Chapter Twenty-Six - Arrival at Centrifugal Station
GraftingBuddha
Retired Pooh-Bah
Chapter Twenty-Six - Arrival at Centrifugal Station
The thunder of the collapsing carriage was something Tanner didn't hear, so much as she felt. A wrenching snap that echoed through her bones, shook her muscles, made her vision fill with tiny black stars, and for a second she could see every last blood vessel in her cornea. Humans were encoded with restraint, they had limits, bindings, their ligaments were manacles, the limited scope of their joints were shackles. A thousand demands and constraints. But then moments like this came. Moments when the world turned around and around and around, the coach strained and the wood wailed, while the sound of dying horses seemed to surround them on all sides, punctuated by the cracking of bones as the coach rolled over the things that had pulled it this far. And those limits... well, they became arbitrary. She felt her joints strain, her ligaments pull close to breaking, her flesh suddenly become aware of how far it could push, and how easily it could snap. Safety meant control over one's body. And now that control was gone. Tanner could do nothing but cling tightly to Marana, feeling the warm body of the older woman curling into her desperately, overcoming her moment of paralysis... the benches became hammers, the edge of one slamming painfully into her back, and her breath was split between desperate gasps and wheezes as the air was driven out, over and over.
It felt like it went on forever, but it probably only lasted a few awful moments, before the snow welcomed them like old friends. The window of the coach shattered, spilling crystalline fragments into the dark interior. The little metal stove cracked, and Tanner felt tiny, hot coals pepper her for a second, one of them latching into her hair for a terrifying moment before it spun away into the snow, escaping through the open window. A few moments of absolute chaos. And then silence. Silence, but the wailing of the wind, the lingering moans of the dying horses, and the hiss of hot coals in cold snow. Tanner shook. She was paralysed. The idea of moving was beyond her, her body seemed to have resolved itself to remain very, very still for a very long time indeed, until the world warmed and she could unwind.
Hadn't blinked yet.
Everything ached, but adrenaline was drowning it out.
She turned her head, just for a moment, trying to ease something back into her muscles, some idea of movement, some idea that they could get out of here. Broken glass trickled from her hair, and she felt the cold like a knife in her cheek, felt the draught from the innumerable rents on the coach. A single tumble, and it was like the whole thing had fallen apart. Made her wonder how it could've stayed together in the first place, for so many days, so many hours. The structure was sighing, sagging downwards, all that delirious internal tension ceasing without any further ceremony. Like standing inside a ghost figuring out that it was dead, that it ought to collapse. Marana was moving, squirming, and... move, needed to move. Slowly, Tanner unfurled from Marana, letting the woman go. She looked unharmed, there were no chunks of glass embedded in her, no streaks of luminous blood... she looked rattled, though. Might well be bruised. Tanner could feel a host of little lacerations covering her own body, and a blisteringly painful stripe of bruising across her back where the bench had struck her with tremendous force, like a lash digging into flesh, leaving mottled purples and reds... anyway. Anyway. No point bothering with herself. An involuntary groan left her lips as she tried to steady herself, the world unfamiliar now it was at such an odd angle. Right, right, the coach had turned on its side, one door was pressed into a snowdrift, the other was exposed to the sky, window turned to a jagged lamprey-mouth by the crash, shards glinting in the dead silver light of the cloud-smothered sun.
Get the door open. Climb out that way. Could easily help Marana out, she was light enough. Tanner would be harder, but... no, the coach was intact enough for her to haul, just need to be careful of glass. She paused for a second, the sound of her breathing deafeningly loud, and each puff of air released a little burst of steam - more and more with each second, as the air cooled and the disparity between the world and the humans in it grew larger and larger. Fears of hypothermia danced in her mind, but... she had to listen, make sure nothing was out there, just to make sure Marana could go out... inconclusive, the snow was muffling sound, the horses were still groaning and wailing to one another. No sound from the coachman. He'd been silent during the crash, she remembered that much. She propped Marana up, and ignored the woman's attempts to ask after her own health. Irrelevant. She just... yes, if she stood up like this, she could easily reach the upper door, and had the right leverage for a good shove. The broken window shivered like a destabilising snowflake. The wood groaned, and refused to move - the door was broken, the hinges were deformed, something was stopping it from... no, no, there was a bit of give. She braced herself, and pushed. The door strained... a snap echoed, and the entire thing suddenly fell downwards towards Tanner, completely detached from the frame. Tanner immediately caught it, blessing the thickness of her gloves as little shards of splintered wood tried to seek out her skin.
She paused for a moment, holding the broken door like it was her tombstone, pressing her down into the earth. Marana coughed.
"...need any help?"
"Shush. Shush. Just... listening."
Marana hesitated, nodded, and checked her pockets for... ah. There it was. Her revolver, gleaming and undamaged, filled with six bullets. Tanner needed her stick. Brutish as it was, she'd prefer to have it on her. But first... the door. She lowered it to the ground, let it lie against the bench which had slammed so unpleasantly into her back, and tried to poke her head through the wide gap in the coach's side where a door had once lived. One of the luxuries of height. She stood on her tip-toes, staring out into the unyielding light. It was past midday, and she could see keenly the path the sun would take as it set. Snow, snow, all around. The land was rugged, giving way to hills, to rocky pinnacles, to frozen ponds and sleeping rivers. No sign of humans. No sign at all. And the road was just a low, weathered grey stripe over the wasteland, a dusting of snow devouring it inch by inch. The road behind them... she could only see the tracks of the coach for a few metres, after that, there was nothing at all. The snow was falling quickly, and her face smarted, felt like she'd poked herself into a sandpaper factory. There were no shouts from bandits, no growls from wolves, nothing of the sort. Nothing from the coachman. Only the dying horses.
Of the four, one was already dead. None would move again. Their legs were snapped like twigs, those powerful tendons turning against their owners, ripping and releasing such tension that they could... never be repaired. Years and years of growth to produce those kicking legs, years of building tension as their weight and muscle grew, as experience toughened them... all wasted. Nothing could recover it. Even now, though, they were trying to move, squealing as their injured legs brushed the snow. The dead one had a head bent to a nauseating angle, a nub of bone protruding through the flesh, like the budding horn of a lamb. Dead. Totally dead. The others were afraid of it, shying away if their damaged limbs could allow it. Two were wheezing pathetically, ribs snapped by the rolling coach. They'd given the vehicle the speed which had killed them. Tanner felt nausea churn in her stomach, and she had to take a few desperate gulps of ice-cold air, the accident too fresh for rot to have infected it with cloying sweetness.
What had happened? What had made the coach crash? The road was clear. No blockages. The coachman was nowhere to be seen, but the chaos of the crash... he might be embedded in that twist of bodies, he might have been flung clear, he might've fallen from the coach before it began, and he was lying somewhere behind them. Tanner hauled herself upwards, aware that she'd need to help Marana up, and... crumbs, forgotten the damn stick. Focus on the necessities, focus on the rituals, don't focus on the squealing of the animals. A cold paralysis was lurking in her innards, coiling around her organs and forcing them to work onwards, not to rush with panic, not to curl up with pain. Everyone had a second heart, she thought. The first, a warm, rushing heart that endured until their last day. And the second, a cold, icy heart which only emerged when there was a strict choice between life and death, compelling the body to continue functioning, to wind up tight like a horse's tendons, tight enough to keep going until there was no choice, the choice was settled, life was the accepted path and the softer, warmer heart could take up the shuddering duty. The difference between Sister Halima, who was warm and personable and kind in a scholarly sort of way... and the lodge, strict, hard, cold, unyielding, unwilling to tolerate the presumption of choice in important matters.
The lodge coiled around her organs, and forced her to move. She hauled herself out, and called back over her shoulder, voice shaking.
"Stick, please."
It poked upwards absurdly, and she took it, just before she reached the ground. Her boots sank deeper than she wanted to think about. She reached for Marana, hauled her out with ease, one hand under each armpit. The woman was pale as a sheet, her alcohol-soaked nose almost clown-like by contrast. Even the snow and shock couldn't drain the colour from that thing, nor from the very tips of her cheeks. The two stood, breathing heavily, amidst the desolation and the wailing of horses. Tanner gulped.
