PULL ME UNDER - Bonded By Blood - Three

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Three

Venture out a little, try to find a pond or stream or people, anything. It was eerie how lifeless this forest was, no evidence of deer or rabbits or bears… Shirt tied up to let her midriff dry, so hot. They were stuck in the middle of nowhere. Follow the sun, just pick a direction and go, use the spray paint to mark your way—she snapped her fingers in approval of her idea—use the silver.

So she took a brief walk. More trees and shit all else. When she returned, Tanner was stripped down to his gotch and little ant-like bugs were chewing him up, he was mumbling and crying and slapping at the biting things. Still on his jacket bed, nowhere else in the world to be. Dilated pupils hiding sky-blue irises. “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna—”

“Shut the fuck up.” She spun the lid off the water bottle, sipped and passed it. “No dying.”

Bug torment ceased for a moment, but the thoughts didn’t, brain so loud she could almost hear it from where she sat for how fast he breathed. “Why’d you go?”

“I tried to see where we are.”

“No, why’d you go?”

A lump above her collarbone, forced swallow or she’d choke. Flicked one of those bugs off her shoe. “They were going to kick me out anyway.” Another cigarette, might regret the pace they were going through them. Maybe it was some perverse hope, like they’d get replaced soon.

“You left me all alone with him.”

“I tried to get you to come with me.”

“How could I go with you? You were too busy being a fucking cumrag!”

Why not just stab my heart out with your pocket knife, eat it raw. She had nothing to say in defence of herself, and he was upset and suffering and didn’t mean to say something so hurtful. Right? Even if she did grab a fistful of dry pine needles and threw it at him. He didn’t mean it.

“I left my discman in the tent,” he said. “Kyle is going to steal it.”

“They’re probably wondering where the hell we went.”

“You think they’ll call the cops?”

She snorted. “Not if they think they’ll get in shit.” She brushed hair out of his face again. “Thirsty?”

“Yeah.”

“I have to find firewood. You take what’s left. There’s gotta be more water somewhere. I’ll be back. Okay?” She took the granola bar out of her bag and the silver paint, opened the wrapper with gentle crinkling. “Want a bite?” He shook his head. It had chocolate chips and little chunks of marshmallows, half ate and wrapped back up for later.

Eye-level dots of silver on tree trunks as she walked, arms slowly filling with fallen sticks, but there were few of them. Like the ground was already picked clean. No fallen trees.

Water rushing, she ran to the sound. A crystal-clear bubbling creek. Tanner would be okay—but how to treat the water. She squatted at the edge of the creek, feet digging into the loose pebbles, and let the water run through her fingers. It was cold, didn’t smell dirty at all, pooled in her palm there were no bits of anything. It was far too tempting to take a drink, so she adjusted her bundle in her arms and ran back through her marked trail to find that Tanner was gone. His clothes were still piled near her bag, nothing was missing. “Tanner!”

“I’m here,” he was just past a tree.

Hand over heart in relief, almost a faint. “You stupid shit, don’t be wandering off.”

“I thought I saw something.”

“Don’t start that again. That’s how we lost the tunnel.”

Mist at the treetops rolled back in, and the air cooled. Shirt untied and Tanner dressed, she lit the little fire and it felt cozy for a while.

“I could try boiling the water in the bottle if I dropped hot rocks in.”

“Wouldn’t that melt the plastic?”

Thumb between her teeth, she paused to think. He was right, of course, stumbling off for another shit. God this was terrible. “We have to try something or you’re going to get dehydrated.”

“I’ll just drink it from the creek. What’s gonna happen, I shit more? Running water is safer.”

“You’re a survival expert now?”

“I saw it on TV.”

“You’re funny.”

He scratched at his bites. Lips already dry, eye’s sunken. She helped him get his shirt over his head and hobbled him over to his little nest. It stunk of stomach acid. “Alright. Stay here. I mean it!”

“Yes mom.”

