Chapter 235: In Case You Didn’t Know
My eyes never left the shaking leaves in front of me, a light film of sweat covering my face and hands as I stared into the shadows.
A single leg appeared first... just one.
Then another.
Then another until there were several more.
The thing that crawled out from under the leaf was roughly the size of a dinner plate, with a flat brown body, long legs, and jaws that clicked together loudly enough for me to hear from the porch.
I stared at it.
Then I stared harder.
Nope. Absolutely not. I would not, could not accept that... thing... being in my front yard.
Give me the Butcher, give me the Devourer... but do not, under any circumstances... give me that... that... thing.
A camel spider perched on the underside of the leaf for one second before it launched itself forward, covering what I would swear to this day to be half a football field in length to get to its prey.
Unfortunately for Guo Renwang, he saw it too late.
The spider hit his shoulder and bit into the side of his neck.
His scream ripped through the yard.
He grabbed it almost immediately and tore it off with enough force that part of the creature’s body came apart in his hand. Then he slammed it into the ground and crushed it beneath his boot until it stopped moving.
But he didn’t realize that the head and jaws were still stuck in his neck... still eating away at his flesh and blood.
For one brief second, I thought he might had gotten away with it... that he might survive. But then his knees buckled.
That one bit of weakness... something so subtle as a knee bending just a bit too much, the entire yard changed.
The vines that had pulled back surged forward at the same time. Flowers erupted from the sides of the path Lin Cheng had created, and roots pushed through the earth walls and split them open from the inside. Shen Kaiyang cut through the first wave, then the second, but the third forced him backward.
Guo Renwang tried to stand, he tried to back up his friends, but his leg didn’t obey fast enough.
A vine wrapped around his wrist, and he broke it. Another wrapped around his thigh and he tore through that one too. Two flowers attached to his calf, and he crushed them with his other foot before they could bite deeper.
He was still fighting. As the head of the camel spider continued to eat into his neck, bite by bite.
That was the worst part.
He wasn’t weak. He wasn’t useless. He wasn’t even stupid in that moment. He was strong enough to tear apart anything that reached him, and for almost a minute, he proved it. Vines snapped in his hands. Flowers died under his boots. Roots were ripped out of the earth and thrown aside.
Then more came.
Not one at a time.
Not from one direction.
From everywhere.
The ash around him lifted as if the yard itself had started breathing. Vines rose from behind him, under him, beside him. Flowers opened along the walls Lin Cheng had made. Roots crawled over the ground like fingers searching for a grip.
Lin Cheng shouted and forced the earth upward again, trying to close the space around Guo Renwang, but the moment the wall rose, roots punched through it from the inside. Shen Kaiyang darted forward to cut him free, and a flower snapped at his arm, forcing him to pull back before it took his hand.
That was the moment Meilan stopped smiling.
Guo Renwang roared and tore both arms outward. Several vines snapped at once. For half a second, he was free.
Then the ground beneath him opened and his head tilted to the side, the wound in his neck getting bigger until there were only a few ligaments on his right side... and his spine, keeping that bowling ball on his neck.
That, combined with the crack in the earth was all that the jungle needed.
One of his legs dropped into the gap, and roots closed around it immediately. He punched down with enough force to crack the earth. The roots broke. More replaced them before he could pull free.
The flowers reached him first.
One latched onto his arm.
Another to his shoulder.
A third found the bite mark the camel spider had left and sank its teeth into the same ruined flesh... consuming the head of the spider at the same time.
His scream changed.
Now... I have heard a lot of screaming since the apocalypse started in my first life. Some of it was from fear, some of it was from pain, and some of it was people realizing too late that the world didn’t care about their plans.
But this one was different.
This was a man realizing that all the strength in the world wasn’t going to save him. That his friends weren’t going to save him. That Meilan wasn’t going to save him.
For the first time in a long time, my body stilled as I watched what was going on in front of me. I held my breath as Guo Renwang continued to fight. I actually respected the man... and those were words I never would have let come out of my lips, let alone enter my mind.
But there it was.
The way he fought, the way he never gave up... even as his head was falling off his body....
I could honestly say that I respected Guo Renwang.
I continued to watch as Lin Cheng tried to reach him, but the earth beneath his feet split open and forced him backward. Shen Kaiyang grabbed Guo Renwang’s arm and dragged with everything he had, his boots skidding through ash and blood.
For one second, it looked like they might pull him free.
But then another vine wrapped around Guo Renwang’s other arm.
A root tightened around his neck.
Several flowers closed over his legs.
Yuche’s arm tightened around my waist and I didn’t know if he was trying to keep me still or keep me from leaning forward. Probably both. Or probably because he didn’t like how much attention I was giving to the other man.
The sound Guo Renwang made when the first arm came free was wet enough that even Lingyun stopped smiling.
Meilan screamed his name even as Shen Kaiyang lost his grip and stumbled backward as blood sprayed across the ash. Lin Cheng tried to raise another wall, but his hands shook and the earth only rose a few inches before collapsing again.
The jungle didn’t hesitate.
Guo Renwang’s remaining arm was pulled in one direction while his trapped leg was pulled in another. His head snapped back as the root around his neck tightened and flowers swarmed over the rest of him so quickly that the yard seemed to fold inward.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Even Meilan looked like her mind had refused to accept what her eyes had just watched.
But the flowers kept working.
A vine dragged one arm toward a cluster of smaller blooms. Another carried a leg toward the original flower, which hissed at anything that came too close to Tao Jun’s body but seemed perfectly willing to accept extra food if it was delivered politely. The jungle sorted the pieces with unsettling efficiency.
I watched the whole thing with my mouth slightly open.
Then I looked toward the leaf where the spider had come from.
Another leaf twitched.
My eyes widened.
"Did not see that coming."
Commander Li slowly turned his head toward me.
I pointed toward the leaf.
"And on a side note, Lingyun has full permission to burn my house down if that ever manages to come inside."
The men around me chuckled, thinking that I was joking... but I really wasn’t. There was no way in hell I was going to be able to sleep at night, thinking that thing might be somewhere in my walls... on my ceiling..
Nope. Not happening.
Meilan was still staring at the place where Guo Renwang had been. Her face had gone pale, and the hope that had appeared there only minutes earlier was completely gone.
Good.
She was finally learning.
I looked from her to the flowers now feeding across the yard, then back to the blood smeared through the ash.
"Well," I said as I pointed toward what was left of Guo Renwang. "In case you still didn’t know, the jungle eats people."
