Beach Day

38: The Lost Chapel

For all the guilt, she can't keep herself from smiling. Tiff whirls to face it on its approach, and draws the sword at the same time that Matt undoes the safety and cocks the shotgun.

There's no need to talk about a game plan, she realizes. Matt just gets it. He understands what has to be done and isn't going to yell about it. She might, but she's also a talkative asshole.

It's too bad she's going to ruin it, because she's definitely going to talk and she's definitely going to take her rage out on this thing. It's a good idea. It's just a shitty situation.

Matt moves first. At the same time he pulls the trigger, he takes a step back to brace himself— and puts his foot on a raised root, loses his balance, and falls. The shot goes wide, ringing out in the humid air, doing nothing but making Tiff's ears ring like alarm bells. She shouldn't have let him be so close.

She charges forward anyway, head off her shoulders, and hacks at the joint connecting the right front leg to the body. It's high above her, but it's a weak point, and she can only hope that she can generate enough leverage and apply enough torque to really make it work.

There's no grace to it. There is no medical precision. The jagged blade cuts through jagged bone, then collagen, then dripping shadows. The resistance the substrate offers gives way; still beholden to momentum, Tiff falls to kneeling beneath the bone creature as the leg detaches from the body and it loses its balance. Knees scraped through her jeans, she panics and tries to scramble her way out.

There. An opening, as the back legs give way before the remaining front one does. She scampers on hands and knees, until she gets an idea.

It's a bad idea. It's the kind of thing that would make Mr. Mathew upset with her. He isn't here, though. She might as well take a risk. What's the point of doing anything if she can't make mistakes and get messy?

She Frizzles down and makes a Tiff move; she rolls over onto her back and aims the sword up. As it falls onto her, the sword catches on the intercostal bone and scrapes through until it finds a hole, and slices into it like wood into a falling corpse. It falls apart in mid-air like a Jenga tower; the bones crash into the mud around her like tears, and the guilty are called home. She is nothing if not guilty. The only thing that hits her is a wave of black goo with the consistency of wet flour from a burst water balloon. She closes her mouth and eyes, but it still goes up her nose.

She sputters, looks over at Matt, and frowns deeper. He pushes himself up from the ground, brushes himself off, brushes off his gun (not that it does anything to get the mud off), and comes over to stand over her.

"Are you okay?" he asks. "Is anything broken?"

"I'm fine. I just need a moment." She lets the arms holding the sword fall, careful not to hit him.

"Are you alright to keep going?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." She pushes aside the hand offered to her and stands on her own.

This seems like it was a little too easy. She isn't sure why it went down like that.

Maybe it's the sword itself. Maybe it's just made to kill monsters.

She wants to examine this thing in her hands later. She sure as hell doesn't want to do it now, though. There are more pressing matters to attend to.

As soon as she stands, as soon as she wipes some of the goo from her face and tosses it to the ground, a wave of giddiness washes over her and is gone just as quickly.

She doesn't want to think about that. She mentioned it once. Drake suggested pills. Mr. Mathew suggested a baking competition.

What Tiff suggests to herself as she looks back at the bones is that they keep on going. She doesn't say anything. She just grits her teeth and keeps going.