Hurley's Heroes Collection 2015-2020, page 79
I have forgotten what language I am speaking in. “I know how dangerous it can be, to feel things. I came home one night, and Behati had killed herself. She was so full of sorrow over this war. I wish… I wish she’d done what you had. I wish she’d just left, joined the Enemy. She felt too much…too much…”
And I fall.
Afia tumbles next to me. The pack rests between us. I can hear her breathing, a phlegmy rasp that makes me shiver. She takes my hand. I look out past us, there, across the beaten down red grass. I can see the smoky glow of the globes from my regiment’s trenches, thirty yards distant.
“Afia,” I say. I squeeze her hand. Her hand feels so hot. “Afia, we’re here.”
The chorus beetles grow quiet. I hear the tread of footsteps across the grass. Some part of me expects to see an Enemy face.
“Runner?” says a woman’s voice.
I am home.
#
I dream that the last of the Enemy have been run into the sea. The sea is the color of smoky foam. There is no horizon line over the water, only an endless gray haze, a merging of sea and sky. The enemy bodies disturb only the water along a narrow shore, the thin perimeter of a vast body whose breadth is impossible to measure.
I walk along sand the bleached color of death. I see the enemy’s bloated bodies rolling in with the tide. I look into their mouths, and they are filled with dragonflies.
And then I walk further along the beach, and there are the rest of us. Just bodies. Bodies going on forever.
I hear Behati’s voice, “This is the way the world ends.”
#
I am pulled through a haze of successive dreams-and-wakings. They’re putting tubes into me, feeding me bugs; someone puts a pinch into me, tells me she’s curing me of red ague. Mazaa is yelling at me, something about an enemy.
“It’s Afia,” I say. “Afia is important. She’s an anomaly.”
And Mazaa spits coca leaves and curses at me and says something about how all the enemy are fucking anomaly’s and that’s why they will lose the fucking war.
When I wake again, the real waking, I see the little violet-gassed waif who first summoned me. She says I am needed on the line.
“Afia?” I say.
“The Enemy?” she says.
“Yes.”
She points across the med tent to a still, solitary figure in a low-slung hammock.
I roll out of my hammock. My leg bleeds pain. I limp over to Afia. Taking her hand is like holding a rotting melon. The tissue beneath the skin is rotting away. Her face is unrecognizable. Blue-black, the flesh beginning to liquefy.
“Afia,” I say.
Her lips move, and then, “You liar.” But she is not angry.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I want to squeeze her hand, but I know the flesh will spill open. She will dissolve before my eyes. We need another supply run. More antibodies, more meds, more time… more time… more hope.
“Let yourself…” Afia says, “feel it. Feel everything. When you don’t feel a war, don’t feel the loss, it just… it will go on forever. Witness it. Feel it. I do.”
“Nyala.” The waif is behind me. “The trench commander,” she says.
I walk up to the front line. Mazaa is there. She has her arms folded, waiting.
“Ready?” she says.
“For what?”
Dawn is breaking across the sky.
“You brought it. You should see it.” She gestures to the women behind the big rotating guns. They pour resin into the barrels.
“The CFR?” I say.
She nods.
“What else was in there?”
“Antibodies,” Mazaa says.
“For—"
“Thornbug pinches, yes,” Mazaa says.
“But, Afia—"
“I gave them to her,” Mazaa says.
I am struck dumb at this. “You—"
“You know how I inoculate myself from this war, Afia?” Mazaa says. “Every day I save one thing. A bug. A woman. An Enemy. Just one. Because when the day starts over, this all starts again. Day starts over, and we go again.”
Our filter winks out. The guns fire.
I watch two neat spherical bursts shoot out over the long swath of red grass between our trenches and that of the Enemy. The bursts are beautiful. They look transparent, like soap bubbles. But I know they are not colorless; they are full of color, painted in it, awash in it.
I hear the bursts pop.
The smell of lavender fills the air. I close my eyes. The Enemy cries out. I let myself feel what we’ve done.
The world is filled with dragonflies.
TUESDAY NIGHT DRUNK TWEETS WITH NYX
NYX @Nyx : 6 h
Somebody left a head on the porch this morning. Wasn’t even an important head.
NYX @Nyx : 5 h
I look like a sapper in these pants.
NYX @Nyx : 5 h
Any meeting with a bel dame where you come out alive is a good meeting.
NYX @Nyx : 5 h
Too much blood ruins a good sandwich.
NYX @Nyx : 4 h
Less work. More whisky.
NYX @Nyx : 4 h
Only Ras Tiegans think my jokes are funny. Fuck Ras Teigans.
NYX @Nyx : 3 h
Next time I say I’m doing it for the money, shoot me.
NYX @Nyx : 3 h
Interviewed for a new partner. She drinks too much.
NYX @Nyx : 3 h
Kill any bug bigger than a dog.
NYX @Nyx : 3 h
I should get days off for bad behavior.
NYX @Nyx : 2 h
I used to have a higher tolerance for third-degree burns.
NYX @Nyx : 2 h
Not joking.
