Immobility

16

THE MAN ON THE OTHER SIDE of the door could have been his double. His skin was exceptionally pale, almost the color of bleached bone. His head was hairless, even the eyebrows missing, and from what Horkai could see—forearms, hands—the rest of his body appeared to be hairless as well. His features, though not identical to Horkai’s, were not dissimilar either, and they were roughly the same height. The man was wearing a long tunic, belted at the waist, a pair of worn leather boots below that. Horkai was too surprised to do anything but stare.

The man smiled. “Ah, brother,” he said. “You’ve come home at last.”

He lowered his extended hand in Horkai’s direction, but Horkai pushed it away. “Can’t stand,” he said. “Fell off something a few days ago and must have broken my spine.”

“No need to worry, brother,” said the man. “Time heals all wounds.”

“How long since I saw you?” asked Horkai. “Do I know you?”

“You haven’t seen me, brother,” said the man. “I was speaking metaphorically. I do not need to know you to recognize that you are my brother. Look at you and then look at me, and then tell me if you dare that we are not brothers.”

Horkai slowly pulled himself over the threshold of the door and inside, the man stepping a little to one side to let him enter. On the other side was a small office, four desks in all. On the wall were the door controls and a small screen showing what the camera was seeing just outside the door. A track pad for moving the camera was beside it. The office itself was lit by a battery of long-stalked LED bundles making up a lamp in the middle of the floor. It gave the room a stark and unearthly pale glow. The lamp, Horkai saw, had a hand crank to charge it. On the far side of the room was the opening of another hall.

“You look exhausted,” said the man.

“I am,” said Horkai.

“You’re lucky I thought I heard something,” said the man. “If I hadn’t and you hadn’t moved into the camera’s range when you did, I wouldn’t have checked again until morning.”

The man pulled the door closed by a handle on the inside, then used the wall switch to trigger the door lock.

He came back over to stand above Horkai, shaking his head.

“No, no, no,” he said. “It just won’t do. But if I’m not mistaken.” And then, lifting a finger, he turned on his heel. He plucked at one of the light bundles in the lamp and it came free, battery and all, the end of the bundle still glowing. He walked briskly across the office and down the hall on the other end. This, Horkai glimpsed briefly in the light cast by this makeshift flashlight, was lined with row upon row of metal cabinets. He watched the light slowly fade down the hall until it was gone.

Horkai pulled himself over to a chair and then, with great effort, managed to climb into it without tipping it over. From there, he regarded the room. On each desk was an old computer covered in plastic, the plastic dusty enough that it was clear it had been years since any of the computers had been used. He opened the drawers of the desk he was sitting at, found them empty except for a nub of pencil, its tip broken off, and a key chain with no keys on it. The key chain had a representation of a golden figure blowing a trumpet on it, the words FLIRT TO CONVERT etched below.

Flirt to convert what? he thought. What could it possibly mean? The golden figure above the words made him wonder if he’d stumbled upon a relic from some sort of alchemical cult, a Midas cult interested in converting flesh into gold. But that was crazy, wasn’t it? And why flirt?

And this place, he wondered, looking around, what was it before? Storage of some kind obviously, but for what?

He heard a distant clattering noise and a moment later saw light bobbing up the corridor and toward him. The man was pushing something in front of him that gradually resolved from the darkness to become a wheelchair.

“I thought we had one, and I was right,” the man said, resocketing the bundle in the lamp. “It’s just been sitting back there in storage, but now it has come in handy. Shall we?”

He helped Horkai slide out of the chair and into the wheelchair, making little encouraging but inane comments the whole while. When he realized Horkai was looking at him strangely, he apologized.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had anyone to talk to.”

Horkai nodded.

“Now you’ll be able to move around on your own power,” the man said. “Or I can push you if you’d rather. Maybe a little bit of both?” The man stopped speaking, narrowed his eyes. “By the way,” he said, “how did you manage to get here? Surely you didn’t crawl the whole way?”

“Of course not,” said Horkai quickly. “I had a wheelchair,” he said, “but it broke down.”

“Where?”

“Not far from here. Maybe a quarter mile back.”

“You’re still on miles, are you? We thought the ones left alive might have switched to metric by now. Apparently not. I’ll go fetch your other wheelchair in the morning,” he said, “see if it can’t be fixed. Must have been hard going, considering the condition of the roads. I’m surprised you could make it at all. Did you see my plants, by the way?”

Horkai nodded.

“How are they doing?” the man asked. “But excuse me,” he said, “we haven’t been introduced. Mahonri, same spelling as the prophet, the one who saw the finger of God. And you are?”

“Josef Horkai,” said Horkai.

Mahonri gave him a bemused look. “Strange name,” he said. “Who are you named after?”

“I don’t know,” said Horkai. “I’m not sure I’m named after anyone.”

“That’s odd,” said Mahonri. “Here, all of us are named after someone from the Scriptures. You look like us: why aren’t you? Shall I give you a new name?”

“You asked earlier about your plants,” said Horkai. “They’re fine.”

“Splendid,” said Mahonri. “I’m glad to hear it. Best effort so far: they’re still alive.”

“The others have died?”

“Of course,” said Mahonri. “These will die as well, it’s inevitable, but they’re doing better than the last batch. Of course I cheated a little: I started growing them inside.”

“Why do you plant them if you know they’re going to die?”

“Because someday they won’t die,” said Mahonri. “And to measure how safe it is outside. It’s getting safer for humans. A little safer all the time,” he said. “But I’m forgetting my manners,” he added. “You don’t want to stay out here in the office all night, do you? Shall we go somewhere more comfortable?”

Without waiting for an answer, he plucked another light bundle from the lamp and started back down the hall. Horkai fumbled getting the wheelchair turned around and maneuvering it through the desks, but after a moment was following him down into the hall.

Only it wasn’t a hall exactly, he realized once he was in it. It was a vault: crossing through the door, he could see rows of cabinets stretching to either side of him, dozens of rows, maybe more. The one Mahonri took him down was just big enough for his wheelchair; he kept clipping the handles of the lower cabinets, which were hard to see in the near dark. The row seemed to go on for dozens and dozens of yards. He hurried as quickly as he could, trying to catch up.

But Mahonri had stopped, was waiting for him, weirdly lit by the makeshift flashlight he was carrying.

“Incidentally,” he said, “how did you know to come here? Did one of us recruit you?”

“I didn’t know,” said Horkai, realizing he was out of breath. “I just saw that someone had started painting the street signs again and decided to find out who.”

“That was me,” said Mahonri proudly.

“And then I saw from the road the arch of one of the openings. “It seemed as good a place as any to go for shelter. It was just luck that brought me.”

“It wasn’t luck,” said Mahonri. “It was God. Look at you. You are our brother, you belong here. God led you here to help us do His work.”

Not knowing what to say, Horkai said nothing, trying keep his face as neutral as possible. This seemed to be enough for Mahonri for the time being; he gave a curt smile and turned on his heel, starting down the row again.

They came to a break in the row, a cross-passage that would allow movement to another row. They crossed the break, continued straight on.

“What is in these?” asked Horkai, more as a way to slow Mahonri down than out of any real curiosity.

“Records,” said Mahonri. He stopped, turned around. “What we have here is the history of the human race, a record of births and deaths for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

“Why?” asked Horkai.

“What do you mean, why?” Mahonri responded. “Humanity is important. All these things must be preserved so that, when the time comes, humanity shall know what it has been, is, and will be.”

“When the time comes for what?”

“When the time comes for humanity to return.”

“Return from where?” asked Horkai.

“From extinction,” said Mahonri. “We’re here with the sacred calling of watching over the records, of preserving them and keeping them safe. And now you are here to join us.”

“Just records?” asked Horkai, thinking, How can anything come back from extinction?

“Excuse me?”

“What about the gardening you’ve been doing? Or is that on your own time?”

“No…,” said Mahonri, dragging the word out long. “That’s part of it, too. We’re much more than clerks. We’re keepers.” He gave a guileless smile. “Would you like the tour?” he asked.

Horkai hesitated, then nodded.

Mahonri set off again, continuing straight ahead. Horkai banged the wheelchair along the cabinets, trying to keep up.

They came to another break in the row, and this time Mahonri turned right. Horkai followed him past aisle after aisle, until they hit a wall. Here, they turned left.

“This all was meant for records, too,” the man said, his voice deadened by the closeness of the cabinets. “But it became clear we needed the space for other things.”

The cabinets abruptly ended, the final one mangled and only half there. Mahonri touched a switch, and an LED bulb came on overhead to reveal an open space a little over two hundred feet square, bound by granite walls on two sides. Filling it were eight man-sized storage tanks arranged like the spokes of a wheel. Six were currently iced and buzzing. Around these were a series of sixteen smaller titanium cylinders, each about three feet in diameter and three feet tall. Only four were iced.

“Power was the hardest thing,” said Mahonri. “At first there was an emergency generator we could use, but we rapidly ran out of fuel. So, we converted to solar cells. You saw them in the parking lot, no doubt. They’re all over the far side of the mountain as well, thousands of panels. Even with that, we still have to keep most of the lights off, and we can never use all the storage pods at once.” He looked around him, gestured to the pods. “Lehi’s in the one closest to us, followed clockwise by Zarahemla, Teancum, Helaman, Enos, and Jonas. Originally we thought we’d save the tanks for humans, freeze them and use them to start over with later, but we couldn’t manage to get any back here without them dying.”

“But aren’t you human?” asked Horkai.

“Of course not,” Mahonri said. “And you’re not either. If you were still human, you’d be dead by now.”

“If we’re not human, what are we?”

“Lots of theological debate over that one,” said Mahonri. “You can look at the commentary if you’d like, the notes that each of us makes when the others are asleep—our thoughts on our callings, our religious musings. The Scriptures aren’t clear about it. Helaman believes we’ve had our actual bodies taken away from us, replaced temporarily by organic machines that are neither hurt nor affected by what destroys an ordinary body. Jonas believes that God works by natural means and that he’s allowed us to be infected by a polyextremophilic bacterium, some sort of Deinococcus, say, or perhaps by a variety of bacteria, and that this has given us our resistance.”

“Dino-what?”

“Teancum wonders if we’re becoming transfigured beings,” said Mahonri, ignoring him. “Translated by the finger of God from mortals to immortals. The fact that our bodies seem exceptionally resilient seems to support this, though the fact that we seem also to continue to age, albeit somewhat slower than humans, does not. Enos has been very compelling with his arguments for why we’re not human, but seems to have no thoughts on what we actually are.”

“And you, what do you think?”

“Me?” said Mahonri. “I think we’re the guardian angels of the human race,” he said. “We know our calling and we strive to fulfill it. The specifics don’t matter much. That’s enough for me.” He turned and pointed at the storage pods. “I occupy one of the two remaining pods when one of the others wakes up. You can use the other.”