"...so..."
Marana rubbed the back of her neck, letting out a shuddering breath that turned into a haze of fog, stolen by the wind less than a second later.
"Shit."
"...yes, quite, I... so... what now?"
"Coachman?"
"Can't see him."
Marana stiffened her shoulders, and marched on the horses, revolver shaking a little in her hand... but she kept her finger away from the trigger, and held it in a way that betrayed experience. One more of the horses had stopped moving, leaving only two, their eyes bulging madly and their bared teeth dripping with spit, like cave formations slick with condensation, ivory stalagmites in a flesh-red cavern. Marana was poking amidst them, avoiding any legs that could still kick, her lips tight with concentration. The gore didn't unnerve her. She'd likely seen worse in Krodaw. Her lips somehow thinned further, turning absolutely bloodless.
"He's here. Tangled in the bodies. The reins are tangled around him."
Tanner moved quickly, snow squeaking underfoot, her club held rigidly.
"Well, let's-"
"He's dead. Fall, probably. The coach crashed, and he went with it. His legs are flattened, probably his waist."
Tanner froze.
"Dead?"
"Dead."
Memories of her father with his caved-in head. Memories of the mask of blood he'd worn on that awful day. She backed off, unwilling to look at the corpse. Marana kept looking at it, though, her eyes flat with saddened pragmatism - she was toughened to this, but she still didn't like it. Seemed to be looking for something, or... no, she was moving away, coming to join Tanner. The two looked at one another, the disparity in their heights almost ridiculous.
"Thank you, Tanner. For soaking up all that glass and brutality for me. Very good of you."
Tanner shrugged.
"It's nothing. So... do we move?"
"I want to know why we crashed. The road looks fine, it... come over here, come on, I want to see where we actually crashed. I mean, the instigating incident, what made the horses go into..."
She stopped, swallowed.
"...I ought to put them down. Decent thing."
Heistated. Tanner shivered.
"I'll do it. It's fine."
"No, no, I'm-"
"I used to gut fish for a living. I'm... used to it. Killing animals."
Somewhat true. Somewhat. She'd fished from time to time, back in Mahar Jovan, and yes, that involved grabbing a fish and slamming the skull into the nearest hard surface, cracking it open, killing the thing as quickly as possible. Merciful, really. And when you were poor, you ate what you could get, you didn't turn up your nose when your mother told you to snap a chicken's neck so they could have it for dinner that night. Well. She didn't. Marana handed over the revolver, telling Tanner to keep her finger away from the trigger until she was pointing it at something she wanted dead, showing her how to cock it, a grim look on her face.
"I can do it, you know. I'm not... averse, it's-"
Tanner was already stalking away. Marana paused, and hurried to check the place where they'd crashed. Two dead horses. Two still struggling, incapable of healing. Decent thing, to put them down. Tanner just buried her impulses under layers of expectation, more than anything else. Remember killing fish, remember the feeling of cold meat under her fingers, the little red shapes of organs as she ripped them out, along with the spines. The stink of the maceration tanks. Killing was easier in the cold. Everyone was almost a corpse in the cold, anyway. The blood retreating from the skin. The organs chilling. She felt low stings from the tiny wounds the glass had inflicted - suppressed it, barely. The horses were insane, their eyes were rolling madly in their sockets, foam was spilling and steaming, their half-crushed ribs were pulsing rapidly, desperate to live. Tanner shook. Held her breath. Lifted the gun.
Two shots.
Two sets of kicking legs that abruptly stopped.
Two bulging eyes that grew cloudy.
A click as the hammer resumed its original upright position.
Not remotely like killing a fish. Not remotely. Come on. Move. Marana was distant, looking at the snow with an inscrutable expression. Best to move. Best to move. Come on. Ignore the shaking in her hand. She preferred the stick. Hated the kick of that revolver. First time she'd fired one, and it'd been a kill. Euthanasia. No, no, bury it all, focus on what was needed, what was expected. Routines could kill thought for years at a time, remembering a routine could dull thought for a few hours, at least. Hands wouldn't stop shaking, though. Wondered if they'd ever stop. Focus on Marana. She looked uncertain, staring into the churned-up portion of snow where it looked like everything had gone wrong, where tearing hooves (would tear no more) had ripped brown clods of earth to mix with the snow, to mar it, to stain it. Tanner paused, shivering as Marana examined the ruin. Took a moment for the woman to turn, to acknowledge her.
"Is it done?"
"Done."
"Sorry. I should've done it. Just..."
Tanner didn't reply. If, in the reckoning of the world, two people were asked to kill something for the first time, and one of them was a boozy middle-aged woman with her own problems, and the other was a hard-faced giant judge, part of an order which had once executed people, and might one day execute people again if the law called for it... well. Well. Better the judge than the artist. Tanner put all thoughts out of her mind, and Marana's face twitched with an abrupt paroxysm of shame, before a mask of tension returned to both.
"Right, then. The horses, it... they didn't trip or anything, the road's smooth, and they didn't slip, either. If they wanted to slip, they'd have done it hours ago, days ago. The coachman... he... I don't know. I just don't."
Tanner looked around, and her height let her see further than Marana could, and she paused while she studied the snow, her large stick in hand.
"...something's wrong."
"What?"
"There's... look, over there."
"Describe it, I can't see that far."
Tanner hummed uncertainly, leaning into the wind which blew unceasingly in her direction, driving snow into her face with vicious force.
"Prints. I can see prints. The snow's taking them already, there's nothing past a certain distance, but there's... there's some shallow ones, I can see those, then very, very deep ones, then nothing, and-"
Marana swore.
"Something jumped, then. Ran for the horses. Jumped at them. Wouldn't take much. One falls, it drags the others, the coach turns and crushes them to death. Damn. Damn."
Tanner's eyes widened with fear.
"Mutant?"
"Why would a mutant leap at uninfected horses? Wolf, maybe. Heard of rabid, starving animals doing stupid things. Jumped, been flung free, probably..."
A sound.
A sound from behind them, in the great plain of snow that gave way to towering hills. Tanner whirled, and Marana raised her restored revolver. They backed away, towards the phantom prints already being filled by merciful snow, eager to erase all trace of the calamity. The sound was dark and snuffling, filled with pants that spoke to life, and heathy life, with functional lungs. Tanner had images of wolves, huge grey ones, loping easily through the snow, crazed by winter-hunger to attack even a coach. Had they... had they been waiting in ambush? No, that was... come on, just keep the stick up, keep the stick up, and ready herself to hit things. The snuffling rose, and Tanner cursed the hilly landscape, such a break from the rolling plains of the last few days. Hated them, hated each and every divot and protrusion, which hid the creature from sight. Could be an army out there. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking, but her breathing was steady, and she didn't whimper or scream. The cold second-heart was still beating with brutal certainty, unwilling to let her sit down and die. The evolutionary compulsion to live above all else, no matter what.
The creature seemed to shake itself off, behind the snow. Like derailing a coach was just a mild inconvenience.
And all of a sudden, the creature was moving, recovering with terrifying speed. It'd run them off the road, pounced and terrified the horses, killed the coachman, a single pounce and they were traped in the wildenrness. Tanner was trying not to think about the journey onwards, and all the terror of the cold and the world and the crash seemed crystallised in that movement, that unnatural movement. Fast, something dark in the snow, something low-down and nimble, skittering practically over the surface like a water strider on a stagnant pond. She could barely see it, even in the light... Marana was frozen, and Tanner was too, watching the thing moving for the... the horses. As it stopped, it resolved in her vision, and the wet sounds of flesh being ripped at filled the howling air.
Her voice was low, and fearful.
"...it's... it's not a wolf."
"Well, what is it?"
"Mutant."
Marana blinked.
"...but why...?"
