Inch by Inch

Ana, Jay and Kane pushed their way through the undergrowth as best they could.

Red vines pulled at Jay’s spear, and the shaft of the bow strapped to his side. Thick luminous green bushes protested any movement, turning steps into stomps. Thorns of all sizes skidded across leather armor and latched onto soft clothes, taking a toll for his passage.

Behind them, the oddity had less trouble. Hard exoskeleton protected its six bulky limbs, letting it trample brush as it would bodies. Those same long legs kept its softer body above the tangled ground, maneuvering it back and forth in the air to avoid harm.

Jay was starting to regret his decision to send his team into the grove of trees. He’d chosen the option, wanting to avoid the fate of the cattle, but it might end up being his team’s downfall.

The oddity was not getting any closer. Even as they fought the undergrowth for each pace, the monster seemed to be stalled, 15.82 m behind them. With one step, it would brush a young tree aside, only to awkwardly side-step an older one seconds later. The undergrowth wasn’t causing the creature issue, but the trees were.

This knowledge was little comfort as Jay’s breaths came in gulps, and he fought to keep his balance as a rotten log splintered under his foot. Their footing was too uneven, marshy with one step and cluttered with debris on the next. The oddity didn’t need to be faster than them. All it needed to do was wait for them to make a mistake. One wrong foot and they would fall.

Moving into the grove had only delayed the result, not defied it.

He slowed, turning to focus on the creature behind them. It was forcing its way around a wide, stubby tree. Short as the tree was, its branches were too high to hinder the oddity. Its trunk, however, was just broad enough that it couldn’t be brushed aside. The oddity tried anyway, scraping its right legs across the bark as it tucked them close to push past. This was no easy task. It was a wide creature with its long legs. Unwilling to take a few steps to the side to avoid the obstacle, the monster chose to wrestle nature instead.

It made Jay wish for a denser forest, one where the trees grew as tightly packed as the thorns and the oddity could not follow them.

As if sensing him watching through unseen eyes, the tip of the monster’s stinger parted, opening jaws to reveal hundreds of fingernail sized teeth.

“Jay!” Kane shouted.

His team had noticed the change in his pace. Kane slowing to match him while Ana ran on, shooting panicked glances back. Her helmet was half askew from the running and strands of hair had fallen out of the right side, a tangle as chaotic as the thicket engulfing them.

“We need to fight,” Jay said hoarsely. He repeated it once more at a shout when his voice started working again.

The oddity finished extracting itself from the tree, but it advanced cautiously now. It didn’t know why they had stopped. The wounds left on the cattle’s armored flanks proved the monster was intelligent enough to learn. To understand and think. Had the cattle fought back at all, or were they overtaken by attacks from behind?

Ana made a shout of protest, but her argument was unclear through her pants for air.

Jay turned, for once starting to move towards the oddity, not away.

“It has trouble with the thicker trees. Try to keep some between you and it.”

“Wild take the Three.” Kane cursed. Jay could hear him turn too, the sounds of his stomps coming closer. “It’s slow to turn. Keep apart from each other.”

“What are you doing?” Ana screamed. The sounds of her passage through the grove had quieted as well.

Jay shared a glance with Kane. “We go to the sides? See if we can split its attention.”

Kane nodded and started to move to the right. “Careful of the tail. There’s... something about it.”

The oddity hissed, teeth shifting as the sound escaped its tail mouth.

“Ana, hang back. If it turns, try to cut the tail.”

“What- Jay!”

He had no time to process what she said next. The faceless oddity remained fixed on him as he moved to the left, even as Kane circled around to its right.

“That’s right, focus on me.” Jay called, voice wavering. He didn’t know why he was talking to it, or what he was even saying. It all seemed to blurt out. “You faceless shit. Do you even have eyes or are you seeing out of that tailmouth?”

The oddity hissed again, tail stinger flapping open. It continued to track him, trampling plants underfoot as it awkwardly turned.

Jay gulped, but stabbed forward with his spear anyway, warning it back. “Does that count as having your head up your ass? Can you breathe if I stab your tail shut?”

Would his weapon even pierce, or was this oddity like the pincushion swarm around the wagon? If this monster was invulnerable...

Provoked by the motion, the oddity started forward. It was fast in a straight line. Too fast.

Jay turned and ran for the thickest tree he could see, a bent gray one with tile-like bark. Heavy stomps and snapping undergrowth chased him. He was within reach of the trunk when a pained hiss made him turn back.

Kane jumped away from the oddity, staggering as a shrub interrupted the motion. He left a deep crack on the exoskeleton of a leg behind him.

“The armor is weak!” The swordsman shouted without inflection, all business.

The oddity began to turn towards its attacker, only to halt and swing its tail at Kane instead. The limb swung out over the tops of its leg joints, but didn’t come close to Jay’s teammate. It was unable to reach far out to the sides. The monster’s bizarre anatomy didn’t allow for it. With the failure, it increased its efforts to reach Jay.

