Game of Cages

spread, one hand supporting the other. The shots went quickly, popopopop—it takes surprisingly little time to empty a handgun.

The floating storm was about fifteen yards off the ground and nearly above them. Moe Howard dropped the magazine out of his pistol and slapped in a new one with well-practiced speed. He started shooting again, and I knew he was hitting his target even though I couldn’t see any effect. Haircut didn’t bother to reload. He began to back away.

Beside me, Catherine said, “Oh, God. No.”

The floating storm was above Moe now. There was a tremendous flash of reddish light and a thunderclap louder than anything I’d ever heard in my life. A blast of air staggered me. Haircut was close enough to be knocked down. When I blinked away the lights in my eyes, I saw him struggling to his feet, still half stunned.

The floating storm moved straight toward Haircut. He didn’t have a chance.

I turned to run and saw Catherine giving me a withering stare of raw hatred. I was startled, but when she took off downhill, I followed.

We ran, aiming mostly northward because it was downhill. Where the ground was rough, we angled toward one side of the path or the other, trying to keep to flat ground. We also kept to the trees, hoping they would force the predator to stay high and out of range. And the ground was clearest where the trees were thickest. Where they were thin, the way was choked by vines and bramble.

It stayed on our tail, never getting too close and never falling far behind. Would a ball of churning gas and electricity toy with its prey? I figured not.

So we ran. The light from the predator cast long shadows ahead of us. Whip-thin tree branches, nearly invisible in the dim electric light, stung my face, neck, and arms. As we topped a ridge and slid down the other side, the light the predator gave off was suddenly blocked. We had to pick our way through the moss-covered branches by touch until the floating storm came close enough to light the way again.

We were never going to survive this way.

We came to a little stream—not deep, but the banks on both sides were pretty near vertical and too far to jump. Catherine bolted to the right, running along the gap until she came to a place where the bank on the far side was more gentle.

She jumped, hitting the ground with a loud whuff. I landed beside her and a little farther up. I grabbed her jacket to help her up the hill, but she shook me off angrily and ran by me. Her breath was coming in labored heaves.

I glanced down at my shadow and realized how short it had become. I sprinted after Catherine, trying to keep close without passing her.

I watched her. It was obvious that she was tired, but she never let up the pace. She ran on willpower, hurdling broken branches and exposed roots. It was barely running—more like hopping through an obstacle course. I didn’t think either of us had the stamina to outrun the predator. I glanced back at it again. If it was becoming tired, I didn’t know how I’d tell. At least we were putting a little more distance between it and us.

Catherine suddenly angled to the right, and I followed. She’d found a footpath that was clear of broken branches, although the moss was still slippery. The wind chilled the sweat on my face. We made better time on the footpath, and the forest grew darker around us.

“The town is down there,” Catherine wheezed. I looked in the direction she pointed. Through the trees, I could see a cluster of faint, distant lights.

We could never run that far. We kept running anyway.

Then we came to the thing I was most afraid of—the ground dropped away in front of us. We had reached the edge of a fifty-foot cliff.

At the bottom was a little pine forest, all laid out in perfect rows. A Christmas-tree farm.

“Shit,” Catherine said. “I can’t run any more. Boy, you said you had a weapon that could kill a predator.”

“I said maybe. And it won’t work on this one. My spell is made of paper, and that thing is made of lightning. My spell would just burn up.”

“Are you sure? You won’t even try?”

Of course I would try—as a last resort. To the left of us, there was a section of cliff that had collapsed, making a very slight slope. A couple of trees grew nearly sideways out of the dirt. “Can you climb down this cliff?”

The electric hum of the predator was growing louder, and the woods were growing brighter. “Not fast enough,” she answered.

“I’ll give you time. Get down to the farm. Find something to kill an electricity monster. I’ll lead it to you.”

She ran to the left. “What if it catches you?”

I almost answered: Then when it comes for you, I won’t be leading it, but the predator was close and it was time to run.

I followed the path along the top of the cliff, lengthening my stride to stretch out my legs. I’d already run a couple hundred yards over rough ground, and I didn’t have a lot of gas left in my tank. The predator fell behind, but at least it was chasing me, not Catherine.

The woods to my right became steeper, sloping higher and higher until it was a wall of ferns and mud above me. If this trail dead-ended, I would be dead-ended, too. I was too damn tired to run uphill.

A couple of the trees ahead looked strange—too regular, and stripped of their branches. As the floating storm lit the woods around me, I realized they were power poles.

I picked up the pace. The power line came up the cliff below at a slant, ran along the trail for a few hundred feet, and then continued uphill to the right at a rocky point. The nearest pole on the trail was just ahead. The cliff drop to the left was still steep but looked manageable if I had a little time to work at it. I stepped around the pole and backed away from it, gasping to catch my breath.