Why would it go for uninfected horses. Why would it put itself at risk for a meal that has no use to it. Tanner could see it, her height gave her an advantage, the creature was... maybe it had been a wolf, once. No longer. Fangs like bee stingers, long and black, hollow and pulsing with venom, gums swollen with glands that flared an unsightly purple. Too many eyes, many of them tiny and black, insect-like. Larger than it should be, much larger. No wonder the horses had gone mad with fear and tripped over themselves - the scent of mutation would've driven them to madness already, and the size of the predator could've bowled them over in moments. And... and there were tumorous growths, places where contaminated matter had been ingested. Sticky matter, not unlike spiderwebs, dripped from its mouth pointlessly. The mangy grey fur was studded with tiny twitching legs from a whole variety of insects, and the wide-splayed paws seemed to be gnarled with cancerous tree-roots which emerged like grotesque pseudo-fingers, shivering erratically as plant and animal struggled to merge meaningfully. It was... it was unstable. Unstable mutant. Not one of the smart ones the captain, Kralana, had talked about. A bundle of deformities stuffed into an animal, driving it mad with hunger for more contamination, anything to complete its transformations. It was evolving in a hundred directions at once, and each direction screamed for fuel.
The wind shifted - when she'd looked at the tracks it'd blown into her face, then into her back once she'd turned, and now it shifted, and she could detect the popping, hissing scent of contamination, awakening long-buried instincts of fear within her primordial brain. A command - get away. Linger, and you'll cease to be human.
The creature was stuffing its maw into the horses with wet slurping sounds, digging its bee-stinger teeth into the flesh and ripping away as quickly as it could, sometimes leaving little stinging needles behind in the process, snapped away at the roots. A pulse of relief that she'd killed those two survivors. Didn't make them experience more terror and pain towards the end. Why was it... why was it eating them? What was the point? A strange anger surged in her - why had it run them off the road? It was a mutant, it needed contamination, not... not random horses, not a coach. And the creature seemed to recognise this, somehow. It chewed, ripped flesh away in bleeding chunks, and barely gnawed them before trying to choke them down, its stomach starting to bloat with matter. And the creature groaned as it ate, the only normal eyes among its little collection watering with pain. It chewed randomly, taking from one horse, another, another, from random places, sometimes scraping against bones for a moment before abandoning them, dabbling in everything it could reach without ever settling, and all the while its emaciated stomach bulged with pointless, pointless meat. Tanner stared. Marana hissed through her teeth, voice barely audible.
"...it's unstable. It's... it's young. Doesn't know what it needs. Still thinks it needs to eat."
Tanner turned slightly.
"What?"
"Contamination. Hasn't reached the brain properly. Hasn't told it what it needs, really."
"Look at it, how could-"
"Body. Just the body. Not the brain. Mutant body, but the brain is still wolfish. And wolves eat things like this. But the meat won't satisfy it."
A low growl from the mutant.
It was getting angry with the lack of satisfaction.
They'd been attacked by a creature that was too idiotic to realise it didn't need uninfected flesh. It was one thing to be attacked by a mutant. Another thing to be attacked by an idiot, a shambling rabid wretch that would gain nothing from this, nothing at all.
Tanner realised something.
The wind. It was blowing towards them.
Their scent wasn't carrying to the creature.
That might be the only reason it hadn't-
The head of the beast twitched up on powerful muscles that wriggled under the skin like worms.
It stared at them with its many eyes.
A gobbet of flesh that might've been from the coachman dripped out of its stinger-laden jaws.
Marana raised her revolver.
The creature let out a low, low growl.
Maybe it saw them as a threat. Maybe it saw them as something that might soothe its perishing hunger. Maybe it saw them... saw them the way any starving animal would. And this creature was ravenous. It'd gorged itself on the meat of horses and man, but there was nothing satisfying. Its stomach was bloating, almost scraping the ground, and yet... yet it would be hungry forever. Hungry until the brain caught up with the body. And it didn't look like that would happen in the next few seconds.
It moved slowly, snorting, growling though a throat which wasn't meant to growl, growling was pointless for mutants, pointless, they didn't need to do it. Made it sound like it was gurgling through a throat filled with mucus and meat, which probably wasn't far from the truth. Gurgling through a membrane. Marana raised her revolver, and aimed. Carefully. One eye closed. Legs apart. Tanner braced her stick, and wished she'd taken a revolver of her own... but she knew her hands would shake too much, far too much, to aim for anything that wasn't a dying, immobile horse barely a few feet away. This thing would give her no such luxuries. It advanced, low to the ground, gurgling wetly, teeth red with gore...
Marana fired without ceremony.
There was no reasoning with the mad. No warding them away with self-interest.
The mutant rushed suddenly, the bullet slamming into its front shoulder, tearing at the infected meat - a spray of mutated blood that practically crawled in the snow for a few painful moments, raw tissue trying to escape, to live, to evolve into something greater. The wolf paid it no mind. Barely slowed. Another bullet. It staggered once more, almost falling as a bullet tore through its side, sending more crawling blood into the snow. Two bullets on the horses. Two bullets on the wolf. Two more bullets left in that gleaming revolver. The wolf was mad with delusional hunger, and it continued to advance, even with those ragged wounds. Marana clicked back the hammer... fired again, biting her lip as she did so, something like panic dawning in her eyes. This time the wolf did stop, as a bullet slammed into its front, tearing through what might pass for a throat - a little torrent of meat spilled out of the ruptured tube, the remnants of what it'd been struggling to devour a minute ago. The gurgling growl ceased. But the eyes remained bright. And to Tanner's alarm...
The throat was already plugged.
The meat in the stomach. The stuff it'd been devouring. It was useless meat, wouldn't stabilise it, not at all. But the contamination in the wolf... it was trying to add the meat to its biology. Yet another mad evolutionary drive, contamination convinced that the creature was meant to be bloated with horseflesh. It was healing. And quickly.
Too close.
The final bullet did nothing but slow it down for a crucial moment, and its mouth was opening, wider and wider, large enough to wrap around Marana's entire head, riddled with a nest of black stingers that glistened with venom...
Tanner, once more, didn't think.
She swung.
A bullet could hurt it. A heavy wooden stick being slammed into its side mid-leap by a giantess wouldn't kill it, either. But it could redirect it.
Tanner felt grotesque meat contort under the blow, and the wolf spun away silently into the snow, already steadying itself. Marana cursed, reloading the revolver as quickly as she could manage, and Tanner moved, thrashing at the thing with her stick, pounding it further away. She felt meat move, she felt bones shudder, she felt the whole body of the beast adapt to try and endure the blows. It would survive. It wouldn't die to something as simple as this.
Didn't need to.
A bang echoed through the hills and valleys.
The creature stumbled backwards, head half-caved in by Marana's bullet, brains clearly visible through the demolished skull. It staggered, body still insisting it was alive. Tanner braced, lifted her club...
Swung...
And the creature was flung into the snow, crumpling without a sound.
Marana yelled to her.
"Move! It's not dead!"
Correct. She could see it moving. See it shuffling, even as its ruined skull wept blood and rot, even as the ruptured venom glands in its gums popped and dripped steaming poison downwards, each droplet tinted a sickening golden shade. Nothing would kill it. Nothing but absolute destruction. Fire, they needed fire. Gods, she was holding a wooden stick, why hadn't she... she glanced around quickly, just trying to figure something out. And a sudden ripple of fear ran through her. What had the captain said? Mutants only hunted each other, really. The only sustenance they wanted or needed. The cold war in the north was between mutants perpetually looking for an opening to strike, to claim more contamination, more bio-matter, more power. This was a mutant. It was wounded. It was bleeding.
Meaning, more would be coming.
And quickly.
She thumped it one more time for good measure, and started to run, yelling for Marana to follow. The woman's frightened gaze told her she understood her panicked cry that 'more were coming'. The coach was useless, shattered. The horses were dead. Useless. Tanner swerved around the pools of blood the mutant had left as it charged at them, pools that writhed with tiny half-made organisms, some of them almost seeming to reach out to her as she ran. Right, right, so... so... a twitch of irrationality ran through her, and she dashed to the coach, dragging her small trunk out, holding it under her arm with ease. Marana shot her a disbelieving look... but Tanner was already moving, case bouncing at her side. There was no way of staying here, not safely. More mutants were coming. Bigger mutants. Ones that might infect them just through proximity, might kill them with lazy effortlessness... whatever the case, she didn't want to be here when they came. Going back was suicide, there was nothing but a barren little rest-house they'd left behind ages ago. Based on when they'd crashed... there shouldn't be too far to Rekida, right? Just had to push on through to the end. Going back would be suicide. Going ahead was their only hope.