He swore and threw himself towards the tree. Something smashed into his back, shoving him forward and grating his face against the patterned bark. It hurt, but not enough to make him forget the urgency of getting behind protection. He hugged the trunk with one hand and pulled himself around it with the other, nearly dropping his spear as he did. All the lessons on grip with Ana hadn’t been for nothing.

One of the oddity’s legs came down on the trunk behind him, scraping down with a painful screech that scattered shards of bark.

Jay got around the tree and took a step away from the trunk. The oddity’s legs stuck on out either side. “Missed me,” he called weakly.

“On the left!” Kane shouted, darting into Jay’s sight to slice at the middle of the oddity’s legs. He had circled around the creature as it attacked.

Jay couldn’t see what damage his teammate caused, but given the hissing, it was enough. The monster stepped back from the tree and took a step to follow, tail swinging at the swordsman.

Sudden anger came to Jay, bolstered by a liquid running down into his eye. That was his teammate. He blinked furiously and charged. “I’m not dead yet!”

A stab into one of the creature’s forelegs penetrated deeply, the exoskeleton doing little to block the metal with the weight of his body behind it. The oddity’s armor was hard, but brittle like clay, and shattered under pressure.

“Keep harrying it! Take out the legs!”

The stinger swung back towards him, moving far too fast. Jay’s eyes widened, and he fell back.

The tail passed close enough to his head that he could smell raw meat and blood. It continued on its arc to smash into the tree. He scrambled back, abandoning his spear.

“Cut!” Ana shouted from behind the oddity.

The monster gulped as if it was being strangled.

“Left again.” Kane shouted.

The tail floundered in the air, bumping against the tree as the oddity tried and failed to steady it.

Jay continued scrambling back until he was out of its range. The grove fought him every step of the way, tangling his feet, grabbing at his clothes. He struggled to climb to his feet.

The oddity began to turn again, away from the tree and to the left towards Kane’s blade.

Without his spear, there was little Jay could do to stop it. The tail rose drunkenly in the air, weakened, but still prepared to strike with all those teeth.

All he could do was shout a useless warning. “It’s turning!”

Praying for Kane and Ana to stay careful, he inched forward and waited for the tail to get far enough away that he could grab his spear. It had fallen out of sight into the undergrowth, but Jay remembered where he’d fallen. It had to be near.

“On the right,” Ana called from behind the tree.

The creature staggered.

Jay crouched down, brushing his hands across rotten leaves and loamy soil. Where was it?

His hand found purchase, but the wood was too slimy and soft to be his spear.

“Fall back,” Kane shouted. It was the right move. Kane had a sword, which didn’t give him the reach to avoid the oddity’s stinger. He couldn’t use his speed in all this undergrowth either. Someone else had to pull the beast’s attention. Ana had a spear, but a small one, and she was the last of them who should be taking its attention and Kane knew it. That left...

“Jay?” Kane called. His voice was clear, but not as steady as it had been before. He couldn’t see Jay, he didn’t know what was happening. All Kane knew was that Jay wasn’t helping.

At this point his hands were too filthy to know by feel, but the shaft was too smooth to be deadfall. He snatched up his spear.

By now, the oddity had turned away from the tree, and he had a partial view of its left side. One leg was missing from his waist down. Ana’s work.

Jay stepped forward, staggering a little as a sapling caught his pants leg, and thrust at the oddity, not at its legs, but at the soft body behind them. With his spear he had the reach.

The oddity began to shake.

He stabbed again and again.

“Cut!” Ana shouted, then began to cheer.

From above the tail fell, stinger reaching up in one last grasp to save itself. The severed limb landed on top of the creature and slid forward to the ground.

Three’s mercy, she cut it off.

He abandoned plans to retreat and began to stab as fast as he could. Without the tail, the oddity wasn’t half the threat.

Thrust. Pull. Stop the shaft from sliding out from his mucky hands. Thrust. Thrust. Thrust.

With each stab and shout from his team, the body sank low to the ground until falling altogether. The bulky limbs collapsed inward, forming a triangular cage about the still body.

Jay took shaking breaths and stepped back.

“Be careful!” he gasped out. “It might not be dead yet.”

He waited, counting to ten. Then thirty. Then sixty.

“It’s gone.” Kane shouted from the other side of the oddity, his face appearing between the collapsed limbs.

Jay took a step and one last stab.

It was dead.

He stepped out from behind the tree, past the still body, the battered legs and the severed tail. His team collectively took a breath.

Kane pushed through what remained of the undergrowth and crouched down by the stinger-tail-mouth. He pried the jaws open with a knife. The mouth opened with a puff of wind, revealing all those terrifying teeth. This close Jay could see slivers of flesh trapped between them.

Ana started to laugh. It wasn’t an amused sound. She laughed, her breaths sharp and growing faster until the laughs became gasps. She went to wrap her arms around herself, lifting her spear across her front until she caught sight of it.

Her hand flinched from the wood like the orange burned. Clean metal dropped to the floor with a thud. She fell down after it, resting on her heels and holding onto her knees with a death grip.

They were alive. The oddity was not. Everything caught up with him.

Fuck.