The Unkillables (27 page)

Both of them wore visors. The transparent screens covered their faces and displayed readouts before their pupils, so that when Chert or the Jaw faced the two time-travelers, they saw the readouts in reverse. Veela had hers down and set for night vision, though she shone a flashlight before them for the sake of the two guys. She’d considered grabbing a pair of visors for Chert and the Jaw, but she knew those things would freak the guys out. She paused, using her glance controls to search for any anomalies ahead.

And she could see it, in the distance. A human-shaped heat source, but the wrong temperature for a human—way too cool. With the glance controls she had the visor run a few more diagnostics. Yep, that was definitely a zombie. The last fucking zombie—at least, it had better be. She pulled her laser-blaster out, clicked off the safety, and pointed it at the zombie’s head—the visor’s targeting app locked in. “Gotcha, cocksucker,” she said.

“Hang on, Veela,” said Dak. “Don’t be hasty.”

“Go fuck yourself,” she said, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

She pulled it again, and again nothing happened. Again and again and again, and still nothing.

“What the fuck,” she gasped.

“I had a feeling you might be hasty. So I ordered your laser’s CPU not to fire without authorization from me.”

“Dak, oh my God, if this is to conserve energy....”

The zombie had heard them, either their voices or their brainsong, or both. In her visor she could see it quivering to life, and slowly moving their way. Dak strode to meet it, confident in his armor. Veela scrambled along beside him, pleading: “Fuck the batteries, Dak! Who cares if we wind up having to hunt pigs with spears the rest of our lives? Can’t you see that our one and only fucking purpose is to kill these fucking zombies that we brought back with us in the first place?!”

“Veela, please. I could survive here without you, except that I confess to a psychological need for a contemporary, someone at least theoretically capable of the breadth of vision one should expect from someone of our century. Can’t you see that this zombie is the very apex of human scientific thought?”

“It’s the apex because it’s the last thing we invented, and it was the last thing we invented because it killed us.”

“Well, actually, time travel was the last. But Veela, even you must be awestruck that, with the zombie, we humans have
created immortality
. The bulk of the work is done—all that remains are the kinks.”

“No, Dak, you can’t keep this thing and study it. You’ll fuck up and it’ll get loose.”

“
I
will not ‘fuck up’!” he said, affronted. “By studying the process of cthuloid fluid generation, I can perfect the serum and live forever, or at least until you and I destroy the universe—and who knows, perhaps I’ll even figure out a way to avoid that.”

“What are you going to do to cause the cthuloid fluid generation? Feed it the brains of Stone Age people?”

“Well, yes. They certainly are plentiful enough.”

“And when are you going to start this brilliant experiment?”

“I have the frame’s computer set up to begin right away. I think I may be on the verge of figuring out what the original gengineers did wrong; one cthuloid spurt could be all I need. Of course, it could take a thousand, one never knows.”

“Jesus—it wasn’t just that you were distracted by building the perimeter wall—you wanted all those people to get zombified, didn’t you? So you’d have more subjects!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Though it is true that I judged my priority to be containment. Since, yes, I did know that I would eventually require subjects, anyhow.”  

“Did you know there was a zombie mouse in the hold? Did you plan for it all starting again, just under more controlled circumstances? You never had any intention of destroying all the zombies, did you? The whole farce of making the contagion look like an accident was only to placate me, to keep me docile, because you need me to translate....”

“Well, actually, I’m perfectly capable of devising translation software that can....”

“
You need me to translate to your test subjects
, so you can manipulate them better! That’s the only reason you’ve been bothering with me at all, was so I could be your fucking kapo!”

“This is a dangerous world, Veela, and our power stores will run out. There’s no time to lose in finding a path to immortality.”

Veela grabbed the suit, held it as tightly as she could and dug in her heels. The suit continued to walk as if she weren’t there at all. The soles of her shoes scraped the rock floor. In her visor she saw they were about to meet the zombie. She screamed in rage.

Dak sighed. “I should have rescued someone else,” he said.