“Why would I want to use the other?”

“You can’t stay awake all the time,” said Mahonri. “You wouldn’t last long enough if you did. If we’re going to be any use at all, we have to stay alive until it’s safe for humans outside. We’ll add more solar panels somehow and work you into the rotation. Instead of being awake for one month and asleep for six, we’ll now be able to be awake for one month and asleep for seven. Thanks to you, we’ll be alive for eight lifetimes instead of seven.”

“Hold on just a…” Horkai started, but Mahonri had already turned away, was approaching one of the nonfrosted titanium cylinders.

“Plants,” he said. “Seeds. They’ve all suffered at least slight exposure, but they’re resilient. Some might grow. Indeed, as you’ve seen, some have.” He walked over to one of the noniced titanium cylinders and opened it, beckoning Horkai forward. Horkai rolled up until he was beside it, used the arms of the wheelchair to lift himself and peer in.

There was a series of square plastic baskets inside, stacked on top of one another. Each was full of clear glass bottles, and each of these in turn was filled with seeds, all kinds, all varieties, each bottle carefully labeled.

“Don’t need to freeze these,” said Mahonri. “Just keep them dry and protected. Though we have a few frozen as well just in case. You can plant a seed that’s three thousand years old, and if it’s been kept in the right conditions chances are it’ll grow. Every once in a while when I wake up, I plant a few, just three or four, not enough to make a dent, not enough that they’ll be missed. Usually they don’t do much, but as you saw, the last batch is still alive. If this one is still alive when it’s time for me to go into storage, I’ll leave a note for the person who comes next.”

He closed the cylinder, turned back to Horkai.

“Don’t worry,” he said, patting Horkai on the shoulder. “I’ll go over it in more detail before I go into storage. I’ll write down what’s important, what you need to know.

“And now…,” he said, turning away, his voice trailing off. He took a pair of cryogenic gloves from where they hung on a hook on the wall and slipped into them. He removed a pair of tongs from its hook as well. He pressed a button on one of the iced cylinders. The lights flickered briefly, then came on a little stronger. The green light on the side of the cylinder went amber, then red.

“After a few moments an alarm sounds,” said Mahonri, “so we’ll have to be quick.” He had worked his hands deeper into the gloves and used them now to force open the cylinder’s lid. “The alarm is meant to attract whichever one of us is awake. If that individual doesn’t respond quickly enough, then it starts waking us up, one by one.”

He reached into the cylinder with the tongs, carefully slid out a small metal cylinder, held it near to Horkai’s face. Horkai could feel the cold radiating off it. No red letters on it. “Metal on the outside to protect it from external contamination, glass core inside. I can’t show it to you. The sample itself has been coated with cryoprotectants: glycols and DMSO. Should protect the sample for almost a millennium.”

“The sample?”

Mahonri looked at him quizzically. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you were following me. I thought we were on the same page.”

“And what page is that?” asked Horkai, his voice flat.

“You’ve seen the plants already,” said Mahonri. “The seeds. These are the animals: fertilized embryos, thousands of them, from every kind of animal they could get hold of. This is the ark. What we’re living through now,” he said, gesturing at the walls, “is a modern-day equivalent of the Flood.”

“If I remember my Bible, God promised there’d never be another Flood,” said Horkai dryly.

Mahonri quickly backpedaled. “Metaphorically, I mean. And technically there’s no water. So we can still call it a flood—metaphorically—and yet still understand that God hasn’t broken his promise to us.”

The alarm had begun to sound, a piercing noise that made Horkai’s eardrums throb. Mahonri quickly reinserted the cylinder, closed the vat, and started the cylinder up again. The alarm stopped.

“There you have it,” said Mahonri, hanging the tongs back up and beginning to take off his gloves. “Welcome aboard. That’s all, really, that there is to see.”

“So you have everything ready for when it’s safe for humans again?”

“Yes,” said Mahonri.

“All the other cylinders are the same?” asked Horkai.

“Well,” he admitted, “not all. There are two that you’re never to touch.”

“Which are those?”

Mahonri’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know?” he asked.

“If I don’t know,” said Horkai, “how can I know to avoid them?”

He watched Mahonri turn the statement around in his head until finally his eyes relaxed and he smiled. “You have a point,” he said. He led Horkai to the side closest to the wall and pointed to two of the frozen storage tanks. From the outside, they looked absolutely identical to the rest. Through the lid of one, Horkai saw only a craquelure of ice, opaque, impossible to see through, impossible to glimpse what was inside.

“What’s inside?” he asked.

Mahonri shook his head. “It’s not for me to say,” he said. “There’s much you have to learn first. In time you’ll be told.”

And Horkai, not knowing exactly how to respond to this and unable to think of a way to insist, finally simply accepted this explanation and nodded.

THEY FOLLOWED THE BACK WALL this time, passing the end of each row of cabinets, until they came to another opening. It led onto what was less a hall than a tunnel, the walls rounded rather than squared off, the stone itself unpolished. The wheelchair had some difficulty, and in the end Mahonri grew tired of waiting for him and started pushing him.

How long they traveled down the tunnel Horkai couldn’t say. It couldn’t have been long, really, perhaps no more than a hundred feet or so. In the end and very suddenly it opened out, spreading into what at first seemed a cavern until Mahonri raised his light and Horkai saw that this, too, was man-made, could see the grooves where the rock had been chiseled and blasted away.

The floor of most of the chamber was covered with water, and Horkai could hear the sound of dripping. He could not see a river or a stream; the water instead seemed to seep in through the rock walls, which were glistening with it.

“It filters in,” said Mahonri, noticing Horkai was staring. He fingered the edge of his garment. “It’s quite pure by the time it reaches us,” he said.

Near the edge of the water was a little makeshift building, made by balancing sheets of corrugated tin against one another, drilling a few well-placed holes in them and binding them together with wire. A stone bench sat just in front of it, the water lapping at its base.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” said Mahonri, and bowed.

The front of the shack was open, no wall there at all. Inside the shelter was a cot, an uneasy swirl of blankets on it. Three folding chairs were stacked against the back wall, and on the floor at the head of the bed was another LED lamp. Beside the folding chairs were a dozen or so boxes, in two stacks that almost reached the ceiling.

“Homey,” said Horkai.

“I like it,” said Mahonri. He pulled up one of the folding chairs and snapped it open. “Some of the others sleep in the archive itself, but I prefer to be here, by the water. One of us will have to sleep on the floor,” he said. “Shall it be me tonight? Then you can take tomorrow night, and after that we’ll just alternate until you know the system well enough that I can be stored.”

“Okay,” said Horkai.

“Are you hungry?” Mahonri asked.

Am I? He hadn’t thought about it until now, but yes, he did have to admit that he was not only hungry but starving even. He nodded.

Mahonri opened the top box and reached into it. He came out with two packets. He tore these open and then made his way to the underground lake, filling each of them with water.

“It’ll be just a minute,” he said when he came back and set the packets on the floor. “Which gives us just enough time to pray. Would you like to do the honors or shall I?”

“Uh, you?” said Horkai, caught off guard.

Mahonri folded his arms and bowed his head. He closed his eyes and then began to pray. “Heavenly Father,” Horkai heard, sitting there with his arms on his knees and his head unbowed. “We thank thee for bringing our brother home to help us with our work…” and by that time Horkai was no longer listening, his mind wandering instead, his thoughts only making their way when he heard Mahonri say, “In the name of thy beloved son, Amen.”

Mahonri opened his eyes and rubbed his hands. “If you don’t like the flavor you get, we’ll open you another one,” he said. He pointed to the boxes. “We’ve got plenty.”

When he handed the packet over to Horkai, its contents had become a thick, gummy paste. It didn’t taste like anything. He ate it anyway, sitting in his wheelchair, spooning it into his mouth with his fingers, occasionally exchanging glances with Mahonri, trying to make sense of him.

AFTER DINNER, MAHONRI UNBUCKLED his boots and began to talk. “I don’t get the chance very often,” he said. “Not to talk to anyone but myself, anyway. After a while it makes a person a little crazy. It’s nice to have someone else here.”

“I can understand that,” said Horkai.

“What did you do before?” asked Mahonri.

“This and that,” said Horkai evasively.

“I sold cars,” said Mahonri. “Lived in Murray but had a used lot over in West Valley City. Well, it wasn’t my lot exactly, but I worked there.”

“Where were you when it happened?”

“At home with my wife and child. We immediately went down to the basement and waited. But it didn’t do much good. A few hours later, they were covered with sores. A few days after that, they were dead.”

“But not you.”

“Not me,” he said. “Hardly seems fair, does it, but the Lord had work remaining for me here.”

“Watching over the records,” said Horkai.

“Yes,” said Mahonri. “I’m a keeper. As are you now. We are here to preserve things, to help humanity start over again, once it’s safe.”

“But how do you know things should start over?” asked Horkai. “Maybe it’s time for things to come to an end.”

“You have doubts, brother,” said Mahonri. “It is very difficult to have no doubts, to have faith instead. Faith is the more courageous path.”

“Is it?” said Horkai. “Is it really?”

Mahonri ignored him. “It is all written in the Scriptures,” said Mahonri, “if you know where to look. The wicked of the earth will be destroyed by war, death, pestilence, and disease, and only then will Christ return and live among us. And then, for a thousand years, there will be no war and the earth shall be changed so that it is again like unto the garden of Eden. There shall be no disease and there shall be an increase in understanding. Satan will have no power over the people, and the righteous shall reign. Has this happened yet? No? Then the world must needs continue until the Second Coming shall arrive.”

“You really believe that?”

“I do,” said Mahonri, and gave Horkai a steady look. “I know that something touched me and transfigured me so that I might survive where others died. The same is true for you as well, brother. Why would you be alive now were it not for the hand of God?”

Horkai shrugged. “It could be anything. It doesn’t have to mean something.”

“For instance,” said Mahonri.

“For instance, bad luck,” said Horkai. “What’s more terrible than living when everyone else around you dies?”

Mahonri fell silent, his face suddenly looking remarkably old. “It is a hard path,” he finally admitted. “But we would not have been chosen were we not worthy of it. What were you before?” he asked. “What has become of you to make you think this way?”

“I don’t know,” said Horkai, suddenly tired of lying. “I can’t remember much about my earlier life.”

“But surely you must have been pure in heart,” said Mahonri. “Were you not, you would have perished.”

“Stop talking like that,” said Horkai. “Stop talking like you’re quoting Scripture. You yourself said that we might have survived due to being infected by bacteria.”

Mahonri shook his head. “I did not say this,” he said. “Jonas wrote it speculatively in the commentary. I merely reported it. And who is to say that God does not operate through natural means? Even if it is a question of infection, could not God have had a hand in it? Could it not be God who infected us?”