The creature was already moving.
Tanner hesitated.
"Get on my back."
"What?"
"Get on my back, I can carry you."
Marana blinked.
"Alright."
Accepted Tanner's trunk, using a long strap to hang it from her back, and then... hopped on board. Tanner strained for a moment under the weight. Just for a moment. Then she was off. No worrying about Marana falling behind, could just move as quickly as possible. It was for Marana's sake... and for her own. She could feel a low, animal terror budding in her limbs, tempting her to sprint and exhaust her every resources simply to escape. Wouldn't forgive herself if she left Marana when she did so. Her long legs pumped, powering them onwards, the weight vanishing in a haze of necessity, even as she heard the creature loping after them on wounded limbs slowly filling with plundered meat... pausing from time to time, as it lapped up the matter spilled by Marana's gunshots. Recovering everything it could.
Soon, it'd be back to normal.
Soon, it'd be chasing them to satisfy an insatiable, pointless hunger.
And others would come to sake their hungers on it.
Even now, she thought she could see dark shapes in the distance. Creatures eager to descend. Waiting for the right moment.
Watching.
The hills welcomed them. The snow on the ground was growing deeper - no horses to trample it down, no coach to flatten it. The snow in the air was growing thicker and sharper, rasping across their faces, and Tanner was aware of how she was shedding heat recklessly, letting it boil away in waves of stress and exertion.
Just had to keep running.
Rekida was close.
Rekida was close.
***
Kept running. Kept running. At some point, she'd started mumbling to herself, just encouragements to continue. The snow was almost up to her knees at this point, and she felt how it was starting to soak through the cloth of her coat, her skirt, her stockings, leaching into her skin with eagerness. Numb. Marana was bouncing on her back, a dead weight that was panting despite not being the one running. The creature was still behind them, but it was loping lazily, only coming closer from time to time. And when she heard that heavy pant, that gurgling sound from the half-gorged pipes of its throat, and smelled the sweet champagne crackle of contamination... she forgot all weariness and powered on. Was it toying with them? Was it starting to figure out they weren't good for eating? Was it simply letting them exhaust themselves before striking? They said mutants didn't grow tired - nonsense, but they grew tired much, much, much slower than humans did. Exhaustion wouldn't weary their limbs, not really. They said their muscles were made of the same tissue that kept a human heart beating unceasingly for decades on end. They said that contamination burned like a furnace to keep them working at all times. And she knew the first thing a mutant shed was its eyelids. It wouldn't sleep. It wouldn't stop. It would simply pursue. She felt like some primitive animal running from a primitive human, chased doggedly by something which refused to cease, and would, sooner or later, drive her down a dead end, to the brinks of insanity, and then...
Snap.
Gorged on by a creature which didn't even need her.
The coachman was dead. She hadn't even learned his name, but he was dead. Crushed by his own coach. She kept cycling through her rituals, her routines, all of it. Luck... this might seem like an unlucky scenario, but not quite. If it was truly unlucky, she'd be dead. She lived, didn't she? The lodge had kept her alive, she'd cultivated enough luck through her own rites... even now, she had a little trunk with her tools, the tools of a judge, the reason she was going to Rekida, the reason Rekida was a safe place that would shelter her. She knew there was warmth at the end of the journey, this wasn't a leap of faith. But the sun was sliding down the sky with mocking swiftness, a silver disk that seemed to drink warmth from the world... but she knew that was an illusion, and once it was gone, she'd know true cold. The snow was taking her perception, bit by bit. Her hands were numb, even through her gloves. Her ears were gone. Her nose might as well have been severed.
Blood was slithering from the skin to the organs. Moving to protect the most vital areas. But soon enough, that'd just mean she was starving everything outside the internals of heat, of life. And then the things she couldn't feel... she'd never feel them again. They'd shrivel. Blacken. Crack free with a sound like... like Marana's gun firing. Her legs pushed through drifts of snow.
How long until her toes fell off? She already couldn't feel them. Could she guarantee she'd ever be able to push blood into them again, that the vessels hadn't already shrivelled and collapsed like... like twigs? Brittle as seashells and just as hollow.
She was going to die here.
She was not going to die here.
"I'm not dying. Not dying."
Marana murmured into her ear a moment later:
"That's right, you're going to live through this and tell me a whole suite of random things about eels, that's what you're going to die."
"Not dying."
"Precisely, no-one else is dying today, not a single additional horse. We'll get to Rekida, share an enormous meal, drink vast quantities... just think about it, think about... about sausages fried in bacon fat, eggs swimming in the stuff, their yolks bursting and spilling around your plate, think of potatoes crisp enough to shatter in your hands, shatter into little fried shards!"
"Not dying."
"That's the spirit!"
"Got a job. Have a job."
"Precisely, you go and fulfil your professional obligations!"
"Not dying."
Marana kept talking, but it was obvious neither was talking to one another. Tanner just wheezed out what she could through her aching lungs, past her frigid lips, into the soaked fabric of her scarf. Marana was just... saying things for their own sake, her voice jittering with nerves. Sometimes, Tanner felt her revolver thump against Tanner's broad back. Sometimes, Tanner felt all her aches and pains. The stripe of bruises from the crash. The lacerations from the broken window. The low hum in her hands where she'd struck the mutant. All of it. The shakes from shooting the horses, too. The shakes that never stopped.
Might be keeping her warm, for all she knew. Might be keeping her limbs intact. Bless the shakes.
And suddenly...
Something moved.
Not the wolf.
Not the wolf.
Something else. Something larger.
For a moment, something vast and unnameable was there, in the snow. Just ahead of them, and concealed behind a veil of flakes. Larger than Tanner, much larger. Dead eyes stared at her, dead silver eyes, like the slowly vanishing sun. No clues to what it looked like beyond that. Just... dead. A mutant, and a large one, large enough to kill her in moments, to rip her apart, to... to... they were here. They were here. The smarter mutants. The larger mutants. Stable, and utterly mechanical, divorced from any kind of animal reasoning. All the desire to survive, decoupled from everything else that made an animal animalistic. Animals would gnaw off a leg to escape a trap. These eyes... this thing would do the same. It would gnaw its leg off. But it would feel no pain. It would feel no loss. It would lose the leg, then cannibalise it a moment later to avoid wasting resources, before dispassionately preparing to fight whatever had laid the trap in the first place. Inhuman, unanimal intelligence lurked in those eyes, cold as the winter sun, yet innumerable, a constellation of dead stars looming at her from a great height.
A second.
A flurry of snow.
It was gone.
A second of contact, and the thing had vanished. Disappeared into the dark. Tanner barely even had time to process it before she was forced to keep running.
They were here.
They could kill her, if they wanted to.
She focused on Eygi. On her role. On her restraints. A wasp is bound in a spiderweb, and the wasp is immobilised, but it's safe, safe for others to admire, and safe from other predators that fear the cloying touch of the web. No. Idiot. Not all predators. She felt small, she felt weak, she felt the routines and restraints which had dragged her here, and she wondered what they were worth if it ended in the bloody snow.
Her mind's gyre widened with each step, each panicked breath, each rasped word of encouragement from herself to herself, like her two hearts, cold and hot, were communicating with one another by any means necessary. Keep going. Don't stop. Live. Get back home. Mother had money she needed to keep father properly comfortable. The lodge had pride she needed to maintain by living. The judges had expectations upon her. Eygi would be expecting a letter. She'd cultivated too much luck to die in a loathsome place like this, surrounded by hills too barren for fields, too cold for animals. Every wall contained a promise, a promise that something interesting lay on the other side - had the Tulavanta been containing this? Focus on the bitter outrage, focus on the feeling that she'd been cheated, that she'd left the walls and found nothing beyond them.
And do. Not. Stop. Running.
Another hungry gurgle.
