Escape from Harrizel (4 page)

A lizard.

But he stands like a man.

A man with amphibian skin and covered in
dark green armor that shines iridescent like cockroach wings. The
rear of his head is rounded but the front is longer and hangs lower
with a snout, two slits for nostrils and yellow eyes like the sun.
He picks up a long brown rod with his scaled hand, his black talons
clenching it close to his shelled torso. With his other hand, he
strokes a cluster of cascading whiskers that fall at the base of
his snout and back toward the soft skin of his throat.

The second lizard-man descends to the ground
with a hard thud next to the first. A grey cloud floats in the air,
shielding them from sight as a loud hiss erupts. Then it’s silent
until the dust settles, the two facing each other, their glowing
eyes darting about. The first continues to play with his whiskers
while the other zips around, practicing assault with the rod,
aiming at imaginary opponents. A few loud clicking bursts are
exchanged before the second returns to its legs, shaking the rod
high in the air. The first leaps on the second and the two roll in
the dirt, causing a second dust cloud to whirl about them.

I step back and my heel hits a pile of
leaves which crunch.

The creatures still, their yellow eyes
peering in my direction, darting about the greenery before the
first one drops to all fours, racing toward me.

I freeze, keeping my arms pulled to the
side, opening the leaves like separating a curtain. I don’t move. I
don’t
breathe
. My heart is a bomb about to explode, just as
the first one slowly approaches. He lifts two growling slits in the
air, sniffing mere yards to the right. His partner jumps to the
gate, shaking his rod over his head again, signaling the other’s
return. The first one gives up, glowering at the shrubbery before
returning with a hissing snarl to the gate again.

Once he reaches it, I spin to the jungle and
take off. Fast as I can, fast as my legs will take me.

Keep moving, keep moving…

The jungle’s laden with obstacles—giant
roots sit like boulders in the dirt, bubbling over uneven ground
and swinging branches reach across one another, slicing the air
like ready nooses. Vines try to trap me in seemingly endless walled
webs and I’m barely able to navigate the tiny gaps. But as soon as
I tear free from a nasty tangle and out into a clearing, my foot
gets caught on a hidden root and I fall, face first, into the
ground.

I hit it with a violent smack but something
tiny and sharp slices my left cheek. I bring my fingers to the
bone. Red.

A hissing blue flower with orange-coated
petals sneaks back into its bush of siblings. The group of thirty
all turn, pointing a sharp yellow stinger at me, vibrating before
retracting. I spring to my feet, wiping the wet cheekbone just in
time to dodge the yellow stingers shooting darts into the ground
that sizzle and evaporate into nothing.

Racing, I push past a curtain of hanging
yellow leaves and come to a shield of vertical vines, hanging from
the canopy and dotted with crimson blossoms that dip to the ground.
Clusters of trees intermingled in a sea of the spitting blue and
orange flowers block the path on either side. A breeze floats
through the vines and they all sway to the left.

I sweep a few to the right but the instant I
touch them, the crimson blossoms spit out red goo that burns my
fingers like acid. Only a few drops land on my fingers but the pain
is so intense, I snap them to my chest, nursing one throbbing
knuckle in my mouth. There’s a clearing just beyond the curtain of
vines but it’s about fifteen feet away. I pass another aching
knuckle to my mouth and clench my fists, locating the largest gaps
in the sea of hanging fire.

I’ll have to run.

But what if I can’t make it? What if they
snap awake and try to trap me and I burn alive? There’s no other
way. The blue and orange dusted flowers have their yellow stingers
aimed in my direction, arrows ready to fire.

I wish I could remember someone.
Anyone
. A person I loved, one who could tell me it’d be
alright, no matter what happens. Someone to offer comfort. But
there’s no one. No one to remember. Just the fire and sooty faces,
the cold walks and fights. Just survival.

Like this.

I take a breath and focus on the clearing
ahead. I can make it. I just have to be fast. I count myself
down.

Three…

I’ll just have to move really quickly.

Two…

I’ll grit my teeth. It’ll only be a few
seconds.