NYX @Nyx : 2 h
Popped my left eye back in.
NYX @Nyx : 2 h
Fucking magicians. I mean, I’d fuck them. But also. Fuck em.
NYX @Nyx : 2 h
Anyway, don’t piss off women in Basra. You’ll thank me later.
NYX @Nyx : 1 h
Sisters set me up with a tax clerk. Ever explained blood debt to a TAX CLERK?
NYX @Nyx : 1 h
That could have gone better.
NYX @Nyx : 1 h
Where the fuck is my sword?
NYX @Nyx : 1 h
Don’t ask.
NYX @Nyx : 50 m
The tax clerk is pretty funny.
NYX @Nyx : 45 m
Everything looks better with the lights off.
NYX @Nyx : 40 m
Taught her how to blow up a city block.
NYX @Nyx : 40 m
Be cautious. Don’t brag. Get someone else to clean up. Bye.
NYX @Nyx : 37 m
Pill ticks, hoar ticks, yellow ticks, beetle ticks... Fucking ticks. Not fucking the ticks. Just, fuck the ticks. Fuuuuuck ticks.
NYX @Nyx : 30 m
Still early. Let's go cut something up.
NYX @Nyx : 36 m
Men need saving. Women need guns.
NYX @Nyx : 20 m
Staying alive is a lot of work.
NYX @Nyx : 15 m
Knife in the eye. Good way to end the night.
NYX @Nyx : 11 m
My life is a radio drama.
NYX @Nyx : 2 m
There are too many heads in this bag.
NYX @Nyx : 1 m
Shit is it me leaving the heads on the porch???
NYX @Nyx : 1 m
Oh shit it’s me. Goddammit.
THE VAULT OF MERCENARY CHILDREN
NEV KNEW HIS TIME in the valley was short when his neighbor’s spring calves all arrived stillborn.
His neighbor’s daughter knocked on Nev’s door hours after dark, shivering in her too-long coat. “Mama says it’s going bad, with the cows,” she said, and Nev put on his own coat and followed her into the chill evening. It was far too early for calves.
After a few brisk minutes of walking in silence, he heard the lowing of the cattle. The neighboring homestead was a mile distant, and when he arrived, he hopped the fence and sought out the pool of light from a flickering lantern. His neighbor knelt in the long grass, cradling a calf, arms and face smeared in blood and birthing fluid.
Nev lifted his own lantern high, and saw more dead calves strewn across the field, at least a dozen, by his count. Their distressed mothers ambled about. Some continued to lick their dead, instinct still driving them over good sense.
His neighbor raised her face to him, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. Neither of them said a word. Nev set his lantern next to hers and took her face in his hands and pressed his forward against hers. Her tears fell, then.
“They’ll come,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“They’ll question anyone who wasn’t born in the valley.”
“Let me help you.”
“It’s too late. I didn’t realize it was…going to be this bad. We’ll burn them. You should go. They will want someone to blame. It’s a terrible portent.”
Nev released her and took up his lantern. He began the long walk back across the field, but his neighbor’s daughter ran after, crying. “Don’t leave!” she said. “Mama said you could help! Please don’t leave us!”
Nev hesitated. He waited for the child to catch up, then bent over her. “It’s too far gone for me to help,” he said. He brushed the tears from her cheeks. “Some bad people are coming. Stay close to your mother. Stay safe.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be all right,” he said. “You do me a favor, please? You watch after your Mama for me. You be strong.”
He tightened his grip on the lantern and kept walking. The child wailed behind him. Nev climbed back over the fence. He wanted to look back. Wanted it desperately. But he knew from long experience that looking back didn’t make things better. It made it worse.
#
It was during an especially cold summer day that Nev went in search of a new body.
Nev had endeavored to forget everything that came before this body, this moment. It was the only way to go forward. He measured the time in weather and seasons. How many corpses came down the river three springs ago? How many dry summer days did he have to haul water? When was the last frost?
He enjoyed these ways to measure time. Unlike his various string of bodies, the seasons were predictable. He could count on them. It was a comfort.
Exhausted with the river, Nev went into the bustling little town three days’ walk from the cave he had called home for the last several seasons. The villagers had largely ignored him, as he bore the body of weary, non-descript middle-aged man who looked and sounded like them. He provided no favors. Made no friends. They could not accuse him of being a witch, or worse. He professed to being a religious hermit, begging in town for sustenance during the worst times, keeping to himself the rest of his long days. For a time, he had a dog, but it drew too much attention with its barking and foraging in local hen houses, and he had been both devastated and relieved when the dog no longer came to visit him. Perhaps it had found a better home with a better master.
His first indication that something was amiss in town was the silence. Children usually played in the river running along the road, even on the coolest summer days, and their dogs and llamas and more adventurous friends would often follow him for a few paces. Even as he came to the town marker, he had yet to see or hear any living thing. The ground here and on the track to the west was churned up by heavy foot traffic. A shiver went up his spine. He hesitated, wondering if he should turn back immediately and simply move on, as he had always moved on when danger approached. But his belly was empty, and his body had acquired a terrible rot in the sole of the left foot that would soon cripple and then kill him. He needed a new body.