They lapsed into silence. The problem with faith, thought Horkai, is that there’s no arguing with it. Same problem, he admitted to himself, with lack of faith.

“Am I sure I can trust you?” asked Mahonri, half musing to himself. “Do you have sufficient faith to join us?”

“Let’s talk about it in the morning,” said Horkai.

17

HE DROPPED OFF ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, falling into a deep sleep almost as soon as Mahonri lifted him off the wheelchair and put him in the cot. He woke up hours later in an utterly pitch-dark room, with no idea where he was. He was filled with panic that he was unconscious again, frozen, deep in storage, but muddled desperately through that to a memory of Mahonri sitting on the floor beside the cot as his eyes closed, reading the Scriptures to himself, half-aloud. Either he was still in Granite Mountain or he’d managed to escape into a dream again. In either case, he lay there, shivering in a cold sweat, his heart beating very fast, the blood pounding in his ears, until at last, little by little, he began to calm down.

He started trying to picture the room in his head, reached out to one side to touch the tin wall beside the bed, adjusting his image of the room accordingly. Mahonri must be here, he realized, lying somewhere beside his bed. He held his breath and listened, heard at last the muffled sound of the other man’s breathing.

What now? he wondered.

It was the first time since he’d begun the journey that he’d had a chance to relax, slow down, think. He imagined Qatik and Qanik still hiding, huddled against the side of the mountain, waiting for him, slowly dying. Or perhaps quickly dying. Or perhaps already dead. What did he owe them exactly? They weren’t like him—were, if Mahonri was to be believed, almost another species. He couldn’t remember enough about who he was or what his life had been like before the Kollaps to know what he owed them, or owed Rasmus, or owed anyone, for that matter. Had he been, as Mahonri suggested, “pure in heart”? Was that why he’d been singled out, as it were, touched by the so-called finger of God? Not likely, he thought, remembering how he had almost strangled the technician who had awakened him—almost without meaning to, on impulse. No, the last thing he’d been was pure in heart, he was convinced of that.

But what was he now? Was it better that he couldn’t remember what he had been before? A fixer, Rasmus had called him, but what did that mean exactly? Someone called upon when nobody else could solve a problem and willing to proceed by any means necessary. Definitely not pure in heart.

But how did he know that Rasmus was telling the truth? Maybe he hadn’t been a fixer at all but simply an ordinary man living an ordinary life: a bank clerk or a high school teacher. Even Rasmus had couched everything he told him in doubt—my father told me and if I get a few of the details wrong, it’s because I have them secondhand—almost as if he expected from the first not to be believed.

He lay staring into the dark, seeing nothing. Whom should he listen to? Whom should he trust? Rasmus, with his hive? The whole structure seemed clearly a sort of mystification, a way of manipulating others for some purpose that Horkai himself couldn’t quite see. Was Rasmus the one doing the manipulating, or was he himself manipulated as well? And if so, by whom or what?

He took a deep breath. Too many questions, too few answers. What he did know was that from the beginning Rasmus had not been honest with him, was clearly holding something back. The little he’d been able to get out of the mules didn’t tell him much, just confirmed that something was wrong, that he hadn’t been told the truth and that maybe they hadn’t been either.

But why was Mahonri to be believed instead? A group of seven transfigured men, if they were still men, living deep in a hole within the side of a mountain, guarding what must be millions of records as well as the contemporary equivalent of the ark. And believing that they were acting out God’s will, having manipulated Christianity to fit changing conditions. Mahonri was obviously deranged. How could he be trusted? He’d been brainwashed, was clearly a little addled from so much time spent alone. Finger of God, Horkai thought. Not fucking likely. More like the finger of the Devil. Or, even worse, no finger at all.

So whom did that leave for him to trust?

Nobody. Not even himself, since he had no idea who he really was.

What now? he wondered, and stared up into the dark. Vague shapes were beginning to move across his vision now, vague flashes of light that stuttered back and forth, the result of the effort of his brain to see something when it was too dark to see anything at all.

What were his choices?

He could go off on his own, but without legs he wouldn’t get far. Plus there was the disease to consider, the reason he had been frozen in the first place. If that was in fact real and not one lie among many, then there was something to be said for sticking with the people who claimed they were trying to find a cure.

He could stay here with a group of religious fanatics whose only redeeming quality was that they seemed to be suffering from the same physical condition as he, and live largely in storage, allowing himself to be thawed one month out of every eight and participate in the reinstitution of the human race. Something he wasn’t exactly sure was a good idea.

Or, finally, he could do as Rasmus and his community had asked, collect a cylinder with red characters on it, whatever secret or special seed it contained, and bring it back.

The first two were dead ends and would get him nowhere. The last was a wild card: something might come of it or maybe nothing. But it wasn’t immediately a dead end. Would he ever get answers? Maybe. Would he ever know the whole truth? Probably not. But he had to try.

Which was why, almost without realizing, Horkai had pulled his dead leg toward him with both hands and was now forcing his hand into his boot, groping for his knife.

18

THE DARKNESS WAS CRACKLING with light now, all of it imagined, his optic nerve helplessly convulsing over and over. He reached to the side and touched the wall, tried to imagine himself hovering near the ceiling and staring down at the room from above. There he was, on his cot, and there, behind him, against the other wall, the boxes of dried food. But where was Mahonri? He’d been asleep himself before Mahonri had even lain down. The man could be anywhere.

He rolled very carefully over onto his side, orienting himself as well as he could toward the sound of the man’s breathing. He lifted his head, then propped himself up on an elbow. The cot creaked underneath him and he froze, stayed there half-raised, listening. But the breathing didn’t seem to have changed.

He placed the knife on the cot just beside him, against his belly. Very slowly he reached out, waving his fingers through the air. They met no resistance. He extended his hand a little farther, did it again. Still nothing. And again, his hand a little more tentative this time, expecting to touch something. Still nothing. He leaned out and down a little, the cot creaking, and extended his arm farther, and this time, halfway along his arc, he brushed something.

It took him a moment to realize it was fabric, a moment more to decide it was the man’s tunic. He drew his hand back just a little, moved it back along its arc, stretching a few inches farther. This time he touched something soft and cloudlike that he thought at first was a blanket, then prodded it enough for it to be clear it was a pillow. He stretched farther, lifting his hand, very careful now, and brushed flesh.

He stopped, hesitated, but the breathing hadn’t changed. He moved his hand again, inch by inch, until he brushed flesh again and pulled back slightly, then moved it over again, just a little, just a little, until at last he felt the man’s breath against the palm of his hand.

He moved the hand down a little, near where he expected the throat to be. He held his hand like that, the muscles in his shoulder starting to tighten uncomfortably as he tried to fix in his mind exactly how far his hand was stretched, where it was exactly. And then, quickly, he drew the hand back long enough to grab the knife.

He lashed out, felt the blade cut, pass through something. Mahonri made a gagging sound and then screamed, his words lost in a fit of choking. Horkai stabbed into the dark again, connected with something, and Mahonri was flailing, striking at his hands, and the knife clattered away. Something struck the cot and overturned it with a bang, and he was trapped between the cot and the wall while, on the other side Mahonri was screaming in earnest, his body thrashing. Horkai pushed the cot into him and tried to clamber over it, but was struck down. And then suddenly he heard the sound of Mahonri up on his feet, stumbling, knocking into the boxes in the back of the room, no longer screaming now but groaning. He heard the slow sounds of the man’s footsteps and then something struck the upturned cot and the next thing he knew, something heavy and squirming was on top of him, crushing him, and he was trying to rein in his panic. Oh fuck, he thought and struck out once, then again. He groped around, trying to find the keeper’s throat, realized he had his hands wrapped around his thigh. He tried to squirm out from under, tried to squirm around, found a hand holding his head down against the floor, his skull beginning to ache.

Just a few inches from his face, the sound of labored breathing, the slight wind of breath, something warm leaking onto his face and neck. The breathing caught and stopped for an instant and then came again, with a sigh. “Why?” said Mahonri’s voice, little more than a whisper now, barely anything he could hear. And then, without another word, he collapsed.

IT FELT LIKE IT TOOK FOREVER for him to work free of the body. Groping around in the dark, panting and slightly deranged, it took even longer for him to find the wheelchair where Mahonri had folded it up near the front of the shack. The dark was full of figures now, always just out of reach, and as he worked desperately, he felt them swirling around him, surrounding him, brushing their hands over his skin just as he had done to Mahonri. He gave a shiver of revulsion, shook his head. He was beginning to hear voices as well, very quiet, very distant, but still there, and he had started to wonder if Mahonri was really dead after all. Within that haze of panic, he felt like he was shaping the wheelchair out of nothingness, imagining it in the dark, and he was surprised when he finally had it unfolded. He managed to lift himself up into it and found that it held his weight, that it seemed real and he could begin to imagine he might one day be safe.

Carefully, he wheeled along the walls until he felt first the folded chairs, then the pile of boxes, collapsed and scattered now. The floor lamp was harder to find; it had been knocked over in the struggle and he rolled back and forth for some time before finally touching it with a wheel and groping it up. He felt all over it, looking for a switch, but found nothing. Finally, out of desperation, he tore one of the LED bundles free and watched it light up in his hand.

The inside of the shack was a shambles. In one corner, near the cot, the wall itself had been pushed out and the wire holding it together had started to come undone. Mahonri was lying crumpled in the corner, not breathing. Blood was smeared all over the ground and over the boxes in the back, on the wall beside the cot as well. The man’s throat was less slit than gouged, torn open just beneath the chin, windpipe gaping. One of his carotids was nicked, the other more or less intact. Horkai looked down and saw that his whole body was drenched in blood.

SHOULD I FEEL GUILTY? he wondered a few minutes later, forcing the wheelchair along. Should I have regrets? But whether he should or shouldn’t, he didn’t seem to have any. Does that make me a bad person? he wondered. But no, he reminded himself, according to Mahonri, I’m not a person. I’m not a human at all.

He couldn’t decide if this thought seemed reassuring or was all the more terrifying.

19

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO SEE into either of the two titanium cylinders; their lids were too frosted over. He sat there between them, putting the gloves on, looking at one and then the other, trying to decide which to open. They looked, for all intents and purposes, identical.

Eeny meeny miny mo, he thought, and then chose one. He reached out and turned the unit off and immediately an alarm began to sound. Very quickly he undid the latches and opened the lid, releasing a blast of freezing air.

It was filled with a series of small metal cylinders, each slightly larger and thicker than his middle finger. With the tongs, he turned one around, looking for writing on it, some kind of mark. It was there, but not red; it was blue. He looked at one on the other side of the tank—blue as well.

How long until it starts waking them up? he wondered, listening as the alarm droned on.

Maybe Rasmus had the color wrong, he thought. Carefully he examined another, then another. All blue.

