COPYRIGHT 2020 BY MS LEWIS - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
“Vixen!”
Briar ran to her as Topaz pushed herself off the ground, swearing.
“Vix, come on.” Briar shook her friend’s head a little. “Come on!” And when it didn’t work, she slapped her cheek hard. “Come on, dammit!”
Vixen’s eyes flew open and she gasped. And then she just lay there, blinking. The forest around them had gone silent. It was eerie.
“Are you okay?” Briar asked.
Vixen nodded and sat up, looking toward where the explosion or whatever had happened. “There’s a barrier.”
“Electrical, I think,” Briar said. “There was a flash and I smell it. Do you?”
Vixen nodded.
Topaz sniffed. “Smells like burnt chlorine.”
“We're not free at all, are we?” Vixen looked around, her eyes fearful. “What is this?”
“We don’t know that barrier is everywhere,” Briar said. “It can’t be everywhere.”
Topaz sat down, pulled off a shoe and used her gorgeous nails to pry off a few shiny baubles. “Thank God they’re mostly glass. Swarovsky, but still.”
“How do you know which ones are which?” Vixen asked. She was pacing, looking around, but paying attention too. She never missed anything.
“You’re kidding, right?” Topaz shoved a dozen diamonds down the front of her shirt, having no pockets. Then she replaced the shoe and took off the other one.
“How do you look like you just had a manicure after months of capitivity?” Briar asked. She, too, was alert, her senses wide open, sensing for danger. But the manicure was too much. She had to know.
“I had perfect nails the day died,” Topaz said. “So no matter what I do to them by night, they return to perfection while I rest. Like my hair, and my face, and my hot bod.” She returned to her task, not so much as cracking a smile. Briar didn’t know if she was kidding or just that vain.
“Not vain. Just factual,” she said.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to think that outloud.”
“That’s okay. I know everyone thinks I’m just a beautiful, shallow, spoiled, vapid bitch.” She shrugged. “But I am not vapid.”
She put on her shoe and rose to her feet. “So? What’s the plan?”
“Why are you asking me?” Briar realized she did think all those things about Topaz. She needed to check that.
Topaz put her hands on her hips, tipped her head sideways. “Who the hell else would I ask?”
“I don’t want to be the freaking leader.” Briar took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Reaper! Seth! Jack! Where the hell are you?
The others came alert when she called, looking up and turning slowly, like antennae seeking a signal. But no signal came, and within a few seconds, Vixen and Topaz returned to looking at her expectantly.
“I guess we should map this barrier thing out, see if we can find where it ends, or an opening or a way to shut it down or short it out or whatever.” She searched their faces. “Unless anyone can think of a better option.”
“I don’t think there are any other options,” Vixen said.
“We’ll keep calling out mentally as we go,” Topaz said. She had a handful of diamonds, ten or twelve, and went to shove them into her bra like she had the first batch.
Vixen said, “Wait. Jeeziz, you’re gonna cut your tits to ribbons. Here.” She picked up the edge of her shawl and using her teeth to get started, tore off a strip and handed it to her.
Topaz grinned. “I thank you, and Jack thanks you.” She stuck her hand down her blouse to fish out the stones she’d already deposited, wrapped them all in the cloth, knotted it, and tucked it into her bra. “Ahh, and my tits thank you.”
They shared a smile, the first in a long time. “We’re not in cages. We’re outside. We’re way better off than we were an hour ago,” Topaz said.
“Let’s do this, then,” Vixen took a step forward.
Briar grabbed her shoulder and said, “Maybe let me go first, huh? Two jolts like that might do you in.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t burst into flames,” Topaz said. She picked up a twig, and threw it at the barrier. It hit and sparks flew. Then she repeated the process to the right, and to the left of that spot, and then again, further.
Briar said, “I guess we just pick a direction and start walking. The question is, which way?”
“On the count of three, everyone point which way they want to go,” Vixen said, almost excitedly. “One, two-”
Topaz shouted, “Wait! On three, or after three?“
“On three,” Vixen said. “Ready?
Briar nodded. Topaz did, too.
“One, two, three!”
Briar flashed her pointing finger right, then looked to see that the others were pointing exactly the same way.
“I guess we go right,” Vixen said.
They walked slowly, Briar leading the way. She kept them a few yards in from the barrier to reduce chances anyone would stumble and fall into it. Their path took them deeper into the broad-skirted trees. The ground squished beneath her boots, seemingly made up of water-soaked green moss and rotting bark.
