Marcus Slidwell's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

Marcus crouched by the breach and listened. The heavy sound in the brush came again, closer now, snapping wood as it moved. He had no rifle. His panel shield was cut apart and useless. The jar with the spike-slug sat behind him on the supply box, and his field guide lay open beside it. He grabbed the book first and shoved it inside his jacket. Then he looked for anything he could jam into the gap. The brush parted and a small shape stepped through, not the giant he had braced for. It stood on six legs, waist-high, wrapped in a battered coat with brass buckles. Two feelers curled off its head. It had a mouth full of teeth and eyes too big for its face. It looked at Marcus, then at the jar on the box, then at the open journal page he had not managed to hide. "You the one drawing them," the creature said. It was not a question. "Name's Squelch. Put the book down." Marcus did not put the book down. Something crashed again out past the treeline, farther off now, moving away. Squelch tipped his head toward the sound. "Called it off. Owed me a favor. Won't do it twice." He stepped inside the shelter without asking. His clawed foot nudged the jar. The slug inside flared pink and green against the glass. Marcus stood up slow. "What do you want." Squelch pulled a folded page from his coat and dropped it on the dirt. It was a list. Marcus knelt and read it. Names he did not know, in a hand he did not know, with tally marks beside each one. Squelch tapped the page with a claw. "Every slug on this rock. I know them. You don't." He looked at the jar again. "You keep walking, keep drawing, you finish your book. I don't want that." He crushed the page under his foot and ground it into the dirt. "So I get to them first. Kill them, move them, burn the nests. Your book stops at what you've got." He held up a claw. Forty-eight, he mouthed. Then he turned and walked back out through the breach. Marcus stayed on his knees a long minute. The thing in the forest was gone. His shelter was still open. His journal was still in his jacket, and the slug in the jar was still alive, still lit, still his. He pulled the book out and set it on the box. He wrote down what Squelch had said, word for word, on a fresh page at the back. Then he wrote a number under it. Forty-eight. He underlined it twice. He had a name for the thing hunting his work now, and that was worse than not knowing, and it was also better.