The Unkillables (18 page)

She realized that the Jaw was trying almost timidly to get her attention, so she quit hailing Dak for a moment. “What?” she said, trying not to be curt.

“Are we looking for a hole because you think the zombie came out of one?” he asked uncertainly.

“Yes.”

“So the purpose is to track the zombie back to where it came from?”

“Yes!” Jesus, what was it with these guys?! Did they have no clue what was going on at all?!

“Well,” the Jaw suggested humbly, “maybe we should follow the trail that the zombie made? If it came out of a hole, the trail must lead back there.”

Veela blushed. “You can follow its trail?”

The Jaw gaped at her. “Of course.” A blind person could follow the trails left by those clumsy, shuffling, undead things.

It was Veela’s turn to feel humbled. She touched the Jaw’s arm gratefully and tilted her head down. “Yes,” she said, “thank you. Please, follow it.”

The Jaw led the way, backtracking along the trail—no matter how long he’d wondered why she didn’t follow it back to the zombie’s lair, it might never have occurred to him that the reason was she couldn’t see it. Chert fell in behind them. “You see?” he called to his son. “She’s stupid.”

Seeing the way the Jaw’s shoulders tensed at his father’s voice, Veela was afraid they were going to get into it again. But he let it go. Veela felt stupid enough not to take offense. Following the Jaw now, she realized that the trail was, in fact, dramatic enough that she should have been able to see it herself, after all the lessons of the last couple days.

Trailing behind them both, Chert kept his grim eyes on Veela’s back. The woman was going to get his son and himself killed. As soon as the Jaw was distracted, Chert was going to get rid of her.

As predicted, the trail led back to a fissure in the earth. It was a great stone lurching up out of the soil like a whale frozen in time as it broke the surface of a dirt sea, with a dark light-gobbling crevice wide enough for a human or zombie to wriggle through. “Goddammit,” she muttered, and raised the communicator to her mouth again. “Dak? Dak, goddammit, you have to answer me!”

The Jaw watched her worriedly. He had no idea what was going on or what it had to do with the little man, but he could tell something was terribly wrong.

“Dak!” she cried, so angry she was near tears. “The zombies are underground, Dak! They’re in the fucking caves! It’s going to take work and technology to even try to clean them out, so I need you to respond to me!”

She had walked a few paces away, out of a sense that it didn’t look good for her and Dak to fight openly in front of the natives; meanwhile the Jaw was running his hands over the stone fissure from which the zombie must have come. She was watching him, and was just about to tell him to be careful, in case another zombie sprang out of the hole. The Jaw turned to look over his shoulder at her, did a double-take, and shouted a warning. Veela had barely registered it or had time to feel any fear, when there was a massive blow to the back of her head. She was unconscious before her face hit the dirt.

T
he remnants of the People lived under the guidance of Gash-Eye on the stony shore of the subterranean lake, even deeper down than when Spear and Stick had still been with them. One fire spluttered and smoked beside the stale water. They weren’t permitted more than one, because no one knew when they would be able to go outside again to gather more wood.

Gash-Eye sat trying to get a grasp of this new world they’d entered. There was that chamber where she’d thrown Tooth into the fire, and this one by the lake. In both the floor was relatively dry, not too slick, only a few stalactites dotting the rooms. Connecting these chambers was a sort of passageway—not a straightforward tunnel, but a winding corridor with branchings off. Some of those branches were tight fissures, but others were sizable doorways one could easily wander into, without realizing one was leaving the main artery. The People and Gash-Eye found the terrain there treacherous, but that was only because they’d had so little experience inside caves—they’d actually gotten very lucky.

When hunting, Gash-Eye had nearly been tricked by one of these branchings. That had rattled her. It would be easy to get lost forever here.

Soon no one could say how long they’d been underground. These were people who’d spent their entire lives outside, entering caves only to escape rain or snow, or to hide from animals or other people, and never straying far from the mouth. Their new environment would have been trying, even excruciating for almost any human from any society throughout history, but for them it proved physically and mentally debilitating.

Gash-Eye watched them deteriorate. Though she didn’t harbor an excessive amount of love for the People, their sufferings were too great for her to gloat. Especially since she shared in their sufferings. More importantly, so did Quarry.

