Under Zenith

  “Temple,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Hayden Temple.”

  “And you’re giving out personal information. I never thought I’d see the day.”

  I smiled too sweetly over at him, being overly dramatic in my praise.

  “Do you want my help, or do you want to die again?” he asked, obviously fed up with my little act.

  “I’d rather not die again,” I said. “If it’s not too inconvenient for you.”

  “Oh trust me; it’s monumentally inconvenient for me. But I’m your Guide so I’m forced to do what I can for you.”

  “Except help me.”

  “Except that,” he agreed, closing his eyes and nodding.

  We were both startled out of our little exchange by the sound of the machine looming ever closer, effectively cutting a VW Bus in half as it crawled toward us.

  “Now, I don’t mean to judge your method when I’m trying to be supportive,” Hayden began.

  “But.”

  “But, shouldn’t you actually be doing something?”

  “Oh fine, you kill joy,” I said with a laugh.

  I wasn’t sure what I found so funny about the whole situation. In all honestly, it was more likely that I’d fail this task than succeed, but having someone there to talk to and joke around with made the experience infinitely better. It must have been all of the horrible things Hayden had said to me during the other tasks that now made me so easy to please. He didn’t even have to be nice to me anymore. If he just refrained from saying something jerky I was beyond happy with him.

  “I need to get the machine under that car so I can smash him,” I explained, picking my way through the rubble toward the vehicle, suspended in midair.

  “Smash him? You make it sound like you’re figuring out how to kill a bug in your shower,” Hayden answered.

  “Trust me, if I found a bug in my shower, that thing would be dead before it knew what hit it.”

  “Besides that, I’m not sure how much ‘luring’ you’ll need to do since the monster is obviously after you,” he added, completely ignoring my statement.

  “But how do I get it to stay under the car if I’m up in the cab of the…what would you call it? A crane?”

  “Sure.”

  “I can’t operate the crane or it’ll come up there after me. And you certainly can’t operate it because that would count as helping me,” I reasoned.

  It didn’t look like I’d be finding a way around this task any time soon. I could only be grateful the spider had started off so far away from me, that way I had time to think things through as it approached.

  “That is a problem,” Hayden agreed.

  Of course it shouldn’t have surprised me that he was offering no suggestions to get me out of this mess. But that didn’t mean it had to bug me any less.

  Stopping underneath the old rusty car that dangled from the giant circular magnet, I thought of any possible way to be in two places at once.

  “You know, I think you’re over complicating things,” Hayden remarked, sounding bored.

  I guess it was easy to be bored when you didn’t have your life on the line.

  “Would you stop talking?” I hissed, closing my eyes and concentrating.

  It was obvious to me that I needed to stand under the car in order to get the spider right where I wanted it. Somehow I’d need to access the controls within the crane’s cab to drop the car at just the right moment. But that also meant I’d not only have to access the controls from where I stood outside of the cab, but I’d also have to make sure I got out from under the car before it fell.

  I didn’t really have that much faith in my speed.

  Running over to the crane’s cab I hopped in and began examining the console. Luckily, from my vantage point under the car I’d be able to see all of the buttons, even if I was too far away to do anything with that advantage.

  “The big red one says ‘magnet’,” Hayden pointed out.

  “I guess it’s not considered helping when you’re pointing out the obvious?” I asked in annoyance. “It doesn’t matter if I know where the button is if I can’t reach it from under the car. If the cab of the crane weren’t so far away…”

  “I don’t think this is really considered a crane.”

  “You think I care about what it’s called when that stupid spider machine is about to kill me?” I asked rhetorically, hopping back out of the cab and wildly searching the ground for anything that might be useful.

  A few feet away I was able to find something that resembled half of a metal hula hoop. Grinning to myself I snatched it up and examined it.

  “What is that thing?” Hayden asked.

  “I think it’s one of those things that holds a canopy above your bed…well…half of it anyway.”

  “Half a canopy?”

  “Half of the holder,” I answered, giving him an exasperated look to show him I was not amused by his little jokes. “Now stop asking stupid questions. I know you can’t help me, but that doesn’t mean you should be hindering me either.”

  An idea beginning to form in my mind I dropped to my knees on the ground, searching with quick hands through the piles of trash until I found what I was looking for.

  “Blinds?” he asked as I picked up the window shade.

  “I don’t need the blinds,” I explained. “Just the plastic turner on them.”

  I pulled the item in question off of the blinds, glad to see that the attachment on the end of the long plastic shaft was still intact, giving me a notch at the end of the plastic that I could use.

  “Look for another one of these,” I instructed Hayden.

  He gave me a skeptical look, obviously wondering if this was helping me and I’d suddenly be disqualified.

  “I figured everything out myself, I just need you to find this,” I said, trying to justify it.

  Hayden didn’t say anything, he simply raised a thick eyebrow at me, still not willing to break the rules.

  For a bad boy look alike, he was kind of square.

  “Ugh, fine!” I sighed, searching the junkyard for what I was looking for. “There!” I called, seeing one next to Hayden. “Can you at least pull it off of the rest of the blinds for me?”

