John Scalzi - Zoe`s Tale

I was so scared that if I stopped running, I think I would have collapsed into a ball and never gotten up.

I didn't stop running. I kept going. Trying to find Enzo and Magdy before something else did. Trying to find them, and to save them.

"After Gutierrez left, Magdy didn't see any point in keeping our story quiet anymore, so he started blabbing to his friends," Gretchen had told me. "He was giving people the idea that he'd actually faced these things and had managed to keep them off while the rest of us were getting away."

"Idiot," I said.

"When you parents came back without the hunting party, a group of his friends came to him about organizing a search," Gretchen said. "Which was actually just an excuse for a bunch of them to stalk through the forest with guns. My dad caught wind of this and tried to step on its head. He reminded them that five adults just went into the forest and didn't come out. I thought that was the end of it, but now I hear that Magdy just waited until my dad went to go visit yours before gathering up some like-minded idiots to head off into the woods."

"Didn't anyone notice them heading off?" I asked.

"They told people they were going to do a little target practice on Magdy's parents' homestead," Gretchen said. "No one's going to complain about them doing that right about now. Once they got there they just took off. The rest of Magdy's family is here in town like everyone else. No one knows they're missing."

"How'd you find out about this?" I asked. "It's not like Magdy would tell you this right now."

"His little group left someone behind," Gretchen said. "Isaiah Miller was going to go with him, but his dad wouldn't let him have the rifle for 'target practice.' I heard him complaining about that and then basically intimidated the rest of it out of him."

"Has he told anybody else?" I asked.

"I don't think so," Gretchen said. "Now that he's had time to think about it I don't think he wants to get in trouble. But we should tell someone."

"We'll cause a panic if we do," I said. "Six people have already died. If we tell people four more people—four kids—have gone off into the woods, people will go insane. Then we'll have more people heading off with guns and more people dying, either by these things or by accidentally shooting each other because they're so wired up."

"What do you want to do, then?" Gretchen asked.

"We've been training for this, Gretchen," I said.

Gretchen's eyes got very wide. "Oh, no," she said. "Zoë, I love you, but that's loopy. There's no way you're getting me out there to be a target for these things again, and there's no way I'm going to let you go out there."

"It wouldn't just be us," I said. "Hickory and Dickory—"

"Hickory and Dickory are going to tell you you're nuts, too," Gretchen said. "They just spent months teaching you how to defend yourself, and you think they're going to be at all happy with you putting yourself out there for something to use as spear practice. I don't think so."

"Let's ask them," I said.

"Miss Gretchen is correct," Hickory said to me, once I called for it and Dickory. "This is a very bad idea. Major Perry and Lieutenant Sagan are the ones who should deal with this matter."

"My dad's got the whole rest of the colony to worry about at the moment," I said. "And Mom's in the medical bay, getting fixed from when she dealt with this the last time."

"You don't think that tells you something?" Gretchen said. I turned on her, a little angry, and she held up a hand. "Sorry, Zoë. That came out wrong. But think about it. Your mom was a Special Forces soldier. She fought things for a living. And if she came out of this with a wound bad enough for her to spend her night in the medical bay, it means that whatever is out there is serious business."

"Who else can do this?" I asked. "Mom and Dad went after that hunting party on their own for a reason—they had been trained to fight and deal with experiences like that. Anyone else would have gotten themselves killed. They can't go after Magdy and Enzo right now. If anyone else goes after them, they're going to be in just as much danger as those two and their other friends. We're the only ones who can do this."

"Don't get angry at me for saying this," Gretchen said. "But it sounds like you're excited to do this. Like you want to go out there and fight something."

"I want to find Enzo and Magdy," I said. "That's all I want to do."

"We should inform your father," Hickory said.

"If we inform my father he'll tell us no," I said. "And the longer we talk about this the longer it's going to take to find our friends."

Hickory and Dickory put their heads together and clacked quietly for a minute. "This is not a good idea," Hickory said, finally. "But we will help you."

"Gretchen?" I asked.

"I'm trying to decide if Magdy is worth it," she said.

"Gretchen," I said.

"It's a joke," she said. "The sort you make when you're about to wet your pants."

"If we are to do this," Hickory said. "We must do it on the assumption that we will engage in combat. You have been trained with firearms and hand weapons. You must be prepared to use them if necessary."

"I understand," I said. Gretchen nodded.

"Then let us get ready," Hickory said. "And let us do so quietly."

Any confidence that I had any idea what I was doing left me the moment we entered the forest, when the running through the trees brought me back to the last time I raced through them at night, some unknown thing or things pacing us invisibly. The difference between now and then was that I had been trained and prepared to fight. I thought it would make a difference in how I felt.

It didn't. I was scared. And not just a little.

The rustling, rushing sound we had heard was getting closer to us and heading right for us, on the ground and moving fast. The four of us halted and hid and prepared ourselves to deal with whatever was coming at us.

Two human forms burst out of the brush and ran in a straight line past where Gretchen and I were hiding. Hickory and Dickory grabbed them as they passed by them; the boys screamed in terror as Hickory and Dickory took them down. Their rifles went skidding across the ground.

Gretchen and I rushed over to them and tried to calm them down. Being human helped.

Neither was Enzo or Magdy.

"Hey," I said, as soothingly as I could, to the one closest to me. "Hey. Relax. You're safe. Relax." Gretchen was doing the same to the other one. Eventually I recognized who they were: Albert Yoo and Michel Gruber. Both Albert and Michel were people I had long filed away under the "kind of a twit" category, so I didn't spend any more time with them than I had to. They had returned the favor.

"Albert," I said, to the one closest to me. "Where are Enzo and Magdy?"

"Get your thing off of me!" Albert said. Dickory was still restraining him.

"Dickory," I said. It let Albert go. "Where are Enzo and Magdy?" I repeated.

"I don't know," Albert said. "We got separated. Those things in the trees started chanting at us and Michel and I got spooked and took off."

"Chanting?" I asked.

"Or singing or clicking or whatever," Albert said. "We were walking along, looking for these things when all these noises started coming out of the trees. Like they were trying to show us that they had snuck up on us without us even knowing."

This worried me. "Hickory?" I asked.

"There is nothing significant in the trees," it said. I relaxed a little.

"They surrounded us," Albert said. "And then Magdy took a shot at them. And then things really got loud. Michel and I got out of there. We just ran. We didn't see where Magdy and Enzo went."

"How long ago was this?" I asked.