And despite everything, a childish whimper escaped her throat.
She didn't want to die.
She had too much work to do.
The thunder of the collapsing carriage was something Tanner didn't hear, so much as she felt. A wrenching snap that echoed through her bones, shook her muscles, made her vision fill with tiny black stars, and for a second she could see every last blood vessel in her cornea. Humans were encoded with restraint, they had limits, bindings, their ligaments were manacles, the limited scope of their joints were shackles. A thousand demands and constraints. But then moments like this came. Moments when the world turned around and around and around, the coach strained and the wood wailed, while the sound of dying horses seemed to surround them on all sides, punctuated by the cracking of bones as the coach rolled over the things that had pulled it this far. And those limits... well, they became arbitrary. She felt her joints strain, her ligaments pull close to breaking, her flesh suddenly become aware of how far it could push, and how easily it could snap. Safety meant control over one's body. And now that control was gone. Tanner could do nothing but cling tightly to Marana, feeling the warm body of the older woman curling into her desperately, overcoming her moment of paralysis... the benches became hammers, the edge of one slamming painfully into her back, and her breath was split between desperate gasps and wheezes as the air was driven out, over and over.
It felt like it went on forever, but it probably only lasted a few awful moments, before the snow welcomed them like old friends. The window of the coach shattered, spilling crystalline fragments into the dark interior. The little metal stove cracked, and Tanner felt tiny, hot coals pepper her for a second, one of them latching into her hair for a terrifying moment before it spun away into the snow, escaping through the open window. A few moments of absolute chaos. And then silence. Silence, but the wailing of the wind, the lingering moans of the dying horses, and the hiss of hot coals in cold snow. Tanner shook. She was paralysed. The idea of moving was beyond her, her body seemed to have resolved itself to remain very, very still for a very long time indeed, until the world warmed and she could unwind.
Hadn't blinked yet.
Everything ached, but adrenaline was drowning it out.
She turned her head, just for a moment, trying to ease something back into her muscles, some idea of movement, some idea that they could get out of here. Broken glass trickled from her hair, and she felt the cold like a knife in her cheek, felt the draught from the innumerable rents on the coach. A single tumble, and it was like the whole thing had fallen apart. Made her wonder how it could've stayed together in the first place, for so many days, so many hours. The structure was sighing, sagging downwards, all that delirious internal tension ceasing without any further ceremony. Like standing inside a ghost figuring out that it was dead, that it ought to collapse. Marana was moving, squirming, and... move, needed to move. Slowly, Tanner unfurled from Marana, letting the woman go. She looked unharmed, there were no chunks of glass embedded in her, no streaks of luminous blood... she looked rattled, though. Might well be bruised. Tanner could feel a host of little lacerations covering her own body, and a blisteringly painful stripe of bruising across her back where the bench had struck her with tremendous force, like a lash digging into flesh, leaving mottled purples and reds... anyway. Anyway. No point bothering with herself. An involuntary groan left her lips as she tried to steady herself, the world unfamiliar now it was at such an odd angle. Right, right, the coach had turned on its side, one door was pressed into a snowdrift, the other was exposed to the sky, window turned to a jagged lamprey-mouth by the crash, shards glinting in the dead silver light of the cloud-smothered sun.
Get the door open. Climb out that way. Could easily help Marana out, she was light enough. Tanner would be harder, but... no, the coach was intact enough for her to haul, just need to be careful of glass. She paused for a second, the sound of her breathing deafeningly loud, and each puff of air released a little burst of steam - more and more with each second, as the air cooled and the disparity between the world and the humans in it grew larger and larger. Fears of hypothermia danced in her mind, but... she had to listen, make sure nothing was out there, just to make sure Marana could go out... inconclusive, the snow was muffling sound, the horses were still groaning and wailing to one another. No sound from the coachman. He'd been silent during the crash, she remembered that much. She propped Marana up, and ignored the woman's attempts to ask after her own health. Irrelevant. She just... yes, if she stood up like this, she could easily reach the upper door, and had the right leverage for a good shove. The broken window shivered like a destabilising snowflake. The wood groaned, and refused to move - the door was broken, the hinges were deformed, something was stopping it from... no, no, there was a bit of give. She braced herself, and pushed. The door strained... a snap echoed, and the entire thing suddenly fell downwards towards Tanner, completely detached from the frame. Tanner immediately caught it, blessing the thickness of her gloves as little shards of splintered wood tried to seek out her skin.
She paused for a moment, holding the broken door like it was her tombstone, pressing her down into the earth. Marana coughed.
"...need any help?"
"Shush. Shush. Just... listening."
Marana hesitated, nodded, and checked her pockets for... ah. There it was. Her revolver, gleaming and undamaged, filled with six bullets. Tanner needed her stick. Brutish as it was, she'd prefer to have it on her. But first... the door. She lowered it to the ground, let it lie against the bench which had slammed so unpleasantly into her back, and tried to poke her head through the wide gap in the coach's side where a door had once lived. One of the luxuries of height. She stood on her tip-toes, staring out into the unyielding light. It was past midday, and she could see keenly the path the sun would take as it set. Snow, snow, all around. The land was rugged, giving way to hills, to rocky pinnacles, to frozen ponds and sleeping rivers. No sign of humans. No sign at all. And the road was just a low, weathered grey stripe over the wasteland, a dusting of snow devouring it inch by inch. The road behind them... she could only see the tracks of the coach for a few metres, after that, there was nothing at all. The snow was falling quickly, and her face smarted, felt like she'd poked herself into a sandpaper factory. There were no shouts from bandits, no growls from wolves, nothing of the sort. Nothing from the coachman. Only the dying horses.
Of the four, one was already dead. None would move again. Their legs were snapped like twigs, those powerful tendons turning against their owners, ripping and releasing such tension that they could... never be repaired. Years and years of growth to produce those kicking legs, years of building tension as their weight and muscle grew, as experience toughened them... all wasted. Nothing could recover it. Even now, though, they were trying to move, squealing as their injured legs brushed the snow. The dead one had a head bent to a nauseating angle, a nub of bone protruding through the flesh, like the budding horn of a lamb. Dead. Totally dead. The others were afraid of it, shying away if their damaged limbs could allow it. Two were wheezing pathetically, ribs snapped by the rolling coach. They'd given the vehicle the speed which had killed them. Tanner felt nausea churn in her stomach, and she had to take a few desperate gulps of ice-cold air, the accident too fresh for rot to have infected it with cloying sweetness.
What had happened? What had made the coach crash? The road was clear. No blockages. The coachman was nowhere to be seen, but the chaos of the crash... he might be embedded in that twist of bodies, he might have been flung clear, he might've fallen from the coach before it began, and he was lying somewhere behind them. Tanner hauled herself upwards, aware that she'd need to help Marana up, and... crumbs, forgotten the damn stick. Focus on the necessities, focus on the rituals, don't focus on the squealing of the animals. A cold paralysis was lurking in her innards, coiling around her organs and forcing them to work onwards, not to rush with panic, not to curl up with pain. Everyone had a second heart, she thought. The first, a warm, rushing heart that endured until their last day. And the second, a cold, icy heart which only emerged when there was a strict choice between life and death, compelling the body to continue functioning, to wind up tight like a horse's tendons, tight enough to keep going until there was no choice, the choice was settled, life was the accepted path and the softer, warmer heart could take up the shuddering duty. The difference between Sister Halima, who was warm and personable and kind in a scholarly sort of way... and the lodge, strict, hard, cold, unyielding, unwilling to tolerate the presumption of choice in important matters.
The lodge coiled around her organs, and forced her to move. She hauled herself out, and called back over her shoulder, voice shaking.
"Stick, please."
It poked upwards absurdly, and she took it, just before she reached the ground. Her boots sank deeper than she wanted to think about. She reached for Marana, hauled her out with ease, one hand under each armpit. The woman was pale as a sheet, her alcohol-soaked nose almost clown-like by contrast. Even the snow and shock couldn't drain the colour from that thing, nor from the very tips of her cheeks. The two stood, breathing heavily, amidst the desolation and the wailing of horses. Tanner gulped.