“You sure should’ve, you bastard,” she said, and leaped for his exposed face and chest. The sentacles easily fended her off, picking her up and tossing her into the gloom.

***

“V
eela!” shouted the Jaw, who had been bewildered and terrified by the confrontation between her and Dak. In an instant, he figured out exactly how to use the flashlight—he ran it back and forth, scanning the cave, till he found her prone form on the rock floor—then he kept it trained on her as he ran to her side.

Behind him he heard Chert shout in amazement. Once he’d reached Veela and confirmed she was still alive, he turned to see what was going on. Dak was grappling easily with a no-die. Though the thing writhed and hissed, the new body Dak wore held it with no effort, far enough from Dak’s face that the thing could do no harm. That was incredible, but the Jaw turned his attention back to Veela.

She was dazed, but breathing, and stirring. The Jaw lifted her head and rested it upon his knees. “Hush ... hush....” he murmured, stroking her hair, keeping one ear out in case that no-die got loose from Dak.

Veela was struggling to say something. Finally, she managed: “Dak—he feeds the brains of your friends to the no-die ... he feeds it your friends....”

She had to repeat it again before the Jaw understood. Then he looked back, at Dak and the no-die, and Quarry and Gash-Eye bundled on Dak’s back. “Mother!” he roared, and sprang to his feet. “Mother!” he roared again.

***

G
ash-Eye was at the bottom of a shaking dark electric cloud. Though she couldn’t be called happy—her delirium was filled with terrors and sickness—she was nevertheless on some level grateful for being warm and at rest.

From somewhere she heard the Jaw screaming “Mother! Mother!,” and opened her eyes.

She didn’t know where she was. Above her was a white something, a white bundle. Now she remembered having seen Quarry wrapped up in such a bundle, though she didn’t know how Quarry could be floating above her.

Again she heard the Jaw scream. Though she couldn’t know it, the Jaw’s words were directed to his father: “He’s going to give them to the no-die! Quarry and Gash-Eye!”

Quarry.

***

D
ak spent a few moments planning out how he would move things around. Four of his sentacles were focused on keeping the zombie at a safe distance, and four were on the lookout for attacks by the primitives and the linguist. That left only the three already holding her free for picking up the primitive child, lifting her overhead, and feeding her brain to the zombie. He quickly figured out the energy-optimal choreography for those actions.

He scanned through a gamut of readings on the zombie, displayed on his visor. Once he fed the girl’s brain to the zombie, he could expect the cthuloid production to generate a huge spike in the zombie’s strength and energy. But that shouldn’t endanger him; the frame was so incredibly dense and strong that nothing biological could hope to move it, unless it had the body mass of about a dozen elephants—and
nothing
on this world could hope to tear it open. Still, to be safe he increased the power level being diverted to the sentacles holding the zombie.

Less than four feet away the black zombie’s wide eyes stared in his direction, blinded by the floodlights; it gnashed and snapped its jaws at Dak’s face behind the thin visor, instinctively smelling the skull-muffled song of his brain. Dak eyed the creature impassively—the armor frame protected him more than adequately, and the zombie was merely a natural phenomenon. Or an unnatural one, depending on one’s definition.

Using the glance controls, Dak had the sentacles lift the girl and begin unwrapping the thermablanket. She was on top, so for the first experiment he would use her. Besides, Dak thought he might get richer and more productive results with a Cro-Magnon brain, than with a Neanderthal one.

***

G
ash-Eye heard still more screams, and forced herself to wake up. Or to wake up as much as she could, anyway. Suddenly the bundle above her, the one that she thought was Quarry, was rising. Or she thought it was rising; her vision was funny, it was hard to be sure of anything.

She heard that strange woman who had been with her son try to scream and fail; or maybe she did scream something, and Gash-Eye couldn’t understand it.

She felt that the Jaw was somewhere and that he had, somehow, told her that Quarry was going to be fed to one of those things that the strange woman had called no-dies. And there above her the bundle that might be Quarry was being lifted away from her, by something.

