Crooked Tree maintained a fast pace for most of the night, stopping only to drink from springs and climb the occasional tree to spot the chase. Before dawn he ascended another hill and reached out with every sense to find a trace of the men on his trail. He couldn’t find any evidence of their pursuit in the distance. He rested on a rocky ledge and considered next move.
Through the night, his exertion had brought several realizations. He seemed to be learning about this world at a faster pace than experience could justify. With very little interaction with its inhabitants, other than killing or being chased, he had acquired details about their language, society, and culture. Crooked Tree supposed that he had gained some of this knowledge just from sensing the thoughts of the sleeping people around him, but guessed that most of it had been from ingesting the organs of his prey. He thought about that first night after plunging off the cliff—it had seemed natural to learn and grow from his relatives, but somehow the idea of learning from these soft, mysterious denizens of this foreign world felt unlikely and distasteful. Nonetheless, he couldn’t deny the new facts swirling around in his consciousness.
The roads he had used the first few nights were dangerous to him now, because they also carried cars with police who were looking for him.
Crooked tree rolled these words around on his tongue—“Khaaaars,” he pronounced slowly.
“Pole-eesssss,” he continued.
He rose to his feet and climbed halfway down the rocks before continuing laterally, to make his scent harder to track. He sprung over a gap and clutched the wall on the other side of the drop. Pausing to look at the sky, he realized that dawn would be on him before long. He had run most of the night and would need cover soon. It seemed unlikely he would find another empty house in this sparsely populated area, and caves were few and far between. The mountains in this region seemed older—more overgrown and eroded—and not likely to have good cover.
Climbing down from his low ridge, Crooked Tree took to the forest floor and set off to seek shelter. With dawn approaching, he doubled back to a familiar smell and found the remnants of a bear den dug into the hillside. The interior barely accommodated his bulk, but he bent and twisted until he fit. Pulling a long, flat rock across the entrance, he sealed himself in and closed his eyes. A pair of frightened mice scurried across his arm, fleeing their hideout’s new occupant.
Against his eyelids, Crooked Tree pictured the chase of the night before. The memories he had stolen from his victim’s brains together with the behavior of the police forced Crooked Tree to realize the real strengths of his pursuers. They had firepower, speed on roads and in the air, and instant communication. What they lacked was courage, confidence, and instinct. Self-preservation weakened these warriors.
As dawn broke outside, Crooked Tree drifted off to sleep, packed into his underground hole.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Davey
“HEY KID, THAT WAS a pretty good catch back there,” said the girl, catching up to Davey as he walked towards the building.
“Thanks,” said Davey.
He glanced over at her and recognized her from the adjacent field. She had been doing fielding drills while he was training to catch foul pop ups. His coach hadn’t even begun their lesson on foul pops, but when the ball had popped off the coach’s bat and disappeared above his head, he had reacted instinctively. Head tilted back, he saw the ball even before he shed his mask. Jogging evenly, Davey tracked the ball towards the fence.
With one hand out, Davey saw the ball land in his glove and then begin to quickly skitter away. His hand closed fast, but the ball was faster, it rolled off the end of his glove and fell towards the dirt. Davey saw everything in slow motion: the wicked backspin of the ball, the dust kicking from his glove, the arc of the descent. His legs triggered, dropping his body at the same rate as the ball. When he saw that he couldn’t catch up to the speed of the ball, he thrust his arm out and down, picking up the extra speed he needed. He scooped the ball before it even travelled half the distance to the ground and this time he clamped his fingers tight around the spinning baseball, and slapped it still with his right hand.
“Nice one,” the coach called, clapping his approval with the bat tucked tucked under his arm. “Now, John,” the coach addressed the pitcher, “when that ball pops up you need to yell ‘Up!’ Got it?”
“So what’s your name?” asked the girl, snapping Davey back to their conversation.
“Davey,” he said. “What’s yours?” He squinted into the sun as he looked up at her.
“Charlotte,” she said, taking off her cap and running her fingers through her hair. “Hey! Watch out!” she barked.
Davey didn’t heed her warning quick enough. He tried to stop his feet, but they kept moving as he spun his head down to see the big sprinkler head sticking up from the field. This time nothing moved in slow motion, and he didn’t have supernatural control over his actions. His shoe bounced off the side of the sprinkler and his ankle crashed into the sharp metal of the head, scraping his skin away.
“Oh,” Davey said, sucking in his breath as he tumbled to the ground. He pulled his knee up to his chest, gripping his shin on either side of the cut.
“Jeez, that must hurt,” said Charlotte. “Are you okay? You want me to get your coach?”
“No,” said Davey. “I’m okay. Is it bleeding much?”
“Yeah,” commented Charlotte as she stood over him. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”
“Thanks.” Davey squinted up at her.
“You’ll be okay,” she giggled. “It actually doesn’t look that bad. Here,” she said as she pulled a tissue from her pocket and folded it carefully, trying to find a clean side. “Hold your breath,” she instructed Davey. “Really hold it.”
When Davey puffed out his cheeks, Charlotte knelt next to him and grabbed the bottom of his calf. She squeezed her lips together with concentration as she pressed the tissue firmly against his wound. Davey’s breath exploded from between his teeth.
“Thanks for the shower,” said Charlotte. She wiped his spittle from her face with her shoulder without removing the pressure from his leg. “Does it hurt?”
“A little,” said Davey. “Not much.”
“I gotta go,” said Charlotte, removing her hand from the tissue and pulling one of Davey’s hands over to cover the spot. “Just hold that for another minute and it will stop.” She wiped Davey’s blood from her palm onto her bare knee.
“Thanks,” said Davey.
“No problem,” said Charlotte. She stood up and surveyed him one more time. She pulled her hat from her waistband and tucked her hair underneath as she put it back on. “See you later,” she said.
Davey watched as she bounced away towards the field house for her water break.
Charlotte washed her hands carefully at the end of practice that day, her right still sticky from Davey’s blood. From a hygiene perspective, she need not have bothered. The instant Davey’s blood had touched her sweaty palm, his aggressive white blood cells attacked her skin, burrowing through fifteen layers of dead skin cells until they reached live cells to penetrate and inject his mutated genes.
By dinner that night, genetic information from Davey would course through every part of Charlotte’s young body, setting up the machinery required for Charlotte to infect others. At first, she barely noticed the effect on her physiology. The next morning she was a little more tired than usual, but then her energy exploded and Charlotte felt like she could run all day. Later that week, her coach commented on how much her fielding had improved.