The Unkillables

by Boyett, J.

  “Big-Brow!” shrieked Spear. Terrible echoes bounced and rebounded through the cave. “You bitch! I’ll eat you and that little girl both!”

  “Stop it, Spear!” scolded Stick. “Leave them! If they want to skulk in the dark, let them! If Gash-Eye comes back, we’ll kill her for having warned her fellow Big-Brows. But everyone knows Quarry’s right, there’s no way Gash-Eye is behind the unkillables, and merely warning off that band of Big-Brows is not cause enough to risk our lives hunting her. As for Quarry, I say she shall not be hurt.”

  Stick’s admonition wasn’t enough to quiet Spear all at once. “I’ll kill her!” he raged. “I’ll cut open her belly and suck out her guts! You hear me, Gash-Eye? Come out and face me, you freak!”

  Suddenly Gash-Eye became aware of something moving in the darkness. It was between her and Spear—she had dashed past it. She stared at the shape, squinting, until she was sure. Perhaps her rush past had awakened it. The People would not be able to see it.

  That is, the People would not be able to see it, yet. It was shuffling their way, and would be upon them soon.

  “I hear you, Spear,” she said. Her loud words reverberated through the cavern so that it was impossible to pinpoint where she was, though she could make out Spear cocking his head and trying to do just that. “Would you like to kill me before or after I tell you about the unkillable that I see in here with us?”

  No one spoke.

  “It’s headed your way,” she added.

  Still, no one answered. In the stillness all could now hear the scraping of its soles against the rock floor.

  Though it took her a moment to be certain, Gash-Eye saw that now, in fact, it was turning back down toward her and Quarry.

  Spear answered: “You’re lying, Big-Brow. You’re trying to frighten us.”

  “If that’s true you have nothing to fear, and can come after me with no worries that you’ll bump into something else.”

  Spear didn’t move. From the People came keening and sobbing, and hushed warding chants. The unkillable turned again, and shuffled once more toward them.

  “You led us here on purpose!” cried Spear.

  “Stop being a fool, Spear!” said Stick. “Gash-Eye. We know you’re not in league with these things. That’s just Spear’s prattle. Tell us where it is, that we may defend ourselves.” There was bustling commotion. To the others, Stick said, “Where will you go, outside?! There are still a dozen of those things out there!” Again to Gash-Eye, Stick said, “Tell us where it is, Gash-Eye. Be our eyes. Fulfill your purpose, and all will be forgotten regarding your warning to your fellow Big-Brows, last night.”

  While Stick had been speaking, Gash-Eye had taken her hand from Quarry’s mouth and, too quiet for anyone else to hear, whispered, “Stay here. Stay silent. You will not be able to see me, but I will be able to see you, and I will return to fetch you. But you must be silent.”

  Now, as Stick waited for her reply, as they all listened to the bare black feet scattering pebbles, Gash-Eye took a few careful steps, leaning over to pick up two stones about the size of skulls. She gripped them tightly in her palms and crept forward. Even for her the thing was hard to see—she could see it only as a blotch of darker shadow. It was moving so slowly. Gash-Eye wondered if that was because it was weak with hunger. If so, she wondered if it would speed up once it had food at hand.

  The panicked refugees toward the front of the cave were getting noisier and noisier. It had not occurred to them that their commotion might be attracting the unkillable, not even to Stick, who shouted, “Gash-Eye, don’t let that thing drive us back outside to its fellows! Tell us where it is!” Even he was edging backward.

  Their clamor disguised whatever slight sounds Gash-Eye might be making as she snuck up behind the creature. She held her arms outstretched, still gripping the stones, ignoring the strain in her muscles. She was unlikely to get more than one chance to kill this thing. From what she’d seen of the others of its kind, she might have no chance at all.

  Now she was only two paces behind it, staring at the back of its head. The creature paused, as if it were listening, and Gash-Eye wondered if she’d made a sound. For an instant she imagined she saw, not the back of the thing’s head, but its face there in the shadows before her. Although moments ago she’d been ready to welcome death, now that she faced it in the form of this awful monster she was terrified. One last time she gauged the distance between them.

