The first few days can only be described as quiet. Rowan and I walk together at the bacl, the seer stays in the front. They seem to know the pace Rowan and I are walking and keep a fixed distance. We say when are tired, where we should rest, and the occasionally thought Rowan shares a thought. I don’t quite understand what she’s on about. She doesn’t expect me to—she just wants to air the ideas, see if they can survive outside her mind. She often ends her sentences in quiet mutters, descending into silence for hours before she next speaks.
There is a constant wind. It’s not too strong, but I can’t ignore it. I feel like if I stood in it long enough, it would wear away my soul. It isn’t a feeling I’ve felt in a long time.
Whenever we stop to rest, we play cards. A new game every few nights—we have no shortage of them. We know the rules well enough that this happens in silence. I invite the seer to join us on two occasions, and they decline each time. They prefer to enter some sort of trance when we’re not moving. I haven’t asked about it yet. Is it a form of relaxation? I’ve heard that seers need to sleep, that it’s the source of their power. Or one of.
I’m not sure why they are travelling with us. I’m glad they are: they don’t eat, and they don’t mind carrying a third of our rations. Also, they’re the only one who seems to know the way.
Eventually, as we come over one of the few hills, we notice a shape growing at the horizon. It’s indistinct but we know it’s city. It’s almost exactly in the direction we are heading too, a few days travel away. Our rations won’t last us at the rate we’ve allowed. Since we’ll need our strength then, we hold off on eating until we are close enough that our rations will last.
As the days pass, I feel my muscles begin to ache and spasm. I grow tired more frequently, but we know we must push through. If we were to be attacked now, we would struggle to get away. We aren’t defenceless at least: Rowan has packed the contents of both an armoury and infirmary in her backpack, albeit most of it isn’t as reliable as it is experimental. I have my rifle. Perhaps the seer would be able to defend us—I don’t know if they’d be inclined to.
When we are at the point that we can start eating again, the seer is the one who tells us. Apart from their declining to play cards, this is the first they have spoken. I don’t ask how they know we are close enough—Rowan seems to agree so I take their words for it. I eagerly consume a sizeable portion of broth. Even hunger doesn’t make it good but it’s certainly more appreciated.
That night, we celebrate our progress so far. The seer agrees to play cards with us, and also partakes of Rowan’s homebrew Dizz. It doesn’t seem to affect them much, although they claim to enjoy it.
When the effects of the Dizz wear off, we begin to move again. The city has begun to take shape: its buildings reach too high, the sky above it is too cloudless, too bright a blue. It’s the Carrion city, and it will be crawling with mags, just as our stomachs hoped for.
#
The few of them that live near the outskirts are regular citizens and are too preoccupied with their own lives to bother us much. They either don’t recognise that we are different from them, or if they do, do not realise we are a threat. It will make hunting them easy.
I feel sorry for them. The next by Long Town where I usually hunt fights back.
But the hunt doesn’t need to start just yet. It wouldn’t be sensible to provoke now. We will make our way through the city to the other side, and there we will hunt, then leave this place behind.
We arrive at a mostly deserted park. I haven’t seen grass this shade of green in centuries. Or perhaps ever; the grass seems healthier than it should, like it’s been overfilled with life and it’s spewing it out at us, eager to be rid of the excess.
“How far?” I ask the seer.
“The city stretches continues for about ten miles in the direction we’re going. Afterwards, it’s about half the journey we’ve taken so far before we enter the Land of Corpses proper. From there, I don’t know. We might spend a long time looking for the Waker, or she might be there to greet us.”
Rowan nods. “We’re making good time. We also have enough food to spend a day or so here. I want to explore a bit before we go.”
“I don’t mind staying a day.” Rowan’s curiosity is infecting me.
I notice she is staring at something in the air. I follow her gaze to a lump dangling off the side of an apartment building. It’s red and fleshy, merging seamlessly with the concrete. It drips some kind of blood down onto the street below. Mags—mostly young ones—stand beneath it and let the liquid drench them, laughing and splashing each other. After a short while the dripping ceases and the lump, now shrivelled, repairs the hole beneath it.
