The Unkillables (8 page)

“And sealed inside the nut, he can only see straight ahead, through the side that the tiny holes are on,” said the Jaw, frowning in confusion. “What if something approaches from the side with no holes?”

It took Veela some time to understand what they were saying, and when she did she laughed and assured them that, no, they would be safe enough with only the man in the nut watching. Annoyed by her foolishness, Chert and the Jaw agreed that the Jaw would take the first watch, and Chert the second. Chert grimly told himself that if this Veela thought they weren’t going to wake her up for the third watch, she had a surprise in store. He decided he would surreptitiously stay awake himself, during her turn. If he saw her nod off, then he would know she was worse than useless, and he would kill her.

Despite all the uncertainties the day had left him with, Chert fell asleep soon after lying down. He’d hoped for dreamlessness, but at least there were no visions terrible enough to wake him. He woke easily when the Jaw shook him to take his turn. Out of the corner of his eye he watched his son lie down and almost immediately fall asleep. Chert had not always paid much attention to the Jaw. For his first three years the child had been mostly in the company of Gash-Eye, in whom Chert had had no interest once he’d finished the honor of ceremonially cutting her face and fathering the boy upon her. And later, as the boy had grown, even if he had not been a half-breed, it would not have been Chert’s way to wish the child to fawn at his heels, and far less to fawn at his. But over the winters, Chert had developed an unorthodox interest in his son. He knew the boy hated him sometimes. But he didn’t always hate him, because he appreciated how Chert included him in the band, instead of leaving him to be the mere slave he’d been destined to be. Now that they’d been thrown together this way, Chert was surprised to find there was something pleasant about the easy familiarity that was developing between them. Even considering the circumstances.

Chert looked into the dark forest and listened. He was willing to admit that he wished they’d had Gash-Eye with them now, with her freakish Big-Brow eyesight. Also, it would have been good for the Jaw. It was natural that he should miss her. The Jaws were always left alone with their Gash-Eye mothers more than the People’s children were with theirs; fostering a closer, more loving bond between mother and child made the Jaw a more effective hostage.

The nut screamed—it wailed like a spirit being murdered. Chert jumped so high he nearly fell over, then stared at the thing in shock. Surely the little man who lived inside it must have been killed by the noise.

The Jaw was on his feet, staring wild-eyed. Veela leaped up and grabbed the nut; it stopped screaming with an abruptness even more shocking than the noise had been. She said something to Chert in her own language and then, seeing his incomprehension, remembered herself and said, “No-die, you see?”

Mouth gaping stupidly, Chert shook his head.

Now the little man in the nut was talking to Veela, sounding unfazed. Veela spoke to him in their language. Chert and the Jaw stood and stared at them during their exchange. Veela was upset about something—as she and the little man talked, she got angrier and angrier, while Chert and the Jaw could tell from the little man’s calm tone that he retained the upper hand.

At last she flung down the nut, and picked up the Jaw’s spear. Chert snatched it away from her. She said, “Must fight. Come, no-die comes.”

“Then use your strong tight fire, damn you.”

“Tired, the fire is,” she said bitterly, and glared down at the nut.

“Well, I’m tired too. Too tired to fight a band of things that don’t die. Now just tell me where the no-dies are so the Jaw and I can slip past them....”

He trailed off, because he could see by the approaching green glow where the undead were.

One of them, at least. He hoped that was all there was. It was still too distant to make out clearly through the trees.

“Green is,” said Veela. “Means eated. Means strong.”

“Then get your damn strong tight fire.”

“No can. But together. Together, fight. Together, survive.”

The thing came closer. Chert realized it was not a reanimated person, but a deer. It stumbled through the trees clumsily, but it definitely knew they were there and was closing in. If it had been an undead in a human body Chert would have tried to persuade the Jaw to run away, but he figured a deer, even an undead one, would be able to catch up with them.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the Jaw had his spear ready, looking grim and prepared. “The woman says we have to destroy the head,” Chert reminded him. “So that’s what we’ll do and we’ll hope she’s right.”
And then we’ll leave her behind and go our own way, if this is all the help she is,
he silently added. The Jaw nodded at him, then turned his eyes back to the glowing green deer.