Every few steps, one or another of them would pick up a clump of mud, or a twig, or a pebble and throw it toward the barrier. It sparked and crackled in anger each time, and Briar realized as they progressed that it seemed to be arching inward.
“You think it’s a circle?” Topaz asked.
“Maybe. We’ll know if we end up back where we started.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.” Vixen nodded in the direction they were heading, and they both looked that way too.
The marshy ground vanished beneath a thick layer of duckweed that covered a surface of murky black water.
“No telling how deep it is,” Vixen said.
“We could go further from the barrier, toward the middle, see if there’s a way around it,” Topaz suggested.
Briar didn’t see an end to the water in any direction except on the far side of it. And her eyesight was excellent, despite the dark. She didn’t like the idea of veering from their course. If this barrier was a circle, it was a very large one. Miles. She could tell by how gradual its curve was. She’d rather follow a prescribed route with a fixed goal of finding a break in the barrier, than wind up wandering aimlessly in a swamp.
She walked to a nearby tree, picked up a fallen limb higher than her head, then moved forward to where the marshy ground turned to water. Reaching out with the limb, she lowered it until it hit bottom.
“Look, it’s only knee-deep. We can cross this. But let me get across first, just to make sure that really is solid ground over there, and not just a mud bar or something.”
“Yeah, you’re not a freaking leader at all,” Topaz said, moving up beside her, where the squishy ground became murky water. “Briar, let’s just go back.”
“It’s not that far. I have to try.” She waded in boots and all. The water rose above her knees. She poked ahead with the stick, and it was getting deeper. In a few steps it was waist deep. She was exploring ahead with her staff when Vixen screamed.
She expected to see Vixen under attack, but Vix was pointing over Briar’s left shoulder. She whirled, and saw dark torpedo speeding toward her through the duckweed. A torpedo with big, sharp, interlocking teeth. She pushed off with her feet, but the bottom was mud, so she only jumped a few feet. Her legs didn’t clear the surface, and it grabbed her calf and yanked and twisted. Her body wrenched itself, her leg twisting with the gator, her upper body instinctively twisting away from it. She hit the water and went under. She felt the ragged edge of every tooth in her flesh. The pain was debilitating, paralyzing, magnified as it was in her kind.
I won’t drown, she thought. But I’ll bleed out. And then, the hell I will. She pulled against the gator’s grip, so she should bend toward it to fight back.
And then a dark form descended through the muck and wrapped around the creature’s back. The shape of the hair behind it, a ponytail. Topaz! Her hands pried the toothy mouth open. No human would’ve had the strength.
Something hit Briar from behind, wrapped around her chest and hauled her backwards at preternatural speed. In seconds she burst from the water.
She found herself lying on her back, on top someone whose arms were still locked around her from behind. She twisted her head.
Vixen had duckweed dripping from her long, fox red hair, and a few pieces sticking to her face. “You’re welcome. Get off me.”
“Topaz!” Briar surged to her feet, then screamed in pain when she put weight on the leg, and fell to her knees. Vixen scurried to her side, quickly strangling Briar’s leg with a another strip of her shawl, to stop the to stop the bleeding. That wrap of hers was getting smaller all the time.
“Topaz is still with the gator!” Briar hissed, trying to get up and go help her while Vixen was still tying knots.
Suddenly, the alligator went airborne, its lower jaw hanging loosely. It hit a tree, then the ground, then nothing.
Topaz burst from the water in an explosion of algae and muck. She pushed the slime off her face, and panting, trudged forward.
Vix helped Briar up. She hopped on one foot to wrap Topaz in a fierce hug.
“Jeeze, don’t be sappy,” she said, wriggling free.
Briar replaced an arm around Topaz’s shoulders. “You fought an alligator for me. And you!” She slung her other arm around Vixen. “You came into gator-infested muck to pull my ass out. Jeeziz, I knew we were friends, but I didn’t know…I didn’t know that.
Topaz rolled her eyes. “Well, we don’t know how the hell we’re gonna get out of this without you, so…”
“Yeah,” Vixen said. “You’re our freakin’ leader.”
Briar lowered her head, shook it. Somehow or other her embrace had turned into the girls holding her up.
“So what now, freakin’ leader?” Topaz asked.
