Free The Wild Things by Dave Eggers Page A

depleted and desperate state would Max have considered his best option to be to run, stumble, and crawl through the densest and wildest kind of jungle toward the sounds of what seemed to be some kind of riot.
    But this is what he did.
    He walked for hours. He slashed his way through the undergrowth, ducking under grasping, luminescent ferns and slithering between the barbed and crosshatched vines. He waded through narrow creeks -- the water strangely hot -- and climbed over boulders covered with a red and delicate moss that clung to the stone like embroidery. The landscape was sometimes familiar -- there were trees, there was dirt, there were rocks -- but then again, very odd: the earth seemed to be striped in brown and yellow, like peanut butter and cinnamon after the first twirl of a mixing spoon. There were holes, perfect holes, cut width-wise in the trunks of most of the trees.
    After some time his fur, at least above his shins, was dry, and he was warmer, but he was so tired he was dreaming on his feet. Again and again he would shudder awake and find that he’d been walking while asleep.
    He was kept going, and on track, by the increasing volume of the chaos in the center of the island. It was such a strange mix of sounds -- destruction, calamity, but then what seemed to be laughing.

CHAPTER XVI

    And then, when he reached the top of a long high hill, he saw the fire, huge and snapping at the black sky. Most of it was obscured by a giant boulder in his line of vision, but the fire’s size was clear: it licked the surrounding trees orange and blotted out the stars above. It was intentional, it had a center and a purpose.
    Then movement. He saw something.
    First there was just a blur. Some kind of creature shooting through the trees, a rushing figure silhouetted by the red fire beyond. It could have been a bear, he thought, but the animal seemed to be running upright, on two feet.
    Max dropped to his knees, holding his breath.
    Again a figure darted between the trees. This one was the same size as the previous creature, but Max would have sworn he’d seen a beak. It seemed to Max’s tired eyes that a giant rooster, twelve feet tall, had just run across his field of vision.
    Max had half a mind to turn and run -- for what good could come of engaging beasts of that size near a fire of that strength? -- but he couldn’t leave just yet. The warmth of the blaze had awakened him, and he had to know what was happening down there.
    He dropped to his stomach, snaking closer. He only needed to make his way up the boulder between himself and the fire to see what was happening below. He was making his way commando-style, when a cat, a simple orange house cat but for its size -- it was only four or five inches high -- stepped in front of him and hissed.
    Max had never encountered a four-inch-high cat before, so he had no plan of action. He hissed back at the cat and it stopped, tilted its head, and looked at him quizzically. It then sat on its hind legs, lifted a tiny paw, and began grooming itself.
    Max heard more crashing, the sounds of splintering wood, but he saw nothing. He was sad to leave the tiny cat, but figured he would see more of its kind on the island, and by the time he did, he would have worked out what to do with one.
    So he skulked forward, again toward the fire. He wanted the warmth it promised, and he wanted whatever food might have been roasted on it, and he wanted more than anything else to find out just what was going on.
    A hundred yards more and he knew.

CHAPTER XVII

    Sort of. That is, he saw what he saw but couldn’t believe any of it. He saw animals. Animals? Creatures of some kind. Huge and fast. He thought they might be an oversized kind of human covered in fur but they were bigger than that, hairier than that. They were ten or twelve feet tall, four hundred pounds each or more. Max knew his animal kingdom, but he had no name for these beasts. From behind they resembled bears, but they were larger