We moved slowly. There was often fainting, and we would have to wait. One day
he decided to cause an earthquake, at the same time rooting us to the spot with nails
through the soles of our shoes. Ellen and Nimdok were both caught when a fissure
shot its lightningbolt opening across the floorplates. They disappeared and were
gone. When the earthquake was over we continued on our way, Benny, Gorrister and
myself. Ellen and Nimdok were returned to us later that night, which abruptly
became a day, as the heavenly legion bore them to us with a celestial chorus singing,
"Go Down Moses." The archangels circled several times and then dropped the
hideously mangled bodies. We kept walking, and a while later Ellen and Nimdok fell
in behind us. They were no worse for wear.
But now Ellen walked with a limp. AM had left her that.
It was a long trip to the ice caverns, to find the canned food. Ellen kept talking
about Bing cherries and Hawaiian fruit cocktail. I tried not to think about it. The
hunger was something that had come to life, even as AM had come to life. It was
alive in my belly, even as we were in the belly of the Earth, and AM wanted the
similarity known to us. So he heightened the hunger. There is no way to describe the
pains that not having eaten for months brought us. And yet we were kept alive.
Stomachs that were merely cauldrons of acid, bubbling, foaming, always shooting
spears of sliverthin pain into our chests. It was the pain of the terminal ulcer,
terminal cancer, terminal paresis. It was unending pain ...
And we passed through the cavern of rats.
And we passed through the path of boiling steam.
And we passed through the country of the blind.
And we passed through the slough of despond.
And we passed through the vale of tears.
And we came, finally, to the ice caverns. Horizonless thousands of miles in
which the ice had formed in blue and silver flashes, where novas lived in the glass.
The downdropping stalactites as thick and glorious as diamonds that had been made
to run like jelly and then solidified in graceful eternities of smooth, sharp perfection.
We saw the stack of canned goods, and we tried to run to them. We fell in the
snow, and we got up and went on, and Benny shoved us away and went at them, and
pawed them and gummed them and gnawed at them, and he could not open them.
AM had not given us a tool to open the cans.
Benny grabbed a three quart can of guava shells, and began to batter it against
the ice bank. The ice flew and shattered, but the can was merely dented, while we
heard the laughter of a fat lady, high overhead and echoing down and down and
down the tundra. Benny went completely mad with rage. He began throwing cans, as
we all scrabbled about in the snow and ice trying to find a way to end the helpless
agony of frustration. There was no way.
Then Benny's mouth began to drool, and he flung himself on Gorrister ... in that instant, I felt terribly calm.
Surrounded by madness, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by everything but
death, I knew death was our only way out. AM had kept us alive, but there was a way
to defeat him. Not total defeat, but at least peace. I would settle for that.
I had to do it quickly.
Benny was eating Gorrister's face. Gorrister on his side, thrashing snow, Benny
wrapped around him with powerful monkey legs crushing Gorrister's waist, his
hands locked around Gorrister's head like a nutcracker, and his mouth ripping at the
tender skin of Gorrister's cheek. Gorrister screamed with such jaggededged violence
that stalactites fell; they plunged down softly, erect in the receiving snowdrifts.
Spears, hundreds of them, everywhere, protruding from the snow. Benny's head
pulled back sharply, as something gave all at once, and a bleeding rawwhite
dripping of flesh hung from his teeth.
Ellen's face, black against the white snow, dominoes in chalk dust. Nimdok, with
no expression but eyes, all eyes. Gorrister, halfconscious. Benny, now an animal. I
knew AM would let him play. Gorrister would not die, but Benny would fill his
stomach. I turned half to my right and drew a huge icespear from the snow.
All in an instant:
I drove the great icepoint ahead of me like a battering ram, braced against my
right thigh. It struck Benny on the right side, just under the rib cage, and drove
upward through his stomach and broke inside him. He pitched forward and lay still.
Gorrister lay on his back. I pulled another spear free and straddled him, still moving,
driving the spear straight down through his throat. His eyes closed as the cold
penetrated. Ellen must have realized what I had decided, even as fear gripped her.
She ran at Nimdok with a short icicle, as he screamed, and into his mouth, and the
force of her rush did the job. His head jerked sharply as if it had been nailed to the
snow crust behind him.
All in an instant.
There was an eternity beat of soundless anticipation. I could hear AM draw in
his breath. His toys had been taken from him. Three of them were dead, could not be
revived. He could keep us alive, by his strength and talent, but he was not God. He
could not bring them back.
Ellen looked at me, her ebony features stark against the snow that surrounded
us. There was fear and pleading in her manner, the way she held herself ready. I
knew we had only a heartbeat before AM would stop us.
It struck her and she folded toward me, bleeding from the mouth. I could not
read meaning into her expression, the pain had been too great, had contorted her
face; but it might have been thank you. It's possible. Please.
(1012 words)
