The Unkillables

by Boyett, J.

  No, she wouldn’t be fooled by the fact that the bodies of the people below were shaped like hers. The only blood-tie she had left was her son, and she couldn’t depend on Chert to defend him. No matter how well Chert might sometimes treat the Jaw, it was only sometimes, and the truth was that Chert was her enemy, and that the Jaw was not of the People. The People would kill him if she rebelled. So Gash-Eye would obediently lead Spear and the others to the band of Big-Brows. Once the killing started, she could close her strong eyes.

  In the shadows among the trees she saw a shape moving. That was a person, she could tell.

  She was about to signal to Spear, when the person stepped out from between the trees into a patch of moonlight.

  Gash-Eye gasped. Even at this distance she could make out the features of his face. Spear looked at her sharply, then faced forward again. The figure ahead was lit so brightly in the moonshine, soon even Spear would see him.

  Not since she was a child had Gash-Eye seen another of her own kind, alive. She hadn’t realized how strongly she would be affected by the sight of one’s pale face. Meanwhile, the Big-Brow hadn’t noticed her and the others yet.

  She tried to twist around and look over her shoulder, to assure herself that the Jaw was safe with Chert; but the man holding her noose jerked on it and growled close to her ear, much too soft for the still-distant Big-Brows to hear. Spear heard, though, and turned to glare at her in alarm, wondering what she was up to.

  Gash-Eye knew from that glare that Spear was on the verge of silencing her forever—after all, there was bound to be a replacement for her in the band below—so she grabbed her chance before it was gone. “Run!” she screamed, not in the People’s language that she’d spoken for sixteen years, but in her native tongue. Even as she cried out she wondered what madness had possessed her.

  The hunter behind her yanked her noose and cut off her breath. But, although Gash-Eye had been so cowed over the years that her captors and even she had forgotten how strong she was, now desperation spurred her on, and she smacked the hunter in the temple, sending him stunned to the ground.

  Spear gave away his position to the Big-Brows by turning on her with a cry of rage. Maybe she could have swatted him aside just as she’d done the man behind her, but she knew that if she struck Spear he would stop at nothing to kill the Jaw, not to mention her. She danced out of the way of his spear thrust and ran back uphill, shouting another warning as she went.

  She was tackled by someone. With relief, she realized it was Stick and Antler, instead of Chert. Perhaps that was because Chert was busy jabbing his spearhead through the Jaw’s throat; but Gash-Eye felt certain that his absence meant Chert was ushering the boy back uphill, keeping him away from Spear until tempers calmed.

  Spear caught up an instant after Antler and Stick brought her down. While they held her, he kicked her furiously in the face and chest.

  They were too busy beating her to pursue the Big-Brows, and Gash-Eye imagined they were hurriedly disappearing from the patch of forest below. She nearly grinned—but since her lips were the only things defending her teeth from Spear’s rampage, she kept them sealed.

  Two

  Gash-Eye knelt in the middle of the circle, head bowed. She was naked—they had stripped off the skins she wore. Dawn had broken just as Spear was beating her, and the ensuing commotion had given day time enough to arrive. Three boys stood poised to beat her head with long sticks if she raised it, but by rolling her eyes all the way to the side, she was able to see the last blue sky of her life.

  That was all right, that it would be her last. Her gamble had worked. They weren’t going to kill the Jaw.

  Not that Spear had given up trying. “It’s the custom!” he was shouting again. “It’s what the Jaw is for!”

  “The reason we hold the Jaw under threat is to control Gash-Eye.” Chert didn’t deign to look directly at Spear, but addressed the circle at large. “It’s too late to control Gash-Eye, she’s already betrayed us. We’re going to kill her for it. There’s no point in killing the Jaw, too.”

  “The point is to punish her,” said Spear.

  “Punish her by killing her,” said Chert. “The Jaw is a good hunter. Better than many. It makes no sense to kill him on your whim, Spear.”

  “I am not the one acting on a whim. We’ve always known that the custom is to kill the Jaw if the Gash-Eye rebels. That’s why he’s called the Jaw—because he’s the way we can hold Gash-Eye. Don’t worry, now that we know you can’t face the necessity, we won’t let you father the next Jaw....”

