The Unkillables (17 page)

“Don’t be a fool. You know.”

“I know I’m half Big-Brow. How long would it have taken Spear and the rest to refocus your eyes on that hated half? If the unkillables hadn’t come, perhaps I’d be dead now. Either you all would have executed me, or I would have died trying to stop you from killing my Big-Brow mother, whom you once used as you’d like to use Veela now.”

Chert was losing patience. “This is foolishness. All I’m trying to do is get you to do what men have done since the world began. And if you don’t know how, I’ll show you.”

Dry leaves crackled as Veela backed away from them. She raised the nut to her mouth and said something softly to the little man, who didn’t reply.

Chert stepped toward her. “I swear I’ll kill that little man of yours!”

The Jaw clapped a hand on Chert’s shoulder to halt him. “I’ll kill
you
,” he said. “If you lay a hand on her, I swear I will.”

“You can’t kill me, I’m stronger than you!” Chert wheeled around to face his son. “And you can’t kill me for a reason like that, anyway! Women don’t come between men! They don’t come between us!”

Veela, hissing something angrily at the little man in the nut, turned and ran.

“Veela!” shouted the Jaw, and pushed past his father to go after her.

Chert grabbed his son by the arm, yanking him back. “Let her go! We’re better without—”

The Jaw smashed his father in the face, hard enough to knock him loose—yet Chert retained enough control to grab hold of the Jaw and pull him down along with him. The Jaw landed atop him and tried to pound him again. If the blows had connected they might have done real damage, but the Jaw was in a tearful rage and his fists flew wildly, connecting with nothing as Chert dodged them. Chert bucked his hips and rolled on top of the Jaw, then slithered around behind him as the Jaw tried to turn over, and got him in a chokehold. The helmet got torn loose.

From beyond the near trees, Veela screamed. Panicked, she shouted something in her own language.

The Jaw struggled even more fiercely, but all he could do was land weak punches on the back of his father’s head. He had to reach around behind himself to punch. The blows hurt, and they would soon add up, but for now Chert was able to wait them out.

Veela screamed again, this time in the People’s tongue: “No-die!”

The Jaw let out a desperate wheeze, and fought even more vigorously to break free. But Chert held tight.

“No-die!” she screamed again.

“Sh,” Chert said. “Shhh. It’s for the best. Let her go. If she can’t defeat one undead, or no-die, or zombie, or whatever they are, then she’s no good to us anyway.” The Jaw unleashed another burst of thrashing. “Shhh,” said his father again, squeezing his neck tighter. “When you wake up, it’ll all be over.”

The Jaw struggled as long as he could. Then he slumped, unconscious.

As Chert got up Veela screamed again. Hopefully whatever she’d come across would kill her before the Jaw awoke.

He cautiously made his way to her. What with the path she’d torn through the forest and the sounds of her struggle, she wasn’t hard to find.

He saw her and one of the undead. Chert realized with a shock that he recognized it—this thing had once been Horn. He was black now, his head had that indefinably misshapen quality of the no-dies. The thing that had been Horn glared at Veela as if indignant that she would dare withhold her brain. She had her spear pointed inexpertly at it. As Chert leaned against a tree to watch, she jabbed at it, coming nowhere near its body. “Help me!” she shouted at Chert. “Help me!”

He watched her impassively. Even avoiding the risk that she, too, would be changed into a zombie he’d have to fight, was not worth the trouble of helping her. Right now, Chert felt he would gladly allow the personal danger to himself to increase, in exchange for seeing Veela dispatched.

She was only still alive because the zombie was even clumsier than her, and because they were in a stand of saplings that blocked what limited mobility it had. They blocked Veela’s too, though. “Help!” she said once more, hopelessly, then returned her full attention to fending the creature off.

This might prove to be a rare chance to calmly observe one of these zombies fighting, Chert thought. Again he noted how it led with its teeth—more precisely with its out-jutting jaws. It swiped at Veela with its arms, too, but almost as an afterthought.

“Dak!” shouted Veela. That, Chert and the Jaw had figured out from listening to her foreign chatter, was the name of the little man in the nut. He still didn’t respond to her.