He closed and latched the lid and turned the unit on again. Immediately the alarm stopped. One of the storage units suddenly began making a creaking noise, but whether because it was thawing or freezing again, he wasn’t sure.

He turned to the other unit and flicked it off. The alarm began again. He quickly opened it, and this time saw immediately the red characters on one of the metal cylinders inside. He lifted it carefully out with the tongs and moved it carefully into his gloved hand, then closed the lid of the unit, flicked it back on.

This time the alarm didn’t stop. One of the storage units was humming now, definitely thawing. How long would it take? A long time, he hoped.

How do I carry it? he wondered, looking at the cylinder, and then had an idea. He removed one of his gloves with his teeth, held it open in his lap, and then dropped the cylinder in. It lodged in the glove’s thumb. Carefully he rolled the end of the glove down to seal it and then tucked it into his shirt. Then, spinning the wheelchair around, he moved toward the exit.

THE OUTER DOOR OPENED despite the alarm. He managed to bump the wheelchair over its lip and out into the hall. Turning around, he nudged the door closed, was pleased when it eased its way back into place, though less pleased when he didn’t hear the lock click.

A pale light was leaking far into the tunnel. It was dawn or perhaps slightly later. He rolled down the hall as quickly as he could, until he reached the metal grate. From there, he shouted for the mules until finally they lumbered into view.

“Where did you find a wheelchair?” asked Qatik.

“Long story,” said Horkai. “We have to go. I had to kill someone back there.”

“Did you cut off his head?” asked Qanik.

“What?” asked Horkai, surprised. “No, of course not.”

“Then he is not dead,” said Qanik. “You always have to cut off the head.”

“Doesn’t matter now,” said Horkai. “Right now all that matters is that you get the gate up and get me out of here before the others wake up.”

Qatik looked Qanik up and down, then turned back to Horkai. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We can’t do it.”

“What do you mean you can’t do it?”

“Look at us,” said Qatik. “Qanik can barely stand. We have eaten nothing for several days. We do not have the strength to lift it farther. We are dying, Josef. You will have to crawl out. You will have to leave your chair behind.”

“Do you have the cylinder?” asked Qanik. His face was barely visible now through his faceplate, which was thick inside with smeared blood. Horkai saw Qatik, too, had been coughing up blood, though not quite so much, not yet.

“I’ve got it,” said Horkai.

“All praise be to his name,” said Qanik. “Then our purpose can still be accomplished. Our deaths will not be in vain.”

ONCE HORKAI HAD SLIPPED OUT of the chair and had gotten his head through, Qatik dragged him the rest of the way out. But it was Qanik who insisted on carrying him.

“No,” said Qatik. “You are too sick. You are too dead.”

“I can do it now,” said Qanik. “For a mile or two. I will not be here to do it later. You need to save your strength for the rest of the way.”

And so they set out, the sun to their backs, walking as quickly as they could back the way they had come, Horkai again balanced on Qanik’s shoulders. The going was easier now, the road winding downhill. They moved slowly back down the canyon, seeing signs of ruined civilization gradually reappear and thicken. And now, from this direction, Horkai could see, through the haze, to the north, the devastated center of the metropolis, a huge deep crater, maybe a quarter mile across, maybe even wider. He suddenly recalled what it had looked like before, several dozen large buildings, twenty or thirty stories each, and many smaller ones, including the dome of the tabernacle and the six sharp spires of the Mormon temple. Nothing was left now: the buildings that had been within it and all around it were completely gone, reduced to ash. Around that was a belt of ruins—buildings with a few walls still standing, but mostly a field of rubble. Only gradually, far from the center of the blast, did actual houses begin to appear. And then, as the road descended lower, it all fell out of sight.

“Why did they do it?” asked Horkai.

“Why what?” responded Qatik.

“The Kollaps.”

Qatik shrugged. “It just happened,” he said. “That’s what Rasmus says.”

“An accident?”

“That hardly seems a sufficient word for it,” said Qatik.

Horkai nodded. These things happen, he thought, his mind taking a strange turn, and then we say we didn’t mean it, that it was an accident, that it will never happen again. Never again we say: God will not allow it. We say no to torture, and then we find a reason to torture in the name of democracy. We say no to sixty-six thousand dead in a single bomb blast over a defenseless foreign city, and then we do it again, a hundred thousand this time. We say no to eight million dead in camps, and then we do it again, twelve million dead in gulags. Humans are poison. Perhaps it would be better if they did not exist at all.

THE SUN ROSE HIGHER, still hidden behind the haze, and as the day went on, the wind rose and the dust along with it. Half the time Horkai was squinting and coughing, trying to breathe through his shirt, despite the blood stiffening it.

“Any water?” he asked.

Qanik said nothing, just kept plodding forward, his steps deliberate and relentless.

“No food either,” Qatik said. “Nothing left at all.”

Horkai thought again of the water deep within the mountain, slowly trickling out of the rock. It made his throat itch.

“Will we make it back?” he asked.

Qatik, half-turning, took a long look at Qanik and then looked up at Horkai. “One of us will,” he said. “Maybe.”

HE WATCHED MAHONRI’S PAINTED SIGNS die out, replaced slowly by signs stripped to bare metal, communicating nothing. Lulled by Qanik’s awkward but constant gait, he entered a kind of reverie. He thought again of Mahonri, so trusting, believing he was doing the Lord’s work, taking a stranger in and falling asleep beside him without a trace of suspicion. He thought again of the way Mahonri had heaved himself up just before collapsing and whispered, Why? He wondered if the mules were right, if Mahonri was, even now, lying on the floor of his shack, his wounds sealing, his throat becoming smooth and opaque as his body re-formed itself and brought him back to life. Or if he was simply dead. He thought of the storage units, the alarm going off, the way one of the units had started to thaw, waking up a new keeper. Would the new keeper come after them immediately, while the trail was still fresh, or would he stay and nurse Mahonri back to health, assuming he wasn’t dead? Always cut off the head, he remembered hearing one of the mules say again—which had it been? Or perhaps they would come after him as a group, four or five at once, hunting him down for what he had done. No, he suddenly realized, his thoughts leaping back to an earlier track, it wasn’t that Mahonri let in a stranger; it was that he let in a brother. I look like him. He trusted me because of that. That was why Rasmus needed me for this: not because the keepers wouldn’t recognize me, but because they would think they would. As soon as I saw Mahonri, I should have realized.

“Qanik?” said Horkai. The mule below him had started to weave a little bit. He slapped the side of his hood lightly and the man stopped, then shook himself and continued on, a bit straighter this time.

“Qatik?” said Horkai loudly. “Maybe you should take me now.”

Qatik moved closer, touched Qanik’s arm. “I am all right,” said Qanik, his voice forced out. “I will still carry him.”

The mule kept walking, his step a little slower now, a little heavier, a little jerkier, perhaps. He was bent over more, seemed to be staring at his own feet. Qatik stayed close beside them now, just a little behind, keeping close watch.

They kept walking, and Qanik somehow kept going, both Qatik and Horkai growing more and more anxious. The freeway was visible, the road they were on sloping downhill, and Horkai let himself be lulled again by the motion.

“Qatik,” said Horkai.

“What is it?” asked Qatik, not looking away from Qanik.

“Have you ever met someone like me?”

“What?” said Qatik. “Like you?”

“Yes,” said Horkai.

“Not me personally,” said Qatik. “No.”

“But you knew the keepers in Granite Mountain looked like me.”

“Yes, of course,” said Qatik, surprised. “Why else would Rasmus need you?”

They continued on a little way in silence.

“What do you know about me?” Horkai asked.

“What do I know?” asked Qatik. “That you were stored. That you are part of our community. That you are ill.”

“If I’m part of your community, then why don’t I look like everyone else?”

For a long moment Qatik didn’t answer. Finally he said, “You used to look like us, then you changed.”

“How do you know this?” asked Horkai.

“Rasmus told—”

“—that’s what I thought,” said Horkai. “Where did I come from?”

“From a storage unit,” said Qatik, finally turning to face him. “You were stored for a long time.”

“And before that?”

“I don’t know,” said Qatik.

“You don’t know much, do you?” said Horkai.

Qatik fell silent. “I am a mule,” he finally said. “It’s not my purpose to know.”

“Aren’t you curious?” asked Horkai. “Don’t you want to know?”

“Yes,” said Qatik. “Tell me.”

Then it was Horkai’s turn to fall silent.

“You are not going to tell me?” Qatik asked. “Is it a secret?”

“No,” said Horkai. “It’s not that. It’s just that I can’t remember.”

“You can’t remember?”

“No,” said Horkai.

“Then why did you ask me if I wanted to know?”

“I thought you might know,” said Horkai. “I thought you might be keeping it from me.”

“Why are you always trying to confuse me?” asked Qatik, his voice anguished.

“I’m sorry,” said Horkai. “I don’t mean to hurt you. But I have one more thing I need to ask.”

For a long time Qatik remained silent, walking along next to them. Finally he raised his hands and said, “All right.”

“What do you think I am?” asked Horkai.

“What do you mean?” asked Qatik. “Can’t you ask a question I can understand?”

“I changed, you said. That’s what Rasmus told you. What I’m trying to ask, Qatik, is if you think I’m still human.”

“Is this question a trap?” asked Qatik.

“No, it’s not a trap. Just answer honestly.”

Qatik shrugged. “You are part of the community,” he said. “Beyond that, what does it matter?”

“Just answer the question,” said Horkai, his voice starting to rise. “Am I or am I not human?”

“No,” said Qatik, turning his bloodstained faceplate toward him. “Of course you’re not.”

IT TOOK MORE TALKING, more coaxing, but in the end he got a little out of Qatik, almost in spite of the mule himself. No, Qatik told him, Rasmus had taught them that he was not human, but even had Rasmus not said that, Qatik argued, he would have known. Yes, Horkai was part of the community, but he was there to look after them, to protect them.

“A kind of keeper?” said Horkai. “A guardian angel? Something divine?”

“I don’t know,” said Qatik, clearly uncomfortable. “We did not call you that. We do not know what you are, only what you are not.”

“Which is human.”

“If you were human, you would be dead by now,” said Qatik. “Several times over. It is good that you are not human.”

“But what if it’s all a lie?” asked Horkai. “What if I don’t belong to the community? What if I belong somewhere else?”

“I don’t know,” said Qatik. “All I know is that the community needs you. We had something we needed and we could not have gotten it without you. Why would you help us if you were not part of our community?”

Why indeed? wondered Horkai. What game am I playing exactly? Qatik doesn’t know anything. Why am I torturing him?

SOON QANIK BEGAN TO STUMBLE, careening back and forth for a few seconds until, all at once, his legs gave out and he collapsed. Horkai, thrown from his shoulders, scraped his elbow going down, striking the side of his head hard enough to make his skull throb.