One…

I take off and immediately, the pain is
unbearable. I’m zapped everywhere, every inch of exposed skin
bubbling with acid, eating away to the fat and muscle. Throwing my
arms in front of my face to shield it, I move as fast as possible,
sweeping through the hanging fire but all I can feel is the
pain—this erosion of my body. My head hangs low, my scalp screaming
with scorched flesh but I keep going, biting my lip which nearly
bleeds from the assault. I’m almost through, almost to the end but
there may not be much of me left. Am I burning alive? It feels like
it. Bits of me are being charred away, melting into this poisonous
place to be left behind as evidence. Evidence I didn’t survive.

But I’m not quitting.

My legs carry me further, wobbling as
patches of skin disappear. I’m just about through when I snatch the
last few vines to the side and fall into a giant puddle of a sticky
blue substance on the other side. The liquid starts to envelop me
but I keep my mouth and nose perched high, sucking in air for
reserves. I try to wriggle free but can’t move. My heart thumps
rapidly, racing.

I’m drowning.

The gooey liquid is going to suck me down,
and it’s here, I know, that I’m going to die. Just as I start
seeping under, grabbing the last bit of breath, the burning starts
to fade.

I stop moving.

The eroded skin on my hands and arms start
to cool, the wounds suddenly repairing themselves. My body relayers
the missing muscle, fat and skin until they are fully restored.
Able to snatch my hand easier than expected, I turn it over.
Healed. No gaping charred holes. No sizzling to the bone. Taking a
deep breath, I submerge myself completely, rolling around in the
liquid blue as the cooling sensation washes over the skin on my
face and scalp, reconstructing it. I come back up for air and find
it easier to move. In fact, the substance is no longer sticky, but
closer to the texture of water, silky and fluid.

Dragging myself from the puddle, I rest in a
patch of dirt and grass at the foot of a mammoth tree, one—like
most others—more suitable for a giant than a human. With my left
cheek resting on the damp grass, my fingers sink high into the cool
dirt above my head. I could stay like this forever. Never moving.
Never leaving to discover other horrors that await me in this
nightmare. But I’ve only just started. I haven’t put enough
distance between myself and… whatever those things were.

I have to keep going.

With every ounce of strength I can muster, I
peel myself from the ground. My legs wobble, unsure of the weight
they carry, but I force them on, faster and faster.

Just keep going
.
Keep
moving
.

Swiping hanging ivy and clamoring over low
branches that cut across my knees, I fall to the dirt a few times,
tripping over hidden roots, but I get back up, pushing forward,
always
pushing forward.

Just a bit further
.
You’re almost
there
.

Except it’s not me this time. It’s someone
else, or
something
else inside my head. Even if my legs
can’t carry me much farther, this feeling, this
intuition
leads me like a compass. There’s something ahead. Something
important I have to find.

I trudge forward, sweat pouring down my
body, grazing over my limbs like drizzling rain. I swipe my brow
with my forearm and my upper lip with my finger. I’m soaked. My
hands are black with dirt and my hair sits matted to my neck and
back. Heavy pounding threatens to explode my chest as my legs
barely stumble on, about to give out.

But then I round the cluster of trees and
come across something odd.

Just ahead, in the middle of a natural
clearing, a collection of broken walls remain, cathedral-sized and
overgrown in a wild nest of ivy. The stone fragments sit close to
one another, a few disappearing into the treetop canopy above, but
most are broken at the lower branches. Ivy drapes between them and
covers each like fabric. At their base, yellow cobblestones swim in
overgrown grass like sinking ships, dotting the clearing with a
losing battle on the sea.

I fall to my knees.

I
know
this place.

Nearly incapable of moving, I manage to
crawl, dragging myself over pools of ivy. The ground pads my
swollen palms and knees but they still throb, screaming for rest. I
can’t stop now—I need to know what this place is… what it
was
.

I plant my elbows into the ground like
stakes, lugging myself closer to the first broken remain. It stands
over ten feet tall with chips of stone blown away, moss, ivy and
dirt working to clog the holes and mend the jagged edges. There’s
another wall some ways back and another up ahead, lying adjacent to
the ruin on my left. It must have been a room. I scan my brain,
searching this image, searching for what it
might have
looked like but there’s nothing.