  As hard as she could, she clapped the two stones together. Resistance jolted her arms as the creature’s skull came between the stones—she’d calculated well.

  Gash-Eye struck hard enough to kill any creature she’d ever encountered before. But she was shocked to find that the head of this thing actually popped with a squirting sound—as if its skull had been weak and rotten. Chunks of wet brain and shards of bone splattered back into her face. Instinctively she sealed her lips, and, dropping the stones, rubbed her face clean on the backs of her forearms.

  Meanwhile the unkillable thing dropped to its knees before her, then onto its belly. It continued to crawl forward till Gash-Eye set her feet on its calf and held it in place. Its arms tried weakly to twist around and take hold of her, but they couldn’t reach. Gash-Eye wasn’t very scared of the thing anymore. Now that its head was smashed like an old brown fruit, it had no more mouth to bite her with.

  The People didn’t know whether to be hopeful at the crashing sound, or more terrified than ever. “Gash-Eye?” called Stick. “Gash-Eye, is that you? What was that noise?” In the darkness she could make out Spear, head still cocked, straining to pick up some clue of what was happening.

  “I am here, Stick,” she said. Her voice, rougher and thicker than the People’s, reverberated eerily. “I am here, all you People, with you in the dark. The unkillable thing that would have murdered you lies defeated under my foot.”

  Relief mixed with uncertainty could be heard in the People’s murmurings, and in Stick’s voice: “We thank you, Gash-Eye.... If it’s true that you’ve saved us from one of those things, all will be forgiven....”

  “You took me for a purpose,” she continued, cutting him off; “you had a purpose for me, when you took me all those years ago. It was that I might see into the dark places. The dark places of the earth, when the sun goes down, and also the dark places of the universe. You could use me as a tool in your rites, to see into the future and into the other hidden places of the world.

  “But now we are in the world you knew no longer. No more will you merely peer into the darkness. Now you will live here, in my realm, with me. There will be no more light and if you wish to see you must do it with my eyes.

  “Leave this cave if you wish to face what awaits you there. I can see the outside as clearly as I saw that unkillable which was hidden from you all, and I say that if you go out there you will face the black and green non-death of your brethren. I see it: a scene of unkillable monsters, roving the forest, covering the hill like ants on a pile.” Hopefully no one would crawl forth and peek out the mouth of the cave, in case she was wrong. “We must move even deeper down into this cave if you want to be safe.”

  She turned her back on her stunned captors and went to where she’d left Quarry. The girl was huddled and trembling, blind in the darkness. She whimpered when Gash-Eye touched her, then relaxed as she realized who it was. Gash-Eye gathered her up into her strong arms, picked her up and held her.

  “Is this true, Gash-Eye?” ventured Stick, fearfully. When she didn’t deign to answer, he said, “Must we really stay here always, and never see the sun?”

  “For a while. I will tell you when we may safely leave.” If she could draw them away from the light and into the places where only she could see, then they would need her, and she would be safe and would be able to keep the girl safe too.

  Quarry was weeping, almost soundlessly; Gash-Eye gently shushed and caressed her. Then she thought of something. Turning back toward Stick, she said, “And my name is not Gash-Eye. It’s Petal
-Drift.”

  Five

  They didn’t travel very long before the monster, or the woman, insisted they rest. Chert wanted to put more distance between themselves and the catastrophe, but the monster, who’d managed to convey that her name was Veela, assured them it was safe. “No no-die,” she kept repeating. “No no-die, for far.” Well, Chert supposed, maybe she really did have some way of knowing.

  She kept picking up objects and saying something, then holding the rock or stick or whatever it was expectantly toward Chert and the Jaw. It didn’t take long to figure out she wanted them to teach her the words for things, and they switched from Overhill to the People’s tongue. If they were going to teach her a language, it might as well be their own. Veela seemed confused at first, then exasperated when she realized they were teaching her a whole new tongue, instead of building on the one she’d already started. But there wasn’t much she could do about it.