  “I can face as much as you can and more,” said Chert, and stepped close to him, looking into his eyes. Spear didn’t step back. “I say he lives. My blood’s in him. I know what I agreed to when I fathered him, but now that he’s here I’ve changed my mind. Do what you want with the Big-Brow mother, I don’t give a damn about her. As for the Jaw, if you can manage some way to kill the Big-Brow blood in him while leaving mine be, then go ahead. But if you harm the part of him that is mine, then I’ll kill you. It is Chert who says so, Spear.”

  Spear’s face had gone dark with fury. “Consult the People!” he sputtered. “See what the other hunters say, you see if they don’t agree that I’m right!”

  “I don’t care what the rest say.” Chert turned his calm and defiant face to the onlookers. “What I say to Spear, I say to all. I have brought much meat to the People, and my word has strength.”

  The gathered People looked on, in disquiet. There were a lot of them, more than sixty individuals (not that anyone had ever counted)—so far as anyone knew, it was the biggest band of humans that had ever existed.

  Spear and Chert stood together, looking out at the group. Chert stood half a head taller than him and was broader. His head was like a big rounded block. Spear’s face was shaped like a triangle, the point of his chin and the long thin shaft of his body making his name a fitting one. When Spear had only just begun to grow hair on his face, he had challenged his father, and demanded he yield his place in the front ranks of the fire. That was a traditional right of the People, albeit a rarely-exercised one. The father could either yield, or refuse and fight a duel. Spear’s father had chosen the duel, and the next day had been food for birds.

  More than anyone else, Spear hated the unnatural interest Chert sometimes took in the Jaw, as if he were grooming him for manhood. Usually when young hunters were groomed it was so they could one day take their fathers’ places by the fire. But the Jaw would not be able to do that the peaceful way, when Chert died, because he was not of the People, he was the Jaw. And even less conceivable was the idea of him challenging his father for the place, the way Spear had done—no Jaw would be granted that privilege due only to humans, and if the Jaw ever killed his father it would be considered plain murder. Whenever Chert did include his son in the group, even when the People went along more or less uncomplainingly, there was always a whiff of mockery to their cooperation. It was akin to the amusement far-future humans would feel at seeing chimps dressed in human clothes, except that the People honored animals and would never treat one with the same disdain they did the Jaw.

  Stick raised his hands. “Peace, peace,” he called. “Spear is right when he says that custom demands we kill the Jaw. But Chert is right when he says the Jaw has proved a mighty hunter. He is not an ordinary Jaw—perhaps because of his father’s blood, perhaps because of his father’s favor. So Stick says, let there be peace. Stick’s advice is, let the Jaw live, if only in thanks for the meat Chert has brought us. Let the Jaw live among us as before, except for the days of rites and sacrifices, when he must keep apart as always. Meanwhile we will kill Gash-Eye. And when we find the next Gash-Eye, I say let Spear have the honor of fathering the Jaw upon her, and let us return to the old ways with that.”

  The tone of the murmuring that rustled through the onlookers was uncertain, but basically approving. Gash-Eye closed her eyes, at peace. They were going to kill her, send her into the darkness. Her passage there mig
ht be unpleasant, but all she need do was have patience.

  Even Spear was almost ready to relinquish his hope of killing the Jaw. He said, “All right—but only on the condition that I be the one to take out her eyes and kill her in the forest.” Traditionally, the man who’d fathered the Jaw was also the one who killed the Gash-Eye, if and when the time came.

  But Chert gave no sign of resenting this impingement on his privileges. Looking at Spear with eyes half-lidded in contempt, he said, “As you wish.”

  So it was done. Now that Spear was mollified, no one else was likely to fight to have the Jaw killed. With her son’s life secured, Gash-Eye had room to feel the first sharp needles of fear at what Spear had in store for her.

  But all was not over yet. Her eyes still closed, she heard a voice say, “Don’t touch her.” Then she recognized the voice as the Jaw’s. She opened her eyes.

  Spear was jabbing his finger at the Jaw. “You be quiet!” he said. “You’re lucky enough to be living through this. Don’t press that luck!”

  “That’s right, boy,” said Chert, turning toward his son, body tense.

