Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 5 of 150

By dawn they were three hours north of Anita's shop, and the packs on their backs were nearly empty. Ben counted what they had. Half a loaf. A strip of dried meat. Two apples. Justin's water skin was already light. Anita walked point, faster than either of them, but even she slowed when Ben admitted the count out loud. "Two days to the next mark," she said. "Then more after that. We need grain, salt, rope. A town." "No towns," Ben said. He tapped the sealed box against his coat. It thumped back, steady as a second heart. "People will hear. The blue thing will hear." Justin pulled one headphone down. "There's a trade stop off the low road. Not a town. Wagons pull in, swap crates, move on. My grandmother used it." "How far?" "An hour. Maybe less." Anita frowned. "Open ground?" "Sheds. Some carts. Loud, always. Drovers shouting. Animals." Justin looked at Ben. "Loud is what we want. Loud covers the hum." Ben weighed it. The creature tracked scent, but the hum called it faster. Noise on top of noise might smear the trail. He nodded once. The trade stop was three sheds and a mud yard. A drover was arguing with a woman over the price of oats. Chickens screamed inside a stacked coop. Ben kept the box pressed hard against his ribs and let the yard's racket swallow the sound. Anita moved fast. She traded a copper coil for flour, salt pork, oil, and a bundle of hard biscuit. Justin bargained for a full skin of water and a coil of rope. Ben watched the road. Then a crate on the nearest cart began to shake. It was a battered thing, stickered and scrawled over, the word painted big across the front. Something inside slammed the boards. A drover swore and kicked it. The lid burst. A creature shot out — black fur, orange feet, ears back, mouth open in a bright yapping howl. It landed in the mud and started barking at everything at once. The whole yard turned to watch. Justin's face lit up. "That's — that's exactly what we need." "What?" Ben said. "Cover. All the way north." Justin was already moving. He caught the drover's sleeve and pointed at the animal, then at his own coin pouch. The drover, red-faced, took the deal in seconds. Justin came back with the creature squirming under one arm and its splintered crate under the other. It had not stopped yapping. "It never shuts up," Justin said. "Any pursuer listens for a hum, they'll hear this instead." Anita stared. "Or it draws every predator in the north to us." "Better than one that only wants Ben." Ben looked at the animal. It looked back and barked in his face. They left the trade stop fed, watered, and louder than they had arrived. Behind them, the road was quiet. That would not last.