  “You ask so much,” he sighed, doing as I asked and handing the long plastic piece over to me. “And what is this supposed to accomplish again?”

  “I’m completing the task,” I answered simply.

  Walking over to Hayden, I grabbed the waist of his pants and tugged him toward me, startling him quite a bit as his brow furrowed.

  “Dang it,” I said, disappointed at the lack of stretch in his black pants.

  “Love, this is hardly the time or the place,” he said very seriously, leaning in closer to me and giving me his version of a seductive smile.

  It was more effective than he knew.

  “You’re disgusting,” I informed him. “That is definitely not what I was going for. I just need some elastic or something.”

  “Sure,” he said somberly, sounding like he pitied my nonexistent infatuation with him.

  “And for the record, that’s never going to be what I meant.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  I didn’t dignify his statement with a response. With the metallic screeching of the spider now startlingly close to me, I attempted to find the last missing piece of my ‘invention’. Of course, this invention largely relied on my aim, which was quite rusty from lack of practice.

  “Finally,” I whispered to myself, spotting what appeared to be pajama pants lying on top of an old refrigerator.

  Needless to say, I didn’t waste any time pulling the elastic band from the waist of the pajamas. I ran back over to my mark beneath the dangling car and constructed my very rough bow, hoping that I would be able to hit such a small target from so far away.

  “I can understand what you’re doing,” Hayden began. “I just can’t understand how you think you’ll be able to hit the button in one shot whi
le worrying about being torn to shreds by a saw.”

  “Thank you for painting that colorful picture for me,” I called to him.

  Of course Hayden was stationed safely next to the cab of the crane with his arms folded, keeping himself well out of the way of danger. He was infuriating to say the least.

  I could feel the ground rumble beneath my feet as the spider approached behind me. My focus was trained on the button that would save me from this task, and the fact that I had to hit it with a blind turner, an elastic string, and half a bed canopy didn’t inspire much hope. Suddenly the whole idea seemed entirely ridiculous and my knees began to shake.

  How on earth was this going to work?

  Still, I took my aim, hoping for the best. I looked over my shoulder for just a moment, seeing the spider only a few yards behind me now as the screeching became almost deafening.

  The window of time I had to actually hit the button was very small. Somewhere in that window I had to make sure the spider was close enough to crush, but not close enough to chop me in half. Not a great prospect, but definitely a great motivator.

  “Any time now, Isla,” Hayden called, actually looking very worried about me all of a sudden.

  It was unexpected, though it did little to actually help me. Still, the idea that he was slightly put out by my possible second death was touching.

  “Isla!” he shouted, just as I could feel the heat of the machine on the back of my neck, my hair blowing up around me from the whirring of the saw.

  Taking one last deep breath I released the elastic band that held my ‘arrow’ and watched intently as it flew through the air, striking the cab console just to the left of the red button.

  If I’d had time, I would have cursed my bad luck, but as it was, I needed to reload my arrow and try one last time before either dying or making a run for it.

  Hayden’s face was a mask of pure panic now and though it shouldn’t have, it surprised me to see him looking worried. Maybe he just didn’t want to be scarred by the bloody scene that would ensue from my failure.

  Either way, I put his face out of my mind as I reloaded my ‘arrow’, ignored the whirring blade just one foot from my skin, and shot at my target one final time.

  This time the plastic shaft hit the target dead on and I allowed myself one quick smile, proud of my victory. I had actually managed to hit the target from so far away!

  The only problem was, even after hitting the button, the car above me didn’t budge.

  Chapter 14

  “What?” I mouthed, before a harsh prod in my back sent me sprawling onto the dirty floor.

  I yelled out in fear as one of the sharp, metal spider legs penetrated the ground beside me, burrowing deep into the earth.

  This was it. I’d failed the task and now the stupid machine was going to rip me to pieces.

  I scrambled around on the ground, trying to get to my knees to crawl away before the thing killed me, but another leg came racing down above me, this one pinning the skirt of my dress to the ground.

  Knowing I was completely out of luck and hoping ‘death by saw’ wouldn’t be too painful, I looked up at Hayden desperately, only to see that he was no longer looking at me. Instead, he was tripping over himself as he lunged at the red button on the console, pressing it down firmly before appearing by my side and yanking me by the wrists away from the spider.

  He pulled me backward so that I came crashing down on top of him and a split second later, the sound of metal on metal could be heard as small pieces of debris flew over us in the gust of wind that followed the chaos. I closed my eyes tightly against Hayden’s chest as he shielded my head from the metal pieces that shot off in every direction and suddenly, the air was silent.

  I didn’t move for a long time. Instead I concentrated on matching the motion of Hayden’s chest as it rose and fell beneath mine, trying to steady my breathing. His hands still rested on my head as a thousand thoughts raced through my mind, though one was more pressing than the others.

  Had I failed the task because Hayden had helped me?

  After a long while I opened my eyes and lifted my head to get a good look at Hayden. He looked just as shocked as I felt and our blue eyes were wide.

