The Unkillables

by Boyett, J.

  “Need friends, know land,” she said, wishing she knew the word for “environment.” Although these people probably didn’t have a concept of “environment” that matched well with hers—the closest might be something like “world.” She said, “Need friends, know land. Need friends, know tongues.” Even though all the other people in this immediate area were apparently dead or zombified, Veela wanted to be able to communicate with those outside the perimeter in case some zombies had escaped, regardless of how impossible Dak claimed that would be.

  Also, she wanted to be able to communicate with people beyond the perimeter because hopefully they would survive all this, and would one day go out and interact with those folks. It wasn’t as if she and Dak could go back where they’d come from. And remembering the Jaw’s scream and Chert’s blow from the rock, she decided she’d prefer not to be alone next time she had to go through the getting-to-know-you process.

  “If we can’t use the strong tight fire,” pressed Chert, “how can we fight the no-dies?”

  “Need help, talk to other people. Explain no-dies, other people.”

  “And what if we run across no-dies before running across other people who need explaining?”

  “Head.” After some pantomiming, they guessed she was trying to indicate the word “remove.” They taught it to her, and she said, “Remove head. After, no-die body die. No-die body live not with head, short time. After, no-die body die.”

  Chert grew angry. “You want us to walk up to those things and take their heads off with axes? Instead of trying to persuade the spirit of the strong tight fire to fight harder? How powerful do you think we are?”

  Veela was desperate. She was nearly crying. “Need help. Need help.”

  “Then ask for it from the powerful spirit of the strong tight fire. Ask for it from your magic man in his little nut. My son and I are not even medicine men. If we try to fight these things with only our stones and our arms, we’ll die.”

  “But I want to fight them, Father,” said the Jaw.

  Chert was drawn up short for a speechless moment. Never before had the Jaw called him “Father” like that. Of course he knew it was an attempt to soften him and make him more amenable to Veela’s pleas. Understanding the ploy didn’t make it entirely ineffective. Nevertheless, Chert said to the Jaw, “I tell you that if we fight those things in that way we will be killed, or else become like them. I’m sorry, my son. But the truth is a stone that cannot be broken.”

  “Need help,” Veela kept repeating. She actually was crying now. At first Chert thought something was wrong with her; then he realized she was trying to hold back her tears, which struck him as an odd thing to do. “Need help. Or whole world no-die will be. Whole world no-die.”

  “We should agree,” insisted the Jaw. “Even if we don’t end up destroying all the undead, at least we might learn more about the strong tight fire. That may prove valuable, yes?”

  Very well—they could agree, and maybe glean some knowledge from this monster, who might be nothing but a very strange woman, after all. Anyway, Chert could tell he wasn’t going to be able to pry the Jaw away just yet. It was not only the lust for vengeance that held him, Chert sensed, but another kind of lust, too. Well, if it did turn out this Veela was simply a woman, they would be able to take her with them by force, no matter how desperately she wanted to stay near this cursed ground and commit suicide by throwing rocks at those undead. Best to wait, though, till they had been better able to gauge her powers.

  Veela was greatly relieved when they told her they’d stay with her and lend their strength to the fight against the undead, so much so that Chert wondered if she had an exaggerated notion of their prowess. Privately, she herself felt that the benefit they brought was mainly psychological. It felt good to have any allies in this impossible fight, in this alien time. And hopefully she really would be able to learn something of value from them.

  In fact, it was not long before exactly that happened, although she was not to appreciate the significance of the datum for quite some time.

  ***

  It was while they were tramping along again through the forest, before nightfall. The woman followed Chert and the Jaw. She hadn’t wanted to move at all, but Chert had insisted that they put some distance between them and the site of the no-die attack. Chert wondered if she had any idea where she was at all—she just seemed so stupid.

  They passed a patch of purple-capped Mushrooms of the Inner Eye, and the Jaw pointed them out to Chert. “I want to eat one,” he said.

  “We don’t have time,” said Chert.

  “The journey is never long, for those who are left behind.” (Time passed differently when one traveled through the underworld, and the voyager could sometimes feel that many days had gone by.) “And I want to see if my mother is there below.”

  Chert tried to keep his shoulders from sagging. “Why?” he asked. “What good will that do?”

  “I just want to see if she’s there.”

  “Whether you see her or not, it won’t mean anything. You aren’t a shaman. You don’t know how to ask the spirits which visions are true and which are not. And there’s no shaman here for us to tell what we saw.”

  “I want to see.”

  Veela watched the scene with obvious incomprehension. She began moving toward the patch of Mushrooms of the Inner Eye.

  Chert thought she was going to try to eat one. He stopped arguing with the Jaw long enough to grab her arm, prompting her to squeal in fright. The childish, dangerously noisy reaction did not exactly augment Chert’s respect for the woman. “Those are for the People, only,” he snarled.

  Veela bowed her head repeatedly and shrunk in her shoulders, trying to indicate submission. She hadn’t intended to eat the mushroom—she’d been interested in the patch because she’d guessed that this fungus had some kind of ritual significance for her new buddies.

  Chert turned back to the Jaw. Between his son’s stubbornness and the monster woman’s nosiness, he had trouble keeping his temper. “Without the shaman to guide you, you will understand nothing of what you see,” he said, forcing his voice to remain calm. “And you will create danger for me and the woman. We will have to guard you while your spirit voyages out from its body. Even if it only takes a short time, that will not be safe for us.”

  That turned out to be the right argument; the notion that he would be a burden was an affront to the Jaw’s pride, if nothing else. With a frown he turned his back on the mushroom patch and walked away.

  Chert followed his son. While their backs were turned, Veela reached for one of the mushrooms.

  But Chert spun around and grabbed her arm, held his face close to hers, and growled. Veela again put on her cowed, submissive face, which wasn’t hard to do. Okay, so the guy definitely did not want her eating that shroom—she could take a hint. Meanwhile she made a mental note of just how much sharper than hers his senses were. Pretty impressive, how he’d known what she was up to while she was still behind him.

  He kept a sharp eye on her after that, till they were well away from the mushroom patch. For now, Veela only tried to discreetly memorize the distinctive purple design on the cap of the fungus. It might be interesting to analyze whatever it was these guys were tripping on, even if it was probably nothing more than a garden-variety psychedelic.

  Six

  Eventually dusk was presaged in the sky. Veela indicated they all should go to sleep. The Jaw offered to stand the first watch. At first Veela didn’t understand what he meant; once they’d explained it, she shook her head and held up the nut. Chert and the Jaw figured out she was saying the little man in the nut would stand guard.

  “How will he be able to keep watch?” demanded Chert, pointing scornfully at the nut. “Even if you let him out, he must be smaller than a bug. It would take him a day and a night to walk a circuit around our sleeping bodies.”

  “And sealed inside the nut, he can only see straight ahead, through the side that the tiny holes are on,” s
aid 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.

  Seven

  Veela 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 re
plied 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.