  Gash-Eye tried to catch his gaze, to appeal to him to stop, but he was glaring down at his clenched fists. “I won’t let my mother buy my life with her own,” he growled. He was in the grip of another of his strange ideas that no one else would understand. The Jaw sometimes had a dreamy air about him, that would have alienated the People even if he hadn’t been a half-breed—or maybe it was because of his alienation from them that he would retreat into uselessly tracking the trails of his own mind. To look at his absent eyes sometimes, one would think he was looking into the hidden places, the way his Big-Brow mother could—as if there were another, mysterious world beyond this, that interested him more than this one—it was the kind of faraway gaze that offended those who were perfectly happy to live in the world around them.

  “And what will you do about it?!” demanded Spear. “Stop us from killing her?! Stop us all?!”

  “I cannot stop you all, though I could stop just you, Spear. I cannot stop you from killing her, that is. But I can stop you from buying my life with hers. If you tear out her eyes, if you kill her in the traditional way, or in any way, then I’ll kill myself, Chert.”

  “Kill yourself!” said Chert.

  “And I’ll try to take Spear down to darkness with me.”

  “It is his big heavy brow that drags him down to the darkness under the earth!” jeered Spear.

  Chert stepped forward and gripped the Jaw by his upper arm. The Jaw tried to shake him off, but Chert was strong. “Shut up with that nonsense,” he growled. “Kill yourself? You think I’ll let you do such a thing?”

  “I’ll find a way, sooner or later, no matter how you try to stop me.”

  “Obey your father, half-breed,” snarled Spear. “Only a human such as I has the right to defy his father. Not a creature such as you.” Then he shrugged, and, turning to the rest of the People, cried, “Let the half-breed do as he likes. Or let Chert dissuade him, if he can. But we’ve already decided what’s to be done with Gash-Eye. Nothing changes that.”

  “Listen to him, my son!” Gash-Eye thought she caught the Jaw flinching with embarrassment at her mangled pronunciation of the People’s tongue, exaggerated in this moment of her distress; then lightning burst in her eyes as the back of Spear’s hand walloped her across the face.

  “Quiet, animal!” he shouted. “We can settle this without you!”

  The Jaw took a step forward, but Chert’s hand on his arm yanked him back. The frame he’d inherited from his mother would have made him the match of most of the People, but maybe not Chert. His father glared at him; then turned to Spear and stepped forward himself. “No one touches the Big-Brow, then.”

  A scandalized, resentful murmur rippled through the crowd. “Are you insane?” said Spear. “Gash-Eye betrayed us. She warned the prey! She lost us the magic glowing ball! Her betrayal might have gotten any of us killed! Yet now you want her and the Jaw to both go unpunished?”

  “The Big-Brows might have gotten the better of you, Spear, that’s true. But we other hunters had nothing to fear.”

  All could see how Spear had trouble swallowing that jibe, and the bile it called up.

  “Why are we talking about it? We kill her, surely!” That was Maple, who’d edged halfway between the ranks of the women and the men. Ever since she’d begun to leave childhood behind, it had excited Maple to persuade the handsome young hunters to beat Gash-Eye.

  “I don’t see why,” said Hoof, who had always disdained to indulge Maple’s brutal whims. “Gash-Eye has led us to much game and the Jaw has brought us much meat. I will not dispute that her treachery deserves a beating, and perhaps even a marking or the loss of a toe or a finger. But death? Any of us would have done the same in her place.”

  “Quiet, Hoof!” said Spear.

  “Yes,” agreed Stick. “May your tongue be hereafter warded, Hoof, from speaking such evil as to say that one of the People might ever be in the place of a Gash-Eye or a Jaw.”

  Stick continued: “Chert. None of us would disrespect you. No man would impede you from walking where you will. But in this Spear is right. The People must send Gash-Eye back to the darkness. Your son speaks hotly, he will not follow through.”

  Chert looked at the Jaw and gauged the resolve in his face, then turned back to Stick. “No.”

  “Gash-Eye tried to lead us into the darkness. Now the dark spirits below are alerted. They await the food they were promised. We must send them Gash-Eye in our stead, else they will rise up and claim us.”

