Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 37 of 150

They ran west through the pines with the chest between them until the boot sounds behind fell off. Ben stopped at a rise and let Anita set her end down. Amanda stood apart, breathing hard, watching the trees. Justin checked the felt at the seams. Joe crouched and listened. "West relic first," Anita said. "We have the address from the paper. Half a day if we push." Ben touched the empty box at his hip. One box. One relic left after that. His hand felt the shape of the carved face through the cloth and stopped. He pulled the cloth back. A split ran the length of the lid, corner to corner. Hairline, but through. The chest had shifted on the run south. Something had knocked it. "It won't hold," Anita said. She pressed her thumb along the crack. Wood parted under her nail. "An hour of hum and it splits open." Ben sat down on a flat stone. Barb was four days back. Payne was gone. He had no tears, no jar, no time. The next relic waited half a day west and the creature would come to any hum that leaked. Amanda stepped closer. "I have something." She swung her pack down and worked the strap. She pulled out a small wooden chest, dark with age, iron bands eaten thin at the edges. A sad face was carved into the lid. Crude. Deep cuts. Old. "Where," Ben said. "Lost Hollow. Under the floor stone I sat on for three days." She would not meet his eyes. "I found it after you left me. I kept it when I took the other chest. I didn't know what it was for then." Justin leaned close and put his ear near the lid. He nodded once. "It's a real one." Ben turned the chest in his hands. The carving was older than Barb's work, older than Justin's grandmother's. The face looked tired, not sad. A wanderer's face. "Why give it to me now," Ben said. "Because two men are behind us and I can't outrun them alone." Amanda's voice went flat. "And because I owe you a chest." Ben set the cracked box on the stone. He opened the old chest. The inside was clean, dry, deep enough. He closed it and tied it to his hip with the strap from the broken one. A low shape moved in the trees to their north. Dark scales along the shoulders, gray at the belly, one orange stripe down the flank. It stopped between two trunks and watched them, ears forward, one paw lifted. Not blue-scale. Something else. It did not come closer. "It's been following since the shelf," Joe said. "Since her." Amanda looked at the animal and the animal looked back. "West," Ben said. He shouldered the chest of ten and stood. "Now. While we have a box that holds."