The God Eaters

by Jesse Hajicek

  "For now. We'll get unlost later."

  "I'm thirsty."

  Kieran feigned surprise. "Don't shock me like that."

  "And I want a bath."

  "You should stay dirty, actually. Not that you have a choice. It'll keep you from burning. In fact -

  -" Kieran grabbed a handful of mud and smeared it around on the back of Ash's neck. He conducted a thorough inspection of the public parts of Ash, anointing him with gritty slime. Ash squirmed when the process tickled, laughed, enjoying it, until he noticed that Kieran had suddenly gone serious.

  "Something wrong?" Ash ventured.

  Kieran stepped back, dusting his hands. "There. If it gets wiped off, or if you sweat it off, rub more dirt on. Otherwise you'll fry, you're so white."

  "I didn't burn much when we were out in the yard."

  "You're going to be in the sun for the next ten hours. Not the same."

  "Oh. I guess so." That idea took a moment to sink in. "Ten hours?"

  Kieran squinted at the sky. "Well, it's late spring, looks like the sun's been up for an hour or so.

  And we'll have to do it again tomorrow, maybe the next day, depending on where we are. I never saw Churchrock on a map. All I know is we're somewhere northeast of Burn River, maybe closer to Trestre. We're north of the main rail line -- that's what we have to find."

  "Okay. And then where do we go?"

  Kieran took a long breath and blew it out in a sigh. "We don't go anywhere. I go west. You go east. We hop freights in opposite directions."

  Something unpleasant happened in Ash's stomach. He couldn't answer. Couldn't even breathe, for a long moment.

  "Don't look at me like that," Kieran said. "You knew it'd end this way."

  "No. I didn't."

  "What did you think was going to happen? You were going to follow me around forever?"

  "Yes. I guess I did think that."

  "You want to be a killer too? You want to be a real criminal now? Should I teach you how to murder strangers for money?" Kieran sounded terribly tired.

  "Kieran, if -- okay, I hear you, but I can't -- what was that then, last night? You kissed me, we almost --"

  "I thought I was going to die. It doesn't count."

  "It doesn't count." Ash gave a breathless, brittle laugh. He turned away, looking at the cracked dirt in the palms of his hands. "I see."

  After a pause, Kieran said, "Maybe you believe me now."

  Ash didn't have to ask about what. "So it meant nothing to you."

  "Not nothing. It was a comfort. It wasn't a beginning. We don't have time for this."

  Ash surprised them both by rounding on Kieran in a bellowing rage. "Make time! This is important! Explain it to me! Make up your mind! Waking up in your arms made me so -- happy -

  - how can you think I want to go back north? Do you care about me? Because I thought you did!"

  For a long moment Kieran stared, and though he was stone-faced and cold-eyed, Ashleigh thought he might be about to weep. Then his lips thinned and his chin lifted. "Just 'cause you're wet don't mean it's raining." Kieran turned on his heel and strode off across the cracked mud toward the blank horizon, leaving splintered footprints in his wake.

  Ash watched him go, momentarily overwhelmed by an urge to just sit down and let the desert have him. So that's how it's going to be. Wild, melodramatic thoughts coursed through him, the need to beg and plead warring with the resolutions to go far away from Kieran as fast as possible. Underlining all of it was a shame so strong he wished he could murder himself with a shotgun, because thirst and hunger were too gentle a death.

  These blind emotions faded as Kieran grew smaller in the distance. Others welled up gently beneath them: He's got other things on his mind, like surviving, and maybe drug withdrawal. I expected something he doesn't have the strength to do. It was unkind of me. And he was right that there isn't time for this kind of thing; he knows how to find water and I don't.

  Wincing at the soreness in his abused muscles, Ash set off after him at the best pace he could manage.

  --==*==--

  They didn't speak until what was probably something like noon, when Kieran found a puddle shaded under a snarl of broken brush. Even then, he didn't say much.

  "Don't stir up the bottom. I don't want to drink mud."

  "Okay." Ash made a careful scoop of his hands and drank. The water tasted delicious as candy at first, but as his thirst was slaked he noticed a swampy flavor in it. When he was done, he looked into what was left and saw little squirmy motes wriggling in the puddle. "Ew. There are buggy things in this."

  "Won't hurt you." Kieran bent to the little pool and slurped it right down to the mud layer; he must have finished off half a gallon of the filthy stuff. "Wish we had something to carry this in.

  Just going to piss it right out, drinking it all at once like this." He stretched, making his spine crack, then looked around. He pointed out a low violet irregularity between them and the far-distant line of the mountains. "We should make those hills in four or five more hours. Should be more water there."

  "Without bugs in?"

  "Probably not." Kieran started walking again, and that was the last thing he said for almost three days.