She flipped him off again in the most affectionate way and took the empty bottle to the creek, the silver paint reflecting blue haze, bottle dunked and the crisp water lapped up over her hand. It made her ache to taste it. She held the plastic up to the light and gave it a swish. Cold and clear. She tasted it and her shoulders slumped in relief, so refreshing and crisp as it poured down her throat. It had been so hot. She gulped half the bottle right then, gasping loud for air and drinking the rest, dunking the bottle in again and taking it back to Tanner. If she wound up with giardia or whatever, so be it. As far as she knew they didn’t have any other options.

Tanner didn’t hesitate either, choking on it at first and then drinking more. They both agreed it was the best tasting water they’d ever had and slipped into sleep only long enough for Tanner to wake up moaning while the sun was still up. Lauren was the big spoon against his back, an arm draped over his chest, shushing him and feeling his body trembling. Her cheek against his shoulder was soaked in his sweat. Yet he suffered in relative silence.

If she could go back and stab that broken pen into her father’s neck she would have. Her skin burned with so much anger toward anyone that wronged her brother she might have glowed brighter than their piddly little fire they had going.

***

A jingling noise woke her next, an auditory shimmer through the trees, of bells or coins or tiny wind chimes. Her breath caught in her throat, and Tanner was wide awake already, staring out ahead of where he had propped himself up. The hoodie was draped over her now, though she didn’t remember taking it. “Where’s that noise coming from?”

Tanner gave a small shake of the head.

“Should I look?”

“Please don’t go.”

She pressed up against him again, trying to forget the noise. Tanner didn’t seem to sleep at all, legs twitching violent when he tried.

Awake again in the pitch of night, lit by faint embers to see Tanner gripping tight their only weapon. She was frozen, wondering what he had seen or heard—the clinking noise sparkled and brushed her ears again, faint and terrifying, no way to tell the direction from the echoes. “What did you see?” she whispered in his ear.

“I think we’re being watched,” he said, low and serious and it made her skin puff up into goosebumps.

“You sure? Could just be—”

“Don’t you feel it?”

“Just the noise.”

“I’m losing it. Seeing shit.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

He didn’t answer. She reached for her bag, pulled out the flashlight with the dead battery, whacked it on the heel of her hand, nothing. Twisted the bottom off, took both batteries out and switched them. Nothing. No moon, no more wood. Some survivalists.

Damp cold seeped in. Tanner was clammy and twitchy, saying it felt like everything was sandpaper and she couldn’t huddle close.

All through the night, his stomach, his head, his joints all aching and making him miserable, his body revolting against the absence of oxycodone—all Lauren could do was cry silently to herself to think about it. If they had gone back to their camp—Kyle might have been a thief but at least he had a car. Far from any sort of nurse, she didn’t know first aid beyond package directions. So she fell back asleep with tears pooled on the side of her nose, waking when Tanner got up at the first hint of dawn to crawl away from her and dry heave.

She ate the other half of the granola bar after gesturing it to him and he declined. Her joints ached from sleeping on the hard ground, pine needles stuck on her skin and in her hair, a last pair of cigarettes, one each lit with dread. There was one small swallow of water in the bottle and Tanner told her to have it. Then she took another piece of gum, the sickly sweet aspartame and mint overpowering. Her dull ache of caffeine withdrawal was a joke compared to what Tanner was going through, so she didn’t bring it up. Soon it’ll be nicotine withdrawal.

“We could follow the creek. There’s bound to be something eventually.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“I’ll help you. We can’t stay here. We stayed here all day yesterday and there’s been nothing.”

His face squished up, jaw clenching.

“Do you want me to go by myself?”

“No!”

“Then march.”

At the creek, everything was like before. “Upstream or down?”

He knelt into the gravel heavy like a lead ball and dunked his head in, bubbles popping up around his face. He splashed it up over himself and soaked his hair, whipping it back as he sprayed water from his lips. “Fuck, that feels good.”