He lay there facedown on the ground, feeling his head ache. He turned over to find Qatik kneeling beside Qanik, knocking on his faceplate.

“Wake up, Qanik,” he was saying. “Wake up.”

He shook him, then shook him again. He lifted one of Qanik’s arms and let it fall.

“He’s dead,” said Horkai.

“Wake up,” Qatik said again. “Wake up, please.”

“Qatik,” said Horkai. “Stop it. He’s dead. It’s no use.”

And so Qatik stopped. Instead he just kneeled there motionless over Qanik, his arms hanging limply by his side.

“I need to bury him,” Qatik finally said.

“We don’t have time,” said Horkai. “You have your purpose to fulfill. They may already be pursuing us.”

Qatik shook his head. “I need to bury him,” he said again. “I have an additional purpose now, and that is it.”

“No,” said Horkai. “This is ridiculous. You don’t have a shovel. There’s no time.”

Qatik remained silent, not moving.

“Qatik?” said Horkai. “Are you listening to me?”

Qatik didn’t answer.

Horkai sighed. “Qatik, we need to move on.”

“Maybe my purpose means nothing,” said Qatik. “Just as you have been trying to tell me all along. Maybe my purpose is over now. Maybe I will leave both of you here and go off to have some peace before I die.”

“You’re not thinking straight,” said Horkai quickly. “You’re upset, understandably so. This isn’t what Qanik would want you to do, is it?” When Qatik nodded, he continued. “Let’s compromise. What about the hospital that you took me to when I was shot, the shelter there? We’re close to that, aren’t we? It’s the place where he spent the most time, apart from the community, no?”

“Yes,” said Qatik.

“Leave him there down below, in the shelter.”

For a long time, Qatik just stayed squatting and staring down at the other mule, stroking his hood softly. “It is not fair,” he finally said.

“It’s never fair,” said Horkai. “Why should it be?”

“All right,” he said. He reached down, got his hands under Qanik’s legs and back, and, straining, stood up with him in his arms. “The shelter.”

“Wait,” said Horkai. “What about me?”

“What about you?”

“You can’t leave me here.”

“One purpose at a time,” said Qatik, and strode away.

20

WILL HE COME BACK? wondered Horkai, and then thought, Why would he? He could just wander off on his own and die.

No, Horkai tried to tell himself, he’ll come back.

But even if he does, will he come back soon enough? Even if he comes back, what are the chances of us making it back to the community, to the hive, before he dies?

More important, Is it safe to be out on the road alone?

He looked around. On one side of the road was a series of brick walls that looked like they’d been slowly chewed away. A jagged sidewalk ran along beside them. On the other side, a parking lot empty except for two rusted car bodies that had been stacked on top of each other. A storefront behind it missing all its glass, its façade crumbling away. Nowhere to hide.

A little farther along, probably a hundred feet away, he could see what must have once been a small park, the uprights and chains for a swing set, the swing seats themselves long rotted away. A few large rocks. The splintered bole of a large tree. Better than nothing.

He started toward the park, pulling himself along backwards with his arms, dragging his legs. After about thirty feet or so, his hands were hurting, another thirty and they were scraped and bloody. He wanted to stop, kept telling himself that it was ridiculous, that there was no need to be worried, that the keepers probably weren’t coming for him, but he kept going. When he left the asphalt and entered the dirt, it was a little better—softer, anyway—but it wasn’t long before his hands started to sting. He could see the path his dead legs were leaving through the dirt, two long lines. He tried to brush them over, but that didn’t make it look any more natural. If they’re looking, he thought, they will find me. There’s no point to this. But he couldn’t stop himself from continuing on.

Up close, the tree’s bole proved to be wider around than he’d thought. He pulled himself behind it and was almost entirely concealed from the road. Through a crack partway up and before the main break he could see a cross section of the road. He settled in to wait for Qatik’s return.

A HALF HOUR WENT by or maybe more; no way to tell. No sign yet of Qatik. Maybe the hospital was farther away than either of them had realized. Or maybe he wasn’t coming back after all.

The wind picked up and did more to cover his tracks than all his scraping and struggling had done. Pressed against the trunk, his eyes and mouth were protected, though his throat was still dry and he still felt from time to time the compulsion to cough. What time is it? he wondered, and then remembered, again, that a question like that meant little in a place like this. The sun was high above somewhere, largely lost in the haze, perhaps already beginning its descent. That was all he could tell.

And then he heard it, the sound of a voice. At first he thought it must be Qatik, having come back and now calling for him, searching for him, and he almost shouted and waved. But no, he suddenly realized, this voice wasn’t flat enough, wasn’t processed by the speaker of a hazard suit. And then he heard another voice respond to it. Both voices, he realized, were speaking loudly, perhaps even shouting, so as to be heard over the wind.

When the voices came again, he realized they were coming closer. There was a long silence. And then a voice spoke again, closer still, and this time he managed to make out its words.

“Brother!” the voice said. “Even now it is not too late! Brother, we believe you were puzzled or confused or perhaps in the grip of nightmare or had grown sore afraid, and that for this you did what you should not! And so we say unto you, there is no lasting harm done. Our brother has been grievously afflicted but he shall not die. Brother! If you hear us, come to us and be one with us in our work!”

The voice fell silent and for a while he heard nothing, and then another voice spoke in its stead, this one deeper, even more booming than the first.

“But if you do not come forth, we shall shake the dust off our feet and curse you. Brother, if you do not stand with us, you stand against us. And those who stand against us are the enemies of God, and the lot of those who are the enemies of God is most dire.”

The voice fell silent. There was a brief argument between the two voices, though in tones too low for Horkai to follow.

And then they passed briefly through the portion of the road he could observe through the tree bole. There were three of them, all pale, all bald and hairless, all like him. One was larger than the others and missing an ear, which must have happened, Horkai reasoned, before, while he was still human: otherwise, it would have grown back. They wore dusty tunics, identical to the one Mahonri had worn, and sandals as well. The tall man was arguing with one of the other two, the third trailing slightly behind.

As quickly as they had come, they were past and gone.

“Brother!” he heard one of them shout again, and imagined from behind his bole that it must be the one missing the ear, that he was cupping his hands around his mouth as he walked, calling out to him.

“Brother!” the second voice shouted. “This is your last chance!”

He held himself as still as he could, motionless behind the stump. He listened as the shouts continued and slowly grew distant. My last chance, he thought, and wondered, briefly, if he should raise his hand and holler and reveal himself to them. They were, after all, like him.

But what if it was a trap? What if all they wanted to do was coax him out into the open and kill him? He shivered involuntarily against the stump, feeling trapped.

But it was almost as bad, he realized sitting there, if it wasn’t a trap. He recalled Mahonri’s strange zeal. He’d heard that in the voices of the others as well, in the words they’d chosen, their biblically inflected language. Could he really stand it, a life spent largely in storage, with his few unstored days spent in service of a religious ideal?

No thanks, he thought. I’d rather take my chances out here with Qatik.

Where is Qatik? he wondered, and only then did he realize that the mule would be coming back from the very direction that the keepers had been going, that their paths would surely cross.

WHAT FOLLOWED FELT LIKE HOURS of panic. He imagined Qatik stumbling into them, trying to flee and the large keeper with the missing ear tackling him and crushing his head with a rock. He imagined Qatik hearing their cries and knowing they were coming and then lying in ambush, leaping out at them and killing them. But having his suit torn apart in the process so that he quickly died anyway. He imagined Qatik’s head torn from his shoulders and put on the head of a pike, the pike sunk in the center of the road as a warning to others. He would have to crawl back the remaining thirty or thirty-five miles on his own. How far could he make it? A mile?

He was so busy worrying, so busy imagining all the ways in which Qatik must have died and envisioning his own subsequent death, that he almost missed Qatik himself, only accidentally raised his head high enough to see him standing down the road on the spot where he had originally left Horkai, looking desperately around. Horkai pulled his head up above the stump and waved to him. When didn’t see him, he shouted his name.

The sound galvanized Qatik, who threw himself down and crawled off the road. He was quickly gone, invisible.

Using his arms, Horkai pulled himself higher on the stump until his head and shoulders and torso were clearly visible from the road. But still he couldn’t see where Qatik had gone.

And then he heard from behind him. “It is just you, burden.”

He spun around, in the process losing his balance and falling into the dust. Qatik reached down and dragged him up, pressing him against his chest until he could get a better grip. He lifted him onto his shoulders.

“They came,” said Horkai. “I had to hide.”

“They did not see you?” asked Qatik.

Horkai shook his head, then realized Qatik, below him, couldn’t see it. “No,” he said. “They didn’t see me. What about you?”

“No,” said Qatik. “I heard them shouting. They are from the mountain?”

“They must be,” said Horkai. “They came looking for me.”

Qatik just grunted. He started down the road.

“We’ll have to take a different route back,” said Horkai. “We can’t go down this road.”

“We will go south,” said Qatik. “There is a large road south near the hospital. We will take that, then try to find the freeway again.”

“How do you know they won’t turn around?” asked Horkai. “How do you know that we won’t run into them?”

“How can I know?” said Qatik. “But if luck is with us, we will hear them before they see us.”

AND INDEED NOT FAR from the hospital Horkai did hear them, the sound of their cries. “I hear them,” he whispered, patting Qatik on the top of the hood to get his attention, and Qatik dragged him off his shoulders and immediately fled the road. There was a school, but it was set off a little from the road, behind a parking lot. At first, Qatik seemed to be heading for it, but then instead pushed Horkai under a ruined truck. He rapidly rubbed dirt over his suit to dull it, and then fell down beside him.

“Is it safe here?” asked Horkai. “Do we have enough cover?”

“Either we do or we don’t,” said Qatik. “It is too late now to worry.”

“But we could—,” started Horkai.

“No more words,” said Qatik. “They are coming.”

But it was long minutes before they actually arrived, heralded by their voices. Horkai and Qatik stayed there, flat on their bellies, and waited. “Brother!” He could hear them shouting. “Brother!”

“Why do you hide from us?” intoned a voice as the trio came into range. Horkai could see them now from under the shelter of the truck. “Brother, show yourself and join hands with us. Take your proper place beside us.” It was the large man missing an ear.

“Brother,” said another voice, one of the smaller men. He was distinguishable from the other small man due to the lumpiness of his head. “If you reveal yourself now, things will not go as badly for you as they will if we have to search for you later.”

The other man did not say anything for the time being. This man, at least from this distance, looked enough like Horkai that he could have been his actual, rather than his metaphorical, brother. Did I have a brother? Horkai wondered. Do I have a brother?

He watched the shining backs of their heads as they moved on. “Brother!” shouted the large man again. “We forgive you for what you have done. We do not hold you responsible for what you did to Mahonri. We understand, we swear to you, that it was all a misunderstanding. The man you injured will live. Were he conscious, I am certain he would proffer you his forgiveness and ask you to return with us, to join us in our holy task.”

