Light from the morning sky leaked in through the ceiling of the tunnel ahead. It wasn’t low enough for him to climb, although if his leg weren’t in such bad shape, he might have been able to scale it anyway. A wire hung down from overhead and connected to a simple lift that carried things up and down. It was the type with two platforms that went up and down alternately — one was overhead, the other down below.
Will it move…?
He didn’t expect it to move, but if worse came to worst, if the wire would at least hold, it probably wouldn’t be impossible for him to climb up it. Grasping at this faint hope, he quickened his pace, dragging his foot. Just then, he heard a small clatter behind him.
“Ephraim,” someone called in a muffled voice. Before he could decide whether to turn around or not, a gunshot rang out; a blast hit his right shoulder, sending him flying backward. All at once, he jabbed his nails into the wall and planted his feet, scratching the wall as he saved himself from falling over.
An armored Church Soldier stood under the poor light from the side tunnel. For now, it looked as if there was only one of them. He shook the carbonization gun he supported in both hands; the empty cartridge clattered onto the ground as he loaded the next round.
Harvey didn’t wait; he kicked the ground with his left foot. If his right foot had been functional, he would have used it as a pivot and attacked, but in his current state, all he could do was deliver a suicide tackle. He used the force from the tackle to jam his elbow into a break in the armor. A sound of breaking bones came from his opponent’s ribs, and possibly also from his own elbow.
They fell in a jumbled heap on the ground. He got up, picked up the carbonization gun that had flown from his opponent’s hands, and pulled the trigger. A dull gunshot sounded and the recoil threw him back into the wall; small rocks rained down on his head.
Black smoke rose from his opponent’s carbonized abdomen, and the man stopped moving. His armor had probably absorbed the impact to some degree, but the shot was made at point-blank range.
Sitting against the wall, still holding the gun, Harvey stiffened and stared for a while at the dead body lying on the ground.
“Aaaaugh…” he let out a long, deep sigh. He may have been the one in danger, but there was no need to be so quick to blow out the middle of the guy’s body. The moment his ribs were shattered, he wouldn’t have been able to move anymore. But Harvey’s body moved automatically, and the next thing he knew, he had killed him.
He had tried so hard not to kill anyone, and if they’d just left him alone, he wouldn’t have, so why did they have to keep coming after him?
“I have to hurry…” he muttered, sighing again. He dropped the carbonization gun that weighed so heavily in his arms onto the ground. The other soldiers would most likely come running at the sound of that gunshot.
He tried to stand up and realized that he couldn’t really do that anymore. After his right shoulder took that hit, his right arm was still attached, more or less, but he couldn’t lift it. It was difficult to stand with only one arm and one leg.
He had no choice but to crawl along the ground toward the lift. He swept the fear that it wouldn’t move out of his mind, along with the idea that, in his condition, there was no way he could do anything as spectacular as climbing that wire. But there was light from outside there — it was a dim light, hidden in sand-colored clouds; but the color of the earth and sky that had cherished the planet’s scarcely remaining resources, storing them in their bosom, poured down in a sparkling ray. And anyway, he had the vague idea that if he could get under that light, everything would be okay.
Clinging to the ground with only a left arm, he used everything he had to pull himself forward. Blood oozed under his fingernails as they peeled off when he scratched the hard ground.
Why am I trying so desperately to get away? he suddenly questioned himself. He was in a similar situation eighty years ago. When he reached the battlefield wilderness, lined with corpses, he got tired of it all and stopped going on. He could just stop now, like he did then. This time, the Church Soldiers would have no trouble finding him and doing him the favor of killing him.
He stopped putting his arm forward. He lifted his head and looked up at the light ahead for a while.
As he dimly thought something along the lines of how the modest softness of that sand-colored light was a lot like the atmosphere that surrounded Kieli, he murmured in a whisper, “I guess I can go a little further…,” and started dragging himself forward again after all.
He reached the shaft through which the light penetrated. He crawled onto the lift’s bottom plank, stretched his arm out from an impossible position, and grabbed the operating lever. He pulled it down a little, and it responded; the wire went taut. Miraculously, it looked like it would move.
If I make it out of here, I guess I can go see her face just once. Even just watching her from a distance to see that she’s doing okay. He dwelled on these thoughts that, for him, sounded extremely attached to life, and this time, he put some energy into pulling the lever. “— !”
He turned around instinctively, automatically, as if someone had grabbed his cheeks and forced him.
The armored Church Soldier stood up slowly and picked up the fallen carbonization gun, his abdomen still smoking. A piece of his cracked mask had fallen off, revealing the soldier’s face underneath.
Suddenly, he remembered. It was only in the space of an instant, but he had called him by his old name.
“Hey there, Ephraim. So it’s been eighty years, has it?” the Church Soldier said, twisting the ends of his mouth into a crescent. The blue-gray eyes that showed a hint of madness, the thin lips forming a twisted smile. He was a man with a strange presence, having no other characteristics but those eyes that left any impression, and that fact in itself left an impression.