  “No. Find something else to send them.”

  “To hell with this,” said Spear, and grabbed an axe from one of the nearby men. He raised it overhead, but before he could split Gash-Eye’s skull Chert was beside him, arresting Spear’s arm in his tight grip.

  “I said no,” repeated Chert, grim but still calm.

  “There’s a way things are done, damn you!”

  For a reply, Chert tossed the man to the ground with one hand. Spear glared up at him, half-mad, baring his teeth, the axe still in his hand. The crowd tensed. Something bad was about to happen. The young men eyed each other, trying to see who would help Chert, who Spear, and how close the contest would be.

  The band was minutes away from destroying itself, perhaps. The terror of that knowledge must have been what distracted them for so long from the invaders, till one of the small children cried, “Look!,” pointing down the hill.

  They looked. Instantly the quarrel between Chert and Spear was all but forgotten, even by Chert and Spear themselves. “Big-Brows!” someone said; but he said it with a rising, uncertain intonation.

  Shuffling up the slope were two Big-Brows. But they were like no Big-Brows anyone had ever seen. Their skins were pitch-black, not like the healthy brown of the People’s or the ruddy pink of most Big-Brows’, and they gleamed with a strange oiliness. Their gait was halting and stilted. Their eyes were distant and red, feverish-looking; they seemed oblivious to the fact that they were wandering into a hostile camp in which they’d be badly outnumbered.

  “They’re sick,” said Stick, sounding worried.

  Some of the younger hunters edged out to meet the Big-Brows, uneasy but wanting to prove their mettle.

  “Don’t get near them, they’re sick,” Stick said.

  The strange Big-Brows had nearly reached the People. One of the young men took another step toward them. Brandishing his spear, he said, “Have you come for death, weak giants?”

  As if in reply the nearest Big-Brow grabbed the youth’s spear and yanked it toward himself. The youth didn’t think fast enough to let go of his weapon, and he tumbled toward the Big-Brow—moving fast all of a sudden, the Big-Brow grabbed him by the neck and pulled the youth’s head to his slick drooling mouth and bit it. He seemed to bite impossibly hard; Gash-Eye was sure she’d heard the boy’s skull crack.

  Before any of the People could even start screaming, the other Bi
g-Brow grabbed another youth, Pebble, by the arm. The panicking boy tried to jerk free, but shrieked as the Big-Brow clamped his jaws on his arm first.

  Now there were screams. Hunters threw their spears into the Big-Brows. Many spears hit their targets, but then merely remained stuck in the invaders’ bodies. Neither Big-Brow seemed troubled by them.

  The first youth still dangled from the Big-Brow’s mouth, neck clearly broken. Bits of skull broke loose and snapped up around the Big-Brow’s lips as his teeth sank deeper and deeper into the youth’s brain. The Big-Brow shook the lifeless body in his jaws.

  Pebble’s arm remained trapped in the invader’s mouth. It didn’t seem like his wounds should be mortal, not yet. But he had gone into a wild seizure, foaming at the mouth, and if one looked closely one could see veins of black crawling up the skin of his arm, originating at the bite.

  All this happened in only a moment, the time it took Chert to race forward and try to rescue Pebble. First Chert struck the Big-Brow in the temple. But the Big-Brow didn’t seem to notice, though the blow should have been enough to kill him; something about the oily squishiness of the Big-Brow’s flesh made Chert feel, not exactly scared, but queasy. There was a spongy give to the Big-Brow’s skull, as if it wasn’t made of bone. Instead of directly attacking the Big-Brow again, Chert grabbed the youth around the ribs and tried to yank him from his tormentor’s grip.

  Chert was shocked when the now-blackened arm popped off easily, and he and the boy went sailing backwards, Chert landing hard on his back and then the boy landing on top of him, knocking the air out of his lungs. Chert forced himself to recover because the Big-Brow had let the mangled ruined arm drop from his maw and was coming for Chert again, his jaws nearly snapping on the hunter’s face before Chert could roll out of reach and spring to his feet. The Big-Brow sprinted after him, head jutting forward, jaws snapping spasmodically. Only a spear hurled right through his neck toppled the Big-Brow before he could catch his prey.