Fear must have aided her concentration. She landed two good thrusts, driving the spear into the zombie’s ribs. She couldn’t kill the creature with the spear, but she could keep shoving it back till she got unlucky or exhausted. But the second blow nearly got her killed; the spearhead stuck between the zombie’s ribs, and if the zombie had thought to grab the shaft while Veela was trying to yank it out, it could have disarmed her. But the zombie proved almost as stupid as its prey, and too preoccupied with lunging uselessly at her head to press its advantage.

Veela pulled the spear out and circled around the thing, spear up. The thing spun after her. Chert saw what she was trying to do, and admitted that it wasn’t a bad idea, though she didn’t seem very aware of where her spear was in relation to the trees.

She waited till the right moment, till the zombie’s neck was lined up with a sapling behind it, though Chert could see how hard it was for her to hold back, how terror made her want to strike prematurely.

When everything was aligned, she thrust forward with the spear, putting all her strength into it, all her hope. Her aim was true—the spear pierced the zombie’s neck and passed through into the tree behind—the zombie’s swiping twisted hands nearly caught Veela, but she managed to stay just out of their range. The zombie was pinned to the tree. Considering how pathetic Veela had been two days ago, Chert was willing to admit that this was relatively impressive.

Even with its neck pierced the zombie continued trying to breathe. Most of the air whistled in and out through the hole incompletely plugged by the spear. Obviously the thing no longer needed to breathe but continued to do it, out of habit perhaps. Instead of using its arms to tear the spear from its neck, the idiotic creature continued to claw at Veela.

Gasping from exertion and terror, she hunted for stones big enough to do damage but small enough to easily handle. She looked at Chert as if she again had the urge to plead for help, but knew better than to waste her breath. She found two suitable stones. She circled around behind the zombie. It expected her to come back around on the other side, its right, and sent its arms flailing and swiping in that direction. Veela, feinting to the right just close enough for the thing to spot her and strain its energies in that direction, doubled back and sprang upon the creature from the left. She spun around, pounding the rock in her left hand as hard as she could into the zombie’s head, then following up with the stone in her right.

The zombie grabbed her around the waist with its left arm, when she lunged in to bash it in the skull. To be fair, Chert wasn’t sure how she could have gotten close enough to hit it in the head with the rock, without getting within arm’s reach as well. Luckily for her the zombie, after having at first shown little interest in the spear, had become preoccupied with clawing at the spot on its neck where the thing held it fixed; with only the zombie’s one arm around her waist, she was able to push on its chest hard enough with her left hand to keep out of range from its snapping jaws and strong teeth, while she pounded it in the forehead and temple with the rock. As she hit it she made desperate little sobbing noises, but no longer bothered to look up at Chert or call to Dak.

Chert doubted that under normal circumstances her arm would have had the strength to shatter a skull with a rock. But he saw his impression of the no-dies’ rottenness confirmed now. At first he thought it might be his imagination—but, no, there were small dents in the forehead and temple, dents that grew bigger and deeper as she hit it again and again. But the damage to its head didn’t seem to slow it down—on the contrary, it seemed even more determined to draw her into killing range, though still too stupid to divert its right arm for the purpose. The outcome looked certain now, and Chert decided he had little left to learn by watching. He scanned the ground for rocks of his own, planning to walk to the sapling, smash in the zombie’s head, and kill Veela as well, preferably before that thing gained strength from eating her brain.

Something came crashing through the vegetation—without turning around, Chert knew it was the Jaw. He considered trying to stop the boy, but fighting each other would dangerously distract them from the no-die. It was simply bad luck that he’d woken so soon.

The Jaw barreled past his father to the tree. He grabbed the zombie’s arm and pulled it off Veela; he bent it back around the tree, screaming in rage and exertion. There were popping and cracking noises as the zombie’s arm and shoulder snapped in multiple places. The creature howled, but Chert was sure it was in frustration at having its meal torn from its grasp, not out of pain. Veela pounded its head with renewed ferocity, and its skull and face got more and more deformed and misshapen. Finally the Jaw pulled her away from the zombie and snatched both stones from her. As the zombie clawed at him, he slammed both rocks together so that they met in the center of the zombie’s brain. The soft, rotted insides of its head sprayed everywhere.

Veela shouted something, reverting in her panic to her own language; then she said, in the People’s tongue, “No swallow! No swallow!”