He heard the wailing some time later, as he came down the steep path leading into the valley that sheltered the village. The village lay nestled against the edge of a clear mountain lake with staggering views of the mountain range he called the Western Edge, though he supposed it was no longer at the western edge of anything, and its name had likely changed many times. Villagers wandered around below as if dazed, some stunned.
Nev tread carefully, keeping his head bowed and using his walking stick, shoulders hunched to make himself look as unthreatening as possible.
Several young people wept on their front stoops. He passed the village temple, where a dozen injured villagers, mostly women, shouted at the village headwoman.
Nev came along the edge of the crowd and asked the older woman beside him, “What’s happened?”
“They’ve taken the children!” she said, voice hoarse. “Why are the gods not satiated? It’s too much! They’ve taken the children!”
“Who took them?” Nev asked.
“Who else”? she said. Her eyes were damp. “They took every one of them. Far more than the tithe. So many more. All going to the Vault.”
The injured gathered on the village green. An old man wailed. They had no doubt foolishly tried to protect their children, to beg the soldiers to spare their child. Nev had seen dozens of these raids over many generations, but he had never seen one take so many children in a single day. Why did the guild, or the syndicate, or whatever empire was in charge this generation - need to take so many to the vault?
It’s not your business, Nev reminded himself. Tragedies like this also meant he should move on, and quickly. Villages that befell tragedies were always looking for someone to blame, and it was the nature of what he was that he was inevitably the outsider best suited to carrying it.
Nev circled the village proper, looking for bodies, for the dead or near-dead, but found none. He was on the verge of giving up and going back down river, hoping perhaps the raiders would cast off a child, when he saw a man slumped over on a large rock, facing the lake. His arms lay in this lap, as if he cradled something precious there.
As Nev neared, his hope dwindled. The man’s body still heaved with breath. Nev sighed. If nothing else, he could offer aid.
Nev came around the hulking form of the man. His shaggy head was tilted upward, gazing across the lake at the ring of low mountains that cradled it. Snow still dusted the highest peaks. The man turned his glassy black gaze to Nev.
“I have a child,” the man said, “a grandchild, taken by the Syndicate.” Nev caught the stink of a perforated bowel. The man was cradling his own stinking guts in his lap.
“To the Vault?”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry,” Nev said.
The man turned again to the mountains. Gut wounds could take a long time to kill a body. But he could wait. The man was far from the others. He had gotten a long way before being struck down. Blood oozed from the raw wound. Perhaps they had cut something vital after all. That was a kindness.
“Bastards,” the man said. “They’ve taken more than their due this year. Why?”
“War, perhaps,” Nev said. “Wars need bodies.”
“Damn them to the eight hells,” the man muttered, and wiped at his eyes. “Sit with me. It’s getting dark.”
It was not yet noon, but Nev knew what he meant. He had felt the encroaching darkness many times as his soul began to come loose from his body.
Nev settled next to the man, taking stock of the body. The man was probably in his fifties, but still hale and muscular, clearly a body that toiled year over year, but rarely struggled to feed itself. A black snarl of a beard, broad cheeks, and a strong jaw. A body that had fought instead of cowering when the soldiers came for the children.
“What is your name?” Nev asked.
“Carlov das Tani,” he said. His breath shuddered. “I don’t want to die alone. It’s why I left the valley, the wars.”
“You are not alone,” Nev said.
Nev waited as the sun bathed their faces, warming him even as Carlov shivered. It was very close now. Nev unsheathed the sharp little knife he always kept with him. He had bled himself out all manner of ways before, but he found the femoral artery one of the easiest. He could sit while the blood pooled around him, without experiencing the gory gush of it pumping all over his chest.
Carlov let out a little sigh. His gaze dimmed. His soul slipped away. His grip on his guts relaxed.
Nev slipped the blade of his knife into his own femoral artery, the left bony leg; an easy thing to do, with his many generations of practice. He hummed a little as he bled out, contentedly pressed against the body. He removed his gloves and took the body’s hand, ensuring the contact he needed to make the jump. Few of his jumps had ever felt so companionly.
“Father?”
A jolt of adrenaline pulsed through Nev’s body. He turned, but the sudden motion made him dizzy. Darkness ate at the edges of his vision. Her caught the form of a stout, wild-haired woman struggling over the boulders toward him.
Oh no, Nev thought. He sagged weakly against the man next to him. Oh, shit.
“Father!”
Nev’s soul left his body. He jumped.
#
Consciousness buzzed. A burst of awareness. Breathe.
Nev gasped. The body around him spasmed. He heaved forward, propelled by the weight of his new body, and vomited on the stones of the lakebed. His guts slopped onto the ground. His fingers felt heavy, far too clumsy to work, but he took hold of the intestines and some organ he could not name and shoved them back into the body’s gaping torso. The flesh around the wound bubbled and hissed. He vomited again, and his bowels let loose. He lay coughing and spitting on the gravel, waiting for his second wind as his guts sloshed and gurgled and resettled into his rapidly mending body.