"...so..."
Marana rubbed the back of her neck, letting out a shuddering breath that turned into a haze of fog, stolen by the wind less than a second later.
"Shit."
"...yes, quite, I... so... what now?"
"Coachman?"
"Can't see him."
Marana stiffened her shoulders, and marched on the horses, revolver shaking a little in her hand... but she kept her finger away from the trigger, and held it in a way that betrayed experience. One more of the horses had stopped moving, leaving only two, their eyes bulging madly and their bared teeth dripping with spit, like cave formations slick with condensation, ivory stalagmites in a flesh-red cavern. Marana was poking amidst them, avoiding any legs that could still kick, her lips tight with concentration. The gore didn't unnerve her. She'd likely seen worse in Krodaw. Her lips somehow thinned further, turning absolutely bloodless.
"He's here. Tangled in the bodies. The reins are tangled around him."
Tanner moved quickly, snow squeaking underfoot, her club held rigidly.
"Well, let's-"
"He's dead. Fall, probably. The coach crashed, and he went with it. His legs are flattened, probably his waist."
Tanner froze.
"Dead?"
"Dead."
Memories of her father with his caved-in head. Memories of the mask of blood he'd worn on that awful day. She backed off, unwilling to look at the corpse. Marana kept looking at it, though, her eyes flat with saddened pragmatism - she was toughened to this, but she still didn't like it. Seemed to be looking for something, or... no, she was moving away, coming to join Tanner. The two looked at one another, the disparity in their heights almost ridiculous.
"Thank you, Tanner. For soaking up all that glass and brutality for me. Very good of you."
Tanner shrugged.
"It's nothing. So... do we move?"
"I want to know why we crashed. The road looks fine, it... come over here, come on, I want to see where we actually crashed. I mean, the instigating incident, what made the horses go into..."
She stopped, swallowed.
"...I ought to put them down. Decent thing."
Heistated. Tanner shivered.
"I'll do it. It's fine."
"No, no, I'm-"
"I used to gut fish for a living. I'm... used to it. Killing animals."
Somewhat true. Somewhat. She'd fished from time to time, back in Mahar Jovan, and yes, that involved grabbing a fish and slamming the skull into the nearest hard surface, cracking it open, killing the thing as quickly as possible. Merciful, really. And when you were poor, you ate what you could get, you didn't turn up your nose when your mother told you to snap a chicken's neck so they could have it for dinner that night. Well. She didn't. Marana handed over the revolver, telling Tanner to keep her finger away from the trigger until she was pointing it at something she wanted dead, showing her how to cock it, a grim look on her face.
"I can do it, you know. I'm not... averse, it's-"
Tanner was already stalking away. Marana paused, and hurried to check the place where they'd crashed. Two dead horses. Two still struggling, incapable of healing. Decent thing, to put them down. Tanner just buried her impulses under layers of expectation, more than anything else. Remember killing fish, remember the feeling of cold meat under her fingers, the little red shapes of organs as she ripped them out, along with the spines. The stink of the maceration tanks. Killing was easier in the cold. Everyone was almost a corpse in the cold, anyway. The blood retreating from the skin. The organs chilling. She felt low stings from the tiny wounds the glass had inflicted - suppressed it, barely. The horses were insane, their eyes were rolling madly in their sockets, foam was spilling and steaming, their half-crushed ribs were pulsing rapidly, desperate to live. Tanner shook. Held her breath. Lifted the gun.
Two shots.
Two sets of kicking legs that abruptly stopped.
Two bulging eyes that grew cloudy.
A click as the hammer resumed its original upright position.
Not remotely like killing a fish. Not remotely. Come on. Move. Marana was distant, looking at the snow with an inscrutable expression. Best to move. Best to move. Come on. Ignore the shaking in her hand. She preferred the stick. Hated the kick of that revolver. First time she'd fired one, and it'd been a kill. Euthanasia. No, no, bury it all, focus on what was needed, what was expected. Routines could kill thought for years at a time, remembering a routine could dull thought for a few hours, at least. Hands wouldn't stop shaking, though. Wondered if they'd ever stop. Focus on Marana. She looked uncertain, staring into the churned-up portion of snow where it looked like everything had gone wrong, where tearing hooves (would tear no more) had ripped brown clods of earth to mix with the snow, to mar it, to stain it. Tanner paused, shivering as Marana examined the ruin. Took a moment for the woman to turn, to acknowledge her.
"Is it done?"
"Done."
"Sorry. I should've done it. Just..."
Tanner didn't reply. If, in the reckoning of the world, two people were asked to kill something for the first time, and one of them was a boozy middle-aged woman with her own problems, and the other was a hard-faced giant judge, part of an order which had once executed people, and might one day execute people again if the law called for it... well. Well. Better the judge than the artist. Tanner put all thoughts out of her mind, and Marana's face twitched with an abrupt paroxysm of shame, before a mask of tension returned to both.
"Right, then. The horses, it... they didn't trip or anything, the road's smooth, and they didn't slip, either. If they wanted to slip, they'd have done it hours ago, days ago. The coachman... he... I don't know. I just don't."
Tanner looked around, and her height let her see further than Marana could, and she paused while she studied the snow, her large stick in hand.
"...something's wrong."
"What?"
"There's... look, over there."
"Describe it, I can't see that far."
Tanner hummed uncertainly, leaning into the wind which blew unceasingly in her direction, driving snow into her face with vicious force.
"Prints. I can see prints. The snow's taking them already, there's nothing past a certain distance, but there's... there's some shallow ones, I can see those, then very, very deep ones, then nothing, and-"
Marana swore.
"Something jumped, then. Ran for the horses. Jumped at them. Wouldn't take much. One falls, it drags the others, the coach turns and crushes them to death. Damn. Damn."
Tanner's eyes widened with fear.
"Mutant?"
"Why would a mutant leap at uninfected horses? Wolf, maybe. Heard of rabid, starving animals doing stupid things. Jumped, been flung free, probably..."
A sound.
A sound from behind them, in the great plain of snow that gave way to towering hills. Tanner whirled, and Marana raised her restored revolver. They backed away, towards the phantom prints already being filled by merciful snow, eager to erase all trace of the calamity. The sound was dark and snuffling, filled with pants that spoke to life, and heathy life, with functional lungs. Tanner had images of wolves, huge grey ones, loping easily through the snow, crazed by winter-hunger to attack even a coach. Had they... had they been waiting in ambush? No, that was... come on, just keep the stick up, keep the stick up, and ready herself to hit things. The snuffling rose, and Tanner cursed the hilly landscape, such a break from the rolling plains of the last few days. Hated them, hated each and every divot and protrusion, which hid the creature from sight. Could be an army out there. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking, but her breathing was steady, and she didn't whimper or scream. The cold second-heart was still beating with brutal certainty, unwilling to let her sit down and die. The evolutionary compulsion to live above all else, no matter what.
The creature seemed to shake itself off, behind the snow. Like derailing a coach was just a mild inconvenience.
And all of a sudden, the creature was moving, recovering with terrifying speed. It'd run them off the road, pounced and terrified the horses, killed the coachman, a single pounce and they were traped in the wildenrness. Tanner was trying not to think about the journey onwards, and all the terror of the cold and the world and the crash seemed crystallised in that movement, that unnatural movement. Fast, something dark in the snow, something low-down and nimble, skittering practically over the surface like a water strider on a stagnant pond. She could barely see it, even in the light... Marana was frozen, and Tanner was too, watching the thing moving for the... the horses. As it stopped, it resolved in her vision, and the wet sounds of flesh being ripped at filled the howling air.
Her voice was low, and fearful.
"...it's... it's not a wolf."
"Well, what is it?"
"Mutant."
Marana blinked.
"...but why...?"
