As the unkillable’s brain died its glow faded fast. By the last of its light she cast around on the floor and found two fist-sized stones. Just as the black unkillable finally worked itself free of the bearskin, Gash-Eye had the two stones ready; she clapped them together upon its head, bursting it, averting her face to avoid the spray of brain, ichor, and gunk.
All the unkillables were dead. All she knew how to find, anyhow. Surely, no one could ask her for more than that.
Except she knew there was more she had to do.
“Quarry,” she called. “Quarry, uncover the unkillable head. Carefully, though!”
Immediately she felt guilty for having given the child such a dangerous task. But she felt so hungry for light.
Even the ghastly faint glow that seeped in through the crevice, when Quarry had uncovered the head, felt like it might be enough to sustain her, for a while at least. Nothing was more horrible than these unkillables, yet she was grateful for the glow they brought to this cave. She imagined a world in which it really would be possible to bring light into the dark places, the way she was reputed to do, the way she had pretended to do.
Even as her body tried to rest, her mind was rushing to form the next plan. After they’d first come to the lake she’d gone on a scouting party with one of the hunters, while the rest of the People had stayed by the fire. They’d come to a large chamber, where they’d found a natural pit. She thought she could find her way back to that pit; if she could, she might be able to lure Spear there simply by calling out for him.
She found herself hoping they wouldn’t meet. But if Spear ever escaped from the cave and saw Quarry, he would kill her for having befriend Gash-Eye. Besides, if she left him here in the caves, he was one more potential unkillable. And Gash-Eye had promised the child she’d get rid of all those.
She realized she hadn’t heard Quarry speak yet, and grew worried. “Quarry?” she called. Her adrenaline-wracked body was bruised bone-deep, blood trickled from dirt-clogged cuts and scrapes, she was half-starved and freezing, and though she tried to force herself to go check on Quarry, she couldn’t quite move. Her body was in a state of quivering, feverish rebellion, now that the immediate threat to her survival was gone. “Child? Are you all right? Answer me!”
“I’m fine,” called Quarry’s thin voice. Gash-Eye let out a sigh of relief.
She had managed to kill the unkillables. She wondered if it would be as hard to do the same for Spear.
***
M
aple tried to move fast enough that Club would not have to shove her along, but it was hard to make herself go quickly in the darkness, and often she felt his palm between her shoulder blades. Each time she had to suppress a sob. It was madness to keep plummeting aimlessly into the darkness like this, without even their wicked Big-Brow to guide them.
When they’d left Club had taken the firewood and Spear had taken one of the burning brands. But Club had slipped and fallen into a deep pool in the dim light, and had unthinkingly grabbed Spear for support and dragged him into the water with him. The wood and the brand were all soaked, and now they traveled in darkness. Spear had beaten Club for that.
“Move!” Spear would rasp. “Move, or do you want the unkillables to get you?!”
Maple did not want the unkillables to get her, and each time Spear said that she knew that the only good solution was for them to all come to a halt and kill themselves. But every time she thought she would suggest that, she realized that if she opened her mouth only sobs would come out. Once she tried anyhow, and, sure enough, could only weep. Spear and Club had slapped her until she was silent and bloody, with one less tooth than before.
Where were they going? She wanted to ask the other two women, but it was somehow unthinkable. The three were not allowed to speak—they all knew it, without having needed the example of the beating given to Maple. Once they had been kin to Spear and Club, members of the same People—now there was no more People and they’d become less than Gash-Eyes.
They weren’t going anywhere. That was the horror. They couldn’t go outside, because of the red lightning bolts of fire and the unkillables. They couldn’t stay in one place because they would go crazy. Who knew how far underground they had gone already—who knew if they weren’t already so deep in the earth that they would never get free.
Truly, only death made sense now. They should stop this running and help each other die. After all, they were already in the earth. But she couldn’t make herself say so.
Oak had known. In the middle of their crazed march, he had simply stopped and died, and hadn’t come back to life no matter how Spear beat him.
As they were crawling blind across the uneven stones, all of them came to a sudden halt. Even Spear. A voice had called his name: “Spear!” It was Gash-Eye.
Their unseeing eyes rolled fearfully in the dark. The name echoed weirdly through the caves, it was hard to locate but seemed to come from ahead of them.
“Spear,” she called again. “Why are you running, Spear? I thought you were going to kill me.”
