and grasps at her throat; blue, and she falls to her knees. Her sunken eyes are wide with terror and filled with a plea for help I can't give. I go to her side and she falls into me, drops of pink-stained saliva falling from her mouth. It goes on and on and on. I fear it will never end, that this illness will succeed where much greater threats have failed.
The coughs turn hollow and weaken, but they do not stop. Her head lolls on my shoulder, sweat-chilled brow turning to the curve of my neck. She fumbles for my hand and holds my fingers as her eyes flutter and their open-sky blue rolls away into white.
Let it end. Goddess and Lost, please, let it end!
They do. After a last, choking sigh, They do.
Clarke begins to cry, shedding fear, relief, and misery onto my collar, “It's alright,” I tell her, quiet and hoarse, “You're alright, it's over. You're alright.”
She shudders in my arms, her weak sobs rattling her chest. I rub her back, tracing the too-prominent bumps of her spine with my fingers, and keep my eyes on our surroundings. The empty town looms, enveloping us in the oppressive silence of shadowed alleys and abandoned homes. The breeze rattles the naked branches in the overgrown park.
I don't know how the serpent found us before, nor if it will again. It might give us up as too much effort and retreat to its lair in the well, dormant until the next poor soul comes stumbling along. It might be on our trail now; a slow, serpentine curve through emptied streets, its worm-like tongue licking the air.
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All I know for certain is, “We have to go.”
Clarke shakes her head, mouthing her answer as much as speaking it, “I can't.”
I know, but, “We have to.”
“Zira, I...” What remains of her voice breaks, “I just – you should just –”
“Hey,” I take her face in my hands, lift her chin until she looks at me. Tears cling to her lashes, her eyes red, “It'll be alright. We won't go fast, and you'll lean on me. Just like how you got us here, I'll get us out, alright?”
“How?”
“Leave it to me,” I say, getting up onto my knees, “Your job's to keep breathing,” I hold out my hands for her to take, “Up you get.”
For a long, long moment, all she does is look. Of all the feelings I see in her eyes, belief is not among them. Is she giving up? Has she already? Without a word she puts her hands in mine and allows me to pull her to her feet. She's doing her part. Now I must do mine.
- - -
I have a plan, or at least the beginnings of one: keep as far from the town plaza as possible, creep east until we reach the road, turn north towards Amberdusk, and get the moonlit hell away from this place. From somewhere beyond this little street, flanked by rows of cottages, there comes the crystalline crash of breaking glass. Fear crackles down my spine and stings acid-sour on my tongue.
The sound didn't come from the plaza, but from behind us; from where we were, I should think, near the overgrown park. The serpent, on our trail. How? The vile thing is eyeless, it's fucking blind, so how is it following us?! I'd say it doesn't matter, but I'd be lying. We can't outrun it. Whatever lead we have will swiftly vanish because it is healthy and strong; and we are neither. Our only recourse is to hide from it, to evade it, and we cannot do that if it keeps finding us!
We need to figure it out. Now.
“How's it doing that?” Clarke asks. She's stooped from exhaustion and leaning heavily on me, but her eyes are clear.
“Sound, maybe?”
She grunts, considering. “Did you see any ears?”
I saw round, sucking mouths filled with teeth; saw a slimy, worm-like tongue licking the air; saw a round, exposed hole of a throat; but I did not see a single ear. I shake my head.
“Me neither,” she says, “but maybe it doesn't need them, maybe it – feels – sound instead of hearing it.”
We come to a T-junction in this endless sprawl of identical homes. How did anyone ever find their way around here?! “How would that work?” I ask, looking over our newest choice of 'left' or 'right'. Left would take us west for a stretch, but then there's a turn north out of sight that might lead to another east. Right may be an unbroken straight back towards the plaza which, if the serpent's near the overgrown park, might be empty.
Clarke clears her throat, finds something phlegmy in it, and hawks the wad onto the street. She wrinkles her nose at it, all bile-green and bruise-purple, but at least there's less blood than the one before. “Through its skin, I think,” she answers, “but I – I'm not sure.”
Stalled on choosing a direction, I try to imagine what that might be like. I end up remembering a time when I was younger, lying on the ground near the fire while Father tended to the mules. They'd been flea-bitten that day, quite a lot, and kept stomping their massive hooves in annoyance. The ground shook each time; I felt it, down in my bones. Maybe it's like that.
I hope it isn't. If it is, we aren't escaping.
“Zira?” Clarke's hoarse, worried voice brings me back. I still haven't chosen, have I? Right and 'maybe', or left and 'might'?
Stick to the plan. “This way,” I say, turning us left. Then, after a moment, “What about that thing it does with its tongue?”
“The licking?”
I nod. We make the turn north and learn that it leads to a dead end; with another, smaller lane splitting off to the north-east. It's sort of the right way. On we go.
“It does look like it – it's tasting the air, doesn't it?”
“Tasting us, too, maybe,” I answer softly, “Is it possible?”
Clarke makes a small, frustrated sound. “It...could be. I'm not sure.”
There's a spark of frustration that makes me want to ask if there's something she is sure of, but I tamp it down. “I think we should act like it's doing both,” even though I pray it's doing neither, “be as quiet as we can, and find some way to hide our scent, if we can.”
Clarke's about to ask what we'll do if we can't. I can see it, writ clear on her face and in her eyes. She's interrupted before she can, not by me but by a sound.
The front door of a house not ten feet behind us, shattering out into the street.