Why would it go for uninfected horses. Why would it put itself at risk for a meal that has no use to it. Tanner could see it, her height gave her an advantage, the creature was... maybe it had been a wolf, once. No longer. Fangs like bee stingers, long and black, hollow and pulsing with venom, gums swollen with glands that flared an unsightly purple. Too many eyes, many of them tiny and black, insect-like. Larger than it should be, much larger. No wonder the horses had gone mad with fear and tripped over themselves - the scent of mutation would've driven them to madness already, and the size of the predator could've bowled them over in moments. And... and there were tumorous growths, places where contaminated matter had been ingested. Sticky matter, not unlike spiderwebs, dripped from its mouth pointlessly. The mangy grey fur was studded with tiny twitching legs from a whole variety of insects, and the wide-splayed paws seemed to be gnarled with cancerous tree-roots which emerged like grotesque pseudo-fingers, shivering erratically as plant and animal struggled to merge meaningfully. It was... it was unstable. Unstable mutant. Not one of the smart ones the captain, Kralana, had talked about. A bundle of deformities stuffed into an animal, driving it mad with hunger for more contamination, anything to complete its transformations. It was evolving in a hundred directions at once, and each direction screamed for fuel.
The wind shifted - when she'd looked at the tracks it'd blown into her face, then into her back once she'd turned, and now it shifted, and she could detect the popping, hissing scent of contamination, awakening long-buried instincts of fear within her primordial brain. A command - get away. Linger, and you'll cease to be human.
The creature was stuffing its maw into the horses with wet slurping sounds, digging its bee-stinger teeth into the flesh and ripping away as quickly as it could, sometimes leaving little stinging needles behind in the process, snapped away at the roots. A pulse of relief that she'd killed those two survivors. Didn't make them experience more terror and pain towards the end. Why was it... why was it eating them? What was the point? A strange anger surged in her - why had it run them off the road? It was a mutant, it needed contamination, not... not random horses, not a coach. And the creature seemed to recognise this, somehow. It chewed, ripped flesh away in bleeding chunks, and barely gnawed them before trying to choke them down, its stomach starting to bloat with matter. And the creature groaned as it ate, the only normal eyes among its little collection watering with pain. It chewed randomly, taking from one horse, another, another, from random places, sometimes scraping against bones for a moment before abandoning them, dabbling in everything it could reach without ever settling, and all the while its emaciated stomach bulged with pointless, pointless meat. Tanner stared. Marana hissed through her teeth, voice barely audible.
"...it's unstable. It's... it's young. Doesn't know what it needs. Still thinks it needs to eat."
Tanner turned slightly.
"What?"
"Contamination. Hasn't reached the brain properly. Hasn't told it what it needs, really."
"Look at it, how could-"
"Body. Just the body. Not the brain. Mutant body, but the brain is still wolfish. And wolves eat things like this. But the meat won't satisfy it."
A low growl from the mutant.
It was getting angry with the lack of satisfaction.
They'd been attacked by a creature that was too idiotic to realise it didn't need uninfected flesh. It was one thing to be attacked by a mutant. Another thing to be attacked by an idiot, a shambling rabid wretch that would gain nothing from this, nothing at all.
Tanner realised something.
The wind. It was blowing towards them.
Their scent wasn't carrying to the creature.
That might be the only reason it hadn't-
The head of the beast twitched up on powerful muscles that wriggled under the skin like worms.
It stared at them with its many eyes.
A gobbet of flesh that might've been from the coachman dripped out of its stinger-laden jaws.
Marana raised her revolver.
The creature let out a low, low growl.
Maybe it saw them as a threat. Maybe it saw them as something that might soothe its perishing hunger. Maybe it saw them... saw them the way any starving animal would. And this creature was ravenous. It'd gorged itself on the meat of horses and man, but there was nothing satisfying. Its stomach was bloating, almost scraping the ground, and yet... yet it would be hungry forever. Hungry until the brain caught up with the body. And it didn't look like that would happen in the next few seconds.
It moved slowly, snorting, growling though a throat which wasn't meant to growl, growling was pointless for mutants, pointless, they didn't need to do it. Made it sound like it was gurgling through a throat filled with mucus and meat, which probably wasn't far from the truth. Gurgling through a membrane. Marana raised her revolver, and aimed. Carefully. One eye closed. Legs apart. Tanner braced her stick, and wished she'd taken a revolver of her own... but she knew her hands would shake too much, far too much, to aim for anything that wasn't a dying, immobile horse barely a few feet away. This thing would give her no such luxuries. It advanced, low to the ground, gurgling wetly, teeth red with gore...
Marana fired without ceremony.
There was no reasoning with the mad. No warding them away with self-interest.
The mutant rushed suddenly, the bullet slamming into its front shoulder, tearing at the infected meat - a spray of mutated blood that practically crawled in the snow for a few painful moments, raw tissue trying to escape, to live, to evolve into something greater. The wolf paid it no mind. Barely slowed. Another bullet. It staggered once more, almost falling as a bullet tore through its side, sending more crawling blood into the snow. Two bullets on the horses. Two bullets on the wolf. Two more bullets left in that gleaming revolver. The wolf was mad with delusional hunger, and it continued to advance, even with those ragged wounds. Marana clicked back the hammer... fired again, biting her lip as she did so, something like panic dawning in her eyes. This time the wolf did stop, as a bullet slammed into its front, tearing through what might pass for a throat - a little torrent of meat spilled out of the ruptured tube, the remnants of what it'd been struggling to devour a minute ago. The gurgling growl ceased. But the eyes remained bright. And to Tanner's alarm...
The throat was already plugged.
The meat in the stomach. The stuff it'd been devouring. It was useless meat, wouldn't stabilise it, not at all. But the contamination in the wolf... it was trying to add the meat to its biology. Yet another mad evolutionary drive, contamination convinced that the creature was meant to be bloated with horseflesh. It was healing. And quickly.
Too close.
The final bullet did nothing but slow it down for a crucial moment, and its mouth was opening, wider and wider, large enough to wrap around Marana's entire head, riddled with a nest of black stingers that glistened with venom...
Tanner, once more, didn't think.
She swung.
A bullet could hurt it. A heavy wooden stick being slammed into its side mid-leap by a giantess wouldn't kill it, either. But it could redirect it.
Tanner felt grotesque meat contort under the blow, and the wolf spun away silently into the snow, already steadying itself. Marana cursed, reloading the revolver as quickly as she could manage, and Tanner moved, thrashing at the thing with her stick, pounding it further away. She felt meat move, she felt bones shudder, she felt the whole body of the beast adapt to try and endure the blows. It would survive. It wouldn't die to something as simple as this.
Didn't need to.
A bang echoed through the hills and valleys.
The creature stumbled backwards, head half-caved in by Marana's bullet, brains clearly visible through the demolished skull. It staggered, body still insisting it was alive. Tanner braced, lifted her club...
Swung...
And the creature was flung into the snow, crumpling without a sound.
Marana yelled to her.
"Move! It's not dead!"
Correct. She could see it moving. See it shuffling, even as its ruined skull wept blood and rot, even as the ruptured venom glands in its gums popped and dripped steaming poison downwards, each droplet tinted a sickening golden shade. Nothing would kill it. Nothing but absolute destruction. Fire, they needed fire. Gods, she was holding a wooden stick, why hadn't she... she glanced around quickly, just trying to figure something out. And a sudden ripple of fear ran through her. What had the captain said? Mutants only hunted each other, really. The only sustenance they wanted or needed. The cold war in the north was between mutants perpetually looking for an opening to strike, to claim more contamination, more bio-matter, more power. This was a mutant. It was wounded. It was bleeding.
Meaning, more would be coming.
And quickly.
She thumped it one more time for good measure, and started to run, yelling for Marana to follow. The woman's frightened gaze told her she understood her panicked cry that 'more were coming'. The coach was useless, shattered. The horses were dead. Useless. Tanner swerved around the pools of blood the mutant had left as it charged at them, pools that writhed with tiny half-made organisms, some of them almost seeming to reach out to her as she ran. Right, right, so... so... a twitch of irrationality ran through her, and she dashed to the coach, dragging her small trunk out, holding it under her arm with ease. Marana shot her a disbelieving look... but Tanner was already moving, case bouncing at her side. There was no way of staying here, not safely. More mutants were coming. Bigger mutants. Ones that might infect them just through proximity, might kill them with lazy effortlessness... whatever the case, she didn't want to be here when they came. Going back was suicide, there was nothing but a barren little rest-house they'd left behind ages ago. Based on when they'd crashed... there shouldn't be too far to Rekida, right? Just had to push on through to the end. Going back would be suicide. Going ahead was their only hope.
