Beast looked around, hearing only his own pulse beating in his ears. The sky completely cleared, revealing more of the cracks in the earth to be filled with black rock that resembled raised scar tissue.
A hand squeezed his shoulder, and he pushed it off before glancing at Vars, who studied him with a deep brown. “You fine?”
Beast’s lungs had become a vacuum but now they finally filled with air. He sat in front of the charred tree, confused to see the being that had threatened the lives of everyone he knew die.
Jake roared, stretching as the goo that made up the gargoyle form returned inside his body, but he soon got up on shaky legs and approached them, still looking back as if he expected the tree to crack open and swallow him with a wooden mouth in a final act of hate.
“It’s… is it over?”
Vars hugged Jake and kissed his forehead. “I think so.”
The distant sound of sirens died, and as the sky slowly changed color in anticipation of the approaching night, Beast pulled out his phone and chose Laurent’s number. His hand shook when he thought of all the things that could have gone wrong, and he barely held back the urge to smash the cell into the dirt when he found there was no connection.
“I-I need to go,” he said, breathing hard and already bolting for his bike. “To the clubhouse,” he added, stumbling over words as if his tongue was wood.
Now that immediate danger was over, the idea to send Laurent home on his own no longer seemed so reasonable. As an inexperienced driver, Laurent had issues in the best of conditions, so how was Beast to expect him to withstand an earthquake and all its consequences? For all Beast knew, he might find the car squashed by the black rock, or crashed in a ditch. All the grim possibilities sent bile up his throat.
Vars’s nostrils flared when he took a deep breath of air, pulling Jake even closer. “We’ll see how Knight and Rev are doing first. Their tree was the largest.”
Beast felt his mouth go dry, because Vars was right. Their friends were out there, and with the cell connection dead, they couldn’t get in touch.
“I’ll see you at the clubhouse,” Beast said and walked off with a strange emptiness in his head. There were dark clouds floating inside his skull, until he found his motorcycle tipped over, but safe in a thatch of bushes by the road. At least it hadn’t ended up squashed like some of the equipment used at the picnic.
Beast picked it up, but as he was preparing to mount, he was startled by a merry bird song announcing to the world all was well. The damaged asphalt and fallen trees he could already see in the distance were signs of destruction, but the fauna was enjoying the aftermath.
Beast exhaled with relief when his machine came to life. Otherwise, he would’ve had to run, because with each minute of not knowing Laurent’s fate, his brain produced more horrifying scenarios, most involving crashed cars.
He drove as if the devil was still chasing him, and as he entered the woods, he saw the same black rock crisscrossing the landscape. The landscape that used to be familiar, was now a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Beast refused to think of Baal any longer as he slalomed around the rips in asphalt and fallen branches. He was past the gates already when the front of his bike thrashed, and he barely kept himself upright when his tyre burst. His bike skidded down the slope by the damaged road. Beast took a deep inhale but didn’t hesitate to leave the vehicle behind.
He’d lived here his whole life. He knew all the shortcuts and secrets, and the changes the in landscape wouldn’t keep him from reaching the clubhouse.
The ground was irregular under his feet, with hard black rock separating the soft undergrowth that was so familiar, but Beast ran between the densely-growing trees that had been there for centuries. His pulse quickened when he saw bright walls loom beyond trees, and he managed to move faster despite the ache in his lungs. Somewhere out there, Laurent was waiting for him, safe. He needed to believe that, because if that wasn’t the case, then everything he’d done, all the sacrifices of the past year would have been for nothing.
He stood still when he was close enough to see the magnitude of the damage sustained by the clubhouse. Half of it was rabble, the other might collapse soon, for all he knew. It was a picture from a war zone, but the tiny national flag on top of Magpie’s tent waved at him in greeting.
It was only when he heard a child cry in the distance that the paralysis to his limbs wore off. Mind blank, out of breath, he sprinted across the lawn, all the way to the encampment, but what he saw once he encircled the palisade made no sense.