“Waaaaaaaa!” Denton screamed.
“Waaaaaaaa!” the Sapphians screamed.
And then, before Denton’s eyes, the skalkit tilted its head, almost delicately, placed its open jaws on either side of the Sapphian’s rib cage, and…
Denton stopped screaming. He closed his eyes, trying desperately to pretend that none of this was happening. He couldn’t stop up his ears, though, and the sound… There was the sound of bone crunching, the high, mortal scream of the Sapphian, ending in a gurgle and bubbling air, a tugging, tearing sound that was indescribable, and then the only sound in the clearing was that of the skalkits’ chewing.
Denton was sick. He was going to pass out. The blood drained to his feet. His body was covered in sweat, his head swimming. Bile rose and burned at the back of his throat, acidic and sour. His head slumped forward, unable to hold itself up. He saw red stars on his eyelids.
Through ears that were ringing and muffled with cotton he could hear the skalkits finishing off the Sapphian. He could hear the ripping of flesh and bark, the crunch, crunch of powerful jaws breaking bone. There were no more screams, not from anyone.
Denton cried. The tears were silent and gushing and probably the first real tears he had ever cried in his life. His chin dug into his chest as his head hung. And he knew, with a blackness that was absolute, that he was about to die. It was as if all of his terror had been reduced, like broth being boiled down on a stove, to this: utter weakness, misery, self-pity, despair.
And then he felt something. Something was tugging at his wrists. He moaned, sure for one instant that it was a skalkit, but when he opened his eyes he could see both of them snuffling the ground, picking up stray bits of flesh from their first course.
And then he felt something cold… Someone was cutting the vine around his wrists with a knife!
Denton’s head cleared instantly. With a renewal of hope, every iota of cowardice and flight instinct in his personality—and Denton had lots—came rushing back. He thrashed, trying to pull apart the weakened vines, but a cool hand on his forearm bid him to stop. It was hard, but it occurred to him that he might get free sooner if he helped the person behind the tree, so he held still.
He waited. What was taking them so freaking long? The vine at his wrists was tugged, pulled excruciatingly tight, mashed, and mangled and still he was not free.
He watched the skalkits, praying silently at them not to turn his way before he was free. The tree their first victim had been on was wet with blood, as was the ground all around and beneath the tree. If only he had seen this clearing in full daylight, Denton thought, he never would have gone into the gorge. If only he had arrived a few hours earlier, he wouldn’t be in this predicament at all.
The ground was pretty much picked clean of any remaining bits of matter, and the skalkit who had been watching him earlier lifted its head and looked right at him, its eyes greedy. The other one perked up and strode casually to the next tree, not even pretending stealth this time. The female on the tree tried to kick. But the skalkit caught her leg easily in its jaws and tugged, lightly at first, then hard, with a whip of its head. The female’s leg came off at the hip joint. Blood sprayed.
Denton gave a yelp and pulled as hard as he could at his wrists. The vines snapped. He would have been gone then, instantly, but the skalkit with the greedy eyes was fixated on him, head alert. If he ran, that thing would be on him in two seconds flat.
“Help,” he squeaked behind his gag.
There was no answer from behind the tree.
The skalkit with the leg dropped what was left of it and went for leg number two. The female on the tree was… Well, it was far too real and far too gruesome and Denton couldn’t look. He stared at the other skalkit, praying for it to look away, even for a second! But it licked its lips and started moving toward Denton, crouched low, coming in for the kill.
Denton reached up his free hand and ripped out his gag. “Help!” he screamed.
There was a whistle, shrill and yodeling.
It was Eyanna. Denton saw her across the clearing, at the edge of the jungle. She uttered a yodeling call, waving her arms. Denton could see, he could see, that she was terrified—her eyes were sick with death—but she stood her ground. She yelled and hollered at the skalkits, some native chanting thing, jumped up and down.
Denton watched, mouth hanging open. The skalkits watched, mouths hanging open. Then they turned, like a maddened pack of paparazzi, drawn by the irresistible bait. Eyanna ran into the jungle. The skalkits thundered after her.
Denton watched them go and felt a stab of horror and pity. Poor, dumb girl. She didn’t stand a snowball’s chance. He was dumbfounded that she would do this for him, had no idea why. He was so struck by pity, in fact, that it took him a moment to realize this was his own personal lotto ticket. His hands were free. The skalkits were gone.
There was a brief moment where he thought, I ought to help the others, but it was a momentary aberration. He ran.
Denton ran for a long time. He headed away from the gorge and away from where the skalkits had chased Eyanna. It was jungle, just rough jungle, and it was hard going, but still he ran. He crashed and tripped and fell a lot, but he always got up again. At first there were noises in the distance: roaring. He didn’t hear any more screams, though in truth he tried pretty hard not to hear any. And after a while there were no sounds at all.
When he couldn’t run anymore he walked. And finally he reached the big river. It was the same river he’d been following when he’d first come to this world. In the distance to his left he could see the enormous waterfall from the top of which he’d seen smoke in the horseshoe gorge. To his right was the purple hint of mountains.
At the river he felt safe because if any skalkit came, the two he had met or their relatives, he could go into the river and let himself be carried downstream in the current. That was not without its own problems, since he was a mediocre swimmer, but in comparison to skalkits it sounded fine.
His legs gave out and he fell to the riverbank. He began to shake. Bits and snatches of the whole horrible morning came back to him. And the one thing he could not stop seeing, over and over, was not the skalkit putting its jaws around the male Sapphian’s rib cage or even the detachment of the female’s leg. What he could not get out of his mind was the image of himself… running.
I left her to die.
It was a very ugly thing, and if he’d been feeling more himself, he might never have let it into his head. But once there, it was tenacious. He felt bad about it. Eyanna had risked her life to save his. Even knowing what the skalkits were, even knowing, she had come to help him. And in return he had checked her off as dead meat the moment he was free and had run away.
“There’s nothing I could have done,” he said aloud. “And anyway, it’s not like I really know her.” And a few minutes later: “Eyanna’s fast. She might have gotten away.”
And the girl? The one he had made love to? The one who had been tied to the tree just opposite his? How fast could she run tied to that tree? What were her chances?