On the one hand, Gash-Eye felt guilty because part of the reason Quarry was stuck down here was Gash-Eye’s fraudulent prophesying. On the other, last time they’d gone outside the world really had been full of unkillable monsters and red fire streaming down from the heavens, so, fraudulent or not, she’d apparently been right.

Regardless, she could feel a dangerous shift taking place in the People. Just after their most recent escape they had been grateful and anxious to please her. But their fear and dependence had mixed to form something new. From feeling that they were dependent on Gash-Eye, it was not such a long emotional leap to feel she was responsible for them, and from that to feel she was responsible for everything. Shortly after Spear’s disastrous attempt to lead the People from the cave, when they had asked when they might go outside again, they had asked appealingly, beseechingly. Now there was the hint of a demand to the question, as if they were asking not for information but for permission. Then, when she’d brought them food, they’d been fawning. Now, they accepted it almost sullenly, as if it were her fault they weren’t still living off steamingly fresh game.

Sometimes she resented the fact that so much of their gratitude had worn off after only a few days underground. Other moments she thought it was understandable, considering how many weeks they’d been down here. Her time sense was as garbled as anyone’s.

Now she was hunting, far from the fire, just around the curve leading from the chamber into the tunnel, at the very edge of her vision’s range. Quarry was with her—Gash-Eye had done her best to leave the girl near the fire, but more and more Quarry insisted on accompanying her everywhere. Since the disastrous attempt to leave the cave, the girl seemed to feel that her only hope of safety lay with the Big-Brow. Out here the girl was blind—they had rounded the corner of a tunnel leading away from the grand chamber at the shore of the lake, and they were standing completely still, listening for prey. Quarry, wrapped in the bearskin she’d inherited from her mother, held onto the thinner skin Gash-Eye wore, to avoid being separated. Quarry’s bearskin should have kept her warm, but both of them nevertheless shivered in the cold underground air. By the faint glimmerings of the fire that managed to round the corner, Gash-Eye could only just make out the child’s form beside her.

“Gash-Eye?” whispered Quarry. Unlike all the People, who tried to flatter her despite their fear and hatred, Quarry had not adopted the strange new name “Petal-Drift.” It seemed to never occur to her to use it.

“Sh,” said Gash-Eye, and caressed the child to take the edge off her reproach. Moments ago she’d heard something scrape along the rock floor, further up the tunnel. Hopefully it was an animal, more food, and she didn’t want to warn it off by making any noise.

And if it turned out to be a wandering unkillable, she didn’t want to make any noise that might attract it.

Quarry obediently fell silent. But a moment later she coughed; a huge volley of chest-rattling bursts whose echoes rolled through the caves.

Gash-Eye sighed. That had practically been loud enough for the unkillables up on the surface to hear. Then she looked down at Quarry’s dark form with concern, feeling guilty for her annoyance. There was no point asking if the girl was all right. The cold and the damp had invaded her lungs, like they had everyone else’s. Gash-Eye reached down and pulled the bearskin tighter around the girl’s shoulders.

“Gash-Eye?”

“What is it?” whispered Gash-Eye gently.

“Have you seen yet when we will be able to leave?” From Quarry, the question had none of the accusatory quality the rest of the People gave it. There was only a toneless despair.

Gash-Eye would have loved to be able to confide her fraud to Quarry, and Quarry alone. That she didn’t was not because she didn’t trust the girl, nor because she thought Quarry would find fault with the ploy. She just didn’t want to burden her with the secret.

“No,” Gash-Eye said, “not yet,” and caressed the girl again. Quarry was trembling and feverish—only slightly, but it would get worse.

Quarry nodded in quiet acceptance. Then she whispered, “I know you can’t help it, Gash-Eye. I know you can’t make the spirits show you anything, and I know you didn’t bring the unkillables. But you should be careful. Because some of the People, if they don’t get to leave the caves soon, they’re going to blame you.”

“I know.”

“I think they’re awful. I think they’re ugly. If it weren’t for you we’d all be dead. You ought to have left us all and let us die, after the way we always treated you. But all that, I think it only makes them hate you more now. I don’t know why, but I think it does.”

