Up a Tree (p.25)
Amy crept back to where she'd seen Darvish fall. She kept her mind open to catch any thought or warning from Nelda above her, kept her ears open for the telltale whine of the ghosts, and kept her eyes open to locate the nearest twisty trees.
She found Darvish just starting to sit up, woozy, and faintly incoherent, he blinked at her, his eyes crossing and uncrossing before he finally managed to focus on her.
"Come on," she said, hauling him up with one hand, head swiveling as she scouted for danger. He was heavy, but he managed to get his feet under him. Miraculously he still had his ax, although it was charred all up one edge.
"Are you all right?" he asked groggily, shaking his head and bracing his hands on his knees.
"I'm fine," she said. "It's the others we have to worry about."
He nodded and looked around heavily. "Where are Rory and the Doctor?"
"They went ahead to sneak into the zone."
His head whipped to her.
"Don't look at me like that, somebody has to get in there. I told them we'd follow them once we got everyone back together."
He rubbed a hand over his long, lean face. "Any ideas where the others are?"
She tugged on his arm. "The last I saw Bill she was over this way."
He made no comment but followed her, still shaking his head. He cast an eye around, scanning professionally. And she noticed he was quieter moving through the ferns than she was. All to the good.
She headed for the large boulders she'd seen Bill try to hide behind.
-
Amy felt Nelda's leap of excitement. She looked up to see the white Trelwin pointing a long arm off to the right of their current direction. She altered course.
Bill and Darvish didn't ask how she was communicating with the Trelwin, and Amy didn't enlighten them. Things were weird enough without that. And, honestly, she wasn't sure how they'd react to the idea of Trelwins being telepathic. Signing animals were one thing. Telepathic animals were another.
They found Jute half in and half out of a stream. He'd lost his backpack somewhere. And the side of his face looked charred and reddened, as if he'd been electrocuted.
Darvish and Bill pulled him out carefully. They rolled him over and checked for further injuries, fortunately it seemed to be mostly his face and neck.
Eula found them there as they tended Jute and tried to wake him up.
He stumbled out of the brush, hair wild, looking more than a bit mad. He was juttering, his eyes wheeling, and he looked about to bolt.
Darvish picked up his ax, but Amy stopped him and held out a hand to Eula. 'It's all right, it's just the ghosts, they send out beta waves, it makes you panic." His head jerked around at the mention of the ghosts, scanning frantically.
"No, there's none here, there's no ghosts," Amy said. Jute took that moment to wake up with a long moan.
Eula's eyes went white. He whirled to run. A brown form flashed out of the trees and tackled him. They struggled, rolling, Eula fighting frantically against a long-limbed body that was nearly as large as he was.
Amy jumped forward and thumped him on the head with her full canteen. Eula went limp. The brown form disentangled itself.
"Thanks, Chitchi."
Zeke dropped down out of the trees and stood guard over the unconscious hunter.
"That reminds me," Amy said, turning back to the others, Bill was helping Jute sit up. "Give me your ipods, I need to adjust them."
-
With Zeke and Chitchi's help they managed to find and gather the others together fairly quickly. Erik and Pickles had found each other, and followed Chitchi back to the group.
They found Garon back by the fence, desperately searching for his brother.
"He was right here!" He waved to the tree his brother's body had smashed against. He tore at his hair, eyes frantically scanning the ground, running up and down the fenceline, checking each tree to be sure he hadn't gotten the wrong one. Completely ignoring the silent sentinels.
Erik caught him by the shoulders. "Stop it! Think!"
Garon turned wild eyes on him. "I didn't mean it. I said nobody comes out of here alive, but I didn't mean George!"
Amy winced. Her eyes flowed around the area, even as the others spread out to look. There were no telltale dragmarks or bloody remains. Apparently an animal hadn't gotten him. The ground was a scramble of their panicked footprints from before. Although remarkably clear around where George had fallen.
"Over here!" Pickles waved from down the line. They all trotted over, the ghosts were ignoring them, but they all kept a healthy distance.
Pickles pointed down. A triangular life support unit was sitting on a leaf at the base of the fence. Pickles pointed.
"Tracks," Erik said in his booming voice. Amy's eyes zeroed in on what the hunters had seen, beyond the fence, two pairs of footprints led off into the Zone.
"They got through then," Amy said with relief.
"Never mind them, what about George!" Garon yelled. Darvish clapped a hand on his shoulder and the others spread out again.
Amy felt something bomp against her head. A twig, with leaves still attached spiraled down in front of her. She scowled and glared up into the trees.
Zeke was pointing. Chitchi was beckoning. The two Trelwin swung off through the trees back in the direction they'd come from.
"This way!" Amy yelled, and took off after them. The rest heard and followed.
Zeke dropped down out of the trees and landed like an acrobat. He ambled over, all knees and elbows, his grace ungainly on the ground, and pulled aside a weeping veil of leaves in front of a pile of large boulders.
A startled "AAH!" came from the small crevice between the rocks. Garon pushed forward. "George?" he said with terrifying hope.
An identical face pushed out of the darkness.
"Eldon!" Garon said with relief on seeing his twin. "Where's George?!"
"He's here," the other brother remarked, he looked haggard and streaked with dirt and sweat. "I managed to circle back and drag him in here while the ghosts were chasing you all." He waved a worried hand back into the darkness. Garon dropped down on all fours and pushed in past him to see for himself.
Eldon's face lifted to the rest of them. "He's bad."
Eula, still jittery from his own encounter with the ghosts seemed to calm down at that. He shrugged off his backpack and dug out his more extensive medical kit. "Let me take a look at him."