Briar lifted her head. “I think we should go back to square one, and try the other direction.”
“You gonna make it that far without bleeding out?”
“Vix has me knotted up so tight I can’t even feel anything below the knee.” She looked down at her calf, gaping wounds behind torn, blood-soaked denim. A length of Vixen’s shawl was knotted above the knee so tight she couldn’t bend it, feel it, or bear weight on it. “I don’t think it’s gonna bleed.”
Arm in arm, they started walking back the way they’d come from.
“Keep a lookout for some clean water to wash and bathe in,” Topaz said. “Preferably, gator-free.”
“There’s not time.” Briar heard the weakness in her own voice. She’d lost a lot of blood and suffered intense pain. She was fading fast. She needed to feed. But mostly, she needed the day sleep. “Dawn’s coming.”
Topaz and Vixen looked at the sky, sensing the air, nodding in agreement. They felt it, too.
“Right now, that underground prison we just escaped, is our only shelter from the sun,” she said. “The day sleep will heal Vixen’s burns and my leg. It’ll clear the drugs from our systems. We’ll start over at sunset.”
“We can’t go back in there,” Topaz said. “We’re helpless when we sleep. When the guard doesn’t return, or check in they’ll know. They’ll send others. We’ll be drugged and locked up again before we wake!”
“The guards stay for three nights before the shifts change,” Briar said. “Last night was her first.”
“But she was a substitute,” Vixen cried. “What if the regular one comes to relieve her?”
“Look, we don’t have a choice here. What do you want us to do, sleep in the swamp where the alligators will eat us, or in the trees where the sun will fry us?”
“Wasn’t there…a shovel back there at the prison?” Vixen asked. “We could dig holes, and, you know.”
“I’ll take my chances in the prison, thanks,” Topaz said.
Briar's weight supported by Vixen, Topaz, and one leg, she'd been hop-stepping between them, but it was draining her. She didn’t have much strength left. “Watch for poles or wires,” she told them, because her own vision was blurring. “Electronics. Anything. The power for that barrier has to be coming from somewhere.”
“You sound drunk,” Topaz said. “Do you feel drunk?”
“No.”
“I miss that feeling. What do you say when we get out of here, we stalk a dive bar and share a shit-faced human with a blood alcohol of at least point two-five?”
“I’m in,” Briar said. But it sounded like "min."
It was a long walk. By the time they made it, the sky was already changing from blue-black to purple to red along the horizon’s edge, in those spots where they could even glimpse a horizon.
They came to the clearing, the hatch door in the dirt, the shovel lying on the ground outside it. Vixen looked at the shovel, then at the sky. “There’s no more time.”
Briar opened the door, started down the stairs using one leg and the wall, eager to find a good spot before she passed out entirely. “Leave the door open,” she called behind her. “Maybe they’ll assume we left.”
“I’ll leave it partway open,” Vixen said. She was bringing up the rear. “If we leave it wide open, it looks deliberate. Staged. Partway open, it looks like we left in a hurry and slammed it behind us, and it bounded back a little, never caught.”
“You’re devious as hell,” Topaz said.
“That’s a stereotype. You’re being specist.”
“Specist?”
Briar reached the bottom stair and looked left and right. “If we can find a spot that’s out of sight and they buy the open door and don’t look too hard, maybe–“
“There’s a bunch of junk in one of the cells!” Topaz said. “I saw it when I was looking for Jack. This way.” She moved past Briar, down the second row of cells. It was dark, but they all had excellent night vision. Between it and their heightened senses, they could perceive as well in full darkness as daylight. Only Briar’s senses were dull, and she felt like she was moving in slow motion.
“I’ve got you,” Vixen said, sliding up under her arm from behind. “Almost there.”
Topaz was moving a half toppled cell door. She held it open at an awkward angle so the other two could move inside, then she came in herself, pulling it back into place behind her with great care.
Briar could see a pile of equipment that appeared to have just been thrown haphazardly in there. Cots, trays, instruments, a couple metal cabinets, painted white, covered in rust. “We can make this work,” she said. “I think…we can make this…” and that was it. Her mouth kept moving, but the sounds coming out where no longer words, just garbled noises as she sank into the abyss.
“We’ve got you, Briar,” Vixen whispered. And then, to Topaz, “Hurry. I can feel the day sleep pulling me in.”
EPISODE 4 COMING IN APRIL
