For the first twenty steps into the outside world, Lysander was barely cognizant of the fact that they had left. It wasn’t until that twentieth step that he thought to glance back and saw the shrinking figure of Richie and the barely visible line of the Barrier. Nothing felt different, but the knowledge that something undeniably was different still unsettled him. The same forest still spread around them indefinitely, but the trees now seemed sinister or infected somehow, even without physical proof. At some point, Noah had pulled a compass and map from the front pocket of his canvas backpack and directed them toward a stretch of road that had begun peaking through the branches.
Once they made it to the side of the road, Lexi stopped them and slung her own bag off her shoulders. While she dug through her things, Lysander looked around at his surroundings. The had paused next to what was once a major highway, apparent in the sheer size of it. Grayed pavement stretched in either direction, and faded stripes of white and yellow designated lanes. Most of it had fallen into severe disrepair, though it looked too natural and gradual to be a cause of the Spread with cracks zigzagging along the surface and potholes periodically pockmarking the other uninterrupted grayness, just enough to make traversing the stretch almost certainly impossible with a vehicle.
It was at that moment that it began to rain, a light spring misting that dampened the tips of Lexi and Noah’s hair. Underneath the shelter of Tessa’s bubble, however, Lysander felt nothing, only heard the pattering as the droplets collided with her magic.
“This is wild,” Ramon muttered, eyes round and searching as he watched the water slide down around them like they were enclosed in a large glass capsule.
“One of the many perks of my power,” Tessa chirped, but her voice sounded distant as though it cost her to divide her attention to their conversation, “Built in umbrella.”
Noah glared over at them before rolling his eyes, unimpressed. Lexi emerged from her search, triumphantly raising the item above her head. It looked like a belt of some kind, and she did indeed buckle it around her waist, but then Lysander fully processed the rest of the visual information and realized that two sheaths dangled from either end and now rested against her hips. Inside each sheath, the hilt of what must be a dagger poked out. From the size of them, the weapons had to be the length of her forearms.
Seeing his attention, Lexi commented, “Now that we’ve made it this far outside the city, things are gonna start getting weird pretty quick. I’ll watch our backs.” He had had no idea she even carried around daggers, let alone knew how to wield them, and the caution only made the pit of his stomach start to roil. Somehow amidst worrying about dying of Spread sickness, he had forgotten about the very real possibility of a plain old death by mauling.
“My barrier will protect us from a lot, but it won’t hold up against the strain of a continuous assault,” Tessa said.
“Excellent. If we get attacked, I’ll keep their attention then,” Lexi replied, already swinging back around to continue. The length of her braid now gleamed slickly in the rain.
Checking his map–and hunching over it to protect it from getting wet–Noah declared, “We can follow this for a few hours at least. Shouldn’t be too far from that place we crashed in last summer, Lex.”
Biting her lip, Lexi considered this. “Sticking to the road means we’ll be seen, but bumbling around in the woods means potentially running into something that wants to eat us, so I guess we’ll take the lesser of two evils.”
“What do you mean ‘we’ll be seen’?” Ramon asked.
“Most clingers hang out around this area. While a lot of families tend to stay pretty solitary, there’s also a fair number that like the safety that a community provides. Hence, the little Clinger Cities you’ll see next to the street. That’s how most communes out here start. I heard even the Almighty’s enclave started as a clinger camp,” Lexi explained before beginning to walk once more, their steps leading them further southeast.
“The Almighty?” Lysander squeaked.
“Yeah, word is he runs the largest Shifted caravan in the country, but that his people are like weird religious zealots. With any luck, you’ll be tucked back into the city before you ever have to worry too much about a run-in with a caravan.”
“So, it’s like a cult?” he continued, unable to help himself. It baffled him that so many lived out here creating their own societies and cultures.
“Kinda. Like I said, don’t worry too much about it.”
“Okay, but then why is it bad that the…clinger camps see us?” he asked, stumbling over the new terminology.
“Gossip. Word travels fast out here, surprisingly enough with how spread out everyone is, but I guess people don’t have much else to do. Plus a lot of caravans make stops at clinger camps. You can usually find some good supplies there. Stuff people grabbed before they got exiled but then realized they had no use for out here. Fences pay good money for that kind of shit.” At that, she shot Ramon a look over her shoulder.
