The Black Slide by J.W. Ocker

Author:J.W. Ocker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

I’m Sorry, but That’s the Plan

All three threw their arms over their heads and faces and tried to flatten themselves against the black fangs, choosing to have their backs sliced by the sharp edges of the rock over being perforated by what was falling from the sky. The sharp metal needles sounded like chimes as they sporadically hit the hard metal plain, a grotesquely pretty sound ringing across the dismal and dangerous landscape.

“What do we do?” asked Laila. He heard the wince in her voice and peeked under his yellow arm to see a needle lancing her forearm.

“We’re too far away from the Painful Place to get back. We won’t make it,” said Ozzie as he yanked a needle out of the side of his neck. A tiny trail of blood wended from the wound down to his collarbone. “And I don’t know how long we can stay here.”

“Not much longer,” said Griffin. “We have to get inside the cage forest. It’s right over there, and it’s the only cover we’ve got.” He stopped there and didn’t tell them the other half of his desperate, suddenly formed plan.

“We’ll get eaten by those things,” said Ozzie. “Or caged. I don’t even know. I hate this place.”

“It’s our only hope,” said Griffin. Hope was a strange word to voice out loud in this place, like he’d said a curse word in front of his dad or Ms. Pitts. He could hear the pretty, deadly chimes of the needle rain picking up speed as more needles fell from the black bowl of the sky. If it kept going like this, the black fangs and their arms would be even less shelter than they were now.

“Okay,” said Ozzie. “Count of three?”

“No count!” shouted Griffin, springing from the black fangs like a lizard escaping the jaws of a fox and immediately paying for the shout when a needle nicked his lower lip.

They ran. Ran with needles dropping from the sky and embedding into their skin. Ran with arms over their heads to protect their skulls. Ran with hands over their faces to protect their eyes. Griffin could taste the blood in his mouth like he’d knelt and licked the metal ground. Sometimes the needles bounced off with a mere prick of the skin, other times they embedded solidly. The yellow cast he held over his head was spinier than an iguana. He wished the rest of his body were wrapped in an armor-cast to protect him from the needle rain. Even a yellow one covered in Laila’s exclamation points.

The red-streaked children crossed the colorless landscape until they arrived at the edge of the cage trees. Every foot of ground inside was within range of one of these cage-boughs. If the plan had been to hide in the forest from both the needle shower and the cage trees, it was a bad plan. There was no safety beneath the clusters of traps at the tops of those poles. When Griffin had first seen the cage

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