Free Marauder Ramses by Aya Morningstar Page B

says. “But I’ll survive.”
    I’ve strapped his soaked clothes onto the back of my pack, hooking them on the outside so they won’t get all of the other supplies wet. We still have more thermal blankets, some pots and pans, and some matches. I’d trade everything but the blankets for the food that Ramses lost. Though I can’t exactly blame him for losing the food. We had mere moments to escape the ship before it sank, and he prioritized our immediate safety over grabbing the rations.
    As we begin to walk uphill, my legs start to feel numb. I don’t know if it’s exhaustion or the cold – or a combination of both. There’s a ridgeline in front of us, and it goes about ten meters straight up. The face of the ridge is exposed rock, and there are small boulders circling all around the bottom, only partially covered in snow.
    When we make it out of the snow, I’m tempted to just fall to the ground, lay on my back, and go to sleep. I’m praying that we’ll choose this spot to take shelter, and that we won’t have to continue trudging any farther through the snow.
    Ramses starts to sift through the boulders, and he finds a few that fit in the palm of his hand. He hefts them up and down, then throws one at the rocky face of the ridge. It hits it hard, and the sound echoes across the rock.
    “Nice,” he says. “Here, put these in your pack.”
    He hands one to me, and it’s so heavy that I nearly drop it. He catches it as it falls out of my hand, and then he says, “Hmmm, I guess I’ll carry the pack.”
    He takes the pack from me, throws his blanket off and exposes his full nakedness once again. His dick isn’t rock-hard anymore, but there’s definitely still a lot of blood pumping through it.
    Over Ramses’s shoulder, I see something move suddenly.
    I tear my eyes away from Ramses and stare back at the pile of rocks.
    “What is it?” he asks, whirling around.
    “Maybe the rocks were just shifting,” I say. “Something moved.”
    Ramses opens up the bag and pulls out the stun rod.
    “Isn’t that to be used as a last resort?” I ask.
    Ramses doesn’t respond. Instead, he just holds the stun rod up.
    Then the rock shifts again, but I see – to my horror – that it’s not a rock at all.
    “Stay behind me!” Ramses shouts, throwing one of the boulders at the source of the movement.
    The thing moves toward us, scurrying across the rocks on eight legs. It looks like a giant spider. It’s grey like the rocks, and it has dozens of eyes all over its face.
    He picks up another rock, this one slightly larger than the last, and points the stun rod toward the spider.
    I back up a good five paces, as I’m completely unarmed. “We should just run –”
    “Keep backing up,” Ramses says, also taking steps backward.
    The spider takes tentative steps toward us. Its body is slightly larger than Ramses, and its big legs jut up to twice his height before bending at the joint and going back down. As it steps into the thick snow, I see that it has evolved to this height to keep it well above the snow.
    We continue stepping backward along the path that Ramses created, which leads straight back to the ice-cold water. We can back up, but not for long, and if we try to run sideways, the deep snow will slow us down while the spider moves effortlessly and catches us.
    For each step back we take, the spider takes two – or sixteen – steps forward, if you count each movement of each leg as one step. Its fangs start to move back and forth – as if it’s ready to eat – as it draws closer and closer to Ramses.
    “All right,” Ramses says, “I’m going to go in on it; you hold this.”
    He tosses the stun rod back to me, and I catch it in both hands.
    Go in? With what? A big rock? Why the hell did he throw our best weapons back to me?
    “Do you want me to zap it?” I ask.
    “No!” he shouts. “We need to save that rod for Grius. Back up to the sea! Don’t get near this thing!”
    And then he rushes forward,