The creature was already moving.
Tanner hesitated.
"Get on my back."
"What?"
"Get on my back, I can carry you."
Marana blinked.
"Alright."
Accepted Tanner's trunk, using a long strap to hang it from her back, and then... hopped on board. Tanner strained for a moment under the weight. Just for a moment. Then she was off. No worrying about Marana falling behind, could just move as quickly as possible. It was for Marana's sake... and for her own. She could feel a low, animal terror budding in her limbs, tempting her to sprint and exhaust her every resources simply to escape. Wouldn't forgive herself if she left Marana when she did so. Her long legs pumped, powering them onwards, the weight vanishing in a haze of necessity, even as she heard the creature loping after them on wounded limbs slowly filling with plundered meat... pausing from time to time, as it lapped up the matter spilled by Marana's gunshots. Recovering everything it could.
Soon, it'd be back to normal.
Soon, it'd be chasing them to satisfy an insatiable, pointless hunger.
And others would come to sake their hungers on it.
Even now, she thought she could see dark shapes in the distance. Creatures eager to descend. Waiting for the right moment.
Watching.
The hills welcomed them. The snow on the ground was growing deeper - no horses to trample it down, no coach to flatten it. The snow in the air was growing thicker and sharper, rasping across their faces, and Tanner was aware of how she was shedding heat recklessly, letting it boil away in waves of stress and exertion.
Just had to keep running.
Rekida was close.
Rekida was close.
***
Kept running. Kept running. At some point, she'd started mumbling to herself, just encouragements to continue. The snow was almost up to her knees at this point, and she felt how it was starting to soak through the cloth of her coat, her skirt, her stockings, leaching into her skin with eagerness. Numb. Marana was bouncing on her back, a dead weight that was panting despite not being the one running. The creature was still behind them, but it was loping lazily, only coming closer from time to time. And when she heard that heavy pant, that gurgling sound from the half-gorged pipes of its throat, and smelled the sweet champagne crackle of contamination... she forgot all weariness and powered on. Was it toying with them? Was it starting to figure out they weren't good for eating? Was it simply letting them exhaust themselves before striking? They said mutants didn't grow tired - nonsense, but they grew tired much, much, much slower than humans did. Exhaustion wouldn't weary their limbs, not really. They said their muscles were made of the same tissue that kept a human heart beating unceasingly for decades on end. They said that contamination burned like a furnace to keep them working at all times. And she knew the first thing a mutant shed was its eyelids. It wouldn't sleep. It wouldn't stop. It would simply pursue. She felt like some primitive animal running from a primitive human, chased doggedly by something which refused to cease, and would, sooner or later, drive her down a dead end, to the brinks of insanity, and then...
Snap.
Gorged on by a creature which didn't even need her.
The coachman was dead. She hadn't even learned his name, but he was dead. Crushed by his own coach. She kept cycling through her rituals, her routines, all of it. Luck... this might seem like an unlucky scenario, but not quite. If it was truly unlucky, she'd be dead. She lived, didn't she? The lodge had kept her alive, she'd cultivated enough luck through her own rites... even now, she had a little trunk with her tools, the tools of a judge, the reason she was going to Rekida, the reason Rekida was a safe place that would shelter her. She knew there was warmth at the end of the journey, this wasn't a leap of faith. But the sun was sliding down the sky with mocking swiftness, a silver disk that seemed to drink warmth from the world... but she knew that was an illusion, and once it was gone, she'd know true cold. The snow was taking her perception, bit by bit. Her hands were numb, even through her gloves. Her ears were gone. Her nose might as well have been severed.
Blood was slithering from the skin to the organs. Moving to protect the most vital areas. But soon enough, that'd just mean she was starving everything outside the internals of heat, of life. And then the things she couldn't feel... she'd never feel them again. They'd shrivel. Blacken. Crack free with a sound like... like Marana's gun firing. Her legs pushed through drifts of snow.
How long until her toes fell off? She already couldn't feel them. Could she guarantee she'd ever be able to push blood into them again, that the vessels hadn't already shrivelled and collapsed like... like twigs? Brittle as seashells and just as hollow.
She was going to die here.
She was not going to die here.
"I'm not dying. Not dying."
Marana murmured into her ear a moment later:
"That's right, you're going to live through this and tell me a whole suite of random things about eels, that's what you're going to die."
"Not dying."
"Precisely, no-one else is dying today, not a single additional horse. We'll get to Rekida, share an enormous meal, drink vast quantities... just think about it, think about... about sausages fried in bacon fat, eggs swimming in the stuff, their yolks bursting and spilling around your plate, think of potatoes crisp enough to shatter in your hands, shatter into little fried shards!"
"Not dying."
"That's the spirit!"
"Got a job. Have a job."
"Precisely, you go and fulfil your professional obligations!"
"Not dying."
Marana kept talking, but it was obvious neither was talking to one another. Tanner just wheezed out what she could through her aching lungs, past her frigid lips, into the soaked fabric of her scarf. Marana was just... saying things for their own sake, her voice jittering with nerves. Sometimes, Tanner felt her revolver thump against Tanner's broad back. Sometimes, Tanner felt all her aches and pains. The stripe of bruises from the crash. The lacerations from the broken window. The low hum in her hands where she'd struck the mutant. All of it. The shakes from shooting the horses, too. The shakes that never stopped.
Might be keeping her warm, for all she knew. Might be keeping her limbs intact. Bless the shakes.
And suddenly...
Something moved.
Not the wolf.
Not the wolf.
Something else. Something larger.
For a moment, something vast and unnameable was there, in the snow. Just ahead of them, and concealed behind a veil of flakes. Larger than Tanner, much larger. Dead eyes stared at her, dead silver eyes, like the slowly vanishing sun. No clues to what it looked like beyond that. Just... dead. A mutant, and a large one, large enough to kill her in moments, to rip her apart, to... to... they were here. They were here. The smarter mutants. The larger mutants. Stable, and utterly mechanical, divorced from any kind of animal reasoning. All the desire to survive, decoupled from everything else that made an animal animalistic. Animals would gnaw off a leg to escape a trap. These eyes... this thing would do the same. It would gnaw its leg off. But it would feel no pain. It would feel no loss. It would lose the leg, then cannibalise it a moment later to avoid wasting resources, before dispassionately preparing to fight whatever had laid the trap in the first place. Inhuman, unanimal intelligence lurked in those eyes, cold as the winter sun, yet innumerable, a constellation of dead stars looming at her from a great height.
A second.
A flurry of snow.
It was gone.
A second of contact, and the thing had vanished. Disappeared into the dark. Tanner barely even had time to process it before she was forced to keep running.
They were here.
They could kill her, if they wanted to.
She focused on Eygi. On her role. On her restraints. A wasp is bound in a spiderweb, and the wasp is immobilised, but it's safe, safe for others to admire, and safe from other predators that fear the cloying touch of the web. No. Idiot. Not all predators. She felt small, she felt weak, she felt the routines and restraints which had dragged her here, and she wondered what they were worth if it ended in the bloody snow.
Her mind's gyre widened with each step, each panicked breath, each rasped word of encouragement from herself to herself, like her two hearts, cold and hot, were communicating with one another by any means necessary. Keep going. Don't stop. Live. Get back home. Mother had money she needed to keep father properly comfortable. The lodge had pride she needed to maintain by living. The judges had expectations upon her. Eygi would be expecting a letter. She'd cultivated too much luck to die in a loathsome place like this, surrounded by hills too barren for fields, too cold for animals. Every wall contained a promise, a promise that something interesting lay on the other side - had the Tulavanta been containing this? Focus on the bitter outrage, focus on the feeling that she'd been cheated, that she'd left the walls and found nothing beyond them.
And do. Not. Stop. Running.
Another hungry gurgle.
And despite everything, a childish whimper escaped her throat.
She didn't want to die.
She had too much work to do.