Bo and the Beast (Book #1) (Completed)

3. The Dead Wood

Twelve hours later, and the vibrations of the hopper felt like a part of her body, liquefying her bones and boring into her teeth. The scavenging grounds were still nearly a half day's ride away, and she knew she had to stop for something to eat before she fell off her hopper from exhaustion. She'd been going all night, and now that the sun had come back up she would have to take it easy anyway. The Dead Wood gave very little protection against the sun's rays.

By the time she found a suitable place to park her hopper, her neck was slick with sweat and her mouth felt full of cotton. After balancing the hopper on its stand, she went to sit on a tree root to dig through her pack. She ended up eating dried rat meat and gulping water from her canteen. She'd made sure she had enough to last the three days she thought it would take her to find her dad, but she still worried about her water supplies as the sun beat down on her.

Trying to forget her worries, she chewed on the dried meat and closed her eyes. In the darkness behind her eyelids she finally found enough peace to let her mind wander. She briefly thought of the broken water purifier back home, then moved on to a bit of fuming about Aston. But then her mind took a turn toward the fantastical as her exhaustion caught up with her. 

Her imagination pulled up a dark and cruel world that she recalled from bedtime stories of her youth. The Dead Wood had featured heavily in these stories, as a place of fear and death. The trees hid a creature that could rip a grown man in half with just its teeth. Its red glowing eyes always were the first thing you saw, followed by the stench of rotting meat. By the time you saw its massive hairy head, bigger than a hopper engine, it was too late. Its fangs would sink into your throat, its barbed tongue lapping at your skin.

Bo snapped herself back into reality, shivering as she glanced at the trees around her. Any one of the trunks could hide the Beast of Lyx, a creature known for its brutality and blood lust. It was so terrorizing, that the adults in the camp had used it as a scare tactic to keep the children from wandering too far in the Dead Woods.

Or at least, that's what Bo had to believe in order to keep pressing through the trees and face the soon-approaching evening.

She cracked her neck and rolled her shoulders as she climbed to her feet and walked back to her hopper. She still had a long time to ride, and she couldn't afford breaks for too long.

Then she heard it. 

Not a twig snap. Not a bandit's battle cry. Instead it was a piercing animal cry, reverberating against the air and in Bo's ears. She froze, all her senses going dead except for her ears as they strained to hear more. And they did. The sound of growling, the sound of claws against roots, and the sound of huffing breath.

Fear scuttled down her back as she spun to take in all her surroundings. Nothing was visible yet, but Bo's mind supplied gruesome images of the Beast of Lyx crawling through the dust with red eyes already locked on her. 

She shook her head and berated herself for thinking such silly things. She knew perfectly well what the sounds were from, but she wasn't sure they were much better than the Beast of Lyx.

A moment later, a howl cracked the silence only a few feet away. Bo pivoted to face it, but soon the howl was joined by another and another. She stumbled back one foot, trying to remember that fear drove their predator instincts. She straightened her spine and peered into the tree trunks, telling herself to be brave even as she saw movement.

A flash of gray there.

The glint of eyes there.

The smell of dead things there.