For a moment Gash-Eye only looked at her, the girl-shaped shadow in the darkness. Then she pulled her in close: “I’ll never leave you,” she whispered.

Quarry hugged her back, but Gash-Eye could feel how slack her muscles were, and her voice was distant as she said, “Soon, I think my eyes won’t work anymore, even if we do ever go back outside.”

That scraping noise reappeared, closer this time, and Gash-Eye put her hand over Quarry’s mouth, then removed it once she was sure the girl had the idea. Whatever was making the noise, now that it was close Gash-Eye realized it was bigger than a rodent. Maybe it was Spear. Or an unkillable. If it were an unkillable, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about any of the People siding with it against her.

Gash-Eye became aware of dark splotches moving towards them along the wall she was facing. Heart hammering, she gently put her hand over Quarry’s mouth again and slowly, slowly stepped backwards, willing the girl to follow, and to remain absolutely silent as she did so. They crept till Gash-Eye felt the rock wall at her back, and then they stood still. Gash-Eye held her breath.

The splotches took form. There were five of them, definitely human-shaped. At first she was afraid they were more unkillables, because of their strange twitchings and hunched postures. But they didn’t have the absent shuffle of the unkillables, that could explode into action when prey was near. These were merely humans who had been broken by days spent in terror and total darkness. As they groped their way along the opposite wall, Gash-Eye felt almost sure she could make out Spear’s features. They all wheezed slightly as they breathed—the damp cold air must have been even harder on them than on the rest of the People, since they’d been without wood to make a fire.

Once Spear and his friends passed Gash-Eye and Quarry, they were able to see the glimmers of the fire. Gash-Eye heard their gasps and whimpers of desperate excitement, then Spear shushed them and began hissing his plan. The People were unlikely to hear the approachers, huddled around the fire as they were—for one thing they were too far away, for another the fire’s crackling and the echo of its crackling would mask the intruders’ noise. After some quick whispered instructions, Spear led his men around the corner.

Now that they were out of sight, Gash-Eye dared lean her mouth down towards Quarry’s ear. She whispered, “I’m going to go see what they’re doing. You wait here....”

“No! Take me with you....”

“Sh! You wait here, it isn’t safe....”

“No, no, take me, take me with you....” Quarry started to cry.

Gash-Eye didn’t think anyone else would be able to hear the girl’s panicked snufflings, yet, but she was still desperate to get her to stop. “All right,” she whispered, “all right, but quiet, please. They’ll kill us if they hear.”

Quarry got herself under control. They crept to the corner where Spear and his men had just been standing, and peered around it. Gash-Eye could see the men, silhouettes against the dim light of the weak fire, moving in on the People. It seemed incredible to her that the People didn’t see them; she wasn’t about to risk Quarry’s life by calling out a warning. To be safe she had her hand over the girl’s mouth again.

Finally someone noticed the on-comers and let out a shout. Now that they’d been discovered, Spear and the rest of them ran in at speed—they’d held onto their stone knives, apparently, for they fell upon the People and hacked crazily at them. Quarry’s teeth sank involuntarily into Gash-Eye’s palm—Gash-Eye felt her drawing blood, but kept her hand clapped over the child’s mouth anyway. It was Spear, Oak, Boar, Club, and Granite. Though they were outnumbered, it didn’t take long for Spear and his friends to kill all the men; they kept the girls alive. Spear singled Tooth out for special attention and spent a while with him. If there were any unkillables left in the cave complex, Gash-Eye felt sure the howls of Spear’s old friend would draw them.

By the time Spear finally finished killing Tooth, his friend Oak had Maple on her back. He was trying to rape her, but thanks to hunger, days spent in darkness, fear-born madness, and who knew what else, he couldn’t get an erection. Spear kicked him hard in the ribs to get him off the girl, then stared at his bloody cohorts. They all blinked at each other; it was amazing that they’d managed to fall upon the People so disastrously, blind as they must have been. The strength of their furious insanity had carried them through.

“Where’s Thorn?” barked Spear. His voice was hoarse and raspy, as if this was the first time in days that he’d spoken above a whisper. Besides, his lungs were irritated like everyone else’s.