Yautja Camp For Troubled Youngbloods

Meteor

I moved through a jumble of blackberry brambles and then slid around the bole of a tree.

And down a narrow gorge that was all but screened from view by the new growth pines and birch flanking its sides.

Whatever was following me would be unlikely to be able to chase me here. The rough, crumbling, earthen sides of the gully brushed my shoulders. On occasion, I had to turn to the side and shuffle my way forward. Most predators couldn't fit in the narrow way and would not want to try.

But if they did, the passage would slow them down, allowing me the time I needed to exit the other side, crawl up a rocky rise of land, and under a collection of fallen trunks. There'd been a wind storm two years back that'd swept through this part of the woods and knocked over some old oaks. The hulks had tumbled together in a treacherous crisscross that left room to squirm between their rotting sides and crumbling bark and the loose earth beneath.

Though the logs had settled since their initial fall, they still held the potential to shift unexpectedly and it was far from safe to use my hands and arms to drag myself along. But like with the gorge, it was unlikely a predator would follow me here.

Not enough space.

Not safe.

No point in tailing difficult prey when there were easier things to hunt.

If it had only been a coyote or a black bear, my tactic might even have worked.

I was almost to the other side of the fallen timber, just a few feet from scrambling out, covered in dust and dirt and not a few wood beetle larvae. Almost to clear ground when a weight crashed down on the precarious interweave of tumbled logs.

Old trunks snapped. Brittle branches cracked and speared down into the earth. The Jenga stick arrangement of the whole pile of rotting wood changed, and things slipped.

A huff of air came out of me, but that was all the reaction I had time for. A slice of pain went through my ankle and foot, and a pressure weighed down on my back. But more than anything I found myself choking on wood dust and dirt that threatened not only to clog my throat but blind me.

There were a few moments of crumbling and avalanche sounds and then all went still and I had a spare breath to appreciate I wasn't crushed. My gratitude was short, however. In the settling silence, with dirt shifting down around my ears, I heard the stealthy scratch of movement on top the dry bark.

And with it, blended through the careful movements that left just the barest scraps of reverberations to be sensed, was the most unnatural sound I had ever heard in the woods.

An odd, thoughtful kind of clicking. Like a woodpecker, but not so random and with a clear purpose. Clicks like words I couldn't process.

Cold water poured down my spine and I dug into the earth with force, attempting to propel myself forward.

Not a coyote. Not a cougar. Not a bear. Fuck, Joel.

Whatever it was, was moving cautiously over the fallen wood. It knew I was here but perhaps not precisely where, and I had no desire for it to find me.

But I could gain no forward momentum. My foot was trapped under a sizable bough that'd dropped in the shift, and hot pain shot up my leg at the tug against the weight from above. Perhaps worse, one of the logs themselves had changed positions and wasn't so much crushing me as laying hard across my back, pressing me down. My hoodie was caught on the rough bark and old branch stems.

I was caught.

And above me the echoing clicks shifted closer. The predator almost right on top of me.

My eyes drifted to narrow slits and the heat that had radiated through me before trickled through the cold chill of fear slinking down my nerves.

Breathe.

I felt my fingers curl into the dirt. I let out the air I'd been holding in my lungs and all but deflated into the ground. The top soil was loose. It moved beneath me. If I did nothing but sip at the air I could sink into that loose soil and leave just a little space between me and the trunk above.

And my ankle...

I twisted my leg slowly, pushing the dirt from side to side, digging a small furrow. When my leg had sunk enough, I pulled. Dug my hands in and pulled myself out of the trap.

Hot pain sliced my ankle yet again, but I paid it no mind and scrambled forward. I had been lucky in that I wasn't far from the clear. For one split second I perched on my fingertips and toes and looked back over the pile, and I knew it had become impassible. The middle had sunk down and the sides were burst.

It looked like a meteor had hit it, the once crisscrossed mass now little more than a crater.

And in that decimated epicenter something moved.

Those thoughtful, assessing clicks came again, and a blur of fractured light shifted across my field of vision, outlining a shape my mind couldn't fill in.

Then I was running. Dashing forward on an ankle that screamed protest, while lines of blood trailed their way into my sock.