She stood up and stared deep into the forest spread out before her. The spaces between each of the trees were shrouded in the shadow cast by the thick canopy of fronds and branches above, but Emily could see far enough in to know she was going to have to push her bike most of the way through. The tentacle-like roots of the towering trees choked the ground, making it impossible for her to ride in a straight line. She would be better off on foot and carry the bike over any obstacles where she had to.
What she would need to be careful of was getting lost in there. The trees all looked the same to her and stretched so far back there wasn’t any visual reference point she could take a fix on to get her through and out the other side with any certainty. She was just going to have to take it slow and easy.
Grabbing her bike by the handlebars and seat, she hefted it over the first set of roots, suppressing a cry of pain as her shoulder injury reminded her it was still there, then stepped over them herself and entered the forest.
Emily expected the air would be cool beneath the shade of the alien canopy. Instead, it was warm with a humidity level that, within minutes of her crossing into the forest, had soaked through her thin tee-shirt to the point where the fabric clung with maddeningly annoying stickiness to her skin. She considered stopping and pulling out a fresh shirt from her backpack, but the idea of unloading the bergen to find the clothes she needed, did not appeal to her. Besides, this place gave her the creeping heebie-jeebies. The sooner she was out of here the better.
Ten minutes into her exploration, she happened to glance back over her shoulder, and realized there really was no way to know which direction she was travelling. The sun, completely hidden by a combination of cloud, smoke and the forest’s dense sprawling canopy, was nothing but a diffused blur overhead. It would be incredibly easy to lose her bearing, wander around for hours and never find a way out. She was confident she wasn’t lost… yet. If she began to suspect otherwise, then she could always turn on the GPS unit she had attached to the bike and use that to find her way through. The only reason she had not done so already was her innate stubbornness to refuse to rely on technology unless she absolutely had to. The GPS and sat-phone were not going to work forever, so the sooner she learned to get by without them the quicker she would become self-sufficient.
Emily pushed through a particularly dense collection of brush, the thin reeds of the plant came up to her head and gave off a puff of the now familiar red dust as she parted the curtain of plants and elbowed her way through. It seemed everything in this strange new world was designed to propagate the alien presence as quickly and efficiently as possible, even down to the simple plant life.
Once through the brush, Emily found herself in a large clearing. The ground was scoured clean of any kind of plant life, earthly or otherwise, exposing the dark brown soil. The circular shaped clearing stretched for about four-hundred feet from edge to edge, but in the center of the space, Emily saw something unlike anything she had witnessed over the past few days.
A huge new structure, similar to the trees she had been walking through but with a trunk twice as thick around and stretching another thirty feet past even the highest tree she had seen. Instead of the fern-like branches of the other trees, this one held a huge cluster of milky pale orbs. Each orb was at least sixty feet in circumference and filled with a translucent pink liquid. At the center of each orb, a dark shadow was curled up within, occupying the majority of the space. As she watched, each of the shadowy silhouettes slowly rotated within their capsules, turning as though pushed by some gentle tide only they could feel.
Whatever was growing inside the orbs was huge, and, as she continued to watch, one of the shadows spasmed, twitching like a dreaming baby.
“Jesus,” Emily said, taking an involuntary step backwards as her eyes roamed over this latest discovery. She counted twenty of the orbs, clustered tightly together like a sprig of berries.
She was tempted to get closer, but this time her instincts told her to stay as far away from the structure as possible. She had been lucky so far in her encounter with the world’s new masters, now was not the time to push her luck. The spider-creatures she had encountered had seemed patently uninterested in confrontation, but there must be a good reason this particular tree was so obviously isolated and alone. Discretion was definitely the better part of valor here, she sensed, and decided to give the orbs as wide a berth as possible.
She began pushing the bike around the edge of the clearing. It was easier said than done because the loose earth grabbed at her sneakers and the tires of her bike, slowing her progress.
As Emily walked she began to feel a sense of unease settle over her like a dark cloud. Whatever was inside the orbs made her very uneasy. It felt like waves of anxiety washing over her, and Emily was sure the cause was the orbs and whatever was growing within them. Try as she might, she simply could not drag her eyes away from the cluster of strange fruit suspended from the alien tree, and the closer she got to them, the stronger her disquiet became.
By the time she had finally crossed the empty space and reached the opposite edge of the clearing, Emily’s nerves were singing with anxiety. She felt ready to explode. It was a miracle she had made it this far. Her instinctual flight-or-fight gauge had quickly fixed firmly on flight soon after she spotted the orbs, and it took all of her self-control not to abandon the bike and her precious supplies and run as fast as she could away from that perplexing, terrifying stretch of open land. She felt like a little kid trapped in a haunted house. She didn’t know why she was so unnerved but she knew the source of it was that bizarre cluster of things in the center of the clearing.
Finally, she reached the opposite side and pushed through the high plants growing along the border of the remainder of the forest. As soon as the clearing was behind her and obscured by the tall vegetation Emily let the bike slip to the ground, leaned one hand against the nearest trunk of a tree and vomited, violently emptying her stomach of the remainder of her breakfast onto a large clump of the red moss and her sneakers. She wiped her mouth with her hand, picked up her bike and immediately began pushing it through the forest again, her desire to place as much space between her and the clearing superseding any thought of cleaning up her shoes.
Thirty minutes later, with her panic now just a tingle in her spine, Emily spotted light breaking through the tree line about a quarter mile ahead of her. She let out a long sigh, slowing her pace a little as her fear was replaced with relief.
That was when she heard something moving through the undergrowth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The sound of something big moving through the bushes off to her right froze Emily mid-step. Whatever was in there had effectively blocked her route out of this godforsaken place. She lowered the bike as gently to the ground as she could, trying not to make any sudden movements, then slowly reached around with her right hand to unsling the shotgun from her shoulder. She pushed the butt of the gun against her right shoulder and clasped the forestock with her left. The weight of the weapon in her hands made her feel a little more secure as she swung the barrel towards the clump of tall red plants where she last heard the sound of movement. The straps of the bergen pulled tight against her shoulders making it awkward for her to keep the weapon steady, her arms felt as though they wanted to spring apart as the bergen’s straps dug into her shoulder muscles. Of course, that was the least of her concerns because her hands, trembling with either fear or adrenalin, she wasn’t sure which, made the barrel of the Mossberg sway back and forth like a pendulum.