Eldon crawled out of the cramped crevice and made way for the slighter man. They could hear Garon farther inside, "George?"
"Don't move him!" Eula barked as he crawled in, shoving his medkit before him.
Eldon stood up and stretched, running dirty hands over his face. Bill handed him a canteen. Eldon stared at it for a moment, then took it. "Thanks." He took a swig, then poured water over his face scrubbing away the dirt.
"I don't know why," he said, as they listened to the sounds of Eula and Garon conferring in the stones, "but those things just all floated right past us. It's like they didn't even know we were there. I'd brushed out our tracks, but it wasn't that." He eyed the silent apparitions behind them, still wary.
"This is why," Amy said, pulling up the leafy branches. A small tree grew up out of the top of the stones, twisting down so that its branches formed a screen in front of the small cave.
Darvish went on to explain the significance of the twisted trees. Zeke and Chitchi sat on top of the stones, listening to the sounds beneath them, and watching everyone.
"Thanks, guys," Amy whispered. Zeke looked at her with that particularly flat animal look, eyes blinking. Even now she couldn't quite tell what he was thinking.
Eula backed out of the crevice, he stood up and brushed himself off. Darvish stared at him. Bill, Jute and Pickles stood guard at three corners, keeping an eye out for danger, and watching the ghosts.
"He's alive." Eula said. There was a collective outpouring of breath. Even from the guards. "He's got a bruised spine, cracked ribs, a concussion, broken wrist and a hell of a burn all up his right arm, but he should be all right if we can get him back without wrenching the spine. Needless to say, we can't move him." He looked over at the fence, and the clear area beyond where the Doctor and Rory had disappeared.
Garon poked his head out, watching on all fours. "I'll stay with him," he said. Eldon started to object. Garon overrode him, "You had your turn. Besides, if I hadn't made that damned useless remark..."
Eldon stared at him, confused, then his face cleared and he swatted his guilty feeling brother on the head. "You are such a fool."
"Fine," Erik said, breaking the stalemate. "So what do we do now?"
They all turned to look at Amy. Her eyes widened and her head reared back at that sudden focus of attention.
Erik waved a hand beyond the fence behind them, the gesture somehow taking in the ten foot tall electrified ghosts standing in their way.
"You said we'd join them, any ideas how?" he asked, matter of fact, but a bit sarcastic.
She plopped her hands on her hips, nettled, and looked around at the others. "Isn't it obvious?"
Eight pairs of eyebrows went up.
She huffed. "If the Doctor and Rory got through while those things were chasing us, then all we have to do is get them to chase one of us again and the rest can slip through behind them."
"I'm not going through that again," Eula said.
"Are you volunteering to be bait?" Erik demanded of Amy.
"What about the rest of us?" Bill said. "Won't they chase all of us?"
Zeke and Chitchi got tired of the discussion and swung off into the trees.
Amy didn't blame them. "The rest of us will hide in the trees," she explained. "There's bound to be a couple of twisted trees close to the fence that could hold all of us. And the one who is bait only has to lead them far enough off to give us a chance before finding a tree of their own."
Darvish nodded and rubbed his jaw. "That could work. We'll have to scout the best location to..."
There was a sudden panicked warble from the jungle and one of the large local deerlike animals burst out of the trees almost into the midst of them. They scattered and dove out of the way, only to be confused to see Zeke and Chitchi swinging down behind the deer, swatting at it with branches, driving it along.
The deer, eight feet tall at the withers, and with an impressive rack of antlers, turned midflight and tried to gouge at them. Zeke slapped it across the face with a sharp branch, leaving scratches. The deer flinched its eyes away and ran, straight between two of the apparitions.
The air zapped! Throwing the entire thousand pound deer twenty feet back into the forest. Everyone stood shock still, hair standing on end. The forest king lay there for several seconds, gently steaming. Then started to twitch. It lifted its head, foundered a bit, then wallowed to its feet and bounded drunkenly away back into the bush.
"Well," Erik said into the silence. "Any other ideas?"
Amy scrubbed at her face and glared at the apparently empty space between the ghosts. The Doctor and Rory had gotten through, it was possible. So how had they done it? She grunted. Getting into places was rather a forte of the Doctor's.
But what could they do? She looked up at the ghosts, walked up close to the fence to examine them. They still weren't reacting. They hadn't so much as flinched when the deer had been zapped.
She turned and pointed at Eula, "How did you get away from the ghosts?" she demanded suddenly.
He looked surprised at the sudden attention. Then sour. "After the third time they zapped me, I must have passed out. When I woke up they were gone."
Amy turned again. "And we found Jute in a stream."
Jute grimaced, wrinkling the red side of his face. "I thought the water might ground them out. I was wrong."
"But you were unconscious." She turned again. "And so were you, Darvish. After they blasted you, they left you alone."
"What's your point?"
Amy turned and looked up speculatively at the ghost floating serenely above her. "Maybe they're just here to drive people off."
"Tell us something we don't know," said Erik.
She glared at him. "Don't you see, they stopped when they thought we were all down, either unconscious, or in the trees, where they couldn't detect us. Even that deer was merely zapped back, not killed. Maybe it's not strong enough to kill us."
"Tell that to George," Eldon said.
"It was him hitting the tree that did most of the damage." She looked down the line of ghosts. "I wonder how much energy this thing can actually put out?"
Suddenly a scream shattered the air. From inside the zone.
"Rory!" Amy jumped forward instinctively. And hit the fence.
-
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