The PriZin of Zin (5 page)

Chapter 5: Journey

jour-ney
Noun
\ˈ
jə
r-nē\: passage from one place to another

“Stop. Please stop.”

“Have to move. Coming.”

“Please,” Hunter begged. “I’m gonna be sick.”

“Evil smells.”

That’s for sure
, Hunter thought, trying not to breathe through his nose. He opened his mouth instead to keep nausea at bay.

Mikey stopped, but did not immediately set Hunter down. His big body slowly swung around in a complete circle, scanning the forest for any signs of life, making Hunter feel even more nauseated. Extending his large muscular neck, he put his nose straight up into the air and sniffed each direction. Clearly not detecting any other signs of life, Mikey clumsily let Hunter slide off his shoulder and plop to the ground. Hunter hit with a thud, jarring his already queasy stomach. His hand instinctively went to his mid-section. He tried to stay perfectly still for a moment to quell the motion sickness brewing inside of him.

Mikey looked down. He bent down to Hunter’s level and stuck a huge brown finger into Hunter’s middle, pushing in an uncomfortable gesture, he asked “wrong?”

“I feel sick.”

“Sick?”

“Dizzy.” Hunter tried to swallow down the rising bile in his stomach. “Throw up,” he said back to Mikey. At the blank stare that met him, Hunter leaned forward in a mock vomiting gesture and said “blahhhhh,” gagging toward the ground. A move he instantly wished he hadn’t made.

Bigfoot winced and backed away, grimacing.

Well, at least I get a break from the smell
.

“I really need to get something to eat.” Hungry, but at the same time afraid to eat, Hunter looked at Bigfoot. At his lack of response, he added “food,” and pointed at his stomach.

Bigfoot nodded and turned, running into the forest, leaving Hunter alone - again.

He sat alone in the forest. The sky was bright and glowing. The sun was at high noon. The first day was here and he hadn’t yet found his father. He had only three days. Only three days if he could believe that little green creature, Alistair. But then he had left them all alone when he had promised to come back. The same as this Bigfoot had done now. Hunter was beginning to wonder if this was some sort of game down here.

The last thing he remembered was the look of terror in his father’s eyes as the serpent snatched him from the shore. Hunter choked back tears and the bile rising from his stomach. He wanted to cry and vomit at the same time. Was his father as scared as Hunter was right now? Where was he? What was happening? Was he really dead? And what did '
to die the living death'
mean anyway? They said it was a prison. What had he done wrong, other than just make a bad choice? Was that enough to punish someone over? Hunter replayed the scene over and over again in his mind until his head throbbed.

Stop. Just find him
.
Lead him back to freedom.

Hunter looked around; trees, dense brush, rocks, bushes moving – bushes moving? His heart lurched. If the bushes are moving, then what is behind them is moving, too. As gently as he could, Hunter rose to his feet and began to scan the underbrush. He wanted sight on where this moving thing was, and more importantly,
what
it was.

The bushes rustled to his left. Turning his head, Hunter tried to get a fix on it. The bushes rustled to his right, and then straight ahead. Glancing from one direction to the other, he tried to get a good look at what was stalking him. Squinting through the bushes, his eyes tried to focus on what was behind the leaves, but whatever it was eluded his sight. All he could see were branches. Again, the bushes moved in all three directions, and then large jagged antlers broke free from their cover. Across the small clearing, three deer were staring at him.

Oh, thank goodness
. Hunter sighed and started to relax. He remembered little of what his father had taught him about hunting, but one thing that he did remember was that deer have a natural fear of humans. They were no threat to him. It was very unlikely that they would approach him. As Hunter sat back, contemplating his foes, the deer began to move again.

One by one, they stepped free from the cover of the underbrush to stare at Hunter, then retracted back into the cover of the forest, careful to always stay in the shadows. It was only then he noticed they all had glowing red eyes. Not a pretty red either, like when the flash of a camera is on and the people in the picture end up with red eyes. This was a deeper, blood red color, almost dripping from the sockets. Their glare was an angry one, eyes fixed, necks taut, fangs bared and snarling.

Fangs? Hunter was now being hunted.

The biggest of the three stepped out into the filtering sunlight, and then recoiled in pain, pulling back into the shadows. Sparks of electricity shot from the points of its antlers, cascading fireworks into the air. Throwing its head back to howl in agony, it bared fangs dripping with saliva tinged in blood, and glared at him again through its glowing red eyes. The other two reacted to their partner’s agony, throwing their heads into the air to howl at the sky. They, too, paced back and forth, sparks shooting skyward, careful to stay in the shade of the trees. Fangs dripping, they began to snarl and drool at Hunter, nostrils flaring as they detected his scent on each pass. As the sunlight continued to move, and the shadows encroached on Hunter’s position, the enemy moved forward with the shade, inching ever closer.