“Joachim? Why are you…?” Harvey muttered the name of his old comrade (although he didn’t want to call him a comrade) in astonishment, still in the posture he was in when he crawled up onto the lift. Smiling as if Harvey’s surprise amused him, the soldier swung the awkward gun up and reloaded. His smile was as depressing and annoying as ever.
“Actually, the Church hired me to collect ‘cores.’ Right now, even your heart would fetch a price so high I could buy a continent with it.”
“Never mind that you’re an Undying yourself…”
“Oh, but that’s exactly why I have to do my job — my own life would be in danger otherwise. Really, I’d rather sit back and talk about old times.”
“I don’t want to talk to you for even a second,” he spat, literally, interrupting the soldier’s depressing and annoying small talk.
The soldier’s composed smile changed completely, twisting in displeasure. “Then shut up.”
Without the slightest hesitation, he pulled the trigger.
Give me a break. Here the grave keeper calls me, so I come back to see what’s up and find this. I can’t even disappear in peace.
Floating in the air over the coal mine, a soldier looked down at the corpse lying at the bottom of the narrow shaft.
It wasn’t as if he wasn’t vaguely interested in seeing how the Undying die. The young man lay faceup on the lift’s lower platform, the center of his body blown out by impact from a bullet. As he looked down on his copper-colored eyes, they seemed to be glaring up at him, but there was no longer any light in them.
He was in terrible shape — he’d lost half the use of the right side of his body — but that wouldn’t be enough to stop an Undying’s life functions. There was a hole gouged unceremoniously in the center of his chest where his core, his heart, should have been buried. The bio-cables that had connected his core to the inside of his body had been torn apart, and thick blood resembling coal tar oozed out of them.
That’s how the young man had expired.
The soldier sighed. Well, not like he had breath.
What are you gonna do? You could just end it right here. That is what you wanted,
right?
The youth didn’t answer, only pierced the air with his empty gaze. Apparently when they, these unnatural beings, died, they didn’t become ghosts like he did. It was said that they lived for eternity, but they seemed like such fragile, fleeting, short-lived creatures.
What will you do, Herbie? If you feel like living a little longer, you wanna put some effort into it?
CHAPTER 6
HOW MANY MORE STEPS TO THE LIGHT MARKING THE WAY?
It wasn’t as if there were any clear-cut boundaries between the seasons, but the day after the Colonization Days break, the air took on a definite winter feel, with no room for a single bit of autumn to sneak in.
“Finished.”
Kieli gave the mound of earth a light pat with both hands and paused for breath. Rubbing her fingers together after the cold outside air and digging in the ground had thoroughly frozen them, she turned to look beside her.
“I’m sorry it’s not very good.”
An emaciated black cat sat next to Kieli as she crouched on the ground. It didn’t react to her voice; it only stared at the little mountain of earth in front of it. Its gray eyes matched the winter sky; she couldn’t read whether they were exasperated or angry, or maybe happy.
Kieli faced forward again and, side by side with the black cat, looked down at the ground at her feet. There was a humble grave in a corner of the courtyard, made simply by digging a shallow hole and refilling it with earth. Hugging her knees, she closed her eyes for a brief moment and offered a prayer for the small life.
“Kieli, what are you slacking off around here for? Are you trying to make me do all the cleaning?” a sharp voice snapped behind her. Still squatting, she turned around to see her freckled classmate standing in the school passage. She was pushing a cart piled high with thick books.
When she saw her, Kieli remembered that, oh yeah, school was over for the day. She wiped her dirty hands on her skirt and stood up. She didn’t see any reason to hurry, so she walked at a normal pace (though, thanks to a certain somebody, she got the feeling her normal pace had quickened quite a bit) back to the outside hallway. When she got there, Zilla, who had been waiting in total annoyance, glanced at the courtyard and asked, “What is that?”
“A cat. It was dead,” Kieli answered in short sentences as she took over pushing the cart.
She found the cat frozen to death in the shadows of the hall this morning, on her way back to class after the combination winter term opening ceremonies and morning worship service in the auditorium. She skipped her afternoon classes, found a little spade in the shed, and buried it in a corner of the courtyard where no one would step on it.
Zilla looked cynically at the tiny grave, then took on a somewhat joking tone and snickered. “Don’t tell me it was a cat you used to summon a demon?”
Kieli didn’t change her expression; she only glanced sideways at her classmate and started pushing the cart toward the building on the other side of the hall.
“What? Talk back. You’re no fun!” Temporarily left behind, Zilla complained selfishly and went after Kieli. Kieli thought, Oh so she wanted me to talk back, but she didn’t feel like responding and so kept pushing the cart in silence.
Just then, she felt something coil around her feet. When she looked down, the black cat rubbed against her legs and meowed. After that, it circled once around Kieli and disappeared.
“Did you hear something?”
As Zilla looked around suspiciously, Kieli gave a vague, “Hmm,” and smiled to herself as she looked down at the cart and kept walking. So he liked it? I’m glad.
She got the feeling this was the first time in days that she had smiled a little. But she had shed all her emotions since the incident at the mine. It had gotten to be a pain to converse with people, so she only spoke in broken sentences.