He watched the triune move farther up the road, still shouting, still trying to flush him out, until finally they became inaudible and disappeared from sight.

“Let’s go,” said Horkai.

“No,” said Qatik. “Wait a moment.”

And so they waited a time more, crouched under the rusted hulk of a truck, in the heat and the dust, listening, keeping their eyes pinned on the road.

When after a few minutes the air was still quiet, Horkai repeated his request.

“Yes,” said Qatik. “Time to go,” and inched out from under the truck. A moment later he grabbed Horkai by a foot and dragged him roughly out as well.

“We will still take the other road,” Qatik said. “Just in case.”

“All right,” said Horkai. He might have said more except Qatik had already forked him under the arms and spun him around, lifting him high and depositing him on his shoulders. This in itself would have simply been business as usual, except for what Horkai saw.

IT HAD BEEN QUICK, just a glimpse; he wasn’t exactly certain that he had seen what he thought he’d seen. Qatik had already started off, keeping to one side of the road rather than the middle, just in case the trio decided to double back. He was moving quickly, Horkai’s body jogging up and down, but he still managed to bend just a little and lean just a little, and look carefully at the back of the suit’s right arm.

A short tear, perhaps an inch or two long, through the suit’s outer layer though not through the inner one as far as he could see. Qatik must have done it crawling under the truck. Not so bad as if there were a tear down to flesh, but still, a torn outer layer couldn’t shield him as well, would give him, or at least part of him, more unwanted exposure. It would, no doubt, kill him quicker.

Horkai opened his mouth to say something but then stopped himself. Should he say anything? Qatik would be dead soon in any case. If he knew about the tear, would he give up sooner? Besides, it was just his arm, an extremity rather than his torso or head, and so it probably wouldn’t make that much difference, probably wouldn’t speed up his death much at all. Or am I just telling myself that because I don’t want to have to break the news to him? Guardian of humanity indeed.

They jounced along, Horkai turning the problem over in his head, trying to understand if there was something he should do, even something he must do. But no matter how he looked at the problem, there was always something to make him question each decision. And so, in the end, it was easier to suspend the question, not to make a decision at all. I’ll do it later, he told himself, and then mentally added maybe.

THE ROAD THEY TOOK SOUTH skirted the hospital where they had killed the rogue, where Qatik had presumably left Qanik’s body. On the other side were the remnants of a low stone wall, the backs of condominiums visible above it, relatively intact but with their porches rotted off. The road quickly narrowed. They went past the hospital, and behind its parking lots saw a string of clinics and medical facilities, including a collapsed storefront with a jumble of partially melted prosthetic limbs spilling out of it. What was left of a sign a little farther down read

Like some sort of strange new reference guide, thought Horkai absurdly.

On the other side, the stone wall disappeared and the backs of condominiums were replaced by the fronts of houses.

They crossed another large road. “Shall we turn here?” asked Horkai. But Qatik said, “No. Not yet.” On the far side, instead of houses, there was a large parking lot and large building with a shattered glass front, shelves inside with small bottles on them or scattered all over the floor. Perhaps a pharmacy, thought Horkai. And then more houses, the backs of them this time, on a hill twenty feet or so above the roadway. On the other side of the road were neither buildings nor houses but only a steep slope downward. Horkai could see the road rising before them and realized they must be climbing again. Qatik was going slower now, no longer jogging, and Horkai could hear the sound of his ragged breathing crackling through his speaker.

They crossed another road, this one curving quickly out of sight to both left and right. He asked Qatik again if they should take it, but Qatik again said no, not yet. The downward slope to the left of them became even more severe and was bounded now by a metal barrier. From his place on Qatik’s shoulders, he could see past it and out over the whole valley.

They came to another crossroads, the other road this time wide and straight. This time when Horkai asked, Qatik said, “Yes, here is where we shall turn.” From there they went two miles or so east down a gentle incline to reach the freeway, and then south again along the freeway, climbing uphill again. They passed a huge penitentiary, then something else with a barbed wire fence around it. The light was very dim, the sun having leaked all the way to the west and threatening now to disappear behind the mountains.

“All downhill from here,” Qatik told him.

Horkai took this as an invitation to speak. “Do you think there are more?” he asked.

“More?” responded Qatik. “More what?”

“More like me?” said Horkai. “More like them? The ones from Granite Mountain?”

For a long time Qatik didn’t say anything, and so Horkai began to repeat the question. But before he was even halfway through, Qatik said, “Yes.”

“How many more?”

“I don’t know,” said Qatik. “At least a few.”

“Do you think some have the same disease that I have?”

“Perhaps. Does it matter?”

They continued together in silence, Horkai watching the sun set in the haze, the clouds lighting up like they were bleeding. He patted his shirt, felt the cylinder still secured in the glove’s thumb.

“The ones back there,” he said after a time, “the ones in Granite Mountain, they thought they’d been saved for a reason. They thought God had chosen them.”

“Chosen them for what?” Qatik asked. “To witness the end of the world?”

“As keepers,” said Horkai. “Keepers of the human race.”

Qatik didn’t respond. They kept going. “Crazy, right?” Horkai said.

“I don’t know,” said Qatik.

“Do you think we will live through this?”

“I’ve already told you,” said Qatik. “I’m already dead.”

“No,” said Horkai. “I don’t mean you and me but humans in general. Is this the end for us?”

“I don’t know,” said Qatik. And then added, almost as an afterthought, “You are not human.”

“I’m sorry you have to carry me,” said Horkai. “I’m sorry I’ve killed you.”

Qatik did not answer. Horkai was tempted to leave it at that, but as they continued along, he found something else nagging him, irritating him, until finally, he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

“Why did Qanik die so much sooner than you?” he asked.

“We are all different,” said Qatik.

“But you told me you were first,” said Horkai. “So you have been around longer. Why wouldn’t you die first?”

“Because he carried you more.”

“Why would that matter?”

“Lots of questions,” said Qatik, and gestured to the roadway before him. “Look around you. There is no one here to answer them.”

21

WHEN THE SUN FELL, it grew very dark, though perhaps not quite so dark as it had been a few nights before when he couldn’t see anything at all. He could now, from time to time, see the outlines of things. Or at least he managed to convince himself he could. The going was a little quicker now, Qatik letting his legs carry him down the slope out of one valley and into the other.

He did not know for certain when he fell asleep, when he started dreaming. One moment he was observing the vague outline of things and feeling the rolling motion of Qatik’s gait, listening to the intensity of the quiet. The next he was asleep. He dreamt he was back in a storage tank, not in storage yet but preparing to be stored. The lid of the unit was closed; he was webbed in. The glass itself was clear, not yet frosted over. On the other side of it was a technician, standing by a bank of machinery upon which he would move a level or adjust a slider, as if mixing a song. He was looking at Horkai, waiting for something. Horkai, not knowing what else to do, finally raised a thumb and the technician nodded and smiled. He reached out and touched a button and the storage process began.

In the dream he knew the feet were always the first to go for him, the toes and then the rest of the feet, though he knew other people who claimed it was the hands that went first, not the feet. Then the numbness spread to his fingers and hands and up his legs and arms, slowly converging on the center of his body. The head and chest were always last, but of course he wouldn’t feel those; by the time his chest was being stored, he would have been administered an injection to suspend his heart. The head was always frozen quickly after that, almost immediately, so as to minimize damage to the brain.

Everything was fine, everything went well, nothing went wrong, not with the storage, anyway. But outside, something was happening. The technician was no longer there, had simply vanished. In his place he saw Rasmus and the twins, Olaf and Oleg. And one other person, bald and hairless, his back to him.

I’m watching myself, he thought for an instant, but then a moment later was filled with doubts and had to ask himself, Is it really me?

As he watched, willing the man to turn so that he could see his face, he saw Rasmus make a gesture that the twins immediately seemed to pick up on. They each took hold of one of the other man’s arms and held them tight to his side. Through the glass Horkai heard the muffled sound of his protest, though he was unable to hear the exact words. The man struggled a little, but the twins kept his arms immobilized.

And then suddenly Rasmus lifted his arm and Horkai saw that he was holding a long, very sharp knife.

He must have made an involuntary noise, because for a fraction of a second the twins glanced toward his tank, the man using it as an opportunity to attempt an escape. And, indeed, the man did manage to break free from one twin and was well on the way to breaking free from the other when Rasmus plunged the knife deep into his chest.

Horkai watched the knife come out and then plunge back down. The man screamed and momentarily slumped out of his vision. Then he was up again, struggling and half turning as the knife came down again, and yet again.

And it was only then, as the man grew looser in the twins’ grip and finally seemed to lose consciousness altogether—unless, in fact, he was dead—that his head flopped in the right direction and his body turned enough for Horkai to finally get a look.

But what he saw was not what he expected. Instead of seeing his own bloodied face staring back at him, he saw the face of Mahonri. And as he watched, certain that the man was dead, Mahonri’s eyes suddenly blinked open. With blood pumping from his chest, he turned to face Horkai’s tank, his face wreathed in an unnerving smile.

HE WOKE UP FEELING like he was falling, and had just enough time to realize he actually was. He struck something hard enough to knock the breath out of him.

He must have been unconscious for a few moments, perhaps longer. When he regained awareness, it was to find himself in the dark, listening to someone groaning. It took him some time to realize that the man groaning was in fact him.

His head throbbed. His face was pressed into something dusty and he could taste blood in his mouth. His shoulder ached. He pushed himself over and stared into the dark, trying to remember where he was. Was he in storage still, something having gone wrong? He couldn’t feel the walls of the cylinder around him. Dreaming still?

And then he remembered where he was: near a pool in the heart of a mountain, trapped in a shack with a dead man. If the man was in fact actually dead. His skin began to crawl. Where was his knife? He searched the floor beside him, found nothing. He felt around for the cot that he had been sleeping on before it had turned over, but didn’t find it. He felt around for a wall, for any of the three walls of the shack, but didn’t find those either, touched instead chunks of rock and rubble. Had they been there when he’d gone to sleep? No, he didn’t think so—the floor had been clean: Mahonri had been sleeping on the floor and would have swept it clean first. He was sure of that, or reasonably so. He felt around for his own blankets or the blankets that Mahonri had been using, but did not find those either.

And then finally, groping around, his fingers brushed something. Fabric of some kind, a blanket maybe. He passed over it again, brushing it lightly, and then brought his hand down more fully upon it. The fabric, whatever it was, was thick and stiff, not a blanket. The shape was strange, too, and too regular to be just folds in a crumpled blanket.

He took hold of it more firmly and squeezed. There was something inside the fabric and Horkai realized suddenly that he was squeezing a glove.