Shrugging, Ramon responded, “Yeah, that’s most of the stuff my uncle brings me. My cousin and him live on the outskirts of one of the camps. Dunno which. He’s always cagey about it if I ask.”
As they walked, Lysander realized that the copse of trees that had initially spat them onto the street was one of the only forested areas for miles. Lining the road now were the remnants of suburbia, squat, lengthy plazas infecting the countryside in dull gray tones, matching parking lots now overrun by weeds. It was also here that he saw the first hints of the Spread, crumbling architecture exposing old stores and showrooms. At one point, they even passed a car dealership. Many of the vehicles had been looted back when fuel was still an accessible commodity, but a few still dotted the lot, their tires and metal bodies starting to disintegrate, leaving them looking more like tiny shipwrecks uncovered after centuries rather than decades.
After following the highway for around an hour, signs of human population began to crop up not far from the main strip of road they walked. Quickly built wooden structures replaced the unending pall of cement, the communities choosing wide empty stretches of parking lots to camp out in. The slapdash towns were necessarily closely knit with all the buildings fit into the designated lines of the lots, and people swarmed between them. From a distance, they looked like sticks bobbing along about their business, and Lysander could also see trails of smoke snaking into the sky from various places amidst each camp. The people at the camps closest to the road would stop if they noticed their group passing and watch them pass, which unsettled Lysander slightly, if only because it made him feel vaguely like a zoo animal being studied.
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“Ignore them,” Lexi commanded under her breath, having fallen back to walk beside him. He had made eye contact with a woman in the camp they were walking beside, and her eyes stared holes through him, though she said nothing to either him or anyone else.
Breaking the staredown, Lysander blinked and refocused on his footsteps, barely sidestepping a rather gnarly crack in the pavement in time. “There are more people than I expected,” he replied.
“Mm. Even with the amount of people dying to Spread sickness, there’s still a lot that never made it behind the Barriers with even more being exiled everyday.”
The group continued on, and after another hour of this, Lysander looked over to Tessa. He had been able to mostly tune out the faint golden tinge that her bubble cast over the scenery, and she had been a silent pillar between him and Ramon even when the rest engaged in small talk. Now that he really looked at her, however, he saw that her face was awash in sweat, droplets coalescing around her hairline and running rivulets down her cheeks and falling from her chin. Stray pieces of her hair clung to her temples.
“Holy crap, are you alright?” he asked. Her eyes had a distant pallor cast over them, but when he spoke, she seemed to jolt back to attention.
“Huh? Yeah, I’m good! Why?” she replied.
“You’re sweating, like, a lot,” he said, awkwardly motioning to his own face as though she didn’t know where sweat came from.
“Oh, that. Yeah, no, I’m fine. It’s kinda like I’m riding a bike in my mind, that’s all.”
“Are you sure you’re gonna make it? We still have hours to go.”
“Lysander, I’m fine. For real, don’t worry about me, okay?”
People seemed to keep asking him not to worry about them, even though they kept throwing themselves headfirst into danger.
At this point, the structures of city life were slowly being replaced by patches of farmland, though what must have once been orderly rows of corn or soybeans had been overtaken by rampant weeds or yet more camps of survivors. The wilderness also seemed to be encroaching heavily on the road, now, as more forestry and greenery tore at the thinning highway. What had been a four lane freeway had become only two in each direction, and the exit ramps for towns came less frequently. Again, the Spread reared its head, this time in the form of half chewed road signs–the metal already weakened by pervasive rust–and whole chunks of the asphalt missing, showing the natural earth beneath. Lysander knew it must be his imagination plaguing him, but he felt his chest tightening and his breaths become labored the farther they made it away from the city and the safety of the Barrier. It scared him not knowing what was going on inside his own body. The idea that some unknown force could be–and almost certainly was–wreaking havoc on him gave him a feeling akin to spotting a spider and being unable to stop picturing it crawling over his skin.
Once they had traveled several hours and the stretches of woods and farms outnumbered the signs of civilization, Noah raised a hand and stopped them. “We should stop and rest here. We’re gonna be leaving the road and I don’t want to have to stop much inside the forest,” he said, already pulling his bag from his shoulders and plopping onto the rain slick asphalt beneath him.
