While the major is keeping watch on the road behind them, Rose decides that she wants to see these beautiful animals for herself. The horses spook a little at her presence and run from her, but soon they settle down and return to sniff at her outstretched hands. The horses sniff the air for danger and step closer to her. She leans over the fence. The wood presses painfully into her stomach, but she doesn’t care. She wants them to come to her. She can smell them now. They whinny and neigh at her. She can feel the softness of a horse’s muzzle on her hands, and then another, and another. She can feel their breath on her face, warm and moist and with a fresh smell of grass. Their scent smells so sweet to her.
She steps down from the fence just as the doctors are coming back with some rope, they found in the barn. Rose releases the latch which holds the gate closed and it swings out and opens, pretty easily. The horses follow her silently. “They’ll carry us to where we want to go, they told me so,” says Rose. “And I want this one,” she says, indicating a palomino, that on one side looks as a horse should, but on the other, only an image of a horse reconstructed of interwoven vines and green lush leaves. Rose could feel danger growing closer and closer. Something was coming for them. Something bad.
No one asked Rose what she meant by the horses telling her they would carry them to the ship, and no one, but no one wanted the Turned-horse, so the colonel sat her up on it. There were some bridles, but there were no saddles so everyone would have to ride bareback towards Petit Jean and the crashed ship. A cold, treacherous feeling crept closer and closer. The pressure in the air pressed down until something snapped. Behind them, a cloud of birds, hundreds of them, broke from the trees and took to the air, and following them, a flash of red bled out from the towering pines.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win.”
Three minutes. That’s all the time there is, between mounting the horses and the arrival of the Red Queen and what remains of her colony of warriors.
An impressive Wicked Briar, it’s shell covered in scorch marks, and missing a foreclaw, breaks through a knot of soldiers and stands, panting and heaving, on the front line. The beast is three times larger than the other Wicked Briars which give way submissively, letting it take the lead.
Orange-peel texture and black soot cover most of the regiment, a result from the intense heat of the hydrogen plant explosion. How the Turned made it out alive is an unimaginable feat of survival, but they are lighter by at least a hundred.
The Major shouts for everyone to ride, and ride fast. Rose, who’s never ridden before, is frightened by the speed at which her Turned-horse takes off. She screams, startled, but the fear gives way to exhilaration and astonishment.
Rose chances a quick look over her shoulder and can clearly see the Red Army advancing at break-neck speed. Somehow, she knew the Red Queen wouldn’t easily fall into the trap the Colonel and the Major had set for her. She’s too smart for that.
The Major has spotted the queen too, and he points her presence out to Dr. Shaw and Dr. Valentine, who dig their heels into the horse’s flanks, and spurred onward, ever faster.
The Red Army is steadily closing the gap. The Wicked Briars, carrying the evil horde on their backs, are throwing up a whirlwind of dust as they tear after their prey.
The horses are foaming and snorting and shaking their manes. The winding roads through the mountains are treacherous, and in many places, with no one around to maintain them, they’ve been all but washed away by years of storms and flooding.
This one time, Dr. Valentine’s horse nearly loses its footing and nearly tumbles off a rocky ledge which overlooks an unassuming valley below, but she’s able to pull the horse away and keep up with the group.
The mountains tower around them, and the spaceship towers over the monoliths of stone. The shroud of mist which makes the ship appear wraithlike is at last clearing. The outer hull is curved gracefully, and sleek broad-leafed plates are molded and affixed to the black material covering the entirety of the craft itself.
Rose can see that it has come to rest in a deep chasm, which nature has sliced into the earth which runs through the Petit Jean National Park. The ship makes Rose feel comforted. It’s somewhat like a feeling of homecoming for her.
The demons are launching spears, and they are dangerously close to hitting the horses. The rumbling of hooves echoes throughout the switchbacks as the chase continues.
A massive pile of boulders hangs precariously over the very edge of one of the rocky cliffs high overhead. Some of the rocks are as large as houses.
“Major Connors, do you have another one of those green eggs?” Rose shouts over the galloping roar. She points high above to the boulders which are now beginning to send a small shower of rock chips and sand sliding down the mountainside.
The Major manages to hold onto the reins and fumble around his utility belt where a small pouch is hooked. He feels each pocket in turn until finally, he pulls a small grenade from one of them.
“It’s the last one,” he tells her.
To make this work, he will have to stop his horse so he can throw it. He shouts to Rose, Dr. Valentine, and Dr. Shaw to keep riding, in case this doesn’t work, they still must get Rose to safety.
There can be no more than a couple hundred yards between the major and the oncoming war party. He pulls up on the reins. His horse slides to a stop, hooves skidding on the road. Connors jumps down from his mount, pulls the pin and hurls the grenade high, where the massive pile of boulders rest. It falls short, ten feet from the heap of stone and then explodes. Nothing happens the rocks stay in place, but they are beginning to lean forward, gravity catching hold of them.
The Red Queen realizes what the major is trying to do and urges her troop onward as fast as she can. She beats on the hard exoskeleton of the Wicked Briar she rides, with her spear.
The boulders start to slide and then as if it’s a chain reaction, the entire pile rolls, and summersaults downward, landing between Connors and the Red Queen and her soldiers. A massive wave of dust fills the air, nearly blocking out the sunlight.
Connors doesn’t wait for the dust to settle. He mounts and catches up with the others, who are waiting just within sight of the boulder-clogged switchback.
“That’s not going to hold them up for long. We may have only bought ourselves a few minutes. Good thinking, kid,” says Connors, placing a hand on Rose’s shoulder. “That’s another one we owe you.”
She feels proud, and for the first time in a while, she feels accepted.
They set off again, not wasting any of the precious time the landslide bought them. The entrance to Petit Jean National Park lies directly in front of them. 3,471 acres of sprawling wilderness lay ahead. The ancient geology of the park is breathtaking. However, the alien ship, filling the canyon, and poking into the sky like a necrotic finger, is all anyone can look at.
Log cabins built along the canyon’s edge lay scattered as if blown away by high winds. Enormous trees lay down along the rim of the gouge in the earth. Some trees, hundreds of feet tall, span the distance from the edge of the canyon wall and the ship, acting as makeshift bridges.
“Okay, so, we’re here. Now what do we do?” says Dr. Shaw.
“Well, Shaw. I don’t care what you do, but as for me, I would rather take my chance by going in there,” Connors points to the alien ship, “than staying out here and waiting for the Turned to catch up with us.”