The dead animal made more noise thrashing through the underbrush than it ever had done in life. Once there were not too many trees blocking the way between it and them, Chert saw his son’s spear go flying past his shoulder and into the thing’s neck.

The spear didn’t stop the thing. But it gave it pause. The deer reared back and made an unearthly noise, a kind of wrathful bleat. There was a whistle inside the sound, as the air expelled by the deer was partially blocked by the spear handle lodged in its throat.

The deer began advancing again right away, its head cocked at a funny angle because of the spear. Again it bleated, with that eerie whistle.

The Jaw sprang past Chert, at the deer. The deer snapped at him but missed. The Jaw grabbed the spear and tried to use it as a handle to swing the animal’s head around and smash it into a tree. But the deer reared up on its hind legs and swung itself back and forth, throwing the Jaw and sending him flying head-first into a tree, instead. For the second time that day, the youth was knocked out.

Chert darted forward and slipped his own spear between the thing’s ribs. When it tried to come down onto its front feet again, the spear held him propped up for a few moments. The thing waved its feet and screamed in rage at being immobilized. As Chert retreated from it, he took a quick swipe with his axe at the sinews of its left hip.

Chert knew his spear wasn’t going to stand up to the weight of that thrashing animal, so as soon as he saw he’d succeeded in delaying it he rushed for the Jaw. Sure enough, as he was hefting his son onto his sore shoulders for the second time since morning, the spear snapped and the animal came crashing down. He was no longer naïve enough to hope that damage to the undead’s organs would have any effect, but as he glanced back it looked to him like he’d managed to do some damage to the hip.

“Chert!” screamed Veela. “Chert!”

Without looking at her he tore off through the night with his son on his back. He was leaving their weapons behind; as far as he was concerned, that meant they were providing the woman with more help than they owed or she deserved. He hoped whatever other undead creatures might be out tonight would also have a helpful green glow, so he could avoid them. As for Veela, he thought he’d taken the measure of her unimaginably pathetic tracking abilities. It was safe to say she’d never find them again, unless that little man had some magic that could help her.

Behind him he heard the woman screaming something unintelligible. He ignored her—he had enough to worry about, hauling the Jaw’s weight through the forest in the dark, and had no idea Veela was trying to warn him they wouldn’t be able to get far.

V
eela spent a couple minutes trying to smash the deer’s skull with a rock. Because the animal had no arms and hands to grip her with, she was able to hang on desperately to its neck as it tried to twist its head around and snap at her with its small mouth.

“Dak!” she kept saying. It was hard to keep from screaming, but she knew the communicator would be able to pick up her voice even if she whispered, and she was afraid being loud would attract more zombies. Not that there was much point in keeping her voice down, what with all the thrashing she and the deer were doing, as she kept trying to bash it. “Dak, you have to shoot this fucking thing!”

“We have to conserve our energy,” he replied blithely from the communicator. “It isn’t like there are any power stations where we can refuel.”

Veela jerked her head back an instant before the glowing deer could bite her in the face. “But this thing is going to kill me!”

“Don’t worry, I’m monitoring your progress; you’re doing better than you think you are. If things get too hairy, I’ll step in. But we are going to eventually have to live in this world without the technological advantages we’re accustomed to.”

That was true. And while it didn’t feel to Veela like she was doing very well against the zombie deer, she supposed she was too close to the situation to be an objective judge. For a while she continued to keep her arm locked around the deer’s neck and bang it ineffectually in the head with her rock. This zombie’s motor skills had been particularly impaired during its transformation; still, it would have bucked her off easily, if not for the damage Chert had done to its hip. She was getting exhausted, and knew that her arms would soon slip loose from the deer; at which point, either the deer would manage to inflict only a superficial bite and she’d turn into a zombie herself, or else the deer would eat her brain.
“Dak!”
she wailed, in despair.

