Chapter 23: Unseen Threat
"R-Run!" Arnold screamed in pain.
Since Mia, the camera-girl, was behind the burly man, Gray and Rowan weren't able to see where the plant had struck.
However, from seeing that he was still alive, Gray understood and was pleased to see that he had been hit in a non-lethal position.
He wasn't sure if his friend Rowan thought the same, however, judging from how he seemingly hated the man for having a girl as pretty as Marina.
Gray was becoming more and more attached to the movie characters.
He thought that their acting was extremely realistic and refreshing to watch. He was at the point where he wished of being part of their friend-group, which was a thing that had never happened before.
For now, his favorite character was Arnold.
He thought of him as a gentle giant, and a good boyfriend, brother, and friend.
Although what he was seeing was an horror movie, and deaths were common for the genre, he wished it would've be him.
Well, he frankly wished for nobody in the group to die.
He liked that every character had their charm and an intriguing personality that complimented with everyone in their group.
Compared to them, he felt his personality and character being rather bland.
"Let's split up. We'll meet each-other soon!" Arnold ordered.
Marina, worried for the condition of her lover, wanted to tend to his wounds, but after hearing his orders, she bit her lips, increasing her running pace.
Steph had a similar reaction, but decided to listen regardless and ran in a different direction from his friends.
Mia's camera moved erratically, and after some minutes of continuous running, she finally stopped.
'Her endurance is better than mine…' he huffed in frustration. 'While I'm sure that adrenaline helped, It's still embarrassing to be like this…'
"Did the plant get mad at us for stealing its food?" Mia heaved a weary wheeze. "Never in my life—No, never in the history of mankind has someone ever recorded such things!"
"Well, we have to get out of here first… Then I'll worry about posting it."
When she saw the light of the sun dwindling, her enthusiasm slightly faltered. Dusk had just passed; the light was going to fade away into the night in less than half an hour.
"While my camera has no issues on working in the dark, I really don't want to stay here for so much time," she said. "I need to find everyone. If they ran like I did, they should be in a safer place."
The girl then placed her camera on the floor, but positioned it in a way where the viewers could see her actions from below.
"She's pretty," Gray remarked.
"Yeah, but the other girl looks better."
Mia grabbed her phone, calling her friends.
"Is everyone alright?" she said.
"Yeah…" Arnold said, a clear tinge of pain marking his voice.
"That root went right through my palm. I have a small hole, maybe one or two centimeters wide, but deep enough that I can see through it."
"We have to regroup and get out of here."
"S-Shit…" Steph mumbled under his breath.
"Dear, I should be close to you. Make some noise—I might succeed in finding you."
"I have a band-aid and some gauze in my purse—I know it's not much, but the wound might get infected if we leave it alone." Marina said worriedly.
"No, wait!" Mia interrupted. "We shouldn't make too much noise—we don't know what else is hiding here with us," Mia explained.
"You're right," Arnold remarked.
"Mia, do you know what we should do?" Marina asked.
After some moments of thinking, Mia suddenly questioned, "Do you have enough data to download an app?"
"Yeah," Arnold and Marina echoed.
"…"
"Steph? Why didn't you answer?" Mia asked.
"Uh? N-No. I don't have any data…" the boy finally spoke.
"Shit!" Mia cursed, loudly than she would have wanted.
Mia seemed awfully close to Steph, although it seemed that she was trying to hide it.
She looked around her worriedly. After seeing that nobody was near, she kept talking.
"Me, Marina and Arnold will install a geolocation app to find each-other. Then, we'll find you together.
"A-Alright," Steph said.
His voice was troubled by a constant noise which resembled radio interference.
"Arnold, Marina, I sent the link in the group-chat. Install it and set it up quickly, please. We have to do this before nightfall."
"You really are knowledgeable about these things, aren't you?" Arnold teased.
"I enjoy filming videos based off paranormal stuff, so I have to know how to act in these cases. Nonetheless, this is a first, even for me," Mia explained.
"The most I've heard was weird noises in a so-called paranormal house, but this…this is a whole different world."
"What could possibly be the cause of this phenomenon?" Mia asked, almost to herself.
"Could it be governmental experiments? Alien technology maybe? Or a whole new species?"
"This doesn't matter for now," Arnold interjected. "The priority is to actually survive. We'll ask each-other once we are done."
"Y-yeah…" Mia mumbled. "By the way, the app is done being downloaded. Once you two accept the request I'll send you, we'll all be able to see each-other's locations."
"Alright, I installed it," Marina said.
"Me too," the burly man soon followed.
"I'm going to send the request in our group-chat. In the meantime, why are you being so quiet, Steph? You want to call your mommy?" Mia teased, trying to make the situation less tedious.
"N-No…!" he wheezed.
His voice seemed strained, as if it took every single ounce of his energy to say it.
"Steph, are you alright?" his brother Arnold, immediately noticed his changes.
Marina and Mia stayed quiet, awaiting his response, but nothing came.
Only the radio interference remained, covering any of the sounds he could have uttered.
After a couple of seconds, Steph left the call.
"Fuck!" Arnold roared.
He went on with cursing relentlessly, trying to rationalize with his brother's situation, regretting on letting him go inside the forest.
Marina wanted to reassure him, but decided to let him vent his anger and frustration, although not doing so pained her.
"This was a mistake!" Arnold punched a nearby tree, his knuckles beginning to bleed.
"We should've never stepped foot inside this mess. We'll get Steph and run away from every damn creature of this place—no matter the cost!"
"I-I'm sorry…"
From the camera's POV, Gray could see tears streaming down Mia's face to the root filled soil.
Most importantly, they didn't have animals inside them.
"Mia, you could have never guessed that something like this would've ever happened," Marina reassured her.
