Dr. Alex Nolan's Arc

Chapter 11 of 14

Nolan pushed through the undergrowth for another hour before the trees began to thin. The ground sloped downward, and he heard it before he saw it—the rush of moving water, steady and strong. He stepped out onto a muddy bank and stopped. A river cut through the jungle ahead, wide and fast, the current churning white over submerged rocks. On the near bank, a massive tree stood alone, its trunk scarred with dozens of deliberate cuts and notches. Nolan approached it slowly, running his fingers over the marks. They were old—some weathered smooth, others still sharp enough to catch his skin. Different hands, different tools, different years. This was a waypoint. People had marked this crossing before. His eyes tracked across the water to the far bank, where a structure emerged from the vegetation. A hut on stilts, dark wood weathered gray, with supplies stacked under the overhang and a chimney jutting from the roof. Shelter. Maybe food. The first sign of civilization he'd seen since the cavern. But between him and the hut lay sixty feet of open ground. The river was too wide to jump, too fast to swim safely. A fallen tree stretched across the water twenty yards downstream, its massive trunk bare and split, branches stripped away by floods. It would hold his weight. But crossing meant stepping into the open, fully visible from both banks and the water itself. Whatever had been calling his name would see him. He crouched at the marked tree and studied the far bank. No movement. No sound except the water. The hut's windows were dark. Nolan stepped onto the fallen tree. The trunk was slick with moss, wide enough to walk across if he moved carefully. He made it ten feet before he heard the voice again—his own name, stretched and wrong, coming from somewhere upstream. He didn't look. He kept his eyes on the far bank and moved faster, arms out for balance. The voice called again, closer now, from multiple directions at once. His boot slipped on wet bark and he dropped to his knees, gripping the trunk. The hut was right there, thirty feet ahead. He crawled the rest of the way on hands and knees, splinters driving into his palms. When his boots hit solid ground on the far side, the voices stopped. He'd made the crossing. But now whatever was tracking him knew exactly where he was going.