“Oh, all right,” he snapped. “Stand back.”

“I’m scared to let go.”

“Veela, which is it? Do you want me to shoot it, or do you want to kill it yourself? Right now you’re too close to the head for me to safely hit it.”

“Okay. On three.” Veela counted to three, then hesitated, unable to make herself let go. Then she was scared that Dak was about to shoot anyway and would hit her with the laser. With a whimper she let go and was flung back into the trees.

The impact knocked the air out of her. She should have planned her retreat better, she realized. The zombie deer turned its head to her and bleated in rage.

Just when Veela was wondering if Dak had experienced some kind of instrument failure, the pale green light emanating from the deer was superseded by the blinding red bolt sizzling down from the sky. With the spots popping in front of her eyes it was hard for Veela to be sure, but the laser seemed to have passed through the deer’s right hip, slowing it down by inflicting more joint damage, but coming nowhere near the brain. The deer’s back right leg collapsed, but with its two front legs it pulled itself her way, blank eyes fixed upon her face. Veela was frozen. Had the son of a bitch decided two laser blasts would be too great a drain on their dwindling energy supplies? The deer kept coming. She couldn’t look away from it. That was her death, that glowing green deer.

There was another blinding red blast. Only now did she find herself able to scamper a few feet away. As her eyesight returned she stared at the gently writhing corpse, unable to yet make out its form in detail because of the laser’s after-image but still seeing that green glow. But it was no longer an approaching glow, and after a few seconds she realized it was fading.

She became aware that Dak was hailing her. “Veela? Veela? Are you all right? I know you’re all right, I can see you on the sensors. Answer me.”

Veela shook herself. Her vision had recovered enough that she could see a smoky charred ruin where the deer’s head had been. Its body stirred only lightly. She tried to get to her feet, but was too shaky and exhausted, so she crawled to the communicator. “Thanks a lot,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” said Dak, then, surprised, said, “Wait, was that sarcasm? I just saved your life!”

“You waited long enough.”

“I explained to you why.”

“Yeah, well.” Veela took the communicator and leaned against a tree. She looked out into the darkness of this world that was so beautiful, and yet entirely barren of all the things she had once used in her day-to-day life—and was infected, now, with the pestilence that had destroyed her own world. Or helped to destroy it—she and Dak had certainly done their part. She nearly gave in to the desire to weepingly give up. But she reminded herself that they had about forty-five thousand years in which to avert the very final catastrophe, as long as they could kill these fucking zombies first. Holding the communicator in her palm more as a reminder of home than as a practical tool, she nevertheless used it to say to Dak, “I’m going to go back to sleep now. Please keep watch.”

“Of course I will,” he said, then added, “I’ll have the computer do it, that is.”

It was useless, trying to sleep in this forest. It was filled with living things, and every time one of them made any sound her eyes snapped open. She hoped Dak was keeping an eye out for, say, regular bears, as well as the zombie variety. Even the breezes made her anxious. Never, in her life before, had she tried to sleep in an environment that was not artificially regulated. Strictly speaking, she’d never even been in such an environment; there had always been weather satellites, perimeter barriers, landscape design, and so on, even when she had gone outside beyond the sight of any building, which had been rare. Somehow, she’d been able to sleep when those two guys had been with her, especially the young one, whose name seemed to be “Jaw” (the older one’s name seemed to be a subcategory of rock—Veela had a feeling these people would have about a billion more ways to describe varieties of rock than anyone in her century). Maybe she wouldn’t have been able to sleep around just the older guy—but, foolish though it might be, for some reason she trusted the younger one.

When the world began to be illuminated by the tree-hidden dawn, she sat up. As soon as Dak saw her movement through the sensor attached to the communicator, he scolded her: “Did you sleep at all? I need you to be alert.”

“It’s hard to sleep down here. Anyway, it sounds like
you’re
still awake.”

“Yes, but I had the ship put me into a deep REM for four hours, so I’m relatively well-rested.” Veela silently observed that it must be nice, staying with the ship. “Well, since you’re up, let’s get started.”