  “What happened?” I asked in a whisper.

  “I don’t know,” he answered, his voice betraying how uncomfortable he was with the whole situation.

  “Sorry,” I said quickly, pushing myself up off of Hayden so I was no longer impairing his breathing.

  I sat on the ground next to him, my dress completely covered in mud and rust and ripped along the bottom from where Hayden had pulled me away from the spider.

  The spider!

  I turned around quickly, surveying my fallen foe and hoping it didn’t have some sort of secret reboot system. Even though I didn’t know much about machinery, I could safely say the thing looked beyond repair as it sat smoking beneath the car.

  “You saved me,” I said to Hayden, trying to keep it from sounding like an accusation, even though it kind of was.

  “I didn’t,” he answered quickly, shaking his head in denial and looking like he might actually regret saving my life.

  “You pushed the button.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” he emphasized.

  He still looked shocked and I wasn’t sure what he was more upset about, that he’d broken the rules to save me, or that he might have been caught doing something nice.

  “What does this mean?” I asked, scared for the answer. “Do I fail?”

  Hayden looked around the junkyard, as if he could see the answer written in the piles of trash.

  “I don’t think so,” he began slowly. “I mean…you figured out how to kill the thing on your own. You even built something to do it. That was all the task really called for.”

  He still sounded unsure and I didn’t like the uncertainty in his voice when it was my death on the line.

  “When will we find out if I failed? Will it be immediately, or do they wait until you’ve completed all the tasks to finally tell you, ‘Oops, sorry! You didn’t make it.’,” I asked, slightly hysterical now.

  “I don’t know,” Hayden answered, sounding a bit angry.

  “What about your niece? How did it work with her?” I asked.

  I felt bad about having to bring her up again. I could tell the topic obviously hurt Hayden, but I had to know if I was completely out of luck now.

  He winced at the mention of his first failed attempt to guide someone to their Destination but he answered me nonetheless.

  “We knew immediately,” he said quietly, staring straight ahead.

  I wanted to know what he meant by that, but didn’t press the issue any further. Just because Hayden had impulsively saved my life didn’t mean he had suddenly stopped hating me, and if I wanted to get to my Destination, I needed to stay on his good side.

  A breeze blew through the junkyard, throwing up dust as it did so and breaking up the silence between us just slightly. I wasn’t sure if I should say anything else or just get up and complete the second part of the task. Hayden was pretty much impossible to read and I never knew when he was being dark and brooding, just ready to blow up at someone, or when he was simply quiet because he had nothing to say.

  Eventually I stood up and brushed my dress off; an action that was completely pointless since there was no way I’d ever get the stains out of the white lace…until the cycle reset and I was magically clean again.

  This place was so bizarre.

  Hayden followed my lead, getting to his feet and running his fingers absently through his dark, messy hair.

  “Thank you for saving me,” I said finally, looking up at the safe house instead of at Hayden.

  He wasn’t really the emotional type. I didn’t think he’d want me to stare longingly into his eyes while thanking him. Really, giving him any sort of praise for his act of bravery was probably too touchy-feely for him.

  “It was nothing,” he said gruffly, shrugging off my complime
nt as if it were physically painful to be on the receiving end of kindness.

  “So now I just need to get to the top of that trash pile?” I asked, pointing up at the safe house that rested high above us.

  It may have been very blatantly changing the subject, but I didn’t think Hayden would mind too much if it meant I’d stop complimenting him.

  “You have to build something to get yourself up there,” he corrected.

  “I can’t just climb?” I whined.

  “You can if you want to cut yourself on a rusty piece of metal and get Tetanus.”

  “Too late for that,” I told him, holding out my arm and showing him the bloody cut I had received from the spider’s attack.

  “You really do have a penchant for getting hurt, don’t you?”

  He gave one long-suffering sigh and grabbed my arm to examine it. If there was one thing Hayden obviously enjoyed, it was playing doctor. Or maybe he didn’t enjoy it; he was just constantly forced into that role because of my clumsiness. He ran his thumb over the wound, effectively smearing blood over my skin and grossing me out all at the same time.

  “Shouldn’t you not be touching blood with your bare hands?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

  I was just slightly skeptical of his nonexistent medical credentials.

  “Do you have some sort of disease you aren’t telling me about? Besides being chronically annoying?”

  “I’ll ignore that,” I said.

  “How generous of you,” he responded, still checking out my cut to determine if it was fatal. “Yet again, you’ve narrowly escaped death with this little paper cut.”

  “That’s a deep cut!” I insisted.

  I may have refrained from crying about my wound, but I wasn’t about to have this smug man tell me it was nothing. If I’d been home (and alive) Monica would have called in the national guard by now and watched five Youtube videos on how to stitch up a wound using only items found in your kitchen. Just because I wasn’t a sobbing mess didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

  “You’re such a baby,” he said, releasing my arm, sliding his hand over my stomach to wipe my blood off of his skin, and returning his gaze to the safe house that resembled an office building.