Evil is close
, he remembered Mikey saying. Is this what he meant? They sure looked evil to him. More than evil, they looked hungry, and they were looking right at him! Hunter started to back away.

A loud crash behind him broke the silence. Hunter lurched forward away from the noise, then stopped before he hit the zombie-like deer straight ahead. Spinning around to see what new evil was behind him, Hunter ducked as a large rock sailed over him, slamming into the head of one howling deer. Bigfoot broke through the forest, hurling two more stones at the other two deer, nailing them right between the eyes, silencing their howls. While they were still stunned, he grabbed Hunter, threw him over his shoulder once again, and barreled off through the trees.

“Climb,” Mikey pointed up a large pine tree.

“Do we have to?”

“Climb,” Mikey pointed again.

Hunter eyed the tree. The lowest branch was far out of his reach. “I don’t think I can—“

A large brown hand grabbed his shirt and hoisted him up well beyond the lowest branch. Hunter wrapped his arms around the giant tree trunk, holding on for dear life.

“Climb,” the command came again. He tried to move, but the giant on his tail was much faster than he was. At his lack of progress, an enormous hand grabbed his bottom and shoved, raising him like an elevator up through the tree branches. Higher and higher, deeper into the thick pine needle covering of the tree they ascended, until it was nearly impossible to see the ground. To Hunter’s surprise, there at the top, was a small landing. Not a full tree house, but a sheltered platform made from several pieces of wood stretched between two branches. It was enough to sit on, and lay down to rest. Hunter was shoved onto the platform, and Bigfoot followed, hoisting his enormous bulk from the branches below. He sat opposite Hunter and reached behind him. From around his waist, Mikey pulled several long stringy vines covered with berries.

Blackberries
. Hunter’s heart and stomach jumped. He was so hungry. Mikey placed the vines on the platform floor between them. Nodding at Hunter to go ahead, Bigfoot reached his giant hands out into the pine tree and pulled off several pine cones. With a fine motor dexterity amazing for such colossal fingers, he pulled off each of the woody scales of the pine cone, and taking each one, placed them gently between his teeth to crush. After biting down, he pulled the crushed scale from his mouth, parting the hard outer shell, revealing a tiny pine nut inside. Laying the one small piece of treasure in the palm of his hand, Bigfoot extended it and offered the first little golden nugget to Hunter. He graciously accepted, and tossed the tiny kernel into his mouth.

Hunter’s taste buds exploded. This little treasure of the forest was the tastiest thing he had eaten since he’d landed here. Almost creamy, and incredibly soft, it tasted nothing like an ordinary nut. He held out his hand and waited for another. Continuing for some time, Mikey managed to get a small pile of nuts to go with their blackberries. As they ate, Hunter’s growling stomach began to settle. The two sat in silence for a long time, enjoying their meal.

“How could you run all that way?” Hunter asked. “Carrying me, too?”

Mikey shrugged, and continued his extraction of the pine nuts without a sound.

“But we ran all day.”

Nothing.

“How did you get here?” Hunter asked.

Mikey cocked his head sideways, as if he didn’t understand the question. “Home,” he said.

“You have always lived here?”

Mikey nodded, reaching for another berry.

“Are there more of you?”

Again the head cocked as Mikey contemplated his answer. He nodded.

“What were those things back there?”

“Evil.”

“I’ve never seen any deer that looked like that before. They looked like zombies.”

“Shadows.” Bigfoot took the last pine nut and offered it to Hunter.

Hunter shook his head. “They had fangs. Deer don’t have fangs.”

“Danger. Evil. Teeth can steal your spark.”

Fear the one that can extinguish yer spark for all eternity
, Alastair had warned.

“Evil can’t bear light,” Bigfoot continued. “Light reveals shadows. Shadows of evil have no shadows of their own. They are the shadows, and they are the evil.”

“So that’s why they have to stay in the dark?”

Mikey nodded.

“So I am safe so long as I am in the light?”

Bigfoot nodded again, “from them.” He stretched and yawned, laying his enormous hairy bulk across the planks on the platform. Stretching out, his feet hung completely off one side, and his head dangled very near the edge of the other. Hunter sat and watched this gentle giant as he rested on their perch atop this strange new land. “How far is Zin?”

“Not far.” Mikey patted his hand on the platform next to him. “Need rest.”