[The Forest, Book 3] Part 26 - That's Our Ride

This currently untitled book is the the third and final installment in the Forest trilogy, the first book of which you can read for free here.

---

Part One: Read Here
Previous Part: Read Here

##Part Twenty-Six

When Janet gets her mind back, she’s no longer in the dark. She’s on a bed of gray moss in a gray cavern large enough to stand up and turn around. She stands up and turns around. A humanoid creature with white eyes covering half its face ducks through a gap in the gray roots.

“You dropped this,” says the creature.

Janet takes the vial of ashes from the creature’s black-armored hand. There’s a familiar utility belt around its waist, with a familiar flashlight on the right hip. The grapple gun on the left hip, the chest-harness, and the long rifle strapped across the creature’s back are less familiar, but certainly support Janet’s burgeoning hypothesis. When the raven—also gray; in this strange light, nothing has its proper color—lands on the creature’s shoulder, the hypothesis is confirmed.

“How did you get down here,” says Janet.

A full-color Mikey pops out of the vial.

“Janet, you scared the shit out of me,” he says. “Can’t believe you just dropped me like that. In such a creepy place, too.”

“I go wherever I want,” says Li, tightening a harness-strap.

Janet’s itchy eyes catch on the tiny scales that make up Li’s bodysuit. Could she see those before? She tries to place the ash-vial in her pocket and realizes that she’s naked.

“Ah, fuck,” says Janet. “Don’t suppose you brought any clothes?”

“We’ll figure something out,” says Li. “Let’s go.”

“Romping through the forest completely nude? How is that wise?”

“At this point,” says Li, “you’re much safer out here than you are on land.”

The cavern around them rumbles, and a gray pile of fabric spills from a root-chute.

Wear that, says the voice in Janet’s head.

She puts on the shirt. It fits perfectly. The fabric feels synthetic, soft and pliable. When Janet has donned the whole outfit (gray, gray, and more gray), Li knocks on the wall. The roots rumble and part.

Janet follows her into the passageway. The raven observes her, bouncing with each of Li’s steps, though its head remains stable.

“Where are we going?” says Janet.

“I’m borrowing you,” says Li.

“But where are we going?”

“I thought I told you in Atlanta,” says Li. “We’re going after Tetris.”

They wander through rootborn passages that open before them and close behind them. Janet feels the forest moving around in the back of her mind. It’s distracted. When she tries to access it, she gets flashes, swift-melting visions of locations and people around the world. A taste of the omniscience that nearly erased her mind.

“Are they gonna think I’m dead?” says Janet.

“They’ll think whatever it decides to tell them, I guess,” says Li.

“Seemed like a bunch of fuckheads anyway,” says Janet.

“Accurate,” says Li.

Eventually they reach the exterior of the citadel. A final door opens and the whole cavernous pit sprawls before them. Tremendous gray roots criss-crossing, dotted with creatures, the long-legged striders Janet saw before and other, smaller things, lower in profile, scuttling unconcerned by gravity on surfaces vertical and horizontal. Waterfalls emerge from holes in the pit’s vegetable-matter walls and fall a long, long way down.

“It actually lights up in here once a day,” says Li, “when the sun is directly overhead. But for you, I guess it probably doesn’t matter.”

“Squawk,” says the raven.

They set off along the roots, crossing where they intersect, always upward. The raven preens and clucks, focused on the path ahead. Janet gets the sense that Li is following its directions.

Slowly but surely, it begins to grow brighter. For Janet, the additional light manifests as color. The moss patches on every root are revealed to be red and purple and white, different color-patches intersecting and merging. Li’s raven is green. It leads them up a gargantuan root that seems to end abruptly in empty space.

As they approach the end, huge grasping legs unfurl from beneath the root. Tapping quickly one after the other, the long, moss-scrabbled, hairy legs carry a massive gray-green tarantula into view. Having clambered onto the top of the root, it regards them, eight black balls for eyes, many gray mouthparts fidgeting beneath. It turns and presents its rear, then settles onto the root. Each movement sends a shiver through the floor.

“That’s our ride,” says Li, grabbing fistfuls of long green hair to climb aboard.

It’s only when Janet goes to follow that she sees her hands. Now that there’s light, the truth is inescapable: her skin, from head to toe, has turned a dark, somber green.

---

Next Part: Read Here