Lauren knelt next to him and scrubbed her face, the cold water like a slap but it cleared all the cobwebs out of her skull. She scooped some up to drink, rinsed her mouth and spat, splashed some water on her neck, and that noise came again, louder—hollow rattles, coins jingling. Tanner gripped her forearm before she saw them through the blue fog, riding horseback.

Only, it wasn’t horses. Undulating black and brown stripes flexing and shifting, legs—not like legs at all—stretched out and receded, locomotion like how a solid flock of birds or school of fish might move, maybe a hallucination. All four men on the beasts wore wooden masks, grotesque animal faces carved in them with antlers out at the sides. The closest man turned the animal he rode to watch them sidelong, a spear in his hand decorated with feathers and beads, his right bicep wrapped in red leather. None of them wore shirts and they were all bronzed from sun with taut, scarred skin over muscle, they were fighting men and frightening.

Two men hopped off their saddles to approach the creek, painted leather belts and billowing loose pants of patterned fabric, all of them adorned with strings of beads and coins and knives and all sorts of other things that sparkled or could kill a man, leather boots of black or red that brought the pants in at the calf.

“You’re polluting the sacred spring,” one said as he approached.

It wasn’t English, but she could understand it. She saw their lips move strangely through the holes in their masks and it disoriented her for a moment, the sound not matching the motions. “I’m sorry—” she wasn’t speaking English either, with a hand slapped over her mouth in shock.

“Who are you?” the other demanded, hand on the hilt of a curved dagger at his belt.

“My b-brother and I, we’re lost. He’s very sick—”

“I asked who you are!”

Tanner reached an arm in front of her. “You first.”

You won’t be able to fight them sick like this, you idiot.

Her heart stammered more than her voice. “P-please, we need help. We didn’t know—” A cold edge lifted her chin, and Tanner spun in wild-eyed rage before another man grabbed his arms and twisted them behind his back. Pocketknife pried from his fingers, legs kicked as they dragged him swearing.

Without thinking Lauren grabbed a can from her bag and coated the mask of the man behind her with silver, but all that did was make him holler and spit and grab her hair before she could think of her next brilliant move. Head tugged back roughly, face up to the misty sky, now her arms were getting bound.

Tanner cried out in pain. Had he tried to get to her?

“Leave him alone! He’s sick!” The blade returned and nicked her skin as she spoke.

“Who are you?”

She was getting mad, now. “Tell him to get his fucking knife off my throat—”

Red Armband, still in his saddle, gestured with two fingers and the blade relaxed, though the fist in her hair was still tight.

“Lauren MacGillivray. That’s Tanner MacGillivray. Alright? Want our birthdays and social insurance numbers too? Where are we?”

The men exchanged looks, or at least that’s what she figured they were doing behind the masks. Red Armband turned his attention back to her and a shiver ran through her stomach, a cold pit to think that if Tanner couldn’t stop them—and he couldn’t—she’d be torn from crotch to chin if they wanted to.

Red Armband lowered his spear, pointing with it. “Put them in a cart. Grandmother will have to absolve them.” Then he turned on the strange thing, gone into the low fog. Hair released, she was pulled up to stand.

At the edge of the forest, along a dirt road awaited a huge train of people, a travelling camp, everything piled on those strange formless yet solid things, covered carts and small tents, a world carried on their backs. The ones with burdens were larger, flatter and lower to the ground, with many legs that all went in and out like snail eyes or some sea-creature, disgusting and fascinating at once.

They pushed her to Red Armband. His creature did what a horse might do, turning the part of itself shaped vaguely like a horse’s head with the “nose” near her hair, and it really was like a flock of birds—a million pinhead-sized crawling things, all moving synchronous and shifting brown-black, somehow coordinated. The blood drained from her face, so unnatural and… alien. Red Armband chuckled at her fright, guiding the head of the thing away so she could pass, but she fainted instead.