  --==*==--

  Time blurred into a nightmare spin of speed, with unkind slow intervals of clarity. Despite his coating of itchy mud, renewed periodically with dust, Ash's skin burned in streaks where his sweat revealed it. His scalp was especially vulnerable; the dirt in his matted hair made it itch furiously, and when he forgot himself and scratched, it hurt like fire. Sometimes he thought he must look like a sick monkey, what with the scratching and wincing and the gingerly way he walked on his flayed, blistered bare feet. All day he sweated and longed for night, and at night he cursed that wish as he shivered, as if night wouldn't have come if he hadn't wanted it.

  When there was shade, they rested for long stretches during the day, which allowed them to use more of the night for walking. Exhaustion always claimed them in the end, though, and they had to find some hollow or corner, chase out the poisonous wildlife, and curl up as small as they could make themselves. They slept wrapped around each other like cats, but there was no affection in it.

  The first time Kieran had embraced him against the night's cold, Ash had allowed himself some hope -- had snuggled close and whispered Kieran's name, begging -- but had been given only silence in return. Kieran was as empty of comfort and caring as the desert sky. He was only trying to keep warm.

  Hunger was a constant sickness. Ash discovered that it didn't confine itself to his gut after a day or so, but spread through his body, so that he could amuse himself by listing all the parts of him that were hungry. His ankles were hungry. The backs of his ears were hungry. Sometimes Kieran killed something, barehanded or with a rock, and they ate raw meat that tasted of salt and metal, which only served to make him queasy for a few hours before the hunger returned. Ash thought snake meat tasted worse than bugs or mice, but it was fun to watch Kieran catch snakes in his hands. Sometimes they ate plants, usually dry chewy ones that did nothing against the hunger at all. Some flooded his throat with bitterness; others were simply something to have in his mouth for a while so it wouldn't be so dry. The best was a sort of cactus leaf that had to be carefully denuded of thorns and then broken open -- the pulp tasted horrible, but it was wet.

  All this time, they didn't speak. There wasn't anything to talk about. There wasn't even anything to think about. The desert was beautiful and boring. Long flat bits of plain, covered with prickly weeds and scrub, divided strips of rocky hills paved with sharp gravel. Ash became certain that Kieran had no idea where they were going, and they'd just keep walking until their feet fell off and they died. Sometimes he looked forward to that, because it would be nice to be done.

  --==*==--

  At first he thought he was hearing the cry of some strange desert animal. It sounded familiar, and a little frightening, and in his half-asleep state he pondered it until it faded in
to the distance.

  Only then did he realize that animal noises didn't fade off like that. He sat up and shook Kieran's shoulder.

  "Hey," he rasped.

  Kieran sat up, squinting. They were hiding from the midday sun under an overhanging bit of stone; while they'd slept, the stone's shadow had shrunk, and sitting up put Kieran's head in the glare. Knuckling dust from his eyes, he gave Ash a questioning look.

  "I heard a train."

  Kieran thought a moment, nodded, and lay back down.

  Frustrated, Ash considered shaking him again, but he doubted it would change anything. Hearing the train's whistle meant the end of the nightmare to Ash, but maybe to Kieran it meant something else. The end of quiet, maybe.

  I'm an empath, shouldn't I be able to tell? But in all this time, he'd sensed nothing from Kieran.

  His Talent was too weak to be any use. For a moment, he was bitterly jealous of Kieran's powerful ability, even if it was only good for killing. To have that kind of strength would make a person different inside, might make a person confident and cold like Kieran was. Might make a person afraid to feel anything, lest he understand what he is. Maybe Ash's weak Talent wasn't to blame. Maybe there was just nothing there to sense.

  Weary with despair, Ash lay down to wait until Kieran was ready to leave.

  --==*==--

  The tracks had a smell. Ash was surprised by that. Growing up in Ladygate, the second largest city in the world, he'd seen thousands of trains and all their steely habitat, and never noticed the particular reek of tar and metal that rails had. He smelled it before he saw them. Now he copied Kieran, kneeling to put a hand on one rail's polished surface. It was hot; he snatched his fingers away. Kieran held the pose a moment longer. Then, with no word or look to explain himself, he turned and walked off down the embankment, toward the distant cut the train would eventually come from to take him away.

  Exasperated, Ash began to trot after, until he saw what Kieran was doing -- gathering up fallen chunks of coal and pitching them idly into the undergrowth. He wasn't going anywhere, just waiting. Ash sat down where he was. He heaved an enormous sigh, the kind that ought to produce a feeling of relaxation. It only served to make him more tense. This was it, this was where he let Kieran Trevarde remove himself the way he'd come in. On a train. The irony of that kind of closure wasn't quite enough to make him smile. Not even a bitter smile. A grayish grasshopper landed on his knee, big enough that he felt the weight through his prison pants, but he was too tired to flinch. Dozens of the creatures fled before Kieran's footsteps, red underwings flashing. The whirring of their panic told him where Kieran was. He didn't have to look. Didn't want to. But he did anyway.

  Weary as they both were, dizzy with starvation, Kieran still projected a large predator's grace.

