Sam had dozed off late once more and awoke to the sounds of crackling fish over fire; the dog had gone for a morning swim and caught three large trouts and was panting wet under a blanket.
“My dog didn’t do that.”
“Good morning to you too,” she exclaimed while rotating a trout on a stick over the campfire. Birds sang through the tall dense treetops and lush brush while the river bubbled calmly. A gray overcast gazed upon them. He sipped on his coffee while she played Catch with Rocket.
“So, what’s the plan?”
“Follow the river,” he replied; the river flowed southeast and they marched beside it; the counter constantly on and clicking more and more with each couple steps.
They came across a dam of large logs strewn in the water with dead twigs and golden leaves atop it; stumps of chewed trees lay sharp beside the river like toothpicks for forest giants. Beavers peeked from their mossy castle with curiosity. A bald eagle perched on a branch cried loudly while flocks of birds flew in the distance like a choreographed ballet.
By midday they neared the ten-mile marker of their map and began to see reddish pine trees in the distance.
“Take this,” he said as he popped a pill from its container into her hand and one for himself and gulped it down. The counter clicked faster with each step they took and calmed in places only to resume clicking later. Birds and wildlife no longer made their sounds—a certain stillness about the air; it lay stiff and heavy; the sky sickly. Trees stripped clean of their greens and only bare trunks as red as blood prickled from the ground like poison daggers. Gray ash stuck to their soles. The thrawn trees marked a hazard zone.
Signs of passed wildfires. Charred tree trunks lay bare as if ready to scatter to the slightest of winds like ash clouds. Saplings and plant life sprouted from burnt remains. Nature thrives in spite of humanity’s poisonous touch.
“Is it safe here?” she asked with a concerned look.
“We should be fine,” he replied as the counter went berserk. “We’re just passing through. Remember the Obsidian plant? The red pines, the angry boars.”
“How could I forget? The boars chased us for hours!” she exclaimed laughingly.
“And I’m still convinced one of them had two heads.”
On the redwood floor amid the blood pines and ash plantlike growths emerged like little dots scattered about the toxic ground to their distant right. They lay aglow with a reddish tint, slightly illuminating the desolate background.
“Wow, it’s beautiful,” she exclaimed.
“Some beauty in death.”
They both stopped and stared for a bit at the red dots as the counter raged on. Rocket ogled curiously.
“We should move,” he spoke.
They came to a bend in the river that swerved left at a steep angle northwest; nigh the bend lay a gravel road that led eastward and wasn’t marked on their map. The red forest faded behind them as they marched on the road and the Geiger counter calmed slightly. A few reddish mushrooms lay around the banks of the road, lighting up the umbraged pine forest. Birdsong returned as they trod farther and three deer approached from a shrub; their antlers sprouted wildflowers of various colors and their foreheads glistened slightly as if a third eye shone in the dark.
They stared at the trio and the trio stared back.
“Wow… Are...the deer glowing?” she stuttered.
“Seems like it…”
“Cool… This place is weird.”
Before they could get a better look the deer skipped afield and their butts vanished in the foliage.
“I had heard of glowing irradiated forests but...”
“How long until we grow a third eye?” she asked; Sam chuckled.
They approached a pair of glowing mushrooms.
“If we eat them, will we get superpowers?” she asked.
They looked like regular mushrooms—small, with a cap like an umbrella and a thin stem, shining in various hues of red. They grew out of a dead moss-grown bough, their caps ruby red; a glowing fleshy bulb in the middle shining vermillion. The underside of the caps also emitted a light like a little forest nightlight. Small insects gathered around the bulb and underside like moths to a flame. Nature’s light sources, he thought as he pointed the Geiger counter near one and it clicked rapidly and blurred into a constant beep.
“Best not to eat it then,” he uttered.
The skies grew dark blue and the sounds of the wild quietened. Amber leaves crunched under their feet and the wind played with the bare pines. They took shelter beside small crags and chopped some wood and set up their mats and bags for sleep. They sat around the fire with rocks shielding their backs and trees covering the rest and warmed tins of gelatinous tomato soup and ate and laid to rest.
Voices tried to disturb them as with each night, rumoring of animals and people and other things, coming and going as they pleased. As he watched embers playing with the night in the midst of all the growls and cries he marked a small light approaching whence they came. He overlooked the sable road from their camp which stretched right to left. The faint light approached apace and the voice grew louder. He thought he was hallucinating and blinked and blinked but it was still there and growing closer and closer. A feeble voice of a young man now audible:
“Help! Please help!”
Sam stood up and squinted his eyes but it helped none; the sound of cracking twigs and leaves approached.
“Please! My light is dying! They will take me!” the man yelled as he sprinted and panted with his fading flashlight that faintly illuminated his thighs and knees. Nura awoke from the noises and Rocket stared the man down keenly. Countless voices shrouded him like devilish hornets.
As Sam reached for his flashlight and handgun the man tripped and fell and the light of him vanished a few car-lengths away. No leaves rustled, no twigs cracked. Sam clicked his flashlight on and pointed it where the man was a second ago. Nothing. The darkness had taken him just before their eyes; inhuman voices similar to the man’s now yelled all around them in mockery: “Help... Please help… My light is dying...”
Giggling and crying imbued the dark wood like a gas of nightmare. Sounds of flashlights clicked above them and in the dancing shadows of the flames. Nura wept and shook.
“Shh, it’s all right, sweet girl,” he soothed her as he held her.
During the night she kept waking up shivering from night terrors; her innocent dreams now like ash and silhouettes of laughter.
“Why has this happened? Why him? Why us?” She wept.
“I don’t know, kiddo. I don’t know.”
He hadn’t seen her so aghast in a long time; he held her close and calmed her.
“We’ll be all right. Nothing’s gonna take us, kiddo. Nothing.”
She forced two words through her tears.
“You promise?”
“I promise...”