The Eden Projects (Publishing edit)

Chapter 22. Facade.

The night skittered about. Alive with wood fleas that ate away at the rotting logs and ants that festered in the nooks between branches; the smell of charred flesh and the lacquer used to start its blaze. Huffing Flickers ran to and from the campsite, toting spoils of rancid meat pressed against the fleshy walls of their swollen guts. He didn't dream, but he thought about all their coiling intestines contracting to make room for more and more of that burning meat. 

Kasper stretched, feeling his own stomach churning and digesting the mangled morsels he had ripped away. Bits of necks, arms, faces, and all other things disintegrated in the ravenously acidic broth that welled inside of him. His mind was a belfry of deviant thoughts, all rattling around like loose change in his skull.

Still, the night ticked by.

He was sated.

In a way he never thought he could be.

It hadn't been more than an hour before Zak fell asleep and Kasper lowered himself down the branches one by one as quietly as he could, looking up every now and again just to make sure his sleeping friend hadn't woken up.

Then he trailed out into the road.

The woods were alive with clicking. The whole area wriggled with movement. He had decided he would check on the camp, just to be sure they weren't in too much trouble.

They only wanted Malcolm, after all.

He had gotten everything else he needed.

When he finally surfaced onto the fragmenting edge of the gravel lot, the fire had gone out and the char-pile was teeming with Flickers like white maggots on the dead, snatching up anything left unburnt or singed. They slid over the bodies on the coattails of death.

Most of the lights were off now, and the ones that remained on solely covered the back wall.

A definite weakness.

Unsure of just when Malcolm would return, he decided standing there aimlessly till that time wasn't an option.

So back to the tree he went.

On his way, Kasper did his best to practice capturing the essence of an intimidating voice. It didn't take more than a few tries for him to realize that confidence to him was an unnatural thing. His attempts fell cold, and his lack of larger words were landmines for what successful sentences he could scrounge together.

"This isn't gonna work."

What would Dad do?

"I'm not a leader."

I'm not meant for this.

"I'm not good enough to do this."

Archer would have done it better.

"I could just open the door."

Let the creatures do the talking.

...kill them all...

Stepping trepidatiously through the tall grass along the roadside, he lowered himself against the base of Zak's resting spot and closed his eyes, listening to the rustling wind and hooting owls.

The sounds here were so very different from where he had come from. There were no random bouts of buildings crumbling, or flocks of carrion birds laid resting. It was all trees and green and furry things.

Even the dark took on gentler shapes here.

Kasper did his best thinking at night, so now he thought about everything.