Following Rowan, we approach the mags, now in some kind of giggly stupor. They pat the liquid around them, inviting us to join them. Rowan shakes her head. She puts on a pair of gloves, then takes out a few vials and a syringe. She fills each of the vials and disposes of the gloves immediately. She places the vials in a box filled with grass from our garden.
“Okay—” Rowan begins. She is shushed by one of the drenched Mags. A female with wide eyes.
“You’re going to tell the storyyy, huhh?” they say. They shake their head. “No, no. It’s my turn, my turn.” They whine and keep shaking until Rowan concedes that they may tell the story, at which point they burst into a fit of giggles. When those subside, the mag begins.
“Okay, ‘kay, so what story do you want to hear?” the other mags seem to be almost asleep and do not respond.
Rowan decides the onus of answering the question is hers and so she says: “Do you have any about the Waker?”
“Should we really be talking to them?” I ask. No-one is paying us much attention, but I doubt we’d blend in if we had to talk with a mag for too long.
“I don’t think they’re too guarded—”
“No! I will not speak of it? Whyy?” Their mouth hangs open, the raw flesh around their eyes twitches, frightened. I’m about to apologise but they shake their head. “The Waker—the fucking Waker of Gods—The Heathen Beacon! Corrupter of Wastes—she does not exist here. We do not accept her gifts as those wretched souls out there did.” The mag stares at Rowan then at me and it starts to sober. “You are one of hers, touched by her, given your life to the beasts she called. Out!”
The mag lethargically pushes itself to its feet, using its brethren as to support its slippery body. We do not wait for it to come after us.
#
It’s a day later and we’ve find ourselves on top of a hill overlooking a river. We set up the mobile dilution tank in the evening and let the shreds of maggot meat stew overnight. The mobile tank is less powerful, and we were unable to preserve their glands. Rowan used the fluid we found, and it revived them, though not as effectively as she hoped. She doesn’t understand the mechanism by which they process whatever the hell it is the Old Corpses give off, so her calculations weren’t accurate. That’s what she tells me.
It works well enough, though. The mag flesh should be (mostly) free of toxins. Or at least what’s toxic to us.
Us. Rowan is checking that the meat has been processed enough, and the seer is in their trance, although they’re doing it in our company this time. Who are we, exactly? The survivors from the old world, Rowan and I, although I hardly remember it. I don’t know what the seer is. Are they human? Are they old or young? They are a fellow resident of Long Town but separate from the others.
Of course, Rowan and I are separate too. Rowan is an engineer, one of the rare few who can understand this world, and I am an outcast. That it is by my own volition doesn’t change the fact.
I have been unable to stop thinking about what the mag said; that we are one of hers. I can guess at what it meant by that. They think about us the same way we think about them: they have been corrupted by the influence of the things she brought here, ruined and no longer human.
No-one—no thing—has been untouched by that influence, but least we have clung, desperately, to what humanity remains.
It’s not the first time I’ve wondered about mags. It’s the first time in a long while I’ve felt uneasy eating their flesh.
We have clung to our humanity haven’t we? I realise I haven’t thought about humanity for a long time—it’s been a triviality—and maybe it rotted away while I wasn’t looking. I don’t want to check.
But that’s why we’re doing this; we’re off slaying the thing that all-but took our humanity from us. Maybe this is about spite. That’s very human.
I look at Rowan. Of course, she’s human. She’s curious, joyous, and doesn’t give up. She’s often selfish, too, yet generous when the whim takes her. Her whims. Her whims are undeniably human.
“Are you looking at him?” Rowan asks, gesturing to a figure by the river. It’s a young man dragging a body to its edge. He looks exhausted. “Or just spacing out?”
“Just spacing out,” I say. I come over to sit by her and watch the young man. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s been dragging that body for a long while now. He came from the direction we’re heading.” She stands up. “I don’t know why though. Let’s go ask.”