Just as he realized this, the hand within the glove moved.

He gave a cry and scrambled away as quickly as he could, trying to orient himself in the darkness.

No matter how hard he tried to make it fit, tried to plaster it to the image, he could not picture Mahonri wearing a glove.

That simple fact was enough to open a crack in his perception, to bring everything into doubt, to make his heart slow down, his panic stop. And with that, everything shifted. As quickly as it had sprung into existence, the world that had been building itself up around him in the darkness—the shack, the lake, the dead body on the floor—simply dissolved and was replaced by himself and Qatik, fallen to the ground in the middle of an old freeway.

“Qatik,” he asked, “are you all right?”

He heard a groan again, made for it, knuckling backwards over the ground until he found the man’s hand again. From there, he worked his way up the arm and to the hood. He shook the mule’s shoulders.

“Qatik,” he said again.

“What happened?” asked Qatik, his voice slow and thick.

“We fell,” said Horkai. “You must have tripped.”

Qatik coughed. “I am sorry,” he said. “I am weaker. Not paying enough attention. Not enough sleep. Or food. Blood on the inside of the faceplate makes it hard to see.”

“No need to apologize,” said Horkai.

When Qatik didn’t say anything, he shook him again.

“Just need a moment,” said Qatik. “I will be all right soon.”

“Shall we wait for morning before moving on?” Horkai asked. “When we can see?”

“Can’t,” said Qatik. “By morning I am dead.”

He lay there for a few minutes more, Horkai leaving him alone. Finally he began to move, one of his arms brushing past Horkai’s face. His hands were busy at something and then he grunted, and the movements stopped.

“Suit torn,” he said, his voice flat and dead.

“Where?” asked Horkai, picturing in his head again the tear on the back of Qatik’s arm.

“Belly,” said Qatik. “Something went in when I tripped. I am cut, too. Cannot say how bad it is.”

And then he fell silent. Horkai waited, trying to see him in the dark, catching only the vaguest hint of his outline. He thought he might have drifted off again. He reached out and felt around, touched him gently on the belly, found the fabric there sticky with blood.

“It’s all right if you can’t go on,” said Horkai.

“Just give me a minute,” said Qatik. “I just need a minute.”

HE HAD ALREADY BECOME RECONCILED enough to the idea of Qatik’s death when the man, grunting, sat up. He groped about until he found Horkai’s shoulder, then used it pull himself to his knees.

“How bad is it?” asked Horkai.

“Not good,” said Qatik. “But this is not what will kill me.” He groped around until he found Horkai’s hand and pressed one of the backpacks into it.

“You will help,” he said. “You have an additional purpose now. It is this: There is a fusee in here. Find it and break it open.”

Horkai felt around the edge of the bag until he found the pull for the zipper. He tugged it open and stuck his hand in, feeling through the shapes until he found a bundle of long, thin tubes. He extracted one, then pulled it out and sniffed it, smelling the garlicky odor of phosphorus.

He carefully felt his way along it until he found where the casing was scored, then quickly cracked it open. It flared up immediately, its light red and blinding, and he quickly tossed it a little distance away.

“Good,” said Qatik. “This part is done.”

Horkai could see him now, stark in the glow of the flare. The rip in the front of the suit was perhaps four inches long. Blood had spilled down and no doubt was pooling inside it as well. In one hand Qatik held a sharp-edged piece of metal, perhaps part of a signpost, slick with blood. He balanced on his knees, swaying slightly.

“There is an ampoule of morphine and a hypodermic,” said Qatik.

“Yes,” said Horkai. “Here they are.”

“Prime the needle and load it. Push it through the rip in the suit and inject me.”

“How much?”

“All of the ampoule,” said Qatik.

“Is that a lot?”

“Yes, a lot. You will have to speak to me to keep me awake.”

He affixed the needle to the hypodermic. Breaking off the ampoule’s tip, he pushed the needle in, drawing the fluid up into the chamber. Carefully he parted the lips of the tear until he could see Qatik’s bloody shirt behind it. Rapidly he sank the needle in and depressed the plunger.

Qatik groaned and swayed but did not fall.

“All right?” said Horkai.

“Now,” said Qatik. “In the backpack is a plastic bottle of seam sealant.”

Horkai searched through the backpack, found it.

“Seal the wound with it, and then the suit.”

Horkai took the cap off and pushed the bottle into the opening, spreading the slit wide with his fingers again, turning Qatik a little now so that the light from the fusee would shine on the wound. It was broad and deep, and bits of metal were still in it, blood and fluid oozing around them.

He tried to pick the bits free but Qatik groaned and pushed at his shoulder.

“Just seal it,” he said through gritted teeth.

And so he did, squeezing the tube until a translucent substance squirted out of it and filled the wound. It hissed against the flesh, connecting to it, becoming a sort of dark web. He heard Qatik’s breathing grow more labored, the muscles around the wound tightening. He squeezed a little more in, then realized that it had started to bind not only to the flesh but to Qatik’s shirt as well. He watched it until he was sure the bleeding had stopped and then pulled both sides of the suit’s fabric together and sealed them to each other. He held on too long with his fingers and had to tear them bloody to free them.

“All right,” said Horkai. “It’s done.”

“Good,” said Qatik, and then made a heaving noise and retched inside his suit. What came up was mostly blood. It gleamed wetly on the inside of the faceplate, slipping down. He reached out and steadied himself against Horkai’s shoulder. “I may last another hour or two,” he said, and then retched again.

They stayed there for a few minutes longer, until the fusee began to sputter. Using Horkai as a support, Qatik pulled himself fully to his feet.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I can do it.” He stumbled over to the remains of the barrier edging the freeway, leaned against it, and squatted down.

“You will have to climb on,” he said to Horkai. “If you can manage that, I might be able to stand.”

Looping the backpack around one arm, Horkai knuckled over to him. Carefully, he heaved himself up until he was precariously balanced on the barrier and then fell on Qatik’s back, wrapping his arms around his neck. His legs dangled, scraping the ground. Qatik grabbed them and pulled Horkai’s body closer, until he was riding piggyback. Slowly, Qatik straightened up.

When Horkai started to pull himself higher, Qatik said in a breathless voice, “Not the shoulders. I cannot manage this. Keep your arms tight around my neck and hold on.”

THE GOING WAS SLOW. As they moved away from the sputtering fusee, Qatik stumbling a little, the light faded and then was entirely gone. Horkai could see only the wiry ghost of the fusee still burning in his head.

“Can you see?” he asked Qatik.

“A little,” said Qatik. His voice was very thick now, slurred. “Not much.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until morning?”

“No such thing as morning,” said Qatik.

He kept on, moving slowly, feeling his way forward when he had doubts. Horkai could not help but think about what might happen if they fell again. Next time, he was certain, they wouldn’t get back up.

Horkai began to talk, at first simply urging Qatik on, telling him he could do it, but slowly moving to other things. He spoke of the little he could remember about the Kollaps, offered the scattered bits of it to Qatik, who did not respond back. He spoke of what he could remember about the world before the Kollaps, began to detail what animals could be found on a farm and what they looked like. Why could he remember such things in such detail, reconstruct so many details of the world as it had been, but couldn’t remember his own place in it? When he’d finished with that, he began hoarsely to sing, songs he remembered from when he was a child. “The Farmer in the Dell” he started with since it made a good transition from talk about farm animals, then a song about a garbage truck, followed by a long explanation of what a garbage truck was. He started a lullaby but then thought better of it. And then, tired and distracted himself, he slowly fell silent.

When Qatik weaved or stumbled, Horkai would shake his shoulder or strike him atop the hood, and he would straighten up a little. They kept on going, waiting for night to end.

AND THEN SUDDENLY HE WAS BEGINNING to see again, the darkness leaking away and revealing the things hidden within it. At first it was only the shape of Qatik’s hood in front of him, but slowly the world became more and more distinct, extending itself around them. Still hours until sunrise, he thought, but now at least it was coming. Now at least they could see the road.

Qatik had sped up just a little, not much. He was going forward, stumbling a bit, still weaving a little, clearly confused, sedated.

“Shall I talk to you?” Horkai asked him, realizing how tired he was himself. His eyes felt like they had been squeezed to bursting.

“I feel,” said Qatik, “like I’m walking…” And then he trailed off.

“You are walking,” said Horkai.

“… underwater,” Qatik finished.

“Oh,” said Horkai. “Do you need to rest?”

Qatik didn’t bother to answer. They kept on, Qatik letting the slope carry him forward, Horkai from time to time shaking him, speaking to him, urging him on.

“Promise me,” said Qatik. “Promise me you will finish it. Promise me you will fulfill my purpose. Promise me you will sing to the others what I and Qanik did for them.”

“All right,” said Horkai. “I promise.”

“There is a signal pistol,” Qatik said. “A Molins Number 1. A Very pistol. On a belt inside my suit.”

“All right,” said Horkai.

“When I die, take it, and the signal flares,” said Qatik. “Pull yourself along, as far as you can go, then fire it. Light a fusee, too, so they’ll know where to find you. Maybe they will see and come for you.”

THE SUN CAME NERVOUSLY OUT, still estranged in dust and haze. The slope slowly leveled off, grew almost flat. Qatik moved forward only with the greatest effort now. He veered slowly off the edge of the road and onto the frontage road, but got tangled in the remnants of a barbed wire fence. It took all Horkai’s wits to get him untangled and keep him on his feet. But just when he thought they’d truly reached the end, Qatik tore free with a groan and they were off again, swaying ponderously down the road.

They passed an old salvage yard—unless it was something else and just looked like a salvage yard now. A tattered billboard, little left of it beyond its metal struts. A concrete wall with a window chopped into it, the opening obscured by a metal grille. Pile after pile of dust-covered corrugated piping, a Quonset hut collapsed and blown flat.

“How far away are we?” Horkai asked.

“Far,” said Qatik, forcing the word out. “Miles and miles.”

And indeed they walked on for what seemed like miles and miles, the sun rising above them, Horkai trying to stay focused, trying to keep Qatik going, goading him on. But he himself was exhausted, his head lolling, and there were a few moments when his hands, tired from hanging on to Qatik’s neck for so long, started to slip and he nearly slid off. He was hungry, starving, almost terminally thirsty. He tried not to think about it, tried to stay focused and in control.

They must still have had miles to go when, abruptly, Qatik came to a halt.

“Qatik?” said Horkai.

Qatik stood there swaying back and forth. He took another step, then another. Horkai breathed a sigh of relief that they were going again. But after a half dozen steps, Qatik stopped again.

“Keep going,” Horkai urged. “It’s not much farther. Your purpose is almost complete.”

He heard Qatik retching again in his suit, swaying and nearly toppling, and then the retching suddenly turned to a low, keening laugh.

“My purpose!” he said in a choked voice. “My purpose!”