The soldiers brought her back to the boarding school on the last day of the Colonization Days holiday.
The headmistress and Miss Hanni had already heard the story that an Undying had tricked her and taken her to the abandoned mine, and the Church Soldiers had rescued her just as he was about to eat her head first; Kieli didn’t know what explanation she had been given, but apparently that’s how Miss Hanni understood it. She greeted Kieli with an embrace, accompanied by her self-intoxicated laments and overreactions, as a pitiable student who had gone through a terrifying experience that must have scarred her emotionally. She wished it had been the Church history teacher who greeted her. It must have been awful, Kieli. Of course you don’t have to write a report.
But instead, Miss Hanni told her that she needed to forget those sinful, sinful memories of associating with an Undying as soon as possible, so she was to keep the incident a secret, of course from the other students, but also from the other teachers. Her Church history teacher remained ignorant of the reason she hadn’t been able to write a report, so on her first day of the winter term, Kieli was forced to stand in the hall for an hour, only to be released after receiving an oh-so-generous three-day extension to write twice as long a report. Like she could write twice as much in three days.
Kieli yawned and looked up at the clock on her writing desk; it was almost time for the date to change.
She put her pen down on the report paper, which remained blank even after several hours, and breathed a little sigh. She noticed that the lazy idea of going to bed was about to overcome her, and suddenly became aware of the reality that her daily routine had returned.
In comparison to the few days of her trip, with each day packed full of events, she spent her life at the boarding school by leaving everything to momentum, with no major differences between today and tomorrow — no, her daily routine hadn’t returned. When she got back, there was something missing from that routine.
“Becca, I’m going to bed,” she said tentatively, as she cleaned up her desk like she did every day, turning to look at the beds against the wall, like she did every day, and addressing her roommate, like she did every day.
Good night, Kieli.
The bright soprano voice no longer answered. The lower of the metal bunk beds was arranged with Kieli’s bedding about halfway complete; the top bunk was empty, and dust lay thick on the flattened mattress. The selfish, free-spirited roomate who would lie there pretending to read a book and sometimes talk to Kieli, demanding a reaction to everything, heedless of the fact that Kieli was trying to do her homework, was no longer there.
The double room that she lived in by herself was strangely big and empty.
“……”
She froze for a while with her head still turned toward the bed, then slowly brought her downcast gaze back to her desk. Her eyes stopped on the old radio she had placed on the corner of her desk. It was dented in places, its coating had almost completely peeled off, and there were signs that the speaker had been torn and reattached many times. She reached out, pulled it closer, and turned it on. After a smart little burst of static, music flowed from the speakers at a low volume and filled the room.
Since Kieli had first met the radio, it had always been set to the same frequency — not a legitimate channel, but a guerrilla one, known only to those who knew to look for it. It was possible that the tuner itself was broken. But she was afraid of losing the faint waves from this channel, so she didn’t even think of experimenting with it.
She wondered who had first turned it to this frequency. She had no trouble imagining a red-haired man sitting cross-legged on the seat of a train, adjusting the tuner as the voice from the radio urged him on. Just a little higher, higher; argh, you went too far, you moron. I told you just a little, Herbie.
The radio only carried melodies from some far-off place now; it would no longer talk to her in its low, staticky voice, in its rough but kind tone. And she would never again look at those long fingers that turned the tuner from the seat diagonally across as they lit a cigarette, moving in slight annoyance at the effort involved; and those hands would never again reach out to her.
She wondered
why she had been afraid, even for an instant, and avoided that hand that tried to touch her cheek at the abandoned station, and her mind filled with thoughts she would never regret enough. Even though she was painfully aware that Harvey blamed himself more than anyone. Even though she knew that that big, warm hand that held hers at the carnival didn’t exist for the sake of war anymore.
She pursed her lips and pushed back the feelings that welled up inside her.
She was sure Harvey had escaped safely and would be looking out over the Sand Ocean in the far east as if he was tired of it about now. When he hears the “all aboard,” he’ll stoop down to pick up his bag, and walk over to the boat landing at his usual fast pace — if only he would look back and call out to me. “I’m gonna leave you behind, Kieli. What are you doing? Is the ocean that unusual?”
“No, don’t think about it…” she muttered, exhausted, and dropped her head onto the desk. She pressed her forehead against the radio; its cold touch cooled her temples and somehow she managed to hold back her tears.
My short journey is over. Good-bye, Kieli. You’ll never see me again.…
In the end, it turned out that Kieli would never have to write her report.
She had fallen asleep in that position the previous night, and when she woke up in the morning, red marks from the radio clearly showed on half of her face, so she had just decided to independently cancel her lectures when Miss Hanni summoned her. She didn’t know if it was because she had skipped her afternoon classes the day before, or if they had somehow discovered her attempt to be absent today, but anyway, she was sure that if they were taking her to the headmistress’s office this early in the morning, it must be that she could no longer receive financial aid and they were kicking her out of the school. These were the thoughts that filled her head as she followed Miss Hanni through the door to the headmistress’s office. She completely forgot to be polite and say “excuse me.”
The Dead Sleep in the Wilderness Page 15