I’m about to protest but considering I was just lauding her for her propensity to whim and curiosity, I go with her instead. The man sees us coming and lets go of the body. He’s covered in drying blood. He doesn’t run. I see as we get closer, he’s simply too tired to. He’s not quite starved, but he’s close: he’s lean and shivering.
He gives us a weak smile and a weaker wave. “Hello! Sorry to bother you strangers, but as you can tell I’m in a terrible state and still have the herculean task of hoisting this fellow over that river.” He points to both the body and the river as if we might have confused them with another body and river. “If you’d be so kind as to help me?”
“Sure,” Rowan says. “But I do have a lot of questions.” She grabs the bodies legs and I take the shoulders. I feel his warmth and this close I can see his slow, shallow breaths.
“I’ll do my best to answer them,” he says. He follows us as we shuffle down to the thinnest looking part of the river. It’s flowing faster than I would like it to. It doesn’t seem too dangerous, though.
“So, why?” Rowan asks.
“It’s a gift for my love. I’m not sure what he likes exactly, but I saw him drag a body into his home there.” He points to a large mound of dug up earth with a hole in the front which I hadn’t noticed before. “I do hope he likes it after all this.”
“It’s the thought that counts,” I say as I dip my hand into the water. It’s shallow enough for us to wade through, not quite fast enough to take us off our feet unless we slip. We should be able to do it if we’re careful. I relay this to Rowan, who agrees, and we proceed cautiously into the river.
“And who is this fellow, as you called him?” Rowan asks.
For once, the man hesitates to answer. When he does, he says: “He’s my brother. You have no reason to believe me, but he did try to murder me first.”
Rowan and I whisper to each other to coordinate our movements. The rocks in this river have been ground down and are more slippery than I expected. We decided we would move by keep at least three of our legs on the ground at any one time.
As we cross, the man goes on, “I confided in him about my love. I trusted him, I always trusted him, and he’d never judged me before. But why now? Why with the first person I’d ever felt true love for? If he had been uncomfortable or didn’t want to hear about it … I would have understood. I would have been hurt, but I would have understood.” The man stamps his foot, although in his state it’s not a very impressive display. “He said such hateful things! I can scarcely recall them without the rage of that night pouring back into me. Why, if you were not holding his body, and if it were not a gift for my love—and if I were not so weak I might soon seize up and fall over—if it were not for all that I would be furiously beating his treacherous body!”
We deposit the body on the opposite bank and return to help the panting man across. He’s frailer and lighter than his brother, and more cooperative on account of not being dead so the task is a lot easier.
“I can take it from here,” he says. “I must apologise for my outburst, especially after you’ve been so kind to me. I’m afraid there’s no way I can repay you now, but should you ever find yourself in the area again—or if our paths cross somewhere else—then know that I will do my utmost to show my gratitude.”
“Not necessary,” Rowan says. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. …?”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” he says (possibly to himself) dragging the body to the mound of Earth.
Rowan and I return to our campsite and watch. The man drags the body and waits. He waits a long time, collapsed on the ground. Nothing happens, so we get on with our meal, play our card games, but our eyes always wonder back. Even the seer, who has left their trance, joins in after we tell him what happened.
It’s only as we’re packing up do we see something: what at first looks like a person climbs out of the hole. “My love!” cries the distant voice of the man, his voice croaking. The thing which he cries to is not a human: it is a human body attached to a centipedal mass of legs, arms, and tendrils.
It heaves itself out of the hole after them, elongated limbs pawing at the air for something to latch onto, tendrils twitching in the pallid light of day. It curls around the man, obscuring him from our view. The human part leans down, it looks, to kiss the man who called it lover, although I can’t be sure.
After a while it uncurls, and carefully coordinates its many limbs to move the man to a newly formed groove behind the human part. It’s less careful with the brother; it drags that through the ground and is retreats back into the hole.
Then they’re gone and it’s like none of this happened. For us, at least.
“I think that’s a happy ending?” Rowan says.
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