  It got even more confusing for her when they switched back to Overhill, wanting to question her without having to teach her a whole language first. “Give us the strong tight fire,” said the Jaw. “Give it to us, so we can go back and kill the no-dies.” Chert also was eager to learn the secret of the strong tight fire, albeit not so he could rush back to fight the undead.

  Veela nodded enthusiastically, but what she said was, “Time, takes many. For try, try, try. Difficult.”

  Fine. Chert and the Jaw could understand that it would take time to learn a strange new weapon. But that was all the more reason to start practicing, and they were frustrated at her refusal to produce it.

  She managed to explain that she wanted to be able to talk to them better before training them for her people’s weapons. So they went back to repeating to her the words for things. She retained them surprisingly well, and soon was picking up words for actions and colors, too. Her sentences were still jumbles of the couple hundred words she’d learned, but the hunters could tell it wouldn’t be long before she was able to have a basic conversation. Even so, they didn’t want to wait to start learning. The Jaw, especially.

  He said to her, “I want to kill the no-dies.” It was the thousandth time he’d said it.

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Need the help,” she said. “Help we need, to kill the no-dies. No-die, all. Must needs kill all no-dies.”

  The Jaw nodded. That was fine with him.

  But Veela pressed the point, as if he’d not understood completely; “All,” she repeated.

  They stayed at that resting spot all the next day. For some reason she wanted to stay in the area—when they tried to figure out exactly why, she either didn’t have the fluency or the desire to explain. Chert was suspicious and impatient and several times muttered to the Jaw that they should be on their way, with or without the pretty monster, but the Jaw refused and Chert didn’t want to try to physically pull him away.

  She learned the language fast. Chert wondered if she had magical help. She had a small something, shaped like a nut pierced with tiny regular holes, with a shiny surface like impossibly smooth stone, almost like ice except that, like the protective sheet that had been over her face, which she’d raised, it didn’t melt. Perhaps it really was a nut, from some unimaginable tree. Or it could be something completely different. Chert was getting used to the idea that there were things in the world so completely beyond his understanding that he couldn’t even define the boundaries of his incomprehension.

  Anyway, there was a tiny man living inside the nut. Sometimes Veela would hold it up to her mouth and speak through the holes to the little man inside it, and he would respond in his strange high-pitched buzzing voice. He sounded remarkably at ease and confident, considering that Veela had him trapped in a nut and was hundreds of times bigger than him. Perhaps the nut was of such strong material that he didn’t fear she’d be able to break into it.

  And then again, maybe he had some mysterious value, despite his size. At times Veela listened to him closely and with great attention, and Chert remembered old Pine, from his boyhood, who’d had a withered arm and no teeth left, but who’d been kept alive because of his great wisdom and counsel. Perhaps the tiny man was like that.

  And maybe he even had some more direct power, some form of magic, for example. There were times when Chert distinctly felt that she’d asked the little man for something, and he’d refused, and she’d been helplessly frustrated by his refusal.

  One such time was after the Jaw had pressed her for the secret of the strong tight fire. She’d avoided giving him a straight answer, but soon afterward had consulted the miniature man in the nut. They’d had what sounded like an argument, and afterward Veela had looked unhappy, though her body language was strange and hard to read. The Jaw had asked again for the strong tight fire, and this time she said, “Waiting is being needed.” Impressively, she was able to say this in the People’s tongue already, even though they’d only met her this morning.

  Chert said to the Jaw, “That tiny man inside the nut won’t let her give us the fire.” Veela cocked her ear at the two of them, frustrated not to be able to understand what they said.

  The Jaw turned to Chert with contempt. “What do you mean? How could that tiny man possibly stop her from doing anything?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve given up trying to understand things. But I’m telling you, that’s what he said.”

  The Jaw remained dubious, but was too uncertain to argue.

  “What are the no-dies?” the Jaw kept asking.

  Veela said a word in her own language that neither of them understood. After much pantomiming and retching noises, she communicated to them its meaning: “Disease?” said the Jaw.

  Veela repeated the word twice to memorize it, and said, “No-dies, disease. Type of disease. Bite of a no-die grants you disease. Must kill no-die. All things of world will be no-die.”

