The Host(39)

My legs moved me forward without any thought on my part. The crunching rhythm of my steps was background music, low and tedious.

There was nothing to see; one twisted, brittle shrub looked exactly the same as the next. The empty homogeny lulled me into a sort of daze—I was only really aware of the shape of the mountains’ silhouettes against the pale, bleached sky. I read their outlines every few steps, till I knew them so well I could have drawn them blindfolded.

The view seemed frozen in place. I constantly whipped my head around, searching for the fourth marker—a big dome-shaped peak with a missing piece, a curved absence scooped from its side that Melanie had only shown me this morning—as if the perspective would have changed from my last step. I hoped this last clue was it, because we’d be lucky to get that far. But I had a sense that Melanie was keeping more from me, and our journey’s end was impossibly distant.

I snacked on my granola bars through the afternoon, not realizing until it was too late that I’d finished the last one.

When the sun set, the night descended with the same speed as it had yesterday. Melanie was prepared, already scouting out a place to stop.

Here, she told me. We’ll want to stay as far from the cholla as possible. You toss in your sleep.

I eyed the fluffy-looking cactus in the failing light, so thick with bone-colored needles that it resembled fur, and shuddered. You want me to just sleep on the ground? Right here?

You see another option? She felt my panic, and her tone softened, as if with pity. Look—it’s better than the car. At least it’s flat. It’s too hot for any critters to be attracted to your body heat and —

“Critters?” I demanded aloud. “Critters?”

There were brief, very unpleasant flashes of deadly-looking insects and coiled serpents in her memories.

Don’t worry. She tried to soothe me as I arched up on my tiptoes, away from anything that might be hiding in the sand below, my eyes searching the blackness for some escape. Nothing’s going to bother you unless you bother it first. After all, you’re bigger than anything else out here. Another flash of memory, this time a medium-size canine scavenger, a coyote, flitted through our thoughts.

“Perfect,” I moaned, sinking down into a crouch, though I was still afraid of the black ground beneath me. “Killed by wild dogs. Who would have thought it would end so… so trivially? How anticlimactic. The claw beast on the Mists Planet, sure. At least there’d be some dignity in being taken down by that.”

Melanie’s answering tone made me picture her rolling her eyes. Stop being a baby. Nothing is going to eat you. Now lie down and get some rest. Tomorrow will be harder than today.

“Thanks for the good news,” I grumbled. She was turning into a tyrant. It made me think of the human axiom Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. But I was more exhausted than I realized, and as I settled unwillingly to the ground, I found it impossible not to slump down on the rough, gravelly dirt and let my eyes close.

It seemed like just minutes later when the morning dawned, blindingly bright and already hot enough to have me sweating. I was crusted in dirt and rocks when I woke; my right arm was pinned under me and had lost feeling. I shook out the tingles and then reached into my pack for some water.

Melanie did not approve, but I ignored her. I looked for the half-empty bottle I’d last drunk from, rummaging through the fulls and empties until I began to see a pattern.

With a slowly growing sense of alarm, I started counting. I counted twice. There were two more empties than there were fulls. I’d already used up more than half my water supply.

I told you that you were drinking too much.

I didn’t answer her, but I pulled the pack on without taking a drink. My mouth felt horrible, dry and sandy and tasting of bile. I tried to ignore that, tried to stop running my sandpaper tongue over my gritty teeth, and started walking.

My stomach was harder to ignore than my mouth as the sun rose higher and hotter above me. It twisted and contracted at regular intervals, anticipating meals that didn’t appear. By afternoon, the hunger had gone from uncomfortable to painful.

This is nothing, Melanie reminded me wryly. We’ve been hungrier.

You have, I retorted. I didn’t feel like being an audience to her endurance memories right now.

I was beginning to despair when the good news came. As I swung my head across the horizon with a routine, halfhearted movement, the bulbous shape of the dome jumped out at me from the middle of a northern line of small peaks. The missing part was only a faint indentation from this vantage point.

Close enough, Melanie decided, as thrilled as I was to be making some progress. I turned north eagerly, my steps lengthening. Keep a lookout for the next. She remembered another formation for me, and I started craning my head around at once, though I knew it was useless to search for it this early.