“I am going to kill you!”
shrieked Spear, so savagely that Maple covered her ears, shut her eyes, and ducked her head.
“I will kill you!
You’re the one who ran!”
“I’m not running now.”
“Where are you?!”
“Follow my voice.”
Club groped his way past the women to clutch at Spear’s shoulder—Spear flung his arms out, trying to strike him. “Spear! Can’t you tell it’s a trap?!”
“Let that Big-Brow bitch try to trap me, if she dares! We’re going after her!”
Maple could feel Club’s fear and reluctance vibrating in the air. He knew it was a trap, that Gash-Eye wouldn’t call Spear that way unless she had a plan to kill him, and probably his followers as well. Yet she also knew that Club wouldn’t be able to stand the thought of letting Spear leave him alone.
Sure enough, as Spear rushed crazily towards the source of Gash-Eye’s voice, Club lashed the women to follow, and they obeyed. Facing whatever trap Gash-Eye had prepared for them was less frightening than facing this darkness without a strong man. Even a strong man as crazy as Spear.
They were moving too fast through these lightless zones. Women and even Club kept falling, skinning and bruising their hands and knees; Spear somehow never did, and he always heard their tumbles and turned and beat them till they regained their feet. No doubt Spear scorned any contribution they might make to his fight against the Big-Brow—but they were all his possessions now, and he was unwilling to part with any of them.
From the changing acoustics Maple could tell they were progressing into a bigger, wider chamber; away from the claustrophobic terror of the tight, winding corridors where an unkillable might block their path at any moment, and into the bottomless, agoraphobic terror of a formless open space in which unkillables might converge from any and all directions.
“Keep close to me!” screamed Spear, and yanked Maple to try to make her follow closer on his heels. She was trying—if she had to stay with him, if she couldn’t just let him go to destruction on his own, then she wanted to stick close so that maybe he would protect her from that destruction when they caught up with it. “Club!” he cried. “Keep up their pace!” Club frantically obliged, slapping and shoving them so much that it was a miracle they were able to maintain their footing at all.
“Good,” Gash-Eye’s voice called through the dark, closer now. “You’re making progress, Spear. I see you approach.”
“Lying bitch! Trying to scare us with your so-called powers! Not even you can see in this blackness!”
“The dark is my element. Haven’t you said that many times, Spear? My very purpose is to see into the darkness.”
That was true, Maple thought; they could not see Gash-Eye, but surely Gash-Eye could see them. Maple was certain the same wave of nauseous fear was rippling through all their little band at the thought.
But Spear shouted, “Lies! There’s no light for even you to see by, Big-Brow! The one advantage you ever had is gone, and now I—”
Spear’s words turned to a howl of surprise perhaps at the same moment that Maple felt herself plummeting, perhaps an instant before; she honestly didn’t know. So disoriented was she by having been starved so long of light, she couldn’t even be sure if she was falling for a long time or a brief one, if she was falling up or down. But she knew when she hit bottom—it was hard, and knocked the breath out of her.
Club screamed. They had all fallen, not just her. Maple could tell from his scream that Club was hurt badly.
Spear, on the other hand, recovered from the fall right away. “Big-Brow! Where are you?! Face me!”
“You want a face, do you?” she said.
Above Maple, above the lip of the depression they’d fallen into, a glowing green ball appeared. What was it? Maple fearfully recognized the quality of the light as that given off by the unkillables. She blinked furiously, trying to force her atrophied eyes to see something more than a blurry green ball, but even without being able to make out any details, she realized the moment before Gash-Eye threw it what it must be.
The snapping maw of the unkillable’s head locked onto Spear’s forehead upon impact; Spear had time for one short scream before he landed on his back, silenced. The unkillable head glowed a brighter green as it munched into Spear’s brain. Having no lungs, it could not suck. But some of its throat had come off with its head, and it still had enough muscles there to do a lot of swallowing. All of the brain matter it ingested appeared to spill out the hole of its neck, having been milled by the teeth, but the head must have absorbed something through the lining of its mouth or gums or throat—some cerebral juice, perhaps—for it glowed a brighter and stronger green as it burrowed forth into Spear’s head.