He took another step and then fell to one knee. “Get up,” Horkai told him, striking him lightly on the hood, “get up,” and Qatik struggled, tried to get his leg back under him. And indeed, he was already on his way to standing up again when the other leg went and he tipped slowly over and fell.

Horkai rode him down, letting Qatik’s body absorb the fall, disentangling himself once they were down. Qatik was lying on one side, moving his hands, motioning with his fingers, almost as if he were typing, but making no effort to get up.

Horkai rolled him faceup and leaned in over him. He tried to catch a glimpse of his face through the faceplate, but it was too filthy with blood spatter for him to see much of anything inside. It was as if someone had been murdered inside—which, thought Horkai, was the case.

“I’m sorry,” said Horkai, and was surprised to realize how sincerely he meant it. Qatik tried to raise his hands but couldn’t manage it and let them fall. He tried to speak, but his voice was too soft for Horkai to hear. He moved his ear closer to the speaker and asked him to repeat it.

“Hood,” mouthed Qatik.

What about it? wondered Horkai, and then suddenly got it. “You want me to remove your hood?” he asked.

When Qatik said nothing, Horkai fished a knife out of the backpack and began cutting through the seam sealant around the hood’s edge. Since Qatik still said nothing, he assumed it was what he wanted.

The seal broke away only awkwardly, and he had to roll the flap back and work the fasteners open. His fingers clumsily loosened the hood.

The inside of the hood reeked of blood and vomit. Qatik’s thick face was covered with bruises and sores, the flesh itself beginning to lose consistency. His eyes were half-open, fluttering. He looked fragile, extremely vulnerable. Horkai touched the side of his head and cupped his jaw, and Qatik opened his eyes and gave him a worried and frightened look. A look so painfully intimate, it made Horkai want to look away, but he found that he could not.

He saw Qatik’s lips move, but heard nothing. He brought an ear down until it was almost touching Qatik’s lips and stayed there, hovering, listening until Qatik whispered again.

“Morphine,” he whispered.

Horkai moved his head back and nodded, watched Qatik’s eyes slip closed. He rummaged through the backpack until he found a sheathed needle, a syringe, and the remaining three ampoules of morphine.

He filled the chamber with the first ampoule and injected it into Qatik’s stomach beside the wound, then stayed there waiting. He was about to throw the hypodermic away when he again met Qatik’s eyes. Despite the way the man’s gaze was already going glassy, Horkai still sensed a mute appeal in it.

He filled the hypodermic with the second ampoule and injected it in the same spot as the first. He stayed looking at the third ampoule, holding it in one hand, the hypodermic in the other. Finally he made up his mind and broke the glass tip off, inserted the needle and drew the morphine up into the reservoir. He hesitated for just a moment over the stomach wound, bringing the needle down to touch the skin and then moving it up higher, injecting it this time into the artery throbbing weakly in Qatik’s neck.

A moment later Qatik was dead.

22

HOURS LATER, PULLING HIMSELF along backwards with his arms, night coming on, his hands numb and bloody, he found himself thinking about that moment, that decision. He had been watching Qatik’s face as he depressed the plunger, saw almost instantly his already glazed eyes go loose in the sockets, all the tiny little movements of his face falling still. Not more than a few seconds had passed before he was certain that Qatik was dead.

After only a minute or two, the body had already begun to change, becoming a corpse. The skin of the face had grown noticeably paler and the blood had begun to pool, the now bloodless skin draping strangely on the face so that the nose and even the sockets of the eyes became increasingly prominent. He was surprised to find that the limbs weren’t stiff at all, not yet, that the muscles instead were completely relaxed.

He had brushed the eyelids closed, then covered the face with the hood, turning the faceplate around until it served as a support for the back of the head. And then he set about cutting through the seam sealant over the chest and belly. He opened the Velcro, undid the zipper beneath until he could reach his hand in and feel around the dead man’s sodden waist and slowly extract the Very pistol and the cartridge belt it was buckled onto. Six one-inch firing flares, plus the three fusees left in the backpack: not much.

He rolled the belt up and put it, the flares, and the Very pistol into the backpack. He undid the backpack’s shoulder straps and used them to bind the backpack to his foot, so he could drag it along.

A meaningless death, thought Horkai hours later, covered with sweat and wincing from pain, his arms throbbing as he slowly inched along the freeway, after a meaningless life. A man raised to think of himself as having one purpose in life, his whole life leading to and preparing for it. Raised knowing that when the time came for him to fulfill his so-called purpose, the moment of his death would come hand-in-hand along with it. And his purpose? To carry someone somewhere and then carry him back again. To be little more than a beast of burden, hardly even human—something his leader couldn’t resist pointing out by calling him a mule.

He reached a tear in the road, a disruption that he couldn’t drag himself over and had to concentrate on getting around it.

But, then again, he thought, supposedly I’m not human myself. And my death, when it catches up with me, in a few minutes, a few hours, will be just as meaningless.

Here he was, alone, in the middle of nowhere, engaged in a task for people who, assuming he did once know them, he did not remember now. And why? Because he wanted to know something about who he was, gain some knowledge that he suspected they might have. Was he committed to some sort of cause? No. Was he opposed to Rasmus and his community? No, not really. Did he side with them? No. He was lukewarm, neither one thing or the other. He didn’t feel like he belonged in Granite Mountain any more than he felt he belonged in Rasmus’s hive.

But where, then, did he belong?

They don’t think of me as an animal, as a mule, he thought. For them, either I’m an angel or a devil. Maybe a little of both.

He stopped and wiped the sweat off his face, was sorry he did so when it made his hands sting. He gently patted his hands dry against his shirt, feeling the glove still tucked within it. He took a moment to look around, back at where he had come from. For a long time he had been able to see Qatik’s corpse, growing steadily smaller, slowly reduced to a black dot, but now even that had been lost. He looked all around, saw on all sides of him no living thing, not even a cockroach, nothing but wrack and ruin, the ruined monuments of the dead, destruction, marks of calamity, terror, distress. Nothing but him and the Kollaps.

And perhaps they’re not wrong, he thought. Maybe I am a monster.

And with that, wincing, he stretched his hands behind him and began dragging himself along again.

JUST ME, HE THOUGHT. I’m the only one left alive. And indeed, with the sun setting and the lake glittering with a dull red haze, it felt that way. He had left the freeway, was going slowly up a steep hill, past the wreckage of a university, past an old church. The going was tough, almost impossible, and he felt alternately a strange sense of euphoria and exhaustion so intense that at moments his vision dimmed and threatened to die for good. He kept going, kept on, hauling himself up the slope, watching, when his vision wasn’t too dim, the sun slowly sinking behind the mountains, darkness slowly gathering itself around him.

WHEN HE CAME CONSCIOUS AGAIN, it was completely dark. He wasn’t certain where he was, why he was sitting up rather than lying down, why he was outside. And then his body took over, continuing the motions it had been making before he lost awareness of himself, his arms throwing themselves out behind him and taking anchor, then dragging his body along. He felt it happening, like he was watching it from somewhere else rather than controlling the body that was doing it, and then, slowly, he felt consciousness bleed away again until he was unsure where he was or what was happening, and whether his body was moving or not, whether he was outside or instead inside, whether he was living and breathing or frozen, in storage, waiting impatiently to come back to life.

WHEN HE CAME CONSCIOUS AGAIN, it was still dark. Was it the same night or another? Was there any way to tell? This time he was lying down, his face pressed against a chunk of rock.

He tried to sit up, found himself too weak and dizzy to manage it. He put his head back down and lay there, gathering his breath, feeling the world slowly starting to spin underneath him, threatening to throw him off its edge.

He clenched his teeth, felt the world briefly stabilize again. Very slowly, he managed to roll over onto his side. He pulled himself around with his arms until he could reach his leg, then pulled it flopping toward him.

Head spinning again, he felt along the leg for the straps of the backpack. Where were they? They weren’t there, he was sure of it. Had he lost it? But then suddenly, yes, there they were, his hands had been moving over them the whole time; how had he not noticed?

It took him a long time to figure out how to free the straps, even longer to pull the backpack toward him until it was close enough to open it. He passed out with his hand thrust down the backpack’s throat, came conscious again wondering how much time had passed. Why wasn’t it daylight yet? Unless he had passed through daylight already and it simply was another night. What is in my hands? he wondered, and then realized that he was grasping the grip of a gun.

He pulled it out, felt out the hammer, the trigger. The barrel was short and thicker than he expected, the opening big enough that he could slip his finger into it.

And then it came flooding back. Very pistol, he thought, flare gun. He groped again in the backpack until he found the belt, the lumps of the flares studded along it. He forced one out with his fingers but couldn’t keep hold of it; it fell somewhere deep into the pack. He started to search for it and then gave up, forcing another flare out of the belt, keeping hold of it this time.

He tugged on the gun’s barrel, feeling all around it until he found the breech lock. He levered it open. He tried to force the flare in, but it wouldn’t go, and momentarily he thought Qatik had brought the wrong ammunition. But then he turned it over in his fingers and it slid in perfectly.

He closed the breech. The world was starting to feel like it was shifting again, dissolving underneath him. He tried to raise his arm, but found his elbow remained planted against the ground, unwilling to leave it. The gun felt heavy in his hand. Just drop it, part of him was saying. There’s no point anyway.

He managed to take a deep breath. Elbow still planted, he straightened his wrist until he thought it must be pointing straight up. Or straight enough anyway. Raising his head slightly, he pulled the trigger.

The recoil, small though it was, was enough to tear the pistol from his hand, the flash enough to blind him. The flash ran in a slow pattern across his vision, gradually fading as he blinked, and then he saw it, the red glow of the flare far above him, climbing, climbing, and then falling, suddenly going out.

He let his head fall back. He stared up into the blankness. At least momentarily it was less blank, strange flashes of light and blurs of motion started to cross and burst in his vision. The afterimage of the flare, but more than that, too: his mind trying to see in the near total darkness. Not real, he told himself, not real, and closed his eyes. But they kept on coming, becoming more textured, more real, congealing into abstracted patterns, and then suggestive forms, and finally into faces. Mahonri was there above him, staring down, smiling. And there was Qanik, his face difficult to see behind his faceplate, but also smiling. And, finally, Qatik, pale and dead, but smiling as well.

He closed his eyes but all three were still there. He groped for the flare gun, but couldn’t find it. The backpack was there and he searched through it until he found a fusee and pulled it out. He cracked it open, burning two of his fingers down almost to bone, and tried to throw it. It landed not far from his face, close enough that he could feel the heat off it, could smell his clothing burning, unless it was the burnt flesh of his fingers he was smelling, or the burning faces of the dead.

He lay there half-blinded by the light, somewhere between life and death. Come find me, he was thinking. Come find me.

And then, for all intents and purposes, he died.