"You like him, don't you?" You only wanted to spend some time with him, didn't you?"
"You knew?" Mia tried to wipe her tears with her finger, but for every teardrop she wiped off, three more streamed down her face, frustrating her even more.
"I fear it was obvious, wasn't it, my dear?" Marina smiled.
"Yeah…" Arnold replied absentmindedly, his worries situated towards his brother's safety.
"I-I originally wanted to tell him right here and film the video, killing two birds with two stone, but now…" she stammered. "But now I'm afraid I won't be able to tell him anymore,"
"Mia," Arnold suddenly said.
"Y-Yes?"
"After we regroup, we'll find my brother. And then, you'll say what you truly feel about him. But until that moment, we need you to be calm."
"Neither me and Marina are as knowledgeable as you. If we want to go out of this place—and with Steph with us—we will have to rely on your knowledge."
"You're right…!"
Mia was finally able to wipe her tears, her expression marked with a newfound determination.
Firstly, she unlocked her phone, seeing their precise locations. Then, she grabbed her camera, taking a deep breath.
"Arnold, you are 550 meters away from Marina. If you check the app, you'll know what direction to take."
"Marina, regroup with Arnold, and, as soon as you can, start walking towards me. I'm the farthest one; I'll start moving now so we can meet in the middle of the road. And then, we'll start searching for Steph right away!"
"Yes," Steph's brother replied, his voice nasal.
"Keep it up, Mia. Stay focused," Marina said.
Mia started walking, quickening her pace in a way that wouldn't be as tiresome as running, so she could retain her energies.
She had seen way too many horror movies where characters died due to their lack of stamina.
That was something she promised herself not to happen.
She was going to find Steph.
She had to, so she could finally fix the mess she made.
As Mia started to gain more distance, the roots that lacked any preys inside them earlier, began to return as they originally looked when the group dispersed.
"Does this mean that I'm going in the same place as that pillar made of roots? Or is it possible that the more I go at the centre of the forest, the more these roots begin to change?"
"Right now, even though I walked for a while, I should be pretty far from the middle of the forest… But if my theory is correct, just how would they look then?"
"As long as I don't snatch their preys away, I should be fine, right?"
"Mia, me and Arnold have finally met. I'll tend to his wounds as quickly as I can. We'll go towards your position once I'm done." Marina said, her voice shaking slightly.
It was clear; her lover's wounds were way worse than how she expected.
"I understand," she nodded her head. "Pay attention to the roots below you. How do they look? Do they have any animals inside them?"
"They look normal. The only thing unnatural thing, however, is the sheer number of them."
"That's good," Mia softly said. "The deeper we go in the forest, the more the roots in the ground may begin to change."
"I'm situated in a place where they are still feeding on small animals. So, if I'm right, I should be closer to the centre than you. I would try to test my theory, but I fear we don't have much time."
"Keep staying in the radius of that zone, but keep moving—don't stay still. We don't know if there's something hiding here with us."
"Or worse… that 'creature' could be hunting us. I'll come to your position as soon as I can."
Marina and Arnold stayed quiet for about a minute, frightening the girl. But when she heard the soft voice of Arnold's lover agree with her theories, she calmed down.
Mia stared at the sky and saw that the sun had disappeared completely. It was going to become extremely dark soon.
She knew that darkness was one of the variables bound to worsen their situation even more.
Seeing in the forest without a flashlight was nigh-impossible, but at-least, they still had their phones with them.
If they had lost them while running, then the chance of going back to civilization—much less with Steph—wouldn't have existed.
The camera girl walked with caution on the root filled soil, aiding herself with the help of her phone's flashlight.
Earlier, she had voiced her concerns about using a source of light so bright, afraid to pick the possible attention of some other unknown monster of which she didn't even know the details.
But after seeing her non-existent options, she knew what she had to do.
At least, she had the company of Marina.
Arnold didn't talk much, but that was something understandable for someone in his situation.
She even felt that his silence was ten times better than being cursed out by him.
After approximately fifteen minutes, she finally met the two.
Marina's face was originally scrunched into a frown, but after seeing the girl, she relaxed, smiling softly at her.
Arnold, however, seemed like the living dead.
The bloody gauze on his hand, and his eyes, which were normally hooded by his prominent brow ridge, seemed to have sunk even more, reflecting this new-found aspect of himself.
Mia, regretful of having harmed both Arnold and Steph with her actions, momentarily forgot to speak, turning the silence after Marina's greeting asphyxiating.
Although Gray couldn't hear her thoughts, he inexplicably felt that she was mocking herself for not thinking of Arnold's sudden injury.
Instead, like a child, she thought of herself and the success her blog would find.
'Uh? Could this be…?'
He did the reality-check Casanova had spoken about subconsciously.
He shook his head. 'No, I'm probably just thinking too much about this…'
"Mia, are you alright? You seem awfully pale," Marina said, concerned.
"Y-Yeah… Who wouldn't be in this situation..." she stammered.
Arnold shot a glare towards the girl, moved his mouth as if he was going to say something, but closed it almost immediately, glancing away from Mia with an expression that Gray translated to guilt, almost shame.
"We better get going," Marina looked at her lover, trying to placate him with that soft gaze of hers.
…
"It's no use, we don't have any leads. We even tried to call Steph, but that damned interference keeps crackling, making it impossible to hear," Mia said, shaken.
Her face then turned ashen—only now she found a connection within the things she had seen and heard.
"The plants' unusual growth… The unnatural, almost artificial neon-green color inside the roots… The radio interference…"
"No, that can't be…" she mumbled.
"Mia?" Marina called out, worried by the girl's strange behavior.
"…"
Mia then spoke.
"It's radioactive. This whole forest…is all radioactive."