The warning was unnecessary. The Jaw was already wiping and scrubbing with his forearms at the places on his face where the zombie’s head-matter had splattered onto him. Veela gathered handfuls of dry leaves and handed them to him, and he scraped them across his face over and over, eyes still squeezed shut.

As the Jaw finished cleaning himself as best he could, Veela glared at Chert. He met her gaze. It looked like she was about to say something to him, but decided not to bother.

Once he was relatively clean, the Jaw marched over to his father, fists bunched. “You were going to stand and watch her die.”

Although Chert maintained the appearance of lounging against the tree, his muscles tensed in readiness. “Yes. I was. If she can’t defend herself, she can’t travel with us.”

“Since when does a mighty hunter stand back and let a woman do her own fighting?”

“Ah, but she’s no ordinary woman. Right? I thought she was a powerful sorceress.”

Chert kept his tone relaxed and disdainful. But it was to mask the weary sadness he felt at the prospect of yet more physical combat with his son.

Veela shouted, “Stop your fight! Find zombies. No-dies, we fight!” She was tearing around in the bushes, for no reason Chert could discern. “Where it came from? Must fight them!”

“We
can’t
keep fighting these things!” shouted Chert. “One, maybe two, perhaps we’ll get lucky and survive. But if we run into more than that we’re dead. We have to get across the white air-biting thing!”

“No! Never! Never until all no-dies die!”

“
We’ll
die, if there are many more of those things in here with us!”

“Yes! We die! If need is, we die, to fight the no-dies! To kill the zombies!”

“You see?” snarled Chert to the Jaw. “I was only trying to grant her wish.”

The Jaw had been distracted by Veela’s rant—now he turned on his father again. Veela ran over and grabbed his arm. “Damn your fight!” she said. “Damn your fight! Is nothing! Help with
other
fight!”

“What do you know of our fight?” said Chert.

“Your fight, for always. Always, this fight will happen, of father of son, again and again, for all of human time. But only if we kill the no-dies.”

“Perhaps we ought to let your zombies wipe us out, then, since we’re only good for squabbling.”

Veela paused, looked at him. His bitter joke did not amuse her. She held up the strange nut and said, “Like Dak, you sound sometimes.”

She managed to gall him anew every time she opened her mouth. He had not forgotten his vow to stomp that little man to paste.

By tugging on his arm, Veela managed to pull the Jaw away from his father and their incipient brawl. “Must find where zombie came from,” she kept repeating.

The Jaw’s nerves were so frayed that even he was short with Veela. “What do you mean, where it came from? It could have been wandering through the woods for days! Years, for all I know!”

But Veela remembered what Dak had said about the caves. The zombies had gone in, but come straight back out—he’d been oh so sure of that. And since the ship’s sensors wouldn’t penetrate the planet surface, he wouldn’t be much help even if he did eventually deign to answer her hail. “Search holes,” she said, pointing at the ground. “Search holes.”

The Jaw stared at the ground. “What holes am I supposed to be searching?” he asked.

Veela stopped and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember the prepositions she’d picked up. She’d like to see Dak learn a whole fucking language in just a few days! Chert, too. “Search in holes,” she tried. The Jaw continued to just look at her. “Search
on
holes.” The Jaw looked more bewildered than ever. “Search
for
holes!” she finally shouted. “Search
for
holes!”

The Jaw was still confused, but at least he understood well enough that he started scanning the ground for holes.

Veela waved at Chert. “You, also!” she said. “No each other fight, now. Now is to fight zombies.”

Chert merely looked at her and remained aloof.

Veela returned to scanning the ground. As she did so she kept talking in her own language into the communicator: “Dak—Dak, come in, Dak. Dak, you’ve got to come in.”

There was no answer, which sent her beyond worry. Something had to be wrong—surely not even Dak could be so irresponsible as to leave the communicator off? Even if he was asleep, surely not even he would neglect to program an alarm to go off if she were hailing him. Although who knew.... That son of a bitch had driven the zombies underground. That would leave them in much more long-term danger than when the undead had roamed the planet surface—that unmapped cave complex might easily head to other cave mouths well beyond the perimeter wall. Dak’s amazing plan might turn out to have totally fucked all of human history. She’d be willing to bet he’d been so convinced of the flawlessness of his own operation, that he’d hypnotized himself into actually
seeing
the zombies come right back out again, regardless of reality.