  Nothing feline, he was too angular for that, but some kind of canine, something that was to a coyote what a tiger was to an alley cat. He had that loping stride, that swing-limbed inevitability.

  Some kind of skinny, hot-climate dire wolf. Ash shook his head at his thoughts. They were silly, not poetic -- what Kieran most resembled was himself, an overgrown child who had never once been safe. No wonder he wanted to part ways. Ash was just a liability to him. How could he protect someone when he couldn't quite protect himself?

  "Damn it," Ash muttered. That wasn't strong enough. "Shit. Fuck." He snorted. He'd never been much good at cursing. "Gwnorregh!"

  Kieran's laugh sounded loud over the hissing of his feet in the weeds. "What did you call me?"

  "Nothing."

  "No, seriously." He began wandering back, still flinging coal chunks across the tracks.

  Scowling, Ash repeated the curse. "I don't know what it means, so don't ask. I just know my aunt says it when she hits her thumb with the hammer. And I thought you weren't speaking to me."

  "News to me. I was thinking."

  "For three days?"

  Kieran looked surprised, as if everyone could keep their mouths shut for seventy-odd hours at a time. "What was that word again? Canorra?"

  "Close enough."

  "Yelorrean?"

  "Yes."

  "Know any other good swear words?"

  "Yes."

  He thumped down next to Ash and threw the last black rock of his handful. "Well?"

  "Why should I bother teaching you? You're leaving me any minute."

  "Leaving you." Kieran raised an eyebrow. "Okay, think of it like that if you want."

  Ash felt his face burning, his eyes stinging; he knew his face was red, and childish tears starting to run; he was too exhausted to care. "You know what? You want to know something?" He didn't wait for Kieran's indifferent shrug. "Not everyone is you, all right? Not everyone is numb and powerful and big and scary and hollow. And you can go around knocking people over all your life, and then you'll get old and sick and you'll know exactly why you're dying alone, because you're the kind of cold bastard who sees those things. And maybe you'll think of me and you'll wonder what my life was like. And you know what? I can tell you right now. For your future self. You tell yourself this: Ash Trine's life was good, it had colors in it and people smiled and there were dogs and flowers. And then you remember to tell yourself you could've been in it but you were too much of a stiffnecked paranoid prick to try."

  Kieran was unimpressed. "Been saving that up, huh? You're such a kid. But I do love to hear you talk."

  Ash put his hands over his face and gave up to crying. His heart was breaking; he understood that phrase now, because he felt the crack run through, ripping him apart.

  "Oh for -- stop it, you baby!" Fingers closed on his wrists, jerked his hands down. Kieran was scowling at him, but beneath that there was...

  Gasping, Ash reeled under a rush of understanding. "My god."

  "What?"

  "You -- you unbelievable asshole."

  "What, already?"

  "Half this pain is yours! You're all ripped up inside, you want me to come with you, you want it so bad -- god damn it, Kieran!"

  "I want you to go home." Kieran's voice was flat and tight.

  "My empathy's back. It's been back all this time. I thought it wasn't working, because all the feelings felt like mine, but that was only because yours are the same. You don't want to leave me behind."

  "Bullshit."

  "No, I know now because, because just now I was so hot and salty inside that finally it was different from you and there you were, right in front of me."

  Kieran made a dismissive noise. "Think whatever you want, it doesn't --"

  "But it hurts you so much, and all you have to do to make it stop is admit it! God, it makes me so mad! Do you like festering away like that?"

  As an answer, Kieran went to touch the rails again. His voice was dry and hard when he said,

  "Here we go. Should be the 4:20 out of Salt Rock, so I'll be going first."

  Ash scrambled to his feet. "You're such an idiot!"

  "I could kill you right there, boy, and you are baiting me. Who's stupid here?"

  "And don't call me boy! You're no older than I am!"

  "Nineteen." Kieran looked bitterly amused.

  "One year."

  "Decades." The Iavaian threw his head up like a horse scenting the wind. "If you're done having histrionics, you better listen up unless you wanna walk home. You let the engine get past, don't let 'em see you. Then you get up a good run. Pick a car where the door's all the way open or it'll slide and knock you on your ass. Grab the side and swing in. You watch how I do it. Your train oughta be 'long in a couple hours."

  Now that his Talent had returned, Ash understood that tone as he never had in Churchrock.

  When Kieran's drawl thickened like that, it was time to shut up, or someone was going to taste blood. The unfairness of it made him sick to his stomach. "I hate you," he said tightly.

  "Good. Makes it easier for you. Now get back under that brush 'fore someone sees you." Kieran took another look up and down the track, then backed beneath a twisted
miniature tree that was as hard and thorny as he was. A distant engine noise began to make itself heard over the other sounds.

  Ash obeyed, shaking, still crying. How could someone be so stupid, so blindly wrong, so --scared, so lonely, so certain that anything bright dangled before him was bait for a rust-toothed trap -- and he's just as hungry and exhausted as I am, and look how that's making me act. He took a shuddering breath. "Kieran, I'm sorry."