Marcus Slidwell's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Marcus Slidwell had built his shelter from crate panels and fern stalks, and eight months into the walk it was the closest thing to a home he had. Tonight something had moved into it before him. He crouched at the flap and shone his lamp inside. A slug the length of his forearm sat curled on his blanket, its teal body striped orange, spikes stacked along its back like a row of bright teeth. He did not recognize it. His field guide held forty-seven full entries and twelve specimens he could not yet classify, and this made thirteen. He wanted to sketch it. He also wanted to sleep. He could not do either while it sat on his blanket, and the spikes along its back were not decoration. He had watched one flick a spike into a tree trunk that afternoon and split the bark. He cut a panel from the shelter wall and used it as a shield. He pushed the panel slow across the floor, edging the creature toward the flap. It hissed once and fired. Two spikes punched through the panel and stopped a finger short of his wrist. He held still. The slug seemed to run out of spikes, or patience, and humped its way onto the dirt outside. Marcus dropped the panel and pinned the slug under a crate with a mesh lid. His hands were shaking. He got out his book and drew it while it was still angry, noting the spike count, the stripe pattern, the twin eyestalks that tracked his pencil. Entry forty-eight. He closed the book and looked at his shelter. The wall he had cut was open to the night, and the panel on the ground had two holes in it, and somewhere past the treeline something larger was already moving through the brush toward the smell of a wounded home.