“You guys sit first,” Tessa said. Lysander and Ramon complied, easing down to the ground. Even though the wetness seeped immediately into his pants once he was down, Lysander found he didn’t care. His feet throbbed uncomfortably already, not used to so much continued exercise, and his knees creaked stiffly as he bent them. As Tessa situated herself between them, Ramon swooped behind her and allowed her to use his back to prop herself up. She smiled gratefully at him. “Thanks.”
“You’re keeping me alive. Least I could do is help you relax,” Ramon replied. Noah rolled his eyes at them while Lexi dug out some jerky from her bag.
She passed it around. “Everyone take some. Hopefully those farmers won’t mind us sharing their food because I don’t have much else on me.”
Lysander also hadn’t brought anything to eat other than a couple apples that were now bruised from banging against his water bottle all day. None of the food in his apartment had been conducive to bringing along on a multiple day expedition, mostly because he had never bothered to learn how to can or jar his own produce or cure his own meats, which he regretted now that the reality of his situation seemed so bleak. If the worst happened and he had to live out here, he wouldn’t be able to contribute anything useful, a fact that weighed heavily.
While he stewed over his inadequacies and the rest of the group ate and chatted, Lysander noticed a large black speck emerging from the trees about a mile ahead of their location. The form of it was baffling. His mind wanted to label it as a deer, but it was too large to be comfortably called as such, and it had more antlers than anything else he could think of with two full sets branching into the sky. In fact, given the size of the animal and the unruly growth of the antlers, Lysander wasn’t even sure how the thing had picked through the forest without getting stuck between trees.
“Um, what’s that thing?” he asked, lifting his hand and pointing at the creature. By this time, it had noticed their huddle and was making its way over to them. It approaching them instead of fleeing made his stomach swoop.
Lexi followed his finger and saw the animal. She had been laughing at something Ramon had said, but upon sighting it, the joviality dissipated and she slowly lifted into a low crouch, hands hovering over her daggers.
“Get up slowly and stay behind me,” she directed, eyes locked on the creature. After Lexi had stood, it had stopped moving and Lysander could see its sides bellowing as it breathed. Now that it was closer, he could also make out that its brown fur looked mottled and patchy as though it had grown too fast for its coat to keep up, like a child quickly outgrowing new clothes.
“Will it attack?” Ramon questioned in a whisper, but the animal’s ears still swiveled at the sound of his voice, and it began to paw at the ground agitatedly. “Nevermind. Dumb question.”
“Just start shuffling into the woods,” Lexi ordered, and they all complied, sliding their feet incrementally toward the eastern edge of the road.
It took that opportunity to launch itself toward them, hurtling at them with all four antlers poised to ram them.
“Fuck!” someone shouted, but in the confusion that followed, Lysander had no idea who it was. As soon as it moved, Tessa shoved into his back, pushing him into the treeline, but because of the close proximity they had to maintain, all their feet got tangled together and Tessa and Ramon landed on top of him in a heap. Noah had already escaped behind a tree and groaned when he saw them go down. Behind them all, Lexi stood braced like a wrestler, and Lysander’s heart stuttered as the deer barreled into her. His elbows and palms chafed unpleasantly under his weight, and they were surely scraped, but he could only focus on Lexi, even as Ramon scooped him back to his feet.
She slid back several feet from the momentum, but she still maintained a grip on the antlers, her jaw clenched from exertion. Whipping its head, it launched her over its body, her weight nothing to the thick muscles bunched in its neck. Releasing the antlers, she twisted overhead and managed to land on her feet behind the deer. Before it could change targets and attack the rest of them, however, Lexi kicked it in its hindquarters, causing it to kick out with its back legs at her. She dodged it and, with one swift motion, unsheathed one of her daggers and tried to plunge it into the creature’s neck. Before she could make contact, though, the animal reared back onto its hind legs and flailed wildly at her with its front hooves. She had already committed to the swing and got clipped by its right leg while darting back and away. The blow was glancing, but Lysander could already see a line of blood beginning to seep out of the cut on her forehead, bright red against her pale skin.
The deer towered over her, larger than a draft horse and approaching the size of a moose, but she appeared unfazed and slightly irritated, at best. As it landed, she slipped back into its range, and, with a spin, it was over. She sliced into its neck, and blood poured from it rapidly, coating her arm. With a groan, the animal collapsed, thudding heavily to the asphalt.