This needs a more thorough investigation
than crawling. If only I didn’t ache so badly, if only I’d just
discovered this beyond the first few trees. I ignore the throbbing
in my limbs, the pounding in my chest about to break me open, and I
stagger to my feet, clutching the wall for balance.

Yes, I’m in a room—a compartment of some
sort. When my legs secure themselves, I push forward, past the
ruins in front of me and find another grouping ahead, also coated
in sheaths of ivy with bare blocks of stone wall remaining.

What
is
this place?

I wander from ruin to ruin and stop at each
wall, gazing over the remaining stone and their connection to the
others. They were white at some point but age and dirt have eroded
them to this yellowish tint. They must have been here for years.
Centuries,
possibly. But how do I know? It’s like a feeling,
like a hidden message was stowed away in me all this time—a
knowledge I didn’t know I possessed.

I continue on, lost in this ruin of a city
that at one time must have been quite spectacular to behold. More
rooms, more compartments await me until I emerge from them all,
finding myself across from a new clearing and in the middle of it,
a single tree with flowing tresses of pink, peach and orange
blossoms.

It stands alone, overlooking the city with
its ancient, ethereal eye. A breeze whisks through, dancing in the
blossoms and playing their pink fingers like a pianist on his keys.
Drawn by its overwhelming magnetism, I start for it when I’m
distracted by a
crunch, crunch
behind me.

I drop to the ground, my back to the closest
stone. Another
crunch, crunch
—the stomping of leaves. It’s
coming from my left… or is it my right? Have they found me? Those
creatures from the Castle? Or is this a new predator?

My chest thumps emphatically as I listen for
the source of the sound. The crunching grows louder on my left but
a soft pitter-patter of steps echoes on my right. A pack of
something? If I don’t move now, they’ll find me. Kill me.
Eat
me, most likely. Maybe that’s better, though. Ending my
fate now instead of prolonging all this. Maybe the best thing for
me is to do is run out and fight it and go down trying. But
somehow, I can’t. Fear has swelled inside me, blocking the
practical from survival. I can’t give myself over willingly, even
if I wanted to. It’s human nature to fight and although I can’t
remember, it’s in my nature too.

Another rustle of leaves. What then? Flight?
Fight? Neither sound like an ideal activity. I have to do
something. But what?

Crunch, crunch!!

This is it.

My demise.

I wish I could remember someone I once
loved, someone I’d think about at the very end. Any person who’d
make this time here all worth it. I try to search for any glimmer
of light but the rustling is upon me. I’ve lost. Perching myself to
spring from the wall—one final act of survival—I see him.

His deep mahogany eyes burn through me,
nonplussed…

…and then everything goes dark again.

A table.

Just out of the sun’s reach, it sits on a
square porch under a tin roof. Three glasses drenched in
condensation sit atop the table’s plastic yellow cover, a black
ashtray in the center. A pair of slender fingers flick a cigarette,
releasing the ashes before bringing it to her mouth. She inhales
and the tip lights up orange. Her black hair is swooped up in a red
bandana and large squared frames block her eyes.

The scene fades and is instantly replaced
by another—an older woman staring straight at me with long, white,
billowy hair breezing around her. With silvery glass eyes, she
pierces me, looking
through
me, searching. She calls my name
but her mouth never moves, never opens.

Fallon!

She’s shouting for me. Shouting for me to
hear her, to see her. Her eyes flare wider, ghastly, overpowering
everything else.

FALLON!

I’m awake.

Everything’s bright.
Open
. I’m on a
flat, hard surface but it’s not the floor. A table? I roll my head
to the left and find four endless rows of metal, rectangular
surfaces built five feet off the ground. They disappear into blurs
on the opposite side of the space, lost in the streaming sunlight.
I look to the right. Same. Except there’s half of a wall that
divides my row from the others. I kick my head back. A solid pane
of glass stands behind me, reaching from floor to ceiling and
follows the tables in both directions. It’s like a strange hospital
with too many beds and no sign of doctors.