Legion's Arc

Chapter 6 of 22

Diana walked away from the swarm and did not look back. The dark trees swallowed her. She had left the shirt on the moss, and with it the last shape of her husband. Legion could have followed. It did not. It let the woman go and held its one prize close, thousands of small bodies wrapped around a torn piece of cloth. Diana pushed through the pines alone. Moss hung from the branches and dragged across her face. She could not tell east from west. Every trunk looked like the last one. Her camp was gone. Mark was gone. She stopped and pressed her hand to a tree and tried to breathe. Then she heard it. A soft rushing sound, low to the ground, coming closer. She knew that sound now. Rats. Thousands of them, moving through the leaves. Her chest went tight. She did not know if it was him or some other hungry thing in these woods. She ran. Ahead, a shape rose out of the dark. A barn, half fallen, its red boards gray with age. Moss dripped from the roof. A ragged hole gaped in the door. Diana shoved through it. Inside, the air was damp and thick with rot. The rushing sound swelled behind her, right at the wall. She crossed the floor fast. Old boards sagged under her boots. One cracked. Then the whole floor gave way. Diana dropped straight down into the dark. She landed hard on packed dirt below, the breath knocked out of her. She lay in a cellar. Sagging wooden posts held up the floor she had fallen through. Broken boards lay around her. Weak light came down through the hole. She tried to stand and cried out. Her ankle would not hold her. Above her, the rushing stopped. The barn went silent. Diana looked up at the jagged hole and waited for the flood to pour down after her. It did not come. A single rat crept to the edge of the hole. It was fat and round, its body swollen, with small black eyes. It looked down at her. It did not lunge. It only watched, the way a thing watches to be sure. Then it turned and slipped back into the dark. The rushing sound moved off through the walls above and faded into the woods. Diana understood. It was him. He knew where she was now. And he had chosen to let her fall and leave her here, trapped, watched. She sat in the dirt of the cellar and held her hurt ankle. She could not climb out. She could not run. The one thing in the world that had spared her twice was the same thing she could not bear to look at. Now it knew exactly where she lay.