Zoe's Tale (Old Man's War, #4)(25)

Another one of the fanties let off an epic load of flatulence.

"If we stay here any longer, I'm going to suffocate," I whispered to Gretchen. She nodded and motioned me to follow her. We snuck over to where Enzo and Magdy were.

"Can we go now?" Gretchen whispered to Magdy. "I know you're probably enjoying the smell, but the rest of us are about to lose dinner. And we've been gone long enough that someone might start wondering where we went."

"In a minute," Magdy said. "I want to get closer to one."

"You're joking," Gretchen said.

"We've come this far," Magdy said.

"You really are an idiot sometimes, you know that?" Gretchen said. "You don't just go walking up to a herd of wild animals and say hello. They'll kill you."

"They're asleep," Magdy said.

"They won't be if you walk right into the middle of them," Gretchen said.

"I'm not that stupid," Magdy said, his whispered voice becoming louder the more irritated he became. He pointed to the one closest to us. "I just want to get closer to that one. It's not going to be a problem. Stop worrying."

Before Gretchen could retort Enzo put his hand up to quiet them both. "Look," he said, and pointed halfway down the clearing. "One of them is waking up."

"Oh, wonderful," Gretchen said.

The fantie in question shook its head and then lifted it, spreading the tentacles on its trunk wide. It waved them back and forth.

"What's it doing?" I asked Enzo. He shrugged. He was no more an expert on fanties than I was.

It waved its tentacles some more, in a wider arc, and then it came to me what it was doing. It was smelling something. Something that shouldn't be there.

The fantie bellowed, not from its trunk like an elephant, but from its mouth. All the other fanties were instantly awake and bellowing, and beginning to move.

I looked over to Gretchen. Oh, crap, I mouthed. She nodded, and looked back over at the fanties. I looked over at Magdy, who had made himself suddenly very small. I don't think he wanted to get any closer now.

The fantie closest to us wheeled about and scraped against the bush we were hiding behind. I heard the thud of its foot as the animal maneuvered itself into a new position. I decided it was time to move but my body overruled me, since it wasn't giving me control of my legs. I was frozen in place, squatting behind a bush, waiting for my trampling.

Which never came. A second later the fantie was gone, run off in the same direction as the rest of its herd: away from us.

Magdy popped up from his crouching position, and listened to the herd rumbling off in the distance. "All right," he said. "What just happened?"

"I thought they smelled us for sure," I said. "I thought they'd found us."

"I told you you were an idiot," Gretchen said to Magdy. "If you'd been out there when they woke up, we'd be scooping what was left of you into a bucket."

The two of them started sniping at each other; I turned to look at Enzo, who had turned to face the opposite direction from where the fanties had run. He had his eyes closed but it looked like he was concentrating on something.

"What is it?" I asked.

He opened his eyes, looked at me, and then pointed in the direction he was facing. "The breeze is coming from this direction," he said.

"Okay," I said. I wasn't following him.

"Have you ever gone hunting?" Enzo asked. I shook my head. "We were upwind of the fanties," he said. "The wind was blowing our scent away from them." He pointed to where the first fantie to wake up had been. "I don't think that fantie would have smelled us at all."

Click. "Okay," I said. "Now I get it."

Enzo turned to Magdy and Gretchen. "Guys," he said. "It's time to leave. Now."

Magdy flashed his pocket light at Enzo and seemed ready to say something sarcastic, then caught the expression on Enzo's face in the pocket light's circle. "What is it?"

"The fanties didn't run off because of us," Enzo said. "I think there's something else out there. Something that hunts the fanties. And I think it's coming this way."

It's a cliche of horror entertainments to have teenagers lost in the woods, imagining they're being chased by something horrible that's right behind them.

And now I know why. If you ever want to feel like you're on the verge of total, abject bowel-releasing terror, try making your way a klick or two out of a forest, at night, with the certain feeling you're being hunted. It makes you feel alive, it really does, but not in a way you want to feel alive.

Magdy was in the lead, of course, although whether he was leading because he knew the way back or just because he was running fast enough that the rest of us had to chase him was up for debate. Gretchen and I followed, and Enzo took up the rear. Once I slowed down to check on him and he waved me off. "Stay with Gretchen," he said. Then I realized that he was intentionally staying behind us so whatever might be following us would have to get through him first. I would have kissed him right then if I hadn't been a quivering mess of adrenaline, desperately running to get home.

"Through here," Magdy said to us. He pointed at an irregular natural path that I recognized as being the one we used to get into the forest in the first place. I was focusing on getting on that path and then something stepped in behind Gretchen and grabbed me. I screamed.