Gash-Eye had no strength to move with, but she moved anyway, and quickly. She found herself tied up in some sort of hide, and when she looked down she saw that it was bright white like whatever Quarry was wrapped up in. It was impossible to tear, but Gash-Eye wriggled till she was able to work her arms a bit loose, then thrashed free. It turned out to be one large sheet of skin, or of something.

She threw it off and stood up; she didn’t understand that she was on a raised platform, nor did she quite register just how impossibly regular and flat the floor beneath her was. There was a big hard thing right in front of her, and on the other side of it were the weirdly bright, white light sources she was seeing by. Quarry was being lifted up and over the something in front of her by some sort of creatures: snakes made of some sort of opaque crystal, to judge by the way they glinted in the weird light.

With a roar of rage and effort she snatched the Quarry-bundle from the crystal snakes. She didn’t have the strength to keep hold of the girl and keep her balance; so all she could do was drop the bundle back the way she’d come, with a silent prayer that it would land safely. Once the bundle was gone she saw that on the other side of the thing she was clambering over was an unkillable.

That was the unkillable that was trying to eat Quarry’s brain. There was no time to search for a rock, or any weapon at all. With another roar, she threw herself at the creature.

Echoing through the darkness she heard Chert’s voice, crying, “Gash-Eye!” Though confused, she still knew she had a fever, and that that voice couldn’t be real. Dimly, she thought Chert was an odd choice for the trickster fever spirits to impersonate. But she was too busy to ponder that mystery.

***

D
ak had the terrifying, disorienting impression that things were happening too fast for even the machines to keep up, but of course that was nonsense; he just hadn’t properly foreseen what programming would be necessary. That was almost as upsetting, though.

He hadn’t foreseen any need to put the sentacles transporting the Cro-Magnon girl on high alert, so he’d decided to conserve a bit of energy there, since so much was being diverted to the sentacles binding the zombie, and those guarding against Veela and the two primitive men. The Neanderthal subject had been able to snatch the Cro-Magnon subject away before Dak could even begin to adjust the settings. He would have to extend the sentacles and have them go retrieve the girl, but for the moment he was still stunned by the next development, the Neanderthal subject’s brazen interference with the zombie. For a few seconds he was at a loss as to why the sentacles had let her jump onto the thing, then realized he had set his protective perimeter too close. If the Neanderthal had tried to jump between him and the zombie, the sentacles would have rebuffed her. But hanging off the back of the creature as she was, the sentacles didn’t register her as a threat to him. He hadn’t programmed them to protect the zombie, as well as himself.

His eyes were involuntarily blinking so rapidly that it interfered with the glance controls. He was about to switch over to the manual console on his arm panel, when a wild scream and a flash of motion on his right distracted him. The second after it was over he realized what had happened—the older primitive male had tried to attack him and been swatted away by a sentacle.

Dak was shaking and breathing fast. It disturbed and confused him that he should be so rattled—after all, he knew perfectly well that he was safe here in the armor.

Regardless of his physical security, he was going to have to neutralize these distractions if he wanted to get any work done. He used the manual arm controls to set all the sentacles to the very highest alert. It took him a few tries, because his fingers were inexplicably shaking.

***

G
ash-Eye hung off the back of the unkillable, her left arm around its neck in a chokehold, her right fist clubbing down upon the crown of its head. Holding it by the neck prevented it from being able to reach her with its biting jaws. She knew that if the crystal snakes stopped holding the unkillable in place, it would easily buck her off and eat her brain. Every time her fist came down on its head she could feel its weak skull give a little, but she soon realized she wasn’t going to be able to break the bone with her bare hands. As for the unkillable, it seemed not to notice she was hitting it at all, only to be crazy with hunger for this new food source on its back.

Something flew at them and was knocked away hard by a crystal snake. Gash-Eye wasn’t sure, but she thought the thing had looked like Chert. Impossible. She was still delirious.

Whatever it had been, and whether it had been real at all, it startled Gash-Eye so much that she nearly lost her grip on the unkillable’s neck. She could feel her mind and her body slipping away. If she was going to destroy this thing, she had better do it right now.