Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 114 of 150

Ben stepped into the open field with the sack on his back. The small winged creature rode the burlap and pressed the hum down to a whisper. Dusk washed the grass gray. The tower door closed behind him. He walked toward the pines at a steady pace, not too fast, not too slow. A whistle cut the air from the ridge. Ben looked left. A hunter stood on the low rise, crossbow already up, closing the gap at a run. One man. Fifty paces and shrinking. Ben was still forty paces from the trees. He ran. The straw shifted. The hum climbed a notch. The creature on the sack dug its claws in and held the sound down. Ben's boots hit hard ground, then soft, then hard again. He heard the hunter shout for him to stop. A figure stepped out of the pines ahead. Red hair. Yellow jacket. Ima Hogg, the woman who had burned her own house down to buy him an hour two nights back. She held a coil of cord and a jar of something dark. "Down," she said. Ben dropped to one knee behind a low tussock. Ima walked past him into the field with the jar. She poured the dark liquid across the grass in a wide arc between Ben and the hunter, then struck a match and dropped it. The line caught. A wall of low flame ran across the field, waist high, feeding on whatever she'd poured. The hunter pulled up short. The crossbow tracked left, then right, looking for a way through. Smoke lifted between them. "Move," Ima said. She did not look at Ben. She was already walking backward toward the pines, watching the flame. Ben ran. The sack thumped his spine. The creature clung on. He reached the tree line and turned. Ima came in behind him. The fire held the field. The hunter was still on the far side, circling for the end of the line. "He'll come around," Ben said. "He'll come around slower." They moved into the pines. Ima led. She walked like someone who had already mapped this ground in her head. Ben kept the sack on his back and one hand under it to steady the creature. "Why are you here," Ben said. "Heard the hum from the ridge. Followed it back." "You could hear it." "Anyone downwind could hear it. Straw isn't enough." Ben felt the cold of that land in his gut. Ten paces to the trees had been the plan. He had made the trees. But the hunter had heard him from the ridge before the field, and the wind was still moving, and one man behind him meant more men were on the way. "Where," Ben said. "North. There's a place. Doesn't look like much." She walked. He followed. The chest hummed on under the straw, and the small winged thing rode the sack, and behind them the fire ate the field.