Theo stumbled, caught himself, and continued to sprint down the incline, breathless, falling more than running, narrowly avoiding the dark trunks in the twilight, branches smacking him, leaves and logs tripping him, racing down like a boulder as the land became still steeper.
Crashes and breaking and hateful screams followed him. An innumerable horde of undead men, bones broken, eyes bloody, senses malevolent, trampled after him, sliding, rolling, climbing over one another in covetous bloodlust.
Theo lost his footing and went headfirst, spinning painfully down to the foot of the hill. He splashed into a reeking fen of mud and reed. He stood, disoriented, sputtering. Bodies fell around him. They grabbed at him as they lay in grotesque positions. Their hands were flesh, bone, and gore. He kicked them off, the feel of his boots against their shoulders and arms a familiar one. This was not the first time he had struggled to escape from those hungry, insatiable hands.
But he was tired now, more tired than he remembered being, and his hope of surviving, and even his desire to live, was dimmer than before.
He found his feet and ran, trusting his instincts for the direction. He had to be almost there, if his information was correct. He sloshed through the muck, trying to make for the nearest island of reeds. The creatures did not get to their feet, but slithered and dragged themselves forward like reptilian predators. They were incredibly quick. Mindless, relentless, deathless, they held a blind cunning that frustrated all attempts to outwit them.
Theo, luckily, was faster – just. He had no weapons left. Bullets slowed them, blades dismembered them, fire burned them, but nothing stopped them. They reconstituted, melded, walked charred and maimed. With each partial defeat, they became more disfigured, more inhuman, more monstrous. Theo had heard that some places had tried nuclear weapons – the deathless just became walking Chernobyls.
A moment’s pause upon the little island showed him the way. A painful jolt inside his ribs stunned him. It was sharp as a knife. He didn’t move, didn’t run, almost didn’t breathe, and the deathless were swarming him. Then he dove into the water, toward the submerged cave he had seen – the sight of which had so injured him, because it gave him hope.
Gurgling, kicking, drowning, fighting, screaming, raging against the deathless, he entered the cave and dove deep into the water, looking for a room beyond. He emerged gasping into air and light. He struggled out, into the chamber. Nothing followed him.
It was silent except for the lap of water and the sound of his own labored breathing. As he recovered, thanking God for his survival, he began to have a better sense of his surroundings. The stone chamber was roughly the size of a large room, with a few weathered pieces of furniture – a chest, a table, a cot. The light seemed to come from nowhere.
There might be a figure on the cot.
The pool of water near him remained undisturbed, shining reflectively with soft light, so he walked cautiously forward. In the cot was a woman. He could not tell her age. In appearance, she seemed no more than thirty, except for her face, which was an old woman’s. Her gray eyes were open and looking at him with such unblinking intensity he thought she might be dead.
“Are you one of them?” she asked, stirring. Her voice was that of a young woman.
“Who?”
“You know who. You are not one of them. You have too much caution and curiosity.
“Is it… is it here?” Theo asked. His singular purpose for days and weeks of travel and travail had led him here; even the question caused that piercing pain of hope again in his chest.
“Tell me what you think it is?” The woman did not rise, but her limbs moved as if she were trying to raise herself. He bent to help her, but she shook her head. “Speak.”
“A weapon. A weapon to defeat the hordes, to destroy them. People whisper that one has been found.”
“Weapons can hurt friend as well as foe.”
“There is no hope if we cannot destroy the deathless!” Theo cried.
The woman nodded. “So you bring hope to me as well.” She succeeded in sitting. “In the chest is a box. Bring it to me.”
Theo opened the chest from which came the light, and within, beside supplies for daily living, was a box, from which the light streamed. It was nearly weightless in his hands, and warm. He gave it to the woman.
“I am not the first to keep this. It was begun long ago, even before the deathless, and it is still incomplete. It will always be incomplete, until we are like it. But it is enough.”
“What is it?”
“Call it a weapon, if you like. It is the melody that makes you stop and look up, the phrase that knocks you flat, the moment you realize the weight of raising a child. It is the silence and the song, the paint and the poem, the caress, the revelation, the dawning, the escape from damnation. It is all that is not from us, but makes us like it. It is goodness which is truth which is beauty which is life, real life.”
She began to cry, then, as if even speaking of it pained her, and her weeping grew to sobs. Theo wanted to comfort her but did not know how. He waited, wanting to understand why she wept.
When the tears stopped and she sighed and looked up at him again with fresh eyes, she said, “They cannot stand before it. They have nothing left that can be raised.”
“And us?” he asked.
“You see my face. We are far weaker before Beauty than we suppose.” She smiled now, ironically. “I came to sacrifice myself, out of love for humanity. There was some truth in it, I suppose, but much pride and vanity and foolishness. Still, you have come, and with you is hope. Will you take this burden?”
Theo said yes, and he believed he meant yes.
“I will open it one last time before I die.”
In a moment, Theo was consumed. He looked away, closed his eyes, from the fire, the pressure, the blast, the melting intensity and then it was gone, and he was weeping, trembling, aching deep, deep in his being, thin, insubstantial, like a ghost remembering his flesh. The world returned and it was bright to look at and heavy upon him.
He took the box from the woman’s hands. He realized that he did not even know her name, and this seemed another tragedy, greater for the memory of the glimpse he had bowed beneath.
She was dead, an expectant look upon her lifeless face. He prayed for her; he prayed for himself and for the world. He took the box. It was light, deceptively light, and he feared it. He understood why the deathless did not enter this place.
He stood and prepared himself to enter the world again.