Neither Maple nor any of the others in the pit with her could make out any details; with their smeary vision all they could see by the green glow was Spear, dead at its epicenter, and Club on his back, gaping at Spear in horror, as if he had managed to forget the bloody broken bone sticking at a crazy angle out of his torn shin. Gash-Eye leaped down among them, carrying a pointed stick. Club was still staring at her stupidly when she stabbed him through the throat and wrenched it back and forth as he wriggled, to be sure he was dead.
The two other women screamed and cowered from Gash-Eye, staring at her, their backs against the cold damp wall. One was begging Gash-Eye not to kill them.
Only Maple did not move. She remained where she’d landed, staring impassively up at the former slave. Not even the nearby munching head distracted her. Gash-Eye met her gaze, and Maple knew what was coming. She didn’t flinch. It wasn’t that she was brave—she simply couldn’t see the point of struggling and even if she had, she wouldn’t have been able to find the energy.
“Help us, Petal-Drift!” said one of the women. “You’ll lead us out, won’t you?”
Gash-Eye surveyed them all wordlessly, then said, “If I keep you with me, you’ll turn on me sooner or later.”
“No, no!”
“No, we’d never do that!”
Maple, meanwhile, kept silent.
Gash-Eye, as if she hadn’t heard their protests, said, “And if I let you go and wander the caves by yourself, maybe you’ll meet one of those things. One that escaped. And then maybe I’ll have more unkillables to worry about.”
She jerked the pointed stick up out of Club’s body. Maple was between her and the rest of the women, and Gash-Eye began advancing her huge naked body on her. Behind Maple the others set up a wail. But Maple felt a strange calm spread through her.
“Gash-Eye!” That sounded like Quarry, crying out from the edge of the pit. “Gash-Eye, please, just let them go! Just these ones!”
Gash-Eye was looming over Maple now. “Close your eyes, Quarry!” she shouted, and raised the pointed stick. “Close your eyes,” she said again.
But Maple felt no need to close them.
I
t didn’t hit Gash-Eye how weak she’d become until she had to pursue Quarry through the darkness. The girl stayed at the edge of the pit, ignoring Gash-Eye’s commands to close her eyes, pleading with Gash-Eye to spare the women right up until all three were dead. Then she ran away, racing wildly into the black darkness, screaming. It was by the screams that Gash-Eye tracked her through the blackness. Throughout the brief nightmarish race, Gash-Eye doubted her ability to follow the misbehaving sound, as it echoed and re-echoed; she was sure that if she tripped and fell once, she would lose what small grip she had on the trail. But it was Quarry who fell, and then lay there, still crying out for Gash-Eye to spare the already-dead women, as Gash-Eye finally caught up to her and clutched her in her arms.
After she caught her, Gash-Eye had to hold Quarry’s hot feverish body a long time before she quit struggling; and after that she continued to weep for what seemed like forever.
Gash-Eye wrapped the girl more tightly in her skin, and pressed her body against her as closely as possible, to transmit some warmth. Even so, Quarry continued to shake violently. Gash-Eye had to get her out of here. Grief and delirium were combining to form a dangerous mixture.
“We’ll go outside,” Gash-Eye said.
“Are there more unkillables out there?”
“I don’t think so. I think the red fire from the sky got them all.” Gash-Eye had no idea whether or not that was true, but it seemed like the proper thing to tell the child. Then she laughed, and said, “Besides, you said that, if there are any more unkillables, we should find and destroy them, right? So if we’ve finished off the ones down here, we ought to be looking for more up top.”
“Oh. Yes. I forgot.”
She sounded so earnest. “I don’t think there are any more unkillables, though,” Gash-Eye said. Except there had been that fugitive shuffling she’d thought she’d heard. But she wasn’t going to mention that. She was just as feverish as Quarry, she suspected, and in no condition to go thrashing around the darkness in the hopes of hitting one of those monsters. She wasn’t completely certain she would live through the next few days, even if they did get out of this clammy air where she was still naked. (She had continued to use the bearskin to bundle the unkillable head in; they might need a light again before they got out of these caves. Right now the skin was still where she’d flung it beside the pit, and the head was still in the pit itself.) Waves of sickly heat kept sparking hazy multicolored hallucinations before her eyes. The surface of her body was hyper-sensitive—it was like she could feel even the irritating friction of her hair pushing through the skin as it grew—yet it also seemed very distant. As if her body were a thing she had to reach across a great distance to control, with strain and effort.