  That last bit didn’t quite make sense, though it did sound ominous. They went back and forth a while, rehashing the sentence, Veela repeating the phrase with variations, till by chance they taught her the word “or.” Then she said, “Must kill no-dies, or all things of world will be no-die.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Chert. “No disease spreads to every person of the world. There are no spirits that hungry.”

  “No-die spirit, hungry,” insisted Veela. “Very, very hungry.”

  “Where does the spirit come from?” asked Chert. “Why have we never heard of it before?”

  Veela pretended not to know. Being civilized, she was better at lying than anyone Chert and the Jaw had ever met, so they believed in her ignorance.

  “In any case,” said Chert, “you can’t kill a spirit. If men could kill spirits, they would have long since killed all the disease spirits and no one would ever get sick. What we must do is learn the proper rites to appease this no-die spirit, so that it will look for its prey elsewhere.”

  Their next project was to teach Veela what the word “appease” meant. Once she’d learned it, and grasped the sense of what Chert had said, she grew excited, shaking her head and waving her arms and saying, “No, no, no! No appease! Kill all no-die spirit. Or world is be no-die people, no-die wolf, no-die squirrel, no-die bird....”

  “She means all people and all animals everywhere will become undead,” said the Jaw.

  “No spirit could ever be that hungry!” repeated Chert, exasperated. “How could a spirit be big enough to eat the world?! For that, it would have to be as big as the world. If it was as big as the world, it would fill all of it, and have no one place to call its home. And who ever heard of a spirit without a home? Where would it take its sacrifice?”

  “But what if this particular spirit is that hungry?”

  “Then there’s no use worrying about it, because you can’t kill a spirit.”

  The Jaw fell silent. He was unhappy, but Chert’s points were unanswerable.

  But Veela wouldn’t let it go. “Must help kill no-die,” she said. “Must help. Stranger here, us. Have weapons. Need help, but.” />
  “‘Us’?” said the Jaw. “There are more of you?”

  She looked blankly at the Jaw. From the way her eyes then went to the stone nut, Chert understood that she was wondering why they were surprised, when she’d assumed they knew she meant the little man in the nut. She must believe the little trapped man had some powerful magic indeed, if she thought he could help destroy those hordes of undead. “Must help,” she repeated.

  “Why use us? Why not use the flying stone, with its strong tight fire?” asked Chert.

  Veela got the gist of what he said, though she seemed confused by the phrase “flying stone.” She said, “Weapon, tired becomes.”

  So the spirit that guided or inhabited the strong tight fire was too fickle to explode all the undead heads at once, but required multiple sacrifices and exhortations. Or else it really did grow tired. That would be even more worrisome, especially if Veela proved correct about the nature of the spirit of the undead sickness—how could a spirit that quickly and easily grew tired fight an infinitely gluttonous and infinitely larger one?

  “But why do you need us?” demanded the Jaw. “What can we do, compared to you? You’re the one with the strong tight fire.”

  Veela struggled to respond. It was a linguistic struggle but also a diplomatic one, since she didn’t want to come out and say that she lacked faith in her partner Dak’s ability to monitor the zombies as well as he claimed he could. For example, she knew the ship’s rinky-dink sensors couldn’t penetrate the planet surface to see what might be going on in the cave networks. On top of that, she and Dak were clearly prone to error, since they’d let a zombie mouse stow away on their ship, coming all the way back with them through time. And that mouse had apparently bitten a member of Population Group B (the people Chert and the Jaw knew as Overhills), after she’d already chosen their language as the one to start studying. The plague had wiped that whole group out in an hour. And while zapping them all in the heads with lasers, Dak had failed to notice that a band of Neanderthals had come across a stray zombie. They’d beheaded it and started using its head as a fucking lamp, till one of them got himself bitten. A lot of people had died because Dak had been preoccupied—not that the perimeter wall he was busy with wasn’t important. There were plenty of drones on the ship—if they could access them Veela was certain they could locate and destroy every zombie on the planet, but they were locked up in a special hold and Dak couldn